This was the highlight and main purpose of my personal trip to northern Norway; the archipelago of Svalbard, and the town of Longyearbyen – the northernmost town in the world. I got a plane there from Tromsø, in northern Norway.
Look at that map. Sooooo much farther north than Iceland, the rest of Europe, Russia, etc. Svalbard (the collection of islands) is where all of the North Pole expeditions started from in the early 1900s, because it was the closest to the North Pole. Roald Amundsen, Peary, Nobile, all of the famous North Pole explorers started from here. It’s history, yo.
Everything you could want in polar mountain landscape. 99% of Svalbard is now Norwegian national parks/nature reserves, although the Svalbard Treaty allows any country to actually set up a mining operation on the islands, and you don’t need a visa to live or work there.
Polar bears. Everywhere! You actually can’t go outside the town limits without a rifle, or someone with a rifle, due to polar bears – there are apparently more polar bears than humans on Svalbard’s islands. Unfortunately I didn’t see a live one during my time there, but still pretty neat!
After a quick walkaround, making sure that my cheap “winter clothes” I bought on Lazada (SEA’s version of Amazon) worked effectively (and they did!!), I went back to the room and prepared for my visit to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and a hike up a small mountain. Little did I know that my evening would be a little more extreme than I expected…
SSS Method 
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