Spending months in darkness and months where the sun never goes down, Longyearbyen is probably the most remote town in Europe.
Sitting on a fjord on the remote Norwegian island archipelago of Svalbard, it is one of the world’s most northern settlements.
The pleasant town – easily accessible by plane from the UK via a change in the Norwegian capital of Oslo – offers pleasant hotels and a range of nice, if somewhat expensive, pubs and restaurants – as well as two museums.
Visitors to this tiny town of around a thousand people – hundreds of miles north of the Arctic Circle – can also take boat trips to the remote Russian settlement of Barentsburg down the fjord or organised expeditions out into the barren wilderness.
Approach the outskirts of the town and visitors will encounter road signs warning them of a danger you will not find elsewhere.
The signs are black with a red trim, the icon in the middle white, like the danger it is reminding people of – the polar bear.
Hundreds of the huge Arctic predators make Svalbard their home and people leaving Longyearbyen are required by law to carry flare guns and other equipment to drive bears away should they be encountered.
The Governor of Svalbard also recommends people carry ‘a big game rifle’ in the event they encounter one of the creatures.
It is illegal to hunt the animals or attempt to seek or lure them out, and if one is killed as a last resort in self-defence the Governor must be notified immediately.
The chances of encountering a polar bear in the settlement itself are low, but no chances are taken.
The Governor operates a hotline that people must call if they spot one of the animals in or near the settlement, and helicopters are deployed to chase any intruding bear away.
The polar bear warning signs make a popular tourist photo – and the island’s souvenir shops stock postcards, fridge magnets and other gifts depicting the signs as well as cuddly toys of the Arctic mammals – but the polar bear threat outside the settlement is very real.
In 2022 a French woman was injured after a polar bear attacked a campsite her expedition was staying at, and in 2020 a Dutch man was killed at a campsite near Longyearbyen.
Perhaps most infamously in Britain, in 2011 a polar bear attacked a camp where a group of British students were staying.
Four people were injured and one, 17-year-old Horatio Chapple, was killed.