Svalbard; a place of plenty in a wasteland of white
Deep in the arctic circle on the remote Spitsbergen Island, beneath the northern lights and a 24hr ‘midnight sun’, deep in the side of a snow-covered mountain and surrounded by permafrost there is one of the greatest pieces of evidence of the co-operative spirit of humanity. Taking its name from the entire archipelago in which it’s nestled, is an alien looking bunker in a sea of endless whiteness — Svalbard.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened its doors in January of 2008 and since then has gone on to collect over 930,000 individual varieties of crops.
Originally a coal mine, a remarkable transformation took place. It’s perhaps ironic that Svalbard began life as a coal mine, a producer of dirty fuel, only to become a repository for the world’s seeds, perhaps the only place in the world to make such a dramatic change.
Once the change had happened though, the vault was reminiscent of a secret Armageddon bunker, or a Bond villain’s lair. A stark concrete façade gives way to an entrance hall, where machines and air con units carefully control the internal facility’s temperature. We then descend 430ft along a corridor, eventually leading to a door, beyond which are three chambers, only one of which currently holds the life-giving seeds. As we enter this room, the temperature is now -18C (-0.4F).
