Mine 7

Between the jet lag I can't seem to kick and my cold, I was moving pretty slow on Sunday. I slept late and didn't get out to film until the afternoon. I was half way up a mountain when my phone rang (Longyearbyen may be a small town, but it has amazing cell reception). Linda, the woman coal miner who is the focus of my project was calling. I finished up filming and walked over to her house.

Here's a picture of Linda in her amazing sealskin coat.

Linda works at Svea, the larger of the two Norwegen mines. Svea is about 60km to the south of Longyearbyen. The miners there work a 14 days on, 14 days off schedule. They fly in for their shifts. Linda was just finishing up her 14 days off.

We made plans to go to Mine 7 Monday morning. Mine 7 is just north of Longyearbyen and reachable by car. Longyearbyen has two main roads that run perpendicular to each other. Both roads just end, one at the mine and the other at a glacier.

I headed back to my residence at Galleri Svalbard and spent the evening charging batteries and doing laundry.

Linda had borrowed a car and picked me up Monday morning. We had permission to film around the entrance to the mine, but not inside. We entered a large garage looking building. Inside the building was a lot of machinery, vehicles, and a huge hole into the mountain. I spent a couple hours filming Linda and the miners who work in Mine 7.

To celebrate a successful day of filming, Linda and I had dinner at Funken, a hotel and restaurant with a view over Longyearbyen. The restaurant seemed to think my "reservation for two" was for a romantic dinner - note the hearts on the table. After too many courses of things like Arctic Char tartar and reindeer, I went to bed swearing I'd never eat that much again.