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Priest voted Svalbard person of the year for historic work
Svalbard Church Leif Magne Helgesen has been selected by Svalbardposten readers as Svalbard’s person of the year for 2015. He has been involved in a number of local and global events of historic significance during the past year, including spending the summer helping to keep Israeli soldiers from demolishing a Palestinian village in the West Bank, leading calls for action by the church and others to combat climate change, and serving as one of the most prominent caregivers and spokespeople for the community following the Dec. 19 avalanche.
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.