Malte Jochmann

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Exactly five years ago Malte Jochmann and Elke Morgner, their two young children, and a visiting friend were buried in the kitchen under tons of snow that had just destroyed their home and 10 others. Just after noon on Saturday in the 24-hour darkness of Longyearbyen’ polar night, the couple of their children gathered at a candlelight memorial perhaps 100 meters away from their former home and reflected on how they were among the lucky ones.

About Post Author

Mark Sabbatini

I'm a professional transient living on a tiny Norwegian island next door to the North Pole, where once a week (or thereabouts) I pollute our extreme and pristine environment with paper fishwrappers decorated with seemingly random letters that would cause a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters to die of humiliation. Such is the wisdom one acquires after more than 25 years in the world's second-least-respected occupation, much of it roaming the seven continents in search of jazz, unrecognizable street food and escorts I f****d with by insisting they give me the platonic tours of their cities promised in their ads. But it turns out this tiny group of islands known as Svalbard is my True Love and, generous contributions from you willing, I'll keep littering until they dig my body out when my climate-change-deformed apartment collapses or they exile my penniless ass because I'm not even worthy of washing your dirty dishes.

marksabbatini@yahoo.com

http://icepeople.net

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(Editor’s note: We’re not in the habit of shilling for Svalbardposten here, but they published two exceptional articles during the past week about the miraculous rescue of two families during the Dec. 19 avalanche. Both are available in English and, while behind the paywall, a 24-hour daypass is 30 kroner. The following are excepts introducing the families’ tales:

‘An avalanche had buried all five of us in the kitchen’
Eli Anne Ersdal, 35, and co-habitating couple Elke Morgner, 35, and Malte Jochmann, 38, suddenly found themselves buried in the snow. And their small children were gone.