Longyearbyen

Longyearbyen is rich "northernmost" superlatives - northernmost post office, northernmost pizza delivery, northernmost wi-fi hotspot, northernmost four star hotel, and probably, northernmost roads where you'll see a BMW sport sedan. There aren't many towns in the Arctic as comfortable as Longyearbyen, nor many as close to the North Pole. A slice of Norway in the high Arctict, Longyearbyen is the largest settlement in the Svalbard Archipelago, and a surprisingly lively place.

The winter landscape is mostly white

The town was founded in 1906 by American businessman John Munroe Longyear, head of the charmingly named Arctic Coal Company of Boston. It came under Norwegian jurisdiction in the 1920's, was bombed by Germany in WWII, was rebuilt, found itself a front line in the Cold War, and kept producing coal. Until recently the town was little more than drab apartment blocks where miners slept, ate, and pined for the lush Norwegian forests back home. Now, every year people from all over the world spend thousands of dollars to come to Longyearbyen. An adventure tourism industry has blossomed. Visitors race snowmobiles across glaciers, climb unnamed mountains, navigate kayaks through ice-laden fjords, and feel a giddy rush for being so far from anywhere. Longyearbyen has evolved. The town now boasts restaurants, bars, and two upscale hotels.

Streetlights illuminate Longyearbyen's single icy road
in the winter dusk

Despite the new creature comforts, Longyearbyen still feels otherworldly. For one there is the light and the landscape. Summers are continuous sunshine on nothing but rock and tundra. Winters are one three month long night over uninterupted ice and snow. The breif days In between are long shadows and soft light.

In winter, snowmobiles are the preferred mode of transport. Motors whine as sledders zip between buildings in the winter dusk. Polar bears are a serious enough threat that you're required by law to carry a gun if you leave the center of town . As a result, you see a lot of people strolling down the street with a rifle slung over a shoulder (tourists can rent rifles from the hardware store).

Several years ago, in an effort to make the town a more appealing place to live, an interior decorator was hired to color co-ordinate all the buildings in the town. As a result, Longyearbyen stands as a striking splash of pastel color against the subtle blue, whites, and grays of the arctic landscape.

Pleasingly colored houses in Longyearbyen

While the L.L. Bean colors of Longyearbyen's houses show a charming attention to detail on the part of the town's administrators, they pale in comparison to the visual experience of the arctic winter landscape. The last month of the winter nights, before the sun comes above the horizon in the Spring, offers soft dusk light all day long, with gentle gradients of blues and pinks fading into the white horizon.

From the glacier above town

Coast near Longyearbyen

One of the strangest sights in Longyearbyen are brand new luxury cars. You wouldn't think you would need a high-performance German sports car to get around the one kilometer of roads in town, which are covered in snow and ice half the year anyway. But at least a few people seem to think they do. They're just trying to save money. As an incentive for people to move to Svalbard, Norway's normally high sales and import taxes are waived for residents. This includes the nearly 100% tax on luxury automobiles. At least a few short-term residents have decided to take advantage of this incentive to purchase expensive cars, have them shipped to the island, and then bring them back to the Norwegian mainland when they return.

Longyearbyen is a relatively easy place to get to, and an easy place to stay. SAS has daily flights from Tromso, in northern Norway. Two hours on a 737 will take you to a modern airport, where you can catch a bus to the Radisson Hotel in town. In no time be sitting in your hot tub watching the northern lights through the window while you eat the whale steak dinner from room service.

Bilma

Dunes on the outskirts of town overtaking abandoned family
compound walls

Bilma is isolated. Smack dab in the middle of the Sahara Desert, getting there requires a four day drive across dune seas. You have to want to go to Bilma in order to get there.

The oasis and town on the edge of endless sand

Tucked into the northeast corner of Niger, near borders with Chad and Libya, Bilma is part of a string of oasis towns called the Kawar. These towns are an important crossroads for trans-Sahara trade. Consumer goods like rakes, radios and plastic chairs come south from oil-rich Libya, while people eager to find better employment and a little adventure head north.

Truck loaded with cargo and people headed towards Bilma

The trucks that cross the desert are old Mercedes beasts. People and ride on the high-walled open-topped freight beds in the back. People crowd on top of the cargo, often clinging to ropes and bundles, trying to hold on as the truck bounces across the sand.

On the way to Bilma

The road to Bilma

Quiet Bilma streets at dusk

Once you're there, Bilma is not an unpleasant place. At the center of town are natural springs, shaded with lush vegetation. Footpaths weave between shallow pools of clear water. While there isn't exactly a lot to do in town, there's no less than any other village in West Africa.

House at dusk

Traditionally a salt-producing center, the dune seas now traversed by freight trucks were long travelled by camel carravans carrying salt blocks to Sahel trading towns to the south. Some salt is still produced, and in the cooler months Tuareg caravans make the three week journey by camel from Agadez to buy salt. But salt production is no longer on the scale that it once was. The local economy has contracted in recent years, and the town now gets by mostly by trading dates, and with locally produced agriculture and animal products.

Houses built with salt blocks, which gradually melt in what little
rain falls in Bilma

Bilma sits on the border between Toubou and Tuareg territory. While wars were once common, now they just compete for bragging rights for toughest desert nomads. A handful of Kanouri live in the town, plus one or two French N.G.O. workers. Tourists rumble through town in Land Cruisers in the winter, stopping just long enough to see the salt mines. Most residents have long family connections to the area, and even though young people often do leave for the bright lights and big action of Niger's capital, Niamey, the town isn't likely to disappear any time soon.

Houses in Bilma consist of small enclosed rooms surrounded by
walled courtyards where most socializing and domestic work takes place

Bilma street scene

Difficulty

Some places are more difficult than others. They're hard to get to, hard to spend much time in, and hard to leave. Life is frustrating, tedious, dangerous and dull. Inhabitants of these difficult places, it would seem, would be wiser to leave, to find more comfortable, easier places to live. But they don't.

This blog is fascinated by these places. It will take readers on an enthusiastic tour of all places challengingly isolated, dangerous, and strange, exploring how they came into being and how they still exist.