Shops, schools, cafes, a
university and some dog sledding, all at over 78 degrees north - there
is surely no other town in the Arctic that can compete with Svalbard's
colourful capital Longyearbyen Later in the film I'll be speaking to scientist
Katie about what it's actually like to live here but first some background as to why there's
a settlement here in the first place... [Music] The town sits in the Longyear Valley on the
South Bank of the Advent Fjord - the climate is polar tundra and the town experiences 24-hour
Darkness for 84 days in winter but despite that Longyearbyen is, worryingly, the fastest warming
town in the world with temperatures rising five times faster than the global average over
the last 50 years. Translated the name of the settlement means Longyear City - so
who was Longyear? John Munro Longyear was an American industrialist who first visited
Spitzbergen, as it was generally known then, in 1901. He immediately saw huge potential for
coal mining operations - his Arctic Coal Company staked a claim and so began Svalbard's long
coal mining history. A company town grew up with American management and Norwegian labourers. Over
the years as an independent Norway grew to be one of Europe's richest countries, the tables turned
- Norway formally acquired the archipelago through the 1920s Spitzbergen treaty and also acquired
the mining companies. Sadly nothing remains of the original town after it was burnt to the ground by
German forces in the second world war. Since the 1980s coal mining has significantly declined and
the town's two principal sectors are now research and tourism with cruise ships docking almost every
day in summer. There's an easy way to tell the tourists from the locals here - the tourists are
carrying the most expensive cameras known to man and the locals are carrying guns! The
aerial tramways which carried coal to the port are no longer in operation but remain
as cultural monuments - the cable ways may not be operating but the industrial Heritage still
dominates the town - you can almost hear it! From the Lutheran Church high over the town the Svalbard
priest presides over the largest Parish in Europe - only around 3 000 people of course but
that's not the point -it's size that counts! The town has a population of around 2500 which
is constantly revolving with very few people staying more than seven years. The governor
or Sysselmestre who administers the territory on behalf of the Norwegian government is
based here, as is the airport and UNIS, the university, a joint undertaking of
Norway's four main universities which accommodates students and lecturers from
all over the world. The college is part of the Svalbard science centre and this is also
where you'll find the award-winning Museum Coffee and cuddly dogs - that's me
sold! This is Huskies my favourite Cafe serving probably the last
flat-white before the North Pole! If you open a new commercial Enterprise here
then you can almost guarantee that it'll be the world's northernmost - the northernmost
Brewery, Supermarket, full service hotel and even the world's northernmost chocolatier. Now I
want to find out what it's like to actually live in this remote community at 78 degrees north
... So my name is Katie - I've lived here for about seven years now and initially I was a PhD
student but now I moved on to being a postdoc so I've been doing research pretty much continuously
the whole time and one of the things I've been using to do the research is these really big
Radars behind me. Katie this is a very small town surrounded by a hostile environment, when you
first came here could you ever imagine that seven years later you would still be here? uh probably
no, I mean I thought it would be six months so it's uh it's been a lot longer, but I think
that once you kind of experience it here you never really kind of forget it and there
are a few people, well a lot of people, who get trapped we call it and then, yeah, I
remember I was I was leaving at the airport after my six months and then I was crying because I was
so sad to leave, and then the woman at the airport counter was like "if you want to come back you'll
find a way" because everybody here understands it - like this feeling like when you leave, like
if you're one of these trapped people that you can't go back to living like a normal person in
a big town at least not yet. Often people feel trapped in Longyearbyen if they're living in the
town because they want to be out into the nature so I think it's Svalbard that traps people. I
feel like it's one of the few places in the world that is still like truly wild, at least that
I have found, it's like one of the few places where you can go out and you can basically see
nothing from what humans have made, and you can see all of this beautiful nature and if you're
lucky polar bears and arctic foxes, and yeah, you get I think after living here for one year -
you get very in sync with the nature so you know when the birds are coming, you know what the birds
are called, you know everything about the Sun going up and down and the tides and I can safely
say that when I lived in Middlesbrough I didn't know any of this information! Yeah so obviously
you don't need a visa if your country signed the Svalbard treaty so then we have a lot of different
nationalities - so that is another one of the things I liked because you can feel like, you
know, you're experiencing the culture of tons of different places all at once and you might be you
know invited to the national day of this country or this country or this country and you learn
about ... what are you guys eating there and what is it like there? so I I don't think I've been
anywhere else in the world that international, and it's also changing all the time because people
come and go so there's like different lots of people from different places so you never really
get bored of meeting new people, and it's always interesting to be like what brought you here to
to this place in the middle of nowhere? But still 84 days of total darkness 84!!. Yeah - for me I'm
pretty busy in the dark time because there's lots of Aurora so I think it helps to keep busy like
there are other people who maybe rely on going out in the boat or you know yeah just generally love
to go out and hike or ski and then especially in the time when it's dark but there's no snow people
can feel very, like, trapped in that there's nothing to do and that it's dark all the time and,
yeah, you you have to be a bit careful and you also got to keep an eye on people in these times
if they're lonely or anything like this - but I think yeah just to keep a keep a normal rhythm
- have this wake up light that simulates the sunrise and sunset so you could trick your body a
little bit - take a lot of vitamin D - and there's a lot of people who use this time as like a cozy
time with friends so there's a lot of making like really nice food and dinners for people. 5 PM and
it'll be completely dark and cozy and you'll add a lot of candles so I think that those are some
good survival tips for a dark season on Svalbard You're on very good terms with them. Oh
yeah but you've got to watch yourself as he can knock you down. This is the team that my dog runs in, so we introduced him when he was a
puppy so they learn not to eat him! [Music] As a town Longyearbyen has a unique set of
challenges that go beyond polar bears and the climate - there is a lack of affordable
housing particularly for those working in the private sector. Local democracy is also a
challenge - the town's Community Council has only been in existence since 2001 and voting
for non-nationals is limited to those who have at least three years residence on Mainland
Norway. There are more than 50 nationalities represented in Longyearbyen and they surely need
to have their say if the town is to stay united. These issues are currently being
explored in an exhibition at the Museum Longyearbyen really grows on, but could
you live here permanently with 84 days of darkness in the winter?
I'm not sure I could [Music]
