Things to do
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Adventdalen
The broad valley running inland from the town, where the dog yards, the old mine cableways and the northern lights observatory are. It is the standard route out for snowmobile and sled trips, and going beyond the settlement means someone in the party carries a rifle for polar bears.
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Funken Lodge
The old mining company's guest house above the town, rebuilt as the only hotel here with any pretension, and holding a champagne bar that claims to be the northernmost anywhere. The windows face down the valley to the fjord. It is a short uphill walk from the centre.
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Gruve 3
A coal mine worked from 1971 to 1996 and kept as it was left, entered on foot in overalls and a headlamp through the original low adit. It is the only mine here open to visitors and the seam is worked at about a metre high.
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Longyearbreen
The glacier at the head of the valley behind the town, walked to in a few hours in summer and holding fossil plant beds in the moraine from when the archipelago sat much further south. Guided ice cave trips go into it once it freezes properly in winter.
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Nordenskiöldfjellet
A flat topped mountain of 1,050 metres south of the town, the standard hard day walk from Longyearbyen and the only summit here most visitors attempt. The scree is loose, the weather turns fast, and the guide requirement is about bears rather than terrain.
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Svalbard globale frøhvelv
The global seed vault, driven 120 metres into a permafrost mountainside above the airport and holding well over a million seed samples against catastrophe. Nobody goes inside, so what there is to see is the concrete wedge and the light artwork on its roof, from the road below.
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Svalbard kirke
The northernmost church in the world, open around the clock to anyone, with coffee and a sofa left out and no expectation that a visitor is there to pray. It has functioned as the town's living room since the settlement was rebuilt after the war.
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Svalbard museum
The archipelago's own museum, sharing the university building in the centre, covering whaling, trapping, mining and the ecology of a place where the ground never fully thaws. Shoes come off at the door, as they do in most buildings here, a habit left from the coal dust.
