Word: hammerfest
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...London-based senior editor, journeyed to the village of Resolute in Canada's remote Nunavut territory, where the Canadian government plans to build a military training center to safeguard the coming economic bounty. And our Berlin bureau chief, Andrew Purvis, set off for the isolated Norwegian outpost of Hammerfest, a template for future Arctic boomtowns...
...encountered very different realities in the Arctic--and different reactions from locals. In Hammerfest, where reindeer graze in the glow of a gas flare, Purvis found Norwegians delighted by the rewards from a natural-gas extraction plant. In Resolute, the native Inuit are not so sanguine about the benefits of balmy weather. One man invited Graff to watch a videotape of his 16-year-old daughter killing her first polar bear, a rite of passage that is under threat as the melting ice reduces the bear population. For the Inuit, says Graff, "the idea that a warmer Arctic would...
...August, a wisp of flame suddenly appeared in the Arctic twilight over the Barents Sea, bathing the low clouds over the Norwegian port of Hammerfest in a spectral orange glow. With a tremendous roar, the flame bloomed over the windswept ocean and craggy gray rocks, competing for an instant with the Arctic summer's never-setting sun. The first flare-off of natural gas from the Snohvit (Snow White in Norwegian) gas field, some 90 miles (145 km) offshore, was a beacon of promise: After 25 years of false starts, planning and construction, the first Arctic industrial...
Meanwhile, as they always have, adventurers, hucksters and dreamers will continue to make their way north - some of them in bikinis. Iceland's Valsson sees the Arctic as "the new Mediterranean," with warming temperatures fostering new centers of civilization in Siberia and Arctic Canada. Hammerfest bears witness to some of that: The population is booming, and a sense of hope infuses the economy. But as winter approaches in Resolute and the lowering sky turns dark, Kalluk, the Inuit hunter, suspects that dreams of a new world in the north are overdone. "Whatever else happens," he says, "the sun will still...
With reporting by Laura Blue/London, Ulla Plon/Copenhagen, Andrew Purvis/Berlin and Hammerfest, Elisabeth Salemme/New York, Adam Zagorin/Washington and Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow...