Reindeer are like kangaroos, just chillin in town. Male ptarmigan are beautiful but not necessarily particularly clever… No cats in Longyearbyen, supposed to be none on Svalbard but the Russians have one because Russians do what Russians want.
Longyearbyen town is on the western side of Svalbard. The valley is Y shaped, with each arm holding a glacier and the mountain in the middle is called Sarcophagen. At the base of the Y the valley joins the fjord at a right angle, and leads out to the Greenland Sea. Occasionally avalanches come down and take out a pile of houses, but this is luckily not very common.
Town has a lot of local amenities, including a library, a bank, a grocery store, all the tourist and adventure equipment stores, school, church, pool, and hospital. However, the hospital is essentially for emergencies only- there is no health care on the island, if you are chronically sick you can piss off somewhere else. There is also no dole, child support, or any social services, and coincidentally there is NO crime in Longyearbyen. Totally accidental, of course.
There are snowmobiles everywhere, that is the normal mode of transport in winter, and they are all parked up on pallets for summer. Everyone in summer rides motorbikes and push bikes, or walks. Everyone who is driving is very considerate of people walking everywhere, and nobody really cares about sticking to the correct side of the road, you just go all the way around pedestrians.
All the buildings are very well heated, and it is cultural practice to remove your shoes when you enter. Lovely place, lovely town, everyone who is there gets on very well as they are all the same sort of person who is going to go all the way to Svalbard to do anything.
Just down the road is the nesting site for King Eiders, very relaxed and chilled duckies who look like pillows even before they’re plucked! They are hanging out near the sled dog cages, which keeps the arctic foxes away .
