Where in the world am I?

Where exactly am I, when I say I’m in the Arctic? There is a lot of mystery and confusion about where I am – in fact, before I left I heard over and over, “When are you going to Antarctica?” Nope. Pretty much the exact opposite...

The Arctic and Antarctic Circles are defined by the areas on the Earth which experience at least one complete day of direct sunlight, as well as at least one complete day of no direct sunlight, each year. Because of the shifting tilt of the earth, this line actually varies year to year but it is at about a latitude 66.5° North and South. The polar region, on the other hand, extends beyond the Arctic and Antarctic circles; parts of the Greenland Ice Cap are nearly 400 miles south of the Arctic Circle, and the Antarctic Peninsula stretches far north of the Antarctic Circle. Because of this, the Arctic boundary is sometimes defined as the northern tree line, and other times defined by average temperature.

Coal trams, from the days of mining

Regardless of what the exact definition may be, we were far, far into the polar region. The Svalbard Archipelago is a group of islands about 800 miles from continental Norway. It's an unincorporated area under Norwegian sovereignty, so we had to go through customs when we flew from Oslo. We boarded the ship in Longyearbyen, on the island of Spitsbergen, located at around 78° N latitude (for reference, Stanford University in Palo Alto, California is at 37.4°N). Longyearbyen was started as a coal mining town, although for the most part the mines have shut down. 

Longyearbyen, along the shores of Adventfjorden

Longyearbyen is the northernmost town in the world, boasting the northernmost post office, museum, university, and airport.

There are more snowmobiles than residents (about 2 to 1!) and the ground is permafrost, so all the buildings are built on stilts (if not, your house will melt the permafrost and the structure will become unsound).

"Everywhere in Svalbard"
It's also the only white-on-black warning sign in Norway.

  

The world's northermost
(and largest) post box

Because of the permafrost, you can't to die in Svalbard (well, you can't be buried here), and you also can't be born - pregnant women are flown to the mainland a month before their due dates - mainly because the hospitals are equipped for emergencies.

It was tough keeping zombie
apocalypse jokes at a minimum...

Svalbard is also home to one of the most interesting places on earth: the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. This 'doomsday vault' holds over 1.5 million seed samples as insurance in the even of large-scale regional or global crises. The frozen seeds are stored 430 feet above sea level (in case the ice caps melt), and is cooled to -18°C. Even if the refrigeration fails, it would take several weeks for the facility to warm up to the surrounding bedrock temperature of -3°C. This means the vault could preserve most major food crop seeds for hundreds, and possibly thousands of years.

On a sad note, the first withdrawal just happened, in 2015, because of the Syrian War...