Winter In Spitsbergen: An Adventure To The North Pole

Where is Spitsbergen? That is the first question you ask yourself. And the answer is beyond the Arctic Circle. Therefore, in principle, it does not seem too palatable for tourism, much less in winter, when even the thermometers freeze. However, more and more people are traveling there looking for an adventure near the North Pole.

How to get to Spitsbergen

Many winter trips to Norway are made to Tromso, as it is a good base to go from there to the best places to see the famous Northern Lights. Well, to go to Spitsbergen you also have to travel to Tromso, from where flights leave to Longyearbyen, the capital of this island and the entire Svalbard archipelago, where it is integrated.

The Svalbard Archipelago

The Svalbards are a series of islands in the Arctic that were originally even believed to be part of the gigantic Greenland. Although, the expeditions in the past centuries saw that they really were islands. The largest of them all is Spitsbergen, with 450 kilometers long and more than 220 in its widest points and just 40 in the narrow ones.

This island, like the entire archipelago, is the territory of Norway. The property was ratified in the Treaty of Svalbard signed at the beginning of the 20th century by some 30 countries. All the signatory countries may have established bases on the islands, although in practice there are only Norwegian populations, and some Russian ones, such as the town of Barentsburg or the abandoned mining nucleus of Pyramiden.

Longyearbyen

The capital of Spitsbergen is the city of Longyerbyen. There are concentrated the few available accommodations and, of course, the best places to eat the local diet based on seafood, including fish and seal meat. It is a population of about 2000 inhabitants and has a special charm with its colorful architecture.

It is an attractive place, but obviously it is not to go for walks in winter, due to the cold and the little or no ambient light. And do not forget the difficulty to move. Here, skiing, snowshoeing or sledding is not a sport, it is a necessity.

And it is also a necessity to be armed. All the inhabitants have their rifle, and on any tour of Spitsbergen the guides will be armed. The reason is polar bears that can sometimes cross our path. But do not panic, in recent years there has only been one victim of these animals and it was a tourist who ignored the recommendations of the locals.

Get around by snowmobile

The great means of transport during the winter in Spitsbergen is the snowmobile. With it you can reach the old mining outposts or landscapes as frozen and inhospitable as they are inspiring and full of peace. In fact, the incipient tourism on the island seeks precisely that: to have the feeling of getting away from it all, to achieve absolute tranquility.

And another reason to travel to Spitsbergen is to see some special northern lights. Those who have seen them say that they are different from those seen in places like Finland, Iceland or mainland Norway. So they are, quite simply, impressive.

Very peculiar companies in Spitsbergen

One of the curiosities that one discovers when traveling to Spitsbergen is, for example, that there is a university here: the Arctic University or ANIS. It is extraordinarily cheap, and even more so if we talk about Norway. Also here is the company Svalsat, with the participation of NASA and the Norwegian Space Center, since the satellites in polar orbit are controlled from here.

However, the most famous of Spitsbergen is the Glogal Seed Vault or Global Seed Vault of Svalbard. It is a project sponsored by Bill Gates and that aims to be the guarantee that life on Earth can reproduce in the event of a gigantic tragedy. It is an incredible cave dug into the mountain where seeds from all over the world are stored.

How are the seeds stored there? Thanks to the fact that it is a natural freezer, like all Spitsbergen in winter. But, despite that, it is a very interesting site, a huge surprise for the intrepid who discover it.