Cold and Dark, But It's Home

"Norilsk is a unique city. It was put here by force."
"It is like a survivor. If it had not been for Norilsk, there would have been another principle of life in the Arctic: You came, you worked, you froze = and you left."
Alexander Kharitonov, owner, printing house

"Everything else [beyond the city] is a vast wild land with a wild nature and no people."
"This is where the last wild mammoths died. When they dug the foundations of the buildings, they found the bones of mammoths."
Vladimir Larin, scientist, Norilsk

Due to its location, Norilsk might appear even more isolated than other arctic cities, without ground connections with the rest of the world. The air is the only way to reach it, together with seaway and river boats when the navigation is possible

It was once a dark, frozen, isolated gulag. That was during Soviet times, when Stalin had subversives, enemies of the state and just pure unfortunates sent to this remote city in northern Siberia to work as slave labourers. It was a vast slave prison, part of Stalin's infamous Gulag, where harsh punishment was meted out to people enslaved in a harsh landscape between 1925 and 1956. At its height, an estimated 650,000 prisoners were sent to the camp known as Norillag.

They must have thought they were in Hell, in a place that was perpetually dark throughout the long winter months from late November to June where the sun is never seen and the polar winter is brutal and they worked until they dropped. It was thought that during the two decades of its use, 250,000 of the prisoners died of overwork, of starvation of the effects on the human body of continual exposure to misery and cold, where the temperature was known to drop to minus 62 Celsius.

The place was closed by Nikita Khrushchev in 1956, when human rights became a recognized issue and the-then President dismantled Stalin's slave labour camps. Even so, no foreign visitors may even now access the city without a permit issued by Russia's Federal Security Service. What any foreigner would see if he ventured there now would be a thriving city of 174,000 people living there year-round; a population comprised of descendants of some of the labourers and of the majority who came voluntarily, lured by the prospect of high salaries and the stark beauty of the place.

The city is well populated but the wilderness extending beyond it is uninhabited wilderness for the most part. When winter breaks, and the two months of darkness relent, melting snow brings buried remains of the prisoners to the surface. The city is so remote only plane or boat on the Arctic Ocean offer passage out.

Those who came for the steady work on offer do hard, well-remunerated labour in Norilsk's metallurgical industry, a large complex of mines and smelters representing Norilsk Nickel a former state company since privatized, the world's largest producer of the rare metal palladium as well as a supplier of nickel copper and other metals. In recognition of difficult living and working conditions there are 90 days of paid holiday time, and retirement age is set at 45.

Every year, more than 2 million tons of gas (mainly dioxide sulfur, but also nitrogen oxides, carbon and phenols) are expelled into the atmosphere

Move than 6,000 square kilometers have been turned into a dead zone characterized by dead trees, by mud and snow. More sulfur dioxide is belched out of the company's chimneys that what all of France produces in a year. Its residents, however, are proud of their city and their ability to survive in a harsh environment. Lake Dolgoye even has its dedicated contingent of swimmers eager for the bracing experience when they dip into its icy waters in a lake that only partially freezes; where hot water pipes from a power plant warms it to below freezing.

The Norilsk’s citizens suffer ‘the polar night syndrome’, resulting in anxiety, nervousness, drowsiness or insomnia, depending of the seasons, while the psychological discomfort and poor emotional stimuli also generate many cases of depression. Pictured in January locals celebrate Epiphany by swimming in Lake Norilsk

There are some newly-introduced social amenities in the city, such as Internet service, and the presence of the Norilsk College of Arts, as well as the Norilsk Greenhouse growing fresh product in heated greenhouses. There is home brew available and live music at the Zaboi Bar whose owner claims to struggle with the climate, dreading returning to the city after being away, yet never failing to return to the city he "really do[es] not want to go back" to.

This huge pollution has a strong influence on the people’s health. Life expectancy is 10 years less than in other regions of Russia, the risk of cancer is two time higher and respiratory diseases are widespread

“It is really impossible to emphasize just how otherworldly this place was. Most people, including the city's nuns and head doctors, claim that those from Norilsk have better health. And this is without mentioning that all nature in a radius almost the size of Germany is dead from severe air pollution. I already knew that the people of Norilsk loved their hometown, but I didn't expect them to so openly contradict medical findings [of cancer ten times the rate elsewhere in Russia].”
Victoria Fiore, filmmaker

Many buildings have been gradually abandoned