Day: October 9, 2025

Longyearbyen is located in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, which is a three-hour flight from Oslo and about 650 miles from the North Pole.

While there are a couple of tiny settlements further in the north, Longyearbyen is the first of any significant size.

The town has a population of around 2,400 residents, per Visit Svalbard.

After its discovery by Dutch explorer Willem Barents in 1596, Svalbard became a base from which to hunt and fish the large fauna that inhabited the archipelago.

English, Danish, Dutch, and French companies fought over the hunting grounds, which were rich in walrus and bowhead whales. It’s estimated that the Dutch alone killed 60,000 whales between the 17th and 18th centuries.

At the turn of the 20th century, Longyearbyen was established as a coal mining town, though mining operations have since shuttered.

Mining has been phased out of the entire area, with Svalbard’s final mine, the Norwegian-run Mine 7, closing in June 2025.

As mining phased out, Longyearbyen has become a destination for adventurous tourists and scientific researchers. More than 150,000 people visited Svalbard as a whole in 2018, per the most recent data available.

It is the host of the doomsday seed vault, which stores every known crop on the planet.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault delves 400 feet inside a mountain near Longyearbyen and is home to over one million different seeds.

It also looks like it would make a spectacular lair for a Bond villain.

Buried in permafrost, the vault is supposed to stay frozen for at least 200 years, even if the electricity fails.

Due to rapidly rising temperatures in the Arctic, the vault already requires expensive upgrades to protect it from melting permafrost.

This tunnel became “like a glacier” when the meltwater froze, The Guardian reported in 2017. There are five doors with coded locks that anyone looking to get into the vault has to pass through.

The native polar bears provide an extra layer of security to the vault.

There are believed to be around 300 polar bears on Svalbard year-round, according to Visit Svalbard.

Wandering polar bears pose a very real threat to the population of Longyearbyen. While the bears mainly live north of Longyearbyen on the pack ice, they can occasionally venture into town in search of food.

In 2018, a polar bear was killed on Svalbard after it attacked a cruise ship guard, the BBC reported. In 2011, a 17-year-old student from the UK was killed by an emaciated polar bear that approached a group on Spitsbergen as they camped, The Guardian reported.

Although polar bear encounters are rare, residents and visitors are instructed to carry a firearm with them when traveling outside the town borders. The Governor of Svalbard actually has a six-page report detailing the best weapons to ward off polar bears.

Residents also have natural disasters to contend with.

Two people died in an avalanche in Longyearbyen in 2015 that destroyed 11 apartment buildings. In 2017, another avalanche caused further damage to the town.

While there is a small graveyard — the northernmost one in the world — burials were banned in the 1950s after the deceased started to resurface due to melting permafrost, the Financial Times reported.

The island also lacks the facilities to care for the seriously ill or for pregnancies. If you’re nearing the end of life or about to give birth, you have to go back to the mainland to receive appropriate care.

Longyearbyen brands itself as a “tiny metropolis” as its over 2,500 residents hail from almost 50 different countries.

As of 2025, a total of 113 Thai people and 127 Filipinos inhabit Longyearbyen and Ny-Ålesund, an even smaller town, combined. Filipinos only recently overtook Thai people as the second largest nationality group after Norwegians, per the Spitsbergen-Svalbard website.

The town has a Thai restaurant, a Thai supermarket, and celebrates an annual festival showcasing Thai customs.

Immigrants in Svalbard benefit from a unique treaty, which allows people to come to the archipelago without a visa or work permit, as long as they can financially support themselves.

Hans-Henrik Hartmann, then head of the legal unit at the Norwegian government’s immigration department, told Al-Jazeera in 2006: “If an asylum seeker is refused residence in Norway he can settle in Svalbard so long as he can get there and is able to pay for himself.”

Recent data, however, suggests more people leave Svalbard annually than move there, and a 2022 study reported that 64% of the town’s residents stay less than five years.

While the cost of living in Longyearbyen is unsurprisingly high due to its remote location, residents can benefit from the town’s institutions like the school, which reportedly serves around 270 pupils aged between 6 and 18.

It is — also unsurprisingly — the northernmost school in the world.

Students at the school won’t just learn maths and literature.

“They will learn how to behave in nature, how to behave with polar bears, how to survive in winter, how to find a safe place to camp or how to deal with avalanches,” a teacher told The Guardian in 2007.

The University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS) is, you guessed it, the northernmost tertiary school in the world.

Many of the 700 students that take courses there each year don’t have to pay any tuition fees — they only pay an administration “semester fee” of 710 Norwegian Krone, which is about $70.

They are offered courses in Arctic biology, Arctic geology, Arctic geophysics and Arctic technology.

All students must learn how to use a firearm, per Visit Svalbard.

Aside from the Thai restaurant, residents of Longyearbyen can also pass time in the art gallery, cinema, or museum. There’s even a few pubs and a nightclub — also the northernmost in the world.

You can have a kick about on the pack ice — just make sure to bring armed guards in case of polar bears.

Due to Longyearbyen’s extreme northern location, it experiences “polar night” each year, when the sun doesn’t rise above the horizon from early November through January.

Every year, Longyearbyen celebrates the end of the dark season with Sun Festival Week, per Visit Svalbard.

The town gathers on the old hospital steps to celebrate the sun’s return. The saying goes that “the sun is declared back in Longyearbyen when its rays reach the steps.”

Longyearbyen is one of the best places in the world to witness the Northern Lights, also known as the aurora borealis.

It was also one of the best places in the world to take in the “super blue blood moon” that occurred in 2018 (pictured).

Many people in Longyearbyen get around by snowmobile. In Svalbard, there are more snowmobiles than there are people to use them (3,000 as of 2024), per The Norwegian Polar Institute.

Some prefer more traditional methods of travel, though. The archipelago is home to more than 1,000 polar dogs, which are basically elite athletes — sometimes consecutively running over 100 kilometers, or 62 miles, per day for weeks at a time, per Visit Svalbard.

Shopping at the town’s one grocery store might be a bit of a hassle, but residents know how to get around it.

Longyearbyen visitors can stay in the Radisson Blu Polar Hotel (the northernmost hotel in the world, as recognized by the Guinness World Records), where rooms start at $205 per night, per the hotel’s website.