Longyearben, is the administrative centre of Svalbard, Norway with a population of just over a two thousand residents and is the world’s most northern settlement. The town was established by and named after the American John Munro Longyear who began coal mining in 1906. Operations were handed over to the Norwegians in 1916 and despite being all but destroyed by the Germans in the Second World War, mining continued to be the main occupation of the town until the 1990s.
Now Longyearben is a destination for tourists, is home to a university and is the location of the Global Seed Vault – a doomsday project where country’s can ‘deposit’ their seed stocks to protect and preserve their natural assets against any kind of threat.
