Experience the best of Longyearbyen

Longyearbyen lies on the shore of Isfjorden on the island of Spitsbergen, around 1,300 kilometres from the North Pole. It grew from a coal-mining camp founded in 1906 by the American John Longyear, whose name it carries, and coal mining shaped its first century. The Svalbard Museum explains the archipelago's natural history, hunting past and mining, and the Global Seed Vault is cut into a mountain above the airport.

The land around town is open tundra and glacier, with reindeer, Arctic foxes and seabirds, and polar bears roam the wider archipelago. Dog sledges, snowmobiles and boats reach valleys, ice caves and ice fronts that the road does not. The Russian mining settlement of Barentsburg lies to the west along the coast, and the abandoned Soviet town of Pyramiden stands to the north.

Reindeer, Arctic char and cloudberry desserts feature on the menus of the town's restaurants, and the community is small and international. The sun does not rise in the polar night, from late October until mid-February, and the northern lights show in the dark months. From late April to late August the sun does not set.