Svalbard is group of islands belonging to Norway, with a combined area about the same as Sri Lanka. (Or, if it’s easier for you to conceptualize, Latvia. Or West Virginia or Nova Scotia or Tasmania.)
To say it’s an interesting place is a gross understatement. Just a few of the territory’s quirks:
- Nobody is from Svalbard. Everyone who lives there was born somewhere else, and anyone due to give birth must go to mainland Norway to do so.
- There are no trees. (The environment won’t allow it.)
- There are no cats. (The government won’t allow it on account of the rare birds.)
- If you travel outside the main settlements, you are required to carry a gun. This is in case a polar bear gets hungry.
- It’s home to the Global Seed Vault. You can read about it here, but basically it’s a huge cave filled with seeds in case the world’s vegetation is wiped out due to [insert global catastrophe here].
- It’s so far north that it goes three months without a trace of sun.
Being just about as far north as you can go before you start going south again, Svalbard is home to the northernmost of several things, including the northernmost:
- Settlement (Ny-Ålesund)
- Airport (in Longyearbyen)
- Blues Festival (also in Longyearbyen)
- University (well, research centre, which totally counts)
- Piano (in Pyramiden, which is an abandoned Russian mining town)
That last town must feel like a time capsule. It was built in the Soviet era and abandoned in 1998, but because of the permafrost and dry arctic air, disused buildings in Svalbard don’t decay. The structures in the ghost town are all basically just as sound as they were when they were built.
I don’t know which aspect of Svalbard’s uniqueness prompted Toronto’s Leland Whitty to name this song after it, but it does evoke the Norwegian islands in a few wonderful ways.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. The disorienting polyrhythms of the opening seconds.
2. The unresolved feeling of the opening minute.
3. The final settling onto the root chord at 1:05.
Recommended listening activity:
Making a diorama in your freezer.