First museum in the permafrost opened in Yamal
It took three months to prepare for the museum's opening.
6 April 2022The permafrost museum was inaugurated in the Tazovsky settlement. It was set up in the permafrost in the territory of the Tazagrorybprom fishing enterprise. According to the press service of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area government, it is the second largest "natural refrigerator" in the district. The county's largest permafrost site is situated in Novy Port settlement.
'For decades, the permafrost was used to store catches and other products. We renovated the place, making it a real museum underground. Now, everyone can visit it to get acquainted with the history of the Tazovsky fish factory's formation and development,' said, Vasily Parshakov, the head of the Tazovsky district, during the museum's opening.
It took three months to prepare for the museum's opening. Together with the entrance's landscaping, information boards and more than 30 ice sculptures were installed. Among them are a reindeer sledge, narts and tourist brands of the Tazovsky district — a Sikhirtya girl and shaman Tadebya, a fisherman with a catch of fish. The object was transferred to the local history museum.
It can be visited by appointment. In the future, there are plans to set up areas for honeymoon photo shoots in the frozen ground. Nenets national weddings are not ruled out. The permafrost is built inside a hill. You can go down into it with the help of wooden stairs, the descent is approximately four meters deep. The permafrost chamber has a volume of over 3,000 cubic meters and its area is 1,500 square meters. The temperature in the freezer is -18 degrees Celsius in the winter and -8 degrees in the summer.
The natural refrigerator was built in the 1950s. It took nine years to build it. Everything was made by hand. In the 1970s, the permafrost chiller stopped being used for its intended purpose, because freezer storage chambers appeared.
There are also other permafrost mines on Yamal. The largest in the world, Novoportovsky, is still in use for its intended purpose. It is a cultural heritage site. There are known permafrost sites in Gyda and Yamburg, Yamal District, and in Salekhard under the Obdorsky Ostrog.