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Fewer people living in Svalbard
Population declines 3.3 percent during 2009; Russians drop the most, Thais still main foreigners

Thai women, who by far are the most numerous group for foreign residents living in Svalbard, serve cuisine from their native country during a fundraiser at The University Centre In Svalbard.

Published May 4, 2010

Given everything else that declined in 2009, the population of Svalbard might as well be a part of it.

There were 2,481 residents in the archipelago as of January 1, 2010, 84 fewer than a year ago, according to Statistics Norway. The decline includes 33 residents in Norwegian settlements, which now have a population of 2,052, and 50 in the Russian community of Barentsburg, which now has half the occupants as it did seven years ago.

"Svalbard has a high level of in- and out-migration, markedly influencing the size of the population," a summary by the agency notes. Barentsburg's population, however, has been in steady decline due to the loss of mining and other industries.

Men represent 57 percent of residents in Norwegian settlements, but women make up the majority of foreign nationals in those communities. A total of 18 percent of all women are foreign nationals, compared to 13 percent of men.

Thailand continues to be the dominant foreign group with 96 residents, followed by Sweden with 53 and Russia with 29. Forty percent of the foreign women and 22 per cent of the foreign men come from Thailand.

"Until the mid-1990s, only a few Thai women, married to Norwegian men, had settled in Svalbard," wrote An-Magritt Jensen, a professor in sociology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, in an analysis of Svalbard's Thai population last year. "Over the last decade, these pioneers have become recruiters of fellow countrywomen in a flow of migration."

Today a more balanced ratio of Thai men and women is coming to Svalbard, Jensen added.

"While migration from Thailand to other Western countries is dominated by single women, both genders migrate to Svalbard and arrive in all family statuses," she wrote. "They come for work."

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