Fiskaa asks if Mine 7 plant can stay as heritage

Ingrid Fiskaa of the Socialist Left Party has asked the government whether the coal processing plant at Mine 7 will be kept standing as a cultural monument now that mining in Longyearbyen has ended. She sent the question in writing to the Minister of Trade and Industry, Cecilie Myrseth of the Labour Party, on Friday 6 November. It is written question 528 in the Storting (the Norwegian parliament); the minister's answer is pending.

Fiskaa, a member of the Storting for Rogaland since 2021, writes that the clean-up at Mine 7 is nearing its end. "If the plant is removed, it will no longer be possible to see that there was a mine there," she writes. She notes that the Governor of Svalbard (Sysselmesteren) has asked Store Norske (the state-owned mining company), which owns the mine, to assess its heritage value as part of the closure plan.

Mine 7 was Norway's last coal mine. It produced coal from 1976, and operations ended on 30 June 2025, according to Store norske leksikon. Store Norske decided in autumn 2023 to close it after the local council (Longyearbyen lokalstyre) ended its agreement to buy the mine's coal for the town's power plant. Operations had already been extended by two years after the war in Ukraine raised the demand for coal. The mine was officially closed on 4 May 2026, High North News reported.

The Governor's request goes back to April 2024, when the Governor and Store Norske met to go through the Governor's feedback on preserving the mining environment as a whole. Store Norske was to set out which buildings, installations and terrain changes need not be removed for pollution or safety reasons. It was also to say which of them it believes can be kept, the Governor's annual report for 2024 says. The Governor's report says there is still great uncertainty about the future use of the area and its buildings, and that keeping them would require financial security for maintenance and making them safe.

In its 2026 allocation letter, the Ministry of Justice and Public Security asked the Governor to assess whether to order the landscape at Mine 7 restored under the Svalbard Environmental Protection Act. The clean-up follows the closure plan and requirements set by the Norwegian Environment Agency.

Under that act, all cultural heritage in Svalbard from before 1946 is protected automatically, the Governor says; newer heritage of special value can be protected by the Directorate for Cultural Heritage.

Updated 7 November 2026: who asked the question and to whom, the mine's history, the Governor's request to Store Norske and the heritage rules added.

Coverage: Stortinget, High North News