Polar Climate and Cultural Heritage – Preservation and Restoration Management

Arctic cultural heritage presents very valuable historical information. Cultural heritage may also be a driver for sustainable development of Arctic communities via positive impacts in societal, ecological and economical domains. However, arctic cultural heritage is naturally deteriorating with time. This may be speeded up by warming climate and degrading permafrost, use in daily life (when allowed) and by the tourist traffic. That is why, the organizations responsible for maintaining the cultural heritage are left with a large task to preserve and maintain arctic cultural heritage in a good and affordable way. The PCCH-Arctic project (Polar Climate and Cultural Heritage - Preservation and Restoration Management) will deliver a set of best practices (a guideline) for management of arctic cultural heritage. The project will present the practices of restoration methods and monitoring techniques. The guideline will also include experience in restoration and maintenance of artic cultural heritage by the industry partners responsible for large number of cultural heritage objects in Svalbard. The project will also develop considerations supporting management of arctic cultural heritage from ethical and socio-cultural points of view. In addition, the project research partners will produce data and methods for a better restoration of foundations of arctic cultural heritage. Those new data and methods will be included in the PCCH-Artic guideline. The project develops forecast of future climate warming and thawing of permafrost, and new engineering methods to adapt buildings of cultural heritage to conditions of warmer climate. Finally, PCCH-Artic guideline will be used to develop restoration, maintenance and use of selected cultural heritage in Longyearbyen and Ny-Ålesund. In 2021, four project workshops were organized, two of which were run in Longyearbyen and Ny-Ålesund. The needs of user partners and the issues with specific objects of cultural heritage were discussed on the workshops. This helped to align the project activities as close as possible to the needs of user partners. This in turn, is useful for assuring that project deliverables will be applicable for solving similar challenges in other arctic regions. In addition, a special workshop was organized to look at the situation at the historical settlement of Hiorthhamn, Svalbard. In Hiorthhamn, coastal erosion is threating iconic building of Taubanestasjonen ? a structure, previously used for transportation of coal from the above laying mine to the ships. In June, PCCH-Arctic performed a collaboration with the FlightCase initiative from TU Delft, the Netherlands. Collaboration was focused on the theme of cultural heritage as a driver of sustainable development in small arctic communities. Master students from the FlightCase in cooperation with PCCH-Arctic, have prepared a report, which provides reflections the main pillars of sustainable development and cultural heritage in arctic communities. In August-September, field inspections of case-study structures were undertaken in Ny-Ålesund and Longyearbyen. Inspections included initial data collection. The fieldwork helped to clarify the effects of permafrost degradation on historical structures and buildings, this in turn will be helpful to design the restoration solutions withing the project. In these field visits, researchers and the owners of cultural heritage have discussed currently used solutions for restoration of foundations, and the needs for improvements. Finally, four Master students from NTNU and UNIS were recruited by the project to work withing engineering and social science domains of the project.

The PCCH-Arctic project will study the cultural heritage of Longyearbyen and Ny-Ålesund, both representing coal mining community sites and objects regarded as international heritage. The cultural heritage at Svalbard is fragile, and exposed to impacts of a harsh arctic climate, climate change and tourism traffic. Warming of permafrost is experienced in the last decades, and future climate projections suggest even stronger warming, having a major impact on durability, stability and foundations of many objects. Caretaking is sought to be based on value-based management, with authenticity and integrity as the most distinct heritage values, but where the resilience of a cultural heritage site constitutes its tolerance limits, and to exceed such limits will challenge the value of the site, and thus its resilience. Thus, the PCCH-Arctic research project will focus the research both on future climate change and technical consequences and solutions for the cultural heritage on Svalbard and on the ethical aspects on to what extent measures to preserve such structures are to be authentically reconstructing the original performance; to deviate this in order to preserve the structures within limits of economy; or to let the cultural heritage structures slowly dissolve and disappear. Together with the user partners Longyearbyen Lokalstyre, Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani AS and Kings Bay AS, the research organizations SINTEF, University of Oslo and The Norwegian Meteorological Institute will aim to fulfil the following main objectives: • Give input towards cultural heritage ethics, portrait of future tourists, strategies, policy instruments, and guidelines for cultural heritage management and preservation. • Gain a deeper knowledge and develop improved methods for local climate projections and permafrost degradation in the Arctic. • Provide a methodology and technological solution framework for sustainable management of cultural heritage on Svalbard and in Polar climate.