Norilsk: Very North & Very Dirty
Norilsk is the most northerly city in the world with a population over 100,000. It’s also the second largest city in the Arctic Circle, after Murmansk. On the muckier side of the coin it’s also one of the most polluted cities in the world. Let’s take a look.
Founded in 1920, Norilsk is located between the West Siberian Plain and Central Siberian Plateau at the foot of the 1,700 m (5,600 ft) high Putorana Mountains.
The first question is: “why would anyone choose to set up a town in an area that’s no stranger to -50 C temperatures, and regularly subjected to days of constant dark during the winter?” The answer, of course, is cash.
This particular cash comes in the form of some of the richest nickel reserves in the world. In fact, Norilsk lies in the center of a region where nickel, copper, cobalt, platinum, palladium, and coal are all mined.
Norilsk’s Dudinka port is the only port in the world that’s closed down and dismantled each and every year. In Spring, when it floods due to the seasonal ice thaw, the whole thing is packed down.
During the black old days of the communist gulags, Norilsk’s gulag was particularly brutal with bitter cold and starvation constantly nipping at the prisoner’s heels. Unknown quantities of men met their deaths working in the nickel mines of Norilsk. Prisoners were still working and dying in the mines as late as 1979.
The gulag hosted the longest known prisoner strike of the gulag era. More than 16,000 inmates refused to work for 69 days.
The Norilsk mosque, owned by the Muslim Tatars of the region, is recognized as the most northerly mosque in the world.
The fact that it’s colder than cold does not put the Norilsk people off doing a bit of ice swimming when the notion takes them. Temperatures have been measured at -63.6 C, so this is not for the weak-willed.
Ice swimming and “epiphany bathing” have long been part of Russian culture. Orthodox priests bless water holes cut into the ice every January and brave Russian stalwarts get immersed in the frigid waters en masse.
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OMYAKON THE COLDEST TOWN ON EARTH
Thanks to the aggressive mining and smelting activities of the region, Norilsk is considered one of the top 10 most polluted cities in the world. The smelting in this one city alone is thought to account for 1% of the entire planet’s sulphur dioxide emissions.
The Blacksmith Institute (an international not-for-profit organization dedicated to solving life-threatening pollution in the developing world) estimates four million tons of cadmium, copper, lead, nickel, arsenic, selenium, and zinc are released into the air every year from Norilsk’s industry.
This city is not the type of place that many people visit. I mean, it is fascinating and there certainly is a stark beauty, but the amount of effort it would take to get there pretty much negates the pleasure. Photos will do for now.
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