I Live Where Humans Aren’t Meant to Live | Svalbard

I live in the northernmost town on earth. A place where the sun disappears for many months and doesn't leave for many other months. Where people carry protection against polar bears just to leave town. Where you're not supposed to be born and technically not supposed to die either. This is Longyearbyen. Around 2,400 people live here, halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole. When I first moved here, I knew it was gonna be remote and isolated. But the more I live here, the more it feels unreal. It's like this place feels temporary because it looks like nobody is meant to live here. I've been here almost four years and the next polar night, it's gonna be my fifth dark season here on Svalbard. 24 hours of total darkness for four months straight. Longyearbyen was originally created as a coal mining town in the early 1900s. American businessman John Longyear started mining operations here in 1906 and over time a small settlement began growing around the mines. Svalbard itself had been discovered centuries earlier by Dutch explorer Willem Barens in 1596. But for a long time, no country officially owned it. That changed in 1920 when the Svalbard Treaty gave Norway serenity over the islands. And even today, you can still feel the mining history everywhere in Longyearbyen. People came here to work underground, in complete isolation, in extreme temperatures and especially in extreme darkness during four months of dark season. Anywhere you go on Svalbard, you will find signs of an old coal mining era which has already come to an end. This behind me, for example, it's an old cable car that used to bring coal to the main cableway central station and they would divide coal, put it into the harbor and then ship it away from Svalbard. One of the strangest things on Svalbard is that people cannot be buried here anymore. This is an old cemetery which is not being used anymore to this day. Because of the extreme temperatures, bodies could not properly decompose underground. Scientists have also found traces of viruses preserved in buried bodies decades later. One more reason why bodies cannot be buried here on Svalbard is because the permafrost has a characteristic to push up the grave from the underground. And this, of course, would be a problem and would also be an attraction for wildlife in general. And as funny as it might sound, people also cannot be born here on Svalbard. We only have a little hospital for emergencies but it is not equipped for childbirth. That is why pregnant women have to go to mainland Norway one month before their due date. This is just one of the many unusual realities of living in such a remote place in the Arctic. Hidden inside a mountain just outside Longyearbyen there is humanity's backup plan, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The Global Seed Vault stores backup seeds from countries all over the world. Millions of them. Basically, if global food systems collapse because of war or climate disasters or catastrophe, this seed could help restart agriculture. Which means that one of the most important buildings on the planet is quietly sitting here in the Arctic near a tiny town that was built for coal miners. It officially opened in 2008 and was built deep inside the permafrost where the naturally cold temperatures help preserve seeds safely for hundreds, potentially thousands of years. The vault stores more than 1.3 million seed samples from countries all over the world kept at around minus 18 degrees. It isn't open to the public and only a few people are allowed inside. The seed vault was actually used in real life in 2015 when scientists in Syria withdrew seeds after war damaged a research center in Aleppo. Which means this place isn't just symbolic, it already helped restore crops during a real global crisis. In Longyearbyen, all coal mines have shut down. The last coal mine was closed in 2025 officially. But there is only one mine left active on Svalbard and that is in Barentsburg, a Russian settlement lost in the Arctic. Now imagine spending most hours of your day underground in a coal mine in cold temperatures and where spaces were very extremely tight and getting out of your shift and it being dark again. So of course depression became a huge problem amongst the population here and a consequence of course is an alcohol issue. So in order to control this alcohol problem the government has put some strict rules on the alcohol limit. This means that they put restrictions on how much alcohol you were allowed to buy and that's why even today we have an alcohol card. All residents of Longyearbyen have this alcohol card and basically there are some stamps as you can see this one right here. You get one every time you go there and buy some alcohol. With this card you can buy 24 cans of beer every month, two bottles of strong booze and unlimited wine. You may wonder why can you buy unlimited wine and that's because back in the days wine was not a problem for miners. It was way too expensive so they were just not buying it that often and it never represented an issue for the community. We have actually inherited different traditions from the mining era and one of this is taking shoes off in every place you enter on Svalbard or at least most places and that's because when the miners were entering places they would always bring a lot of coal and mud and snow into the restaurants, shops, bars. So of course when the snow melts even today we have a lot of mud. As you can see there is no snow left and my shoes are full of mud. So most bar and restaurant owners have kept this tradition in order to keep the indoor spaces as clean as possible. Of course this alcohol card is just for the alcohol shop. Alcohol here is sold separately from the main supermarket so there is one supermarket where food is sold and then there is one just next to it where all the alcohol light and strong is sold. But when you go to a bar or to a restaurant you actually can order unlimited alcohol. But of course if you're too drunk then they might not serve you anymore. And since all the coal mines in Longyearbyen have closed now the island relies mainly on diesel for energy. And this is one of the four signs of polar bears we have in Longyearbyen. Basically it marks the town limit. Here theoretically you should be carrying a fire gun. Protection for polar bears. So I don't have one at the moment. We are just gonna drive to town. But yeah polar bears are present here on the island and you should be aware that here on Svalbard you can encounter a polar bear anywhere on the island at any given time. Polar bears are a protected species in Svalbard so carrying a weapon here is considered a safety measure not permission to use it freely. In fact using a firearm against a polar bear is treated extremely seriously and only considered an absolute last resort. People are expected to avoid encounters whenever possible and every incident is deeply investigated. If someone kills a polar bear there can even be legal consequences and court investigations which is why despite all the polar bear warnings actual shootings are very rare. And of course we have more snowmobiles than humans on Svalbard and that's because the main way we move on Svalbard is with snowmobiles in the winter. Another reason why it feels like humans weren't really supposed to build a life this far north is that here nothing grows. We are way above the arctic tree line so this means that all the food has to be imported either by a boat or by plane but in the winter we do have a lot of snowstorms. This means that a lot of flights get cancelled including the food flights that is supposed to bring all our supplies here to Longyearbyen. So it is not rare to find the supermarket half empty here especially during the dark season and you should always keep some extra supplies some extra bean scans in your house just in case. Another reason why many people probably wouldn't live here is the fact that you cannot bring your beloved cats with you. Cats abandon Svalbard to protect the local wildlife especially birds so yes living at the edge of the world sounds amazing until you realize your cat is not invited. So if all the mines here in Longyearbyen have disappeared why does this town still exist and why do people still live here? Today Svalbard mostly survives through tourism science and research and with all of this being said I still choose to live here and I wouldn't exchange it for anything in the world at least for now in this moment of my life. I enjoy living this peaceful life I enjoy living at nature's pace and being completely immersed in the arctic wilderness. For me this is the definition of freedom. I hope you guys enjoyed this video and I will see you of course in the next one.