Rebuilt and back in production

Coal production resumed in 1946 at Longyearbyen, the Store Norske (the state-owned mining company) mining town on the island of Spitsbergen, in the Isfjorden area. The Store norske leksikon says that during the war the mines were first put out of action by the Allies and later Longyearbyen was almost totally destroyed by the Germans. After the war, the Store norske leksikon says, everything was rebuilt and production resumed in 1946.

The destruction that preceded the 1946 rebuilding came in two steps. Store Norske's jubilee history records that coal production stopped in September 1941 and that Longyearbyen was evacuated on the night of 2 to 3 September. The jubilee history adds that more than 130,000 tonnes of coal in store were set on fire, the power station was partly dismantled and ropeway trestles were blown up on Allied orders.

The second step came on 8 September 1943, when the German ships Tirpitz and Scharnhorst attacked Barentsburg and Longyearbyen, which later had to be rebuilt. Thoralv Lund's Kalde krigsår gives nine Norwegians killed or dead of wounds and 41 captured, while Helge Ingstad's Landet med de kalde kyster gives six killed and 41 captured. Ingstad reports that the Germans razed most plants and set the mines on fire, while Sverdrupbyen, Ny-Ålesund and Pyramiden were spared. He says the Svea plant was destroyed too, probably by a submarine crew. The jubilee history says the Scharnhorst set Gruve 2 on fire and that it burned until 1962.

Work toward the 1946 restart began before the war ended. Ingstad writes that the Norwegian garrison was kept on Svalbard and that men were sent to fight the fire in the main mine at Longyearbyen, so that production could restart quickly at peace. Lund says the garrison stayed after the German capitulation on 8 May 1945, mostly on clean-up work, and that the last of it was withdrawn after a year and a half. The jubilee history says reconstruction began almost at once and was done at a fast pace. The jubilee history adds that preparations for Gruve 2 started as soon as the war ended, and that output reached 12,000 tonnes a month in the autumn of 1945. The last boat of 1945 turned back to Harstad because of storms and ice. The history places the restart of production in the winter of 1945/46 and says the rebuilding was planned in 1948 as nearly finished in Longyearbyen and Svea.

The jubilee history says no coal was shipped in the first year, but from 1946 onward through the following decade shipments lay between 300,000 and 400,000 tonnes a year. The jubilee history dates the reopening of Gruve 2 to 1947, so not every mine was producing in 1946. Ingstad, writing in 1948, says Store Norske had Longyearbyen production in full swing again, with the rebuilt town placed further up the valley near new mine entrances. He adds that work at Svea was halted from the autumn of 1949 because Longyearbyen output covered the planned annual quantity, and that Kings Bay Kull Comp. had resumed work at Ny-Ålesund. The jubilee history says that after two or three years the Norwegian market could not take the output of both Svea and Longyearbyen. The jubilee history adds that new markets in Sweden, Denmark and Germany followed in the first half of the fifties. The sources date the Longyearbyen restart of production differently: the lexicon says 1946, the jubilee history the winter of 1945/46 and, for Gruve 2, 1947.