
Who would have thought that a settlement of coal miners in the Arctic can be a base of tourism? Longyearbyen, the “only” town in the archipelago of Svalbard, still bears its coal-mining roots. Although large-scale coal mines have long been gone, the roadsides and mountainsides are still littered with mines and their equipment. However, tourism is slowly becoming the town’s main source of income. The town is considered as the largest settlement and the administrative center of Svalbard, locat…