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RONJERBIEN, NORWAY—The warm glow of the Svalbard Church lights shines on the slopes of the mountains where the church stands above a remote village in the Norwegian Arctic, shrouded in the constant darkness of the polar night.
A century after it was founded to serve the miners who settled in Longyearbyen, the Lutheran House of Faith is open 24/7, helping the community navigate its dramatic shift in identity. It acts as a sign.
Norway’s last coal mine in the Svalbard archipelago, one of the world’s warmest regions, was due to close this year, but a war-triggered energy crisis in Ukraine has forced it to close. A grace period has been granted until 2025.
Mission
The challenge for the lone pastor is to fulfill the Church’s historic mission to serve those in need while grappling with the immediate and divisive challenges of our time.
“We pray every Sunday for everyone affected by climate change,” said Pastor Shiv Limstrand.
Svalbard Kirke invites you to a fireplace-warmed lounge that leads to the sanctuary. A cup of coffee and a multilingual hymnbook are always available.
“You don’t have to be very religious,” said Leonard Snooks, whose daughter sings in the Paula Gospel, the church’s children’s choir, and whose wife works on the city’s energy plan.
Longyearbyen’s energy transition project leader Torbjörn Grotte said this year, switching from coal-fired power to diesel-powered energy production at the factory is expected to halve the carbon footprint.
Anchor and beacon
Change swirls faster than the snowdrifts outside, so the church’s anchor role seems poised to remain the only constant.
Miners attending the funerals of colleagues who have died on the job for decades, newly arrived scientists, and tourist workers trying to fit into an increasingly diverse community come together.
Store Norske, the Norwegian company that still operates the remaining mines, built the first church in Longyearbyen in 1921. The church was inhabited by lone miners and miner families for most of the 20th century.
Trond Johansen was 17 years old when he arrived on a plane chartered by a mining company in 1971. Sipping black coffee in one of the town’s sophisticated cafés on a mid-January morning, the retired miner recalled a time when his chief pastime was at church.
Johansen and his fellow miners got together Wednesday to watch a four-week-old videocassette of news broadcasts from the mainland, but skipped the weather forecast, Johansen adds with a laugh.
Bent Jacobsen, who was born in Svalbard and works in a coal mine like his father, said: “It was a wonderful place to grow up. It was probably more free than many places. There was the wildness and the excitement of polar bears lurking. ‘ said. and his previous brother.
On the verge?
But today, he jokes that the closure of the mine will make it as endangered as the iconic Arctic predator. said Jacobsen.
The natural environment of Svalbard is also changing rapidly. Isfjorden, which translates to ‘Ice fjord’, is no longer ice. Up until a decade ago, foot-thick ice would have been passed through by polar bears in winter.
“Everything has changed except the darkness,” said Kim Holmen, special adviser to the Norwegian Polar Institute.
Exposed to the currents of the Gulf Stream, Svalbard is heating up faster than other parts of the Arctic due to the expansion of open waters that accelerates warming.
Unusual winter rains destabilize the snowpack, leading to more avalanches, including a deadly avalanche around Christmas 2015 that killed two people in Longyearbyen.
One of them was a friend of Rev. Leif Magne Helgesen, then pastor of Circe, Svalbard.
“As a pastor of Svalbard, you are the northernmost religious leader in the world. It gives you a pulpit,” said Helgesen.
church church
He began incorporating climate prayers into his worship services. He also collaborated with his Espen Rotevatn, the church’s then music director, to create the Climate Change Mass. This includes a piano penance ritual with deep, haunting sounds and bright blues-inspired passages.
From a Christian perspective, some might argue that God can solve everything, but Rothevatn shares a different view that he believes is more common in Norwegian churches.
“We are responsible for the planet we have been given. [not] Destroy it, that could be what we’re doing now,” Rotevatn said.
Keeping the lights on during the winter months when the sun doesn’t rise here is more than a Svalbard Kirke metaphor.
Rimstrand, who became a pastor here in 2019, said, “Physical openness and accessibility to me is not only symbolic, but also the ideal of what a church should be.
Among the dozens of congregants who attended Sunday afternoon mass in mid-January were two scientists from India and a Hindu family with an 18-month-old daughter.
“God is God. Religion doesn’t matter. We feel good, peaceful and calm, just like when we go to a temple,” Neil Singh said.
What Rimstrand calls “spiritual hospitality” also extends from the Red Slatted Church.
Before the pandemic, she hosted regular visits by Catholic and Orthodox priests, serving congregations that included Poles at remote research stations and Russians and Ukrainians in the mining town of Barentsburg.
The pastor himself travels to celebrate services outside the church, such as baptizing two children at Green Dog, a dog-sledding company in a wide valley half a dozen miles outside Longyearbyen.
Their mother, Carina Barnlow, arrived in Svalbard 10 years ago and meets most outside of work from a community where Longyearbyen has lived in coal mines for generations and has warmly welcomed outsiders. We’ve already seen it transform into a mixed community of casual short-term workers. .
“A place without history, it’s changing. You can see how it fades away,” she said. “The church is a bridge.”
That’s exactly the kind of church Rimstrand hopes to foster to serve this changing community.
Here, people feel at home when they come to worship by the rose-filled altar, having already attended concerts and Tuesday night coffee hours.
“This is not a pastor’s church, or a church of churches, or a church council church, it’s our church,” Rimstrand said.
Image credit: AP/Daniel Cole, AP/Daniel Cole)
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