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During a year when Longyearbyen experienced far more “typhus” than usual, Elise Strømseng was among those who suffered the most. But she also at the forefront of the many who helped relieve the misery.
Strømseng, won this year’s Typus Statuette, presented to “a resident whose work has kept us out of typhus” (the illness being an old Svalbard reference to all things bad from “poorly paid piecework to a sour beer.)”

The award was presented during the annual Syttende Mai gala Tuesday night at Kulturhuset. The evening’s other major award was presented to Frida Krystad, 15, winner of this year’s annual youth cultural activities grant.
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.