Pyramiden revisited

I said earlier that I´d dig out some of William´s old photos from his last visit to Pyramiden (last summer), from the inside of the buildings. Well, I did and here are some of them:










I suppose most of this is still the same, as things have been left alone since then. I´ve heard that the books in the library have been removed, so maybe those shelves above are empty now.


After our visit to Pyramiden, I´ve had time to read a neat little book about - indeed - Pyramiden. This is a fairly new book (published in 2007), written by Kjartan Fløgstad. The book was a gift from Tonni and Helge, thank you very much to them!


It contains a lot of interesting information about the town, about it´s architecture and history, also related to the history of the Soviet Union. The state of the houses in Pyramiden is described very poetically, which suits the eerily empty photos of abandoned rooms and streets, taken by Siri Hermansen.

However, the book is also about mining, and industry, and all kinds of associations around mining and shafts, caverns and the underground in general - stretching from Mother Earth and Orfeus, through Nils Klim and poetry by Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan and a list of other Americans. After some reading you get a feeling that Fløgstad´s main project has been to describe the idea about mining, and about a (failed) mining town, rather than the story about Pyramiden in particular. On the whole, it feels like too much information - crammed into too little space.

But a neat book it is, and I like the pictures.

And we discovered that a person we know rather well plays a small part in it. Terje, if you read this, check out what you´re doing on page 161!