Longyearbyen

After a long day travelling via Oslo I arrived in Longyearbyen, the main town in Svalbard, at about 23:30 under the near midnight sun. Actually this is still a couple of weeks early for the sun but you can really see the light in the sky.

Walking from the plane to the airport.

Svalbard is a pretty remote place and holds pretty much every Northernmost record (eg most Northerly hotel, supermarket etc) as it is a fairly civilised place - what else would you expect from the Norwegians! This compass just outsde the airport shows just how far from anywhere else you are - you can also see the sun trying to edge above the horizon at midnight.

The first day or so is just assembling, organising oursleves and seeing a bit of the town. We are actually staying a bit out of town which allows / forces a couple of km walk into town in the chilly am showing Svalbard's setting on the shore of a fjord.

The walk into town

There is even a university complete with student's bikes outside:

In the background you can see the chimney from the coal-fired power station which provides all the island's electricity. Along with tourism and a bit of hunting / fishing the island's main industryis coal mining although not all the mines remain opertational. It also has the Global Seed Vault - hopefully there will be time to visit that.

The maximum temperature here is going to be -10c (good job a couple of Winters in Mongolia have prepared me well for this!) and it will be a lot lower than that when we head North to the pole.