Death Forbidden in High Arctic Town

In Longyearbyen, a tiny Arctic town off of Norway, the people are not permitted to die or be buried on the island. Corpses are freezing and not decomposing, prompting the graveyard to stop accepting new bodies.

Longyearbyen is located at 78 degrees north and sits on the archipelago of Svalbard, a group of small islands that lie between the North Pole and the northern tip of Norway. The population of 1,500 live in wooden houses, partly sheltered from the bitter arctic winds in the valley of a mountain. Here in this town if you fall sick or die you are dispatched to the mainland by plane or ship to be buried. Seventy years ago the town's tiny graveyard quit accepting new residents after it was found that the bodies were not decomposing.

Corpses preserved by permafrost have since become objects of morbid curiosity. Scientists recently removed tissue from a man who did die here. They found traces of the influenza virus which carried him and many others away in an epidemic in 1917.

Polar bears make their home here too. Residents also fear attacks from these protected animals which when hungry will eat whatever they can. If a resident shoots a bear in defense they are required to inform the governor. At the kindergarten school on the island the teacher carries a gun to protect the children outside the walls of the school due to the danger posed by the bears. At the university every student spends the first day learning how to shoot bears.

If you are unarmed when you encounter a bear, toss your mittens on the snow in the hope of distracting it.

But if you see it snap its teeth with a smacking sound, it is readying for a kill.

Global warming Global warming has caused some melting too. In fact the Icefjord as it is known to locals is no longer icy. It no longer freezes in the long winters and the glaciers around the fjord are receding. Kristin Grotting, a physiotherapist, who moved there 12 years ago said the children's heavy clothes can leave them with mobility problems and they must be trained to stretch their limbs in the warmth.

The Arctic day lasts from March until October but it never gets very warm and, on the day we met, Kristin kept her thick coat zipped tight...

"We used to be able to take our snowmobiles right across that fjord," she told me. "Now we can't do that any more and we have to go the long way around."

In the mean time if Lord forbid you should fall sick or die suddenly, you're taken to the mainland to end your days or have your funeral.