STOP WAR
Longyearbyen in the Svalbard archipelago is the northernmost city, or rather village, in the world with more than 1,000 inhabitants. Around 2,100 people live there permanently, it is home to an important university, there are shops, schools, museums, restaurants, hotels… everything normal, but not at these latitudes (here we are above 78 degrees north).
Longyearbyen is special: here you cannot born and you cannot die… Women expecting a child must complete their pregnancy in mainland Norway (here in Longyearbyen there is only one emergency unit, not capable of dealing with complications). And you can’t die, (ironically…) because there are no cemeteries: the permafrost, the frozen ground, does not allow burial.
In Longyearbyen, people live with the presence of polar bears. If you leave the town for a hike, you must be armed, and anyone who spots a polar bear near the town must report it to the authorities immediately. In Longyearbyen, an old coal mining village, the custom of removing one’s shoes in many public places (many hotels and restaurants in the town) remains. The miners did this to avoid carrying coal dust with them. From the mining era, the tradition of identifying the city’s streets with a number has remained; only a couple of streets have names.
Longyearbyen has recently seen a notable increase in tourism, which, however, has not diminished its strong character as a village at the edge of the world, where reindeer, arctic foxes and geese roam undisturbed in the town where the streets have no names.
