The Northernmost Town on Earth — polar bears outnumber people, the midnight sun lasts four months, reindeer walk the streets, and it is illegal to die here
Longyearbyen is the administrative center of the Svalbard archipelago, sitting at 78°N — the northernmost settled community of any size in the world. Polar bears (approximately 3,000) outnumber people (approximately 2,500) on the archipelago, and it is compulsory to carry a rifle when leaving town. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, cut into the permafrost of a mountain above town, stores backup copies of the world's crop seeds from 1.3 million varieties in 73 countries. The sun doesn't set from April to August (midnight sun), and doesn't rise from late October to mid-February (polar night). Act…
Svalbard was discovered by the Dutch navigator Willem Barentsz in 1596 while searching for the Northeast Passage to Asia. The archipelago was quickly exploited for its extraordinary populations of bowhead whales — Smeerenburg on Amsterdam Island became one of the world's most important whaling stations in the 17th century. Coal mining began at Longyearbyen in 1906 when American industrialist John Munro Longyear founded the Arctic Coal Company — the town is named after him. The Svalbard Treaty of 1920 gave Norway sovereignty while guaranteeing the right of treaty nations' citizens to live and…