SVALBARD - THE NORTHERNMOST TOWN ON EARTH
2,577,217
views
•Apr
13, 2016
8.32M
subscribers
SUBSCRIBED
Longyearbyen
on Svalbard is the northernmost settlement with over 1000 residents My trip to
Norway was funded by Screen Australia, Film Victoria and Genepool Productions
as part of a new project. More information soon. More info on Svalbard: http://wke.lt/w/s/yiYNC
Music
licensed from www.cuesongs.com "After Catalunya" Spotify page: https://play.spotify.com/artist/2JnQ2...
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/artist/em...
Captions:
Come take a walk with me around Longyearbyen, the largest town on the Norwegian
islands of Svalbard. Parts of it look familiar, but make no mistake, this place
is different. At 78 degrees North, it lies just 800 miles or 1300 kilometres
from the North Pole. And with over 2,000 permanent inhabitants it is the
Northernmost real town on Earth. There are only 50km of road, including the
small streets between houses, so people get around the island mainly on
snowmobile. In fact there are more registered snowmobiles than residents.
Anyone leaving town is required to travel with a gun and someone who knows how
to use it because the islands are also home to polar bears. The average daytime
high is below freezing for all but four months of the year, and from the end of
October to mid-February the sun doesn’t rise at all. This is the long polar
night. Living here is tough. This past December an avalanche in town destroyed
10 homes, which used to be here, killing two people. So how did this cold,
remote, ice-covered archipelago come to be inhabited? The hills around town are
rich in coal deposits that have been mined for over 100 years. The coal was
transported to the port via a series of aerial tramways some of which remain
today, though they are no longer operational. Coal is a reminder that Svalbard
was not always an Arctic ice world. 360 million years ago it was actually in
the tropics North of the equator. A swampy area, it was covered with the
precursors to modern ferns, which were much larger than they are today,
reaching 10-30 metres in height. This vegetation was then covered in mud and
sand and submerged under the sea. Over time it turned into the coal deposits
that in the 20th century brought miners from Norway, Russia, and the US. Most
of the coal mines have now closed and the economy is gradually shifting towards
tourism, education and research. Tourists take trips on snowmobiles and dog
sleds. There is a university centre in Svalbard, which offers semester courses
in biology, physics and geology. And up on the side of a mountain is the
Svalbard Global seed vault… but that’s a story for another time. The locals
tell me that interest in the region from different nations is increasing. As
the globe warms and Arctic ice shrinks, trade routes are opening up across the
North. And Svalbard is strategically placed between North America, Asia and
Europe. One day in the future Svalbard may no longer be as cold or remote as it
once was. But for now it is a reminder of how through our ingenuity people can
live in the most inhospitable of places. Shot with a DJI Phantom 4 drone
Grateful
thanks to Veritasium
and YouTube and all the others who made this video possible
No comments:
Post a Comment