In November 2015, I went to Svalbard – that’s those really cold polar bear-infested islands right up north. It was amazing and I’ve since calculated that I was among the northernmost 0.004% of people in the world, which is quite a claim – that more than 99.99% of people on the planet are south of you.
Anyway, I thought it was about time I wrote a sensible plain “how to”.
How do I get to Svalbard?
By plane, in literally the normal way. Use your favourite flight comparison website for the best prices and off you go. There are direct flights from a small handful of places but practically, the best way to do it is fly to Oslo, change to a flight to Tromsø, Lapland’s unofficial capital and long-standing staging post for Arctic expedition and onwards to Longyearbyen, Svalbard’s only settlement of any real note, from there. When I went, my flight was Oslo-Longyearbyen with a bus-style stop at Tromsø.
Do you need special permission to go to Svalbard?
Not as a tourist, no. As far as visas and documents and politics are concerned, Svalbard is just another Norwegian province. Whatever you need in the way of admin to get to Oslo is all you need to get to Svalbard. If you’re planning to live there, that’s a question I’m not qualified to answer except that it’s illegal to not have a job.
The one minor complication is that somehow Svalbard isn’t part of the Schengen Agreement, which means if you’re on a “direct” flight from Oslo with a stop at Tromsø, you have to disembark at Tromsø to go through passport control. The plane knows this and unless you do something stupid like try to run off into town, it won’t go without you.
Is it expensive?
Yes and no. Yes, it’s expensive. It’s Norway and it’s remote Norway and likely to take at least three flights in each direction which adds to the cost. But it’s not remortgage-the-house, tourist-rocket-to-Mars expensive. Also, Svalbard is virtually tax-free which offsets the cost of its remoteness a bit.
Be more precise?
My flights were £250 return, five nights in a nice but lower-end hotel £340. Add four activities and the grand total was £950. Expensive but not remortgage-the-house, as I said. I didn’t keep receipts for my food or souvenir shopping. The website says the airport bus is currently 75 NOK (~£6.50) each way. I have a vague memory of it being closer to £20 each way but I suppose it’s not so bad.
Where can I stay in Svalbard?
Longyearbyen, most likely. It has a handful of hotels, ranging from the severely upmarket to the virtually-budget, plus places that are almost hostel-like and if you’re there in summer, there’s a campsite which I’m sure is polar bear-proofed but I’d rather have solid walls. You can do expeditions and camp across the archipelago but I’m not the right person to tell you how to go about that. You book them online or by phone just like you do for anywhere else, although I’d strongly advise you do so before you go instead of depending on there being something suitable available when you arrive and stroll up to reception.
What did you mean, “polar bear-proofed?”
Svalbard is in the High Arctic, in polar bear territory. They can and do turn up and a tent is nothing to a hungry bear. You’re not allowed to leave the boundaries of Longyearbyen without a rifle – and the knowledge and legal paperwork to use it. They run courses to gain that but if you’re a tourist just there short term, it’s better in all ways to just join a guided tour. The idea of the rifle is to scare the bear away – hitting it is a last resort and will result in a major police investigation, although if you’re at the point where you have to shoot it, you have to kill it because a bear cares little more for a wound than for tent fabric. But the idea is to never have to actually shoot a bear.
What guided tours can you do?
First and foremost, do the minibus tour of Longyearbyen. It’s a tiny city like nowhere else on Earth and there’s plenty of weird stuff to learn about it.
I was there in winter and so I did a Northern Lights tour, a dogsledding tour and a snowmobiling tour. There are bigger tours out to some of the other settlements which I think you can do by snowmobile or boat in winter. You can definitely do it by boat in summer, along with dogsledding on wheels and kayaking in the fjords and hiking. Google is your friend for finding tour companies and they might well have changed their activities in the last five years, particularly as tourism there has grown.
Can you see the Northern Lights?
As ever, maybe. It has to be winter – in the twenty-four hour daylight of summer, you’ll see nothing – but then it depends on cloud cover and whether the lights just feel like coming out. I missed them because I was having a warming-up post-snowmobiling nap but they were active and bright at lunchtime one day so you can hunt for them by just stepping outside although they’ll look better away from the bright lights of civilisation.
At lunchtime?
You see, Svalbard is so far north that in winter the Earth’s tilt means it’s turned away from the sun which means the sun sets one day in late October and doesn’t rise again until mid February. So it’s dark all day every day. You very quickly learn to recognise different kinds of dark and it does get lighter in daytime (at least, it does in November, which is considered Dark Winter) but Svalbard’s midday dark in November is the same as the UK’s midnight dark in July – something called “astronomical twilight” which is when the sun is a certain number of degrees below the horizon. Conversely, for a few months in summer, the sun never sets.
Isn’t it depressing to be constantly in the dark?
I’m sure it is if you live there. I was there about five days and I regarded it as one of the many novelties of being so far north and became an absolute nerd over the different types of twilight.
What do you need to take?
That depends on the season. In winter you want really good warm clothes, hat, gloves, scarf etc. Boots that can cope with deep snow. If you’re going on an adventure tour, like dogsledding or snowmobiling, the tour company will provide suitable clothes – that’s normally a padded boilersuit thing to wear over your warm clothes, windproof gloves and padded boots. I recommend wearing your own padded gloves under the windproof ones – they might protect from the wind but they have no insulation and your hands will freeze.
The one thing I always say to Arctic-goers is lip balm, chapstick, whatever you call it. That kind of cold tries to peel your lips right off.
In summer, you’ll still want warm clothes, if not quite as extreme as the winter variety. You’ll still want hats & gloves but you’ll also want sun cream and sunglasses.
And in both cases, you should have some indoor shoes. Hotels, restaurants, cafes, tourist informations – they expect you to remove your snowy dirty boots at the door. At my hotel, I just carried them down the corridor in my thick socks and the same at the tourist information but if you’re popping into an eatery, you’ll want something warm, dry and lighter-weight on your feet.
How do I get into town from the airport?
Take the bus. It’s only about ten minutes and extortionately expensive but they’ve got you over a barrel. You can take a taxi but they’re even more expensive and you’re only going ten minutes. You could hire a car but Svalbard only has about ten kilometres of road and you probably don’t have a gun (or any idea how to drive on deep snow) and it’s better to just use the tour companies. Finally, technically you can walk but you’re outside city limits in bear company and I’ve not yet encountered an airline that lets you bring your own rifle with you.
Are there shops?
Oh yes. It’s just another Norwegian city, albeit a tiny and remote one. Svalbardbutikken is the supermarket/alcohol shop, there are plenty of outdoors shops for when you discover that your winter coat is inadequate for the High Arctic, there are boutiques and souvenir shops and all sorts. Don’t hold out for anything much but you’re well covered for food, presents and warm clothes.
What souvenirs should I bring back?
Something practical. I’d personally steer clear of the fur, although the gloves, I think, are made of what’s effectively offcuts so square that with your conscience if you like and also bear in mind there are sometimes rules and laws about importing or exporting real fur.
Every shop is packed with hats and gloves and buffs with Svalbard logos on them and I personally went for a water bottle that I still use today but would use more if you could guarantee it doesn’t leak lying on its side. I left a purple stain on my nice white bedding. I also bought the Swedish (Marabou) vs Norwegian (Freia) chocolate here. See the blog post here for which one to pick. Oh, and a canvas shopping bag version of Svalbardbutikken’s distinctive blue & white carrier bags. Oh, and a couple of sew-on patches with Longyearbyen’s coordinates. One’s on my camp blanket and the other – only during lockdown – finally went on a hoodie.
What’s one weird random thing about Svalbard?
I will forever regret not getting an ice cream. It was minus-who knows how much outside and there’s a freezer right by the checkout in Svalbardbutikken. There was also an ice cream shop open somewhere on the other side of the street. I repeat, I was here in November. It was permanently dark and permanently freezing and there was ice cream everywhere. Oh, and it’s illegal to die there.