How to spend 48 hours in Longyearbyen, the world’s northernmost city | Intrepid Travel Journal

One of the weirdest and most wonderful places on earth is a tiny town in the high Arctic that just 2,100 people call home. Welcome to Longyearbyen – the world’s northernmost city – located on the island archipelago of Svalbard, midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole.

The locals walk around with rifles; polar bears outnumber humans here, and everyone leaves their front doors and cars  unlocked, just in case someone needs to run inside to avoid an encounter. Being in a place where, during winter, the sun doesn’t rise above the horizon for four months and there’s continuous daylight for nearly six months in the summer, is both bizarre and fascinating. Longyearbyen literally translates to ‘the longest year’ – with good reason.

Read the full story on Intrepid’s Journal here…