78° North, only 800 miles away from the North Pole... Svalbard (a.k.a. Spitsbergen)

(Click on pictures to enlarge...)

800 miles away from the North Pole lies Svalbard, part of the Spitsbergen archipelago. The island is under Norwegian administration, but is open to countries that signed the Paris treaty in 1920. In particular there are some Russian mining communities too on Svalbard.

Longyearbyen, where we started our trip, is the "capital" of Svalbard. It has ca. 1000 inhabitants. Coal miners, scientists, students (there is a university campus with focus on Arctic studies)... 25% of the population is renewed each year. Tourism is also an important industry for those who look for Arctic adventure. But beware... Arctic means cold! When we arrived on the island the temperature was -25°C.

From Longyearbyen, we drove on snowscooters 60km to the south, until we reached the Russian mining community of Barentsburg. Our guides were armed with rifles, since polar bears live on Svalbard.

Here, we discovered a place frozen in time, where there reigns a flavour of soviet era. The world's 2nd northernmost Lenin statue still occupies the center of the town (the northernmost is in the abandoned community of Pyramiden, on Svalbard too). Young Russians and Ucrainians work in the coal mines, attracted by high wages that will allow them to buy a house when they return home to the mainland. Their families often follow them in this northern "far west".