Svalbard and Longyearbyen

High Arctic Archipelago Under Norwegian Sovereignty By The Svalbard Treaty (1920); Much Of It Protected As National Parks And Nature Reserves · Longyearbyen, Svalbard

Svalbard is a high Arctic archipelago roughly halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, under Norwegian sovereignty by the Svalbard Treaty of 1920, and Longyearbyen, a former coal-mining town of roughly 2,500 people on Adventfjorden, is where almost every visitor lands. Around it lie glaciers, bare striped mountains, fjords with walrus and seals, and a wilderness that is mostly national park or nature reserve, with polar bears present everywhere outside town. People come for things that are hard to find anywhere else with a scheduled flight: months of midnight sun in summer, polar night and the aurora in winter, snowmobile and dog-sled trips across frozen valleys in the spring light, and boat trips to glacier fronts and the Russian mining settlements. The honest caveat: this is one of the most expensive and most regulated places you can visit. Outside the settlement you may not walk alone without polar-bear protection, so nearly everything beyond town is a paid guided tour, and weather cancels plenty of them.

Longyearbyen, the main settlement of Svalbard, on Adventfjorden, Spitsbergen, Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway

Open all year, but the season decides what you can do: snowmobile and dog-sled season roughly February or March to May, boat and hiking season roughly June to September, polar night and aurora roughly November to January. Most flights come from Oslo (about 3 hours direct, some via Tromso) with SAS and Norwegian; Svalbard is outside Schengen, so bring your passport. The Svalbard Museum and most shops keep daytime hours and some shorten them in the dark season. Book tours, rooms and any rifle rental weeks or months ahead.

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