What it’s like to explore polar night in the northernmost town on the planet

The hub of Norway’s remote Svalbard archipelago, Longyearbyen is a real-life winter wonderland – and especially otherworldly during polar night, says Clodagh Kinsella

Longyearbyen is alive with an ethereal glow during polar night (Hurtigruten Svalbadr/Agurtxane Concellon)

“Killing is the Svalbard history,” says guide Erlend, as we huddle round a fire in a tepee, escaping Arctic -33C winds. “Kids here learn these local traditions. They come up and shoot a reindeer, and have it for lunch.”

Midway between Norway and the North Pole, glacier-lined Svalbard has long lured hardy souls: whalers in the 17th century, then Russians and Norwegian trappers hunting polar bears, reindeer, foxes and ptarmigan.

We’re tracing their footsteps in the Todalen valley, outside Longyearbyen, the archipelago’s main town.

Coming across an old bear trap, Erlend points out the Mauser rifle inside, its swastika insignia a memento of the Nazi’s Second World War-era occupation of Svalbard.

Happily, shooting bears has been illegal here since 1973; it’s also illegal to leave Longyearbyen’s limits without a rifle for protection.

Reassuring since, at Erlend’s prompting, we extinguish our head torches, pitched into the infinite dark of polar night. It might be dusk or dawn: for three months here the sun never rises above the horizon.

As we march along a frozen river, the silence is broken only by paper-dry snow cracking like Styrofoam under our boots. I’m finding the world’s northernmost town just as enthralling as I’d hoped – and, during polar night, there are scant other tourists to share it with.

What’s astonishing is how accessible it is: it’s taken me just five hours in the air to reach the icy parallel realm of Philip Pullman’s Svalbard-set His Dark Materials, an adaptation of which is currently airing on the BBC.

Longyearbyen during polar night (Hurtigruten Svalbadr / Agurtxane Concellon)

That night I head to Camp Barentz, a replica of the hut where Dutch explorer Willem Barentz, who discovered Svalbard in 1596 while seeking the Northeast Passage, overwintered during his ill-fated voyage.

Up above looms Longyearbyen’s one extant mine: mining was the reason the town was founded in 1906, but today it focuses on scientific research and tourism. In winter, the latter revolves around chasing the aurora borealis, which, unusually, is visible in Svalbard day and night.

The northern lights are almost always visible during winter (Hurtigruten Svalbadr / Agurtxane Concellon)

Over reindeer stew and Aquavit, Romanian guide Rakula unravels the Kp-index, which measures geomagnetic activity, or the aurora’s power.

“Today we have four,” she says. “The highest ever was nine and visible in the Arabian peninsula.” I don’t have to go that far. Incredibly, given their famed elusiveness, as I step outside my camera captures vivid dancing green carpets (even if my less sensitive eyes pick up grey wisps).

Over the next week, the aurora is everywhere: outside my hotel, in the hills above town. I grow blase. The lights begin to seem a fact of the land, almost eclipsed in wonder by the stars, as bright as I’ve seen them.

Camp Barentz – a replica hut of Svalbard founder Willem Barentz (Hurtigruten Svalbadr / Agurtxane Concellon)

By contrast, emerging into darkness each morning leaves me with a jetlag so extreme it suits the landscape. Between excursions, I confusedly roam the streets of Longyearbyen, lying in a valley framed by dramatic peaks.

The end of the world is distinctly cosmopolitan. At the Svalbard Museum I read about the archipelago’s unique visa-free status, dating back to 1920, when it became part of Norway. Today Longyearbyen’s 2,400-strong population (dwarfed by polar bears) includes 40-plus nationalities free to live and work there perpetually if they can support themselves.

Alongside a wildlife gallery, two appealing cafes and lively bars – on Svalbard, no taxes are levied on alcohol, and drinking is a key tactic to combat cold – decent restaurants abound. As a telecommunications testing ground, even the internet is ultra-rapid.

Aurora glistens on the horizon (Hurtigruten Svalbadr / Agurtxane Concellon)

On weekends, when bars shut, everyone heads to Huset, a posh restaurant doubling as “the world’s northernmost club” (from the “world’s northernmost ATM” to the “world’s northernmost full-service hotel”, all Longyearbyen vaunts a similar status).

Inside, a motley crew of miners, students and tourists gamely braves out-of-date chart hits. It’s not the best club I’ve been to, but it’s the northernmost one, and that’s what counts.

As I head back to my hotel, Svalbard church’s lights gleam amid softly falling snow. Global warming is affecting the archipelago faster than anywhere on Earth: melting permafrost has seen coffins rise from the church graveyard. You can’t be buried on Svalbard now, and infamously “can’t die” there – not true, but limited social services make it politic to send the dying to the mainland.

Next day, the cacophony of 150 whining canines heralds Svalbard Husky’s yard. Owing to low snow, we’re taking sleds with wheels, but it’s no easy ride: we harness the huskies ourselves. Absurdly, this involves hiking them up by their shoulders and bouncing them to their sleds on their hind legs like ungainly dance partners. Once in place they won’t be held back – they live to run, and it’s exhilarating.

A husky sled in Svalbard makes for an exhilarating jaunt through the snow (Getty/iStockphoto) (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Curiously, after a week of hand-numbing, face-freezing cold, I finally defrost in an ice cave a bracing two-hour hike above town. Sheltered from the wind, its labyrinthine channels are shaped anew each summer by meltwater from the Larsbreen glacier, and adorned with perfect ice-crystals and peculiar ice-ribs that, when tapped, emit baleful sounds.

“It’s a real winter wonderland,” repeats an astonished Danish hiker – but one that, sadly, is fast disappearing.

“We are seized by an uncontrollable longing for remote places,” writes Christiane Ritter at the end of A Woman in the Polar Night, her memoir of an unlikely year living a trapper’s life on Svalbard in the 1930s. Air travel has made the archipelago far less remote but its wind-whipped, Klondike-like lure still remains. Now I long to see it in the light of day.

Travel essentials

When to go

The winter season spans October to the end of February, with polar night from mid-November to January. Polar summer, the best time to see bears, runs from May to September, with 24-hour midnight sun until August.

Getting there

Ryanair flies from London to Oslo from £10 return. Both Norwegian and SAS offer flights from Oslo to Longyearbyen from £99 return.

Staying there

The comfortable, newly renovated four-star Radisson Blu Polar Hotel has a sauna, open-air hot tubs and two restaurants, including Arctic fusion spot Nansen (doubles from £100 B&B). Mary-Ann’s Polarigg is a characterful budget option in ex-miners’ barracks, with basic doubles from £80 B&B.

More information

Main tour operator Hurtigruten Svalbard offers three-hour Wilderness evenings at Camp Barentz for £96pp, with dinner and drinks; its “Follow a Trapper’s Footprints” tour (Oct-Jan) is £37pp for three hours. Dogsledding at Svalbard Husky is £122pp for four hours, while an ice-cave hike with Svalbard Wildlife Expeditions costs £71pp for five hours. All are bookable via Visit Svalbard.