5 hours ago
PREVIOUS EPISODE: I entered Soviet-era supermarket on Svalbard: Here’s what they sell
CIAO, IT'S GIULIA
https://youtu.be/0KgF5eJ_RpA
VIDEO EXCERPTS: I live in the northernmost town on Earth. A place where the sun disappears for many months and doesn't leave for many other months. Where people carry protection against polar bears just to leave town. Where you're not supposed to be born and technically not supposed to die either.
This is Longyearbyen. Around 2,400 people live here. Halfway between Melan, Norway and the North Pole.
When I first moved here, I knew it was going to be remote and isolated, but the more I live here, the more it feels unreal. It's like this place feels temporary because it looks like nobody is meant to live here.
[...] American businessman John Longyear started mining operations here in 1906 and over time a small settlement began growing around the mines. Svalbard itself had been discovered centuries earlier by a Dutch explorer, but for a long time no country officially owned it. That changed in 1920 when the Svalbard Treaty gave Norway sovereignty over the islands.
[...] Behind me for example, it's an old cable cart. They used to bring coal to the main cableway central station and they would divide coal, put it into the harbor and then ship it away from Svalbard.
One of the strangest things on Svalbard is that people cannot be buried here anymore. [...] And as funny as it might sound, people also cannot be born here on Svalbard...
[...] Hidden inside a mountain just outside Longyearbyen, there is humanity's backup plan, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The Global Seed Vault stores backup seeds from countries all over the world, millions of them.
Basically, if global food systems collapse because of war or climate disasters or catastrophe, this seed could help restart agriculture. Which means that one of the most important buildings on the planet is quietly sitting here in the Arctic near a tiny town that was built for coal miners...
I live where humans aren’t meant to live ... https://youtu.be/0KgF5eJ_RpA
CIAO, IT'S GIULIA
https://youtu.be/0KgF5eJ_RpA
VIDEO EXCERPTS: I live in the northernmost town on Earth. A place where the sun disappears for many months and doesn't leave for many other months. Where people carry protection against polar bears just to leave town. Where you're not supposed to be born and technically not supposed to die either.
This is Longyearbyen. Around 2,400 people live here. Halfway between Melan, Norway and the North Pole.
When I first moved here, I knew it was going to be remote and isolated, but the more I live here, the more it feels unreal. It's like this place feels temporary because it looks like nobody is meant to live here.
[...] American businessman John Longyear started mining operations here in 1906 and over time a small settlement began growing around the mines. Svalbard itself had been discovered centuries earlier by a Dutch explorer, but for a long time no country officially owned it. That changed in 1920 when the Svalbard Treaty gave Norway sovereignty over the islands.
[...] Behind me for example, it's an old cable cart. They used to bring coal to the main cableway central station and they would divide coal, put it into the harbor and then ship it away from Svalbard.
One of the strangest things on Svalbard is that people cannot be buried here anymore. [...] And as funny as it might sound, people also cannot be born here on Svalbard...
[...] Hidden inside a mountain just outside Longyearbyen, there is humanity's backup plan, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The Global Seed Vault stores backup seeds from countries all over the world, millions of them.
Basically, if global food systems collapse because of war or climate disasters or catastrophe, this seed could help restart agriculture. Which means that one of the most important buildings on the planet is quietly sitting here in the Arctic near a tiny town that was built for coal miners...
I live where humans aren’t meant to live ... https://youtu.be/0KgF5eJ_RpA