#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. Opened on March 19, 1965, the cold-storage museum is located in one of the chambers of the underground North-Eastern Scientific Research Permafrost Laboratory. In 2002, it was recognized as the best museum in Europe.
“While March 19, 1965, is considered the museum’s founding date, its history actually dates back to the 1930s, when the Igarka Scientific Research Permafrost Station of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences began operations, laying the groundwork for the museum”, reports the GoArctic portal.
The concept for an underground museum-storage-laboratory in permafrost was first proposed by Mikhail Sumgin, the founder of Soviet permafrost studies. He was the author of numerous scientific works and the first textbook for permafrost researchers, and he later headed the Committee on Permafrost at the USSR Academy of Sciences. Sumgin envisioned a future where science could address unsolvable problems, but it needed materials for research, which the permafrost storage would provide.
Construction of the first underground chambers began in the spring of 1936, carried out manually with picks and crowbars. By December of that year, plans were underway to build a larger storage facility. Initially, shaft wells were dug, reaching depths of 8.65 meters (eastern shaft) and 6.94 meters (western shaft). Excavation of arched tunnels, each two meters high, then commenced, with both shafts connecting by March 1938.
From 1942, one of the chambers in the Igarka underground operated as a biomuseum, housing frozen fish, bumblebees, butterflies, and flies. In 1950, laboratory staff placed wartime newspapers into storage, sealing them in a wooden box located two meters below floor level. A sheet of drawing paper containing a copy of the act regarding the burial of the newspapers was encased in the permafrost, stating that the box should be opened on May 9, 2045.
In 1964, at the initiative of Alexander Pchelintsev, the head of the permafrost station, work began to establish a museum in the permafrost. On March 20, 1965, a museum inventory log was created, listing all the items included in the first exhibition – books on permafrost studies encased in slabs of pure Yenisey ice.
Today, the Permafrost Museum features a 120-meter-long ice track with specially equipped changing rooms and a café. However, the museum is not just about the underground tunnels; it also includes a surface complex of exhibitions related to the history of Igarka. Visitors can learn about the GULAG prisoners, who built the transpolar highway, and explore the traditions of indigenous peoples. The museum also displays portraits of permafrost researchers and paintings by Siberian artists.
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Text: Maria Sokolova, Photo: Nikolay Shchipko
