This video was made possible by Storyblocks. Improve your videos with free stock footage,
images, and graphics for seven days by using the link in the description. If you ask an American, the northernmost town
in the world is probably Toronto, Canada. If you ask a Brit, it’s Edinburgh, Scotland,
but for everyone else, the northernmost town in the world is somewhere here but instead
of just telling you I’m going to beat around the bush for four minutes so I can turn this
into a video. Now, if you watch my other channel, Wendover
Productions, you know that I went to the northernmost town in the United States, Barrow, Alaska,
which is decently big by Arctic standards. About 5,000 people live there making it the
largest Arctic city in North America, but North America really doesn’t have arctic
cities, but if you draw a line this way you get to Tromso, Norway which is at pretty much
the same latitude as Barrow but over 70,000 people live there. Part of it is because Tromso is warmer by
on average 10-15 degrees than Barrow thanks to the gulf stream. You can tell from pictures that Tromso is
significantly more hospitable than Barrow and so it has a big tourism industry that
sustains its economy, but if you draw another line this way you get to Murmansk, Russia. Because logic and sensibility doesn’t exist
in Russia, over 300,000 people live in this town which is… not quite as scenic as Tromso. Despite being over 600 miles north of Helsinki,
Finland, Murmansk has a larger population than the Yukon, the Northwest Territories,
Nunavut, and Greenland combined. For some perspective, if Murmansk was in North
America, it would be 2,000 miles north of New York—that’s a four hour flight. But still, there are plenty of towns further
north. One of the most notable is Longyearbyen on
Svalbard. Svalbard is a part of Norway, but only kinda. You see, it is sovereign Norwegian territory,
but it has some pretty unique laws. Back in the 1920’s, after years of dispute
over land rights, a bunch of countries got together and signed the Svalbard treaty. It said that Svalbard was Norway’s land,
but any country that signed the treaty had the right to go and mine or fish or engage
in any other commercial activity on the Archipelago. That’s why Svalbard has towns like Barentsburg,
a mining town with an almost 100% Russian population. It’s also home to this place—a Russian
consulate which is the northernmost diplomatic mission in the world. Because of this treaty, Svalbard is also an
entirely visa-free area. Anyone from any country can live and work
in Svalbard for as long as they want with no visa at all. Longyearbyen is also surprisingly connected
for being so far north. Its airport has multiple daily flights down
to Oslo and also holds the title of being the northernmost commercial airport in the
world so Longyearbyen is pretty much the northernmost place that you can easily get to. You could literally start your day on top
of the world in Svalbard and end it in Newark, New Jersey… not that you’d want to of
course. But at this point we need to split the settlements
into two categories—public and private. You see, there’s real use to being in the
Arctic for both military and meteorological reasons. For example, the US’s northernmost military
base is Thule air base in Greenland which primarily serves as a radar site to detect
ballistic missiles coming over the North Pole. There are also places like Nord, Greenland—a
weather station with a permanent population of four and Alert, Canada—the northernmost
permanent settlement in the world. This place is so far North that from it it
would actually be faster to fly over the North Pole to Mongolia than than it would be to
fly to Washington DC. It’s so far North that the sun is down for
four full months in the Winter and up for four full months in the Summer. Alert is closer to the north Pole than it
is to any other Canadian town. Although, the settlement primarily serves
as a military and research base situated to defend Canadian sovereignty of the high arctic,
so it is not a public settlement—you can’t just decide to move there—so it cannot be
called the northernmost town in the world. So, slightly further south is the northernmost
town in the world—the northernmost place that you can move to with no permission—Ny-Ålesund
on Svalbard. This town only has a permanent population
of about 35 people, but it’s a real functioning place. It even has the northernmost post office in
the world and since it’s on Svalbard, it still has zero visa requirement, meaning that
you can literally just go and move there tomorrow. So, if you get tired of civilization and stupid
YouTubers and just want to get away from it all, this is your place. Or, you could move there and become a stupid
YouTuber, but first, you’ll want to get a Storyblocks account, because there is no
better place to get high quality, properly licensed stock footage, video, and graphics. Since I started YouTube nearly two years ago,
I’ve downloaded 1,080 video clips from Storyblocks. You’d pay a traditional stock footage provider
over $50,000 for that many clips, but with Storyblocks its just $149 a year, but, if
you sign up using this link you can get a seven day free trial and download hundreds
of clips, images, and graphics for free. If you make YouTube videos, there really is
no reason why you shouldn’t at least give Storyblocks a try using this link and you’ll
be supporting the channel while you’re at it.
Previous post had a timestamp...Sorry!
Cool followup to the Barrow video. I've been to Tromso and slightly further north, but not so far as the others. Svalbard always sounded interesting.
/u/wendoverproductions - you've already started down the line of "provisioning remote outposts;" would you go further to do a synopsis of getting supplies to Antarctica, remote mountain or jungle locations, etc.? I've seen some other interesting material about the winter flight ban for Antarctic deliveries, and Smarter Every Day's video on jungle medicine deliveries.