Beside the road you see tilted wooden stumps. On these stakes, the houses of old Longyear City were standing. In 1943, when the Germans attacked Longyearbyen during WW2, they burned down the houses to the ground. The stakes were standing vertical when the houses were built at the beginning of the 20th Century, and they were probably barely visible after 1943. The fact that we can see tilted poles today, is the result of several permafrost and slope processes: The tilt is a sign of slow downslope-movement of the active
Soil creep and tilted stakes
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