[Verse 1]
Old maps stained with coffee rings
Blank white
Northern thing
"Here be ice" in crooked ink
Empty on the page
Or so they’d think
Drifting ships in fog and brine
Hunters chasing skin and spine
Whales and bears paid for the trip
Salt and gun smoke on their lips
[Chorus]
Coal
Cod
And midnight sun
Stories carved in permafrost
From trappers’ shacks to research runs
Keeping count of what we’ve lost
On the edge of almost gone
Svalbard just keeps holding on
[Verse 2]
Miners carved a town from shale
Wooden houses
Rusted rail
Darkness pressed eleven months
Still they laughed in crowded fronts
Treaties signed in careful ink
Many flags along one brink
Arctic’s quiet
Loaded gun
Everyone
And yet no one
Owns this tundra
[Chorus]
[Bridge]
Now the clouds hum overhead
Cameras watch the thinning spread
Tiny seeds in steel and stone
Waiting out the great unknown
Kids on scooters
Polar guard
Wifi where the dogs once barked
Old and new in frozen air
All that was and what we dare
[Chorus]