It was approaching winter, so the sun had disappeared and wouldn’t be back for 3 months.

1.30 in the afternoon in Longyearbyen’s main street.

Experiencing a day without any sun is an odd thing. In some ways it is a simple thing – everyone knows what night is like, but your brain keeps telling you something is wrong when it is so dark in the afternoon. There were a couple of hours of twilight  from around 11 in the morning, but otherwise it was pitch black the entire time I was there.

I was surprised that many of the people I spoke to that lived in Svalbard said they preferred the winter to the summer. They liked the darkness and the sense of peace. After I left Svalbard, I found myself missing the darkness. I’m not sure how I would cope with 3 months with no sun, though.

Although it is part of Norway, Svalbard lies outside Norway’s immigration zone, which means you have to go through passport control when flying out of Svalbard back to the mainland. Anyone can live and work in Norway (you don’t need a visa), as long as you can support yourself. It is not a place for everyone though – fewer than 3000 people live on the island and almost 50% of them have been living there for less than 3 years (people don’t tend to stay too long).  There are a lot of people that work as tour guides for a couple of years.

Statistics Norway says

Of those living in the Norwegian settlements, 7 have been living at Svalbard since the 1960s, 32 since the 1970s (12 of them women) and 73 since the 1980s (28 of them women). These constitute a clear minority, only five per cent, of those living at Svalbard per 1 July. A total of 974 persons or 44 per cent have arrived since 1 January 2010… Fifty-two per cent of the foreign citizens in the Norwegian settlements are women, and a third of these come from Thailand. Twenty per cent of those living in the Norwegian settlements are foreign nationals.

One Thai woman I spoke to said her family lived in Norway, but she couldn’t get a residency visa, so she lived in Svalbard, because that was close to her family.

Svalbard is famous for being home to polar bears. If you’ve read, Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights (Golden Compass) series, that’s where his armored bears live.

If you leave the settlement’s secure zone, someone in your group is required to bring a weapon with you. The tourist office pamphlet lists the Svalbard Rules of Common Sense.

But you’re not allowed to bring you guns in the supermarket.

Bears have killed people in the past, but they usually don’t come too close to the settlement. I didn’t see any bears.

I went for a hike up a glacier and the guide brought along a rifle. Fortunately we didn’t have to shoot anything.

We climbed down a ladder into an ice cave inside the glacier. Some parts were tall enough to stand in, other parts I had to crawl on my stomach to squeeze through the narrow tunnel, which reminded me of the vent scenes from Aliens.

I also visited the Global Seed Vault, an underground bunker designed to hold a collection of seeds from the world’s agriculture. In the event of a doomsday scenario, the vault is the place to go to restart humanity’s farms. You’re not allowed in the vault – usually there is no one inside at all – it is all automated and the seeds are kept in storage.

In the mean time, I went dogsledding, which was so much fun. The kennels were about 30 minutes from Tromso and they had just under 100 dogs there.  We changed into heavy parkas and boots then went to meet the dogs. The dogs all looked very happy and were excited to be chosen to go for a run. We got basic instructions on how to drive the sled.

The dogs are following a track, so they know which way to go, but when you’re going around corners it is important to lean to one side so the sled doesn’t tip over. You also want to step on the brake when you’re going downhill or when you’re about to cross over a creek (as we did a couple of times). Another tourist and I shared one sled pulled by five dogs. We took it in turns to drive. Going uphill sometimes you had to step off the rails and push with your feet to make it easier for the dogs.
The weather was beautiful, as was the countryside, with all the snow.

I thought the dogs were supposed to know which way to go.

One of the dogs on the sled behind me was so happy and fond of leaping into the air.

Near the end of the run we changed drivers again and my fellow driver fell off the back of the sled. He fell into the snow and was okay. I was a bit concerned at being in a driverless sled, but the dogs knew which way to go and they brought me to the end of the track.

The forecast for that night was for clear skies, so I joined a northern lights chase tour. You get in a minibus and they drive you out of town, looking for the best location to see the lights. When we got to the first stop, it was almost completely covered by cloud. The guide said the weather can change quickly and not to give up hope. We drove up a mountain, but the skies were covered by cloud as well. He checked with some of the other tours  running in other places on the island and they were just seeing clouds as well. We moved on again to a location by the beach. The guide said it was a good place to wait. An hour passed and the clouds started to  clear and we saw some stars. The clouds cleared away and the sky filled with streaks of pale green light. Then half the sky lit up with swirls of green.

It was one place where my camera wasn’t good enough to capture anything. The guide took the photos below. The lights didn’t appear as bright to the naked eye, as the guide used a long exposure time (13 seconds) to capture the lights.

There was a couple from Hong Kong that had been trying to see the lights for the previous 5 nights without success. It was their last night  in Tromso and when the lights came out, the woman started sobbing with joy. There was also a Brazilian couple on the tour and they weren’t used to the cold. They spent most of the night in the bus.