Come take a walk with me around Longyearbyen, the largest town on the Norwegian islands of Svalbard.
At 78 degrees North, it lies just 800 miles or 1300 kilometres from the North Pole. And with over 2,000 permanent inhabitants it is the Northernmost real town on Earth.
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| Picture from 'The mirror' |
There are only 50km of road, including the small streets between houses, so people get around the island mainly on snowmobile.
Anyone leaving town is required to travel with a gun and someone who knows how to use it because the islands are also home to polar bears.
The average daytime high is below freezing for all but four months of the year, and from the end of October to mid-February the sun doesn’t rise at all. This is the long polar night.
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Science & History