Address Ny-Ålesund

Ny-Ålesund – the world's northernmost urban community. The place has a relatively short, yet very eventful history. The Dutch and English were the first to hunt whales and walruses, later seals, polar bears and arctic foxes provided a livelihood for the hunters living on Svalbard.

Many have searched for gold, marble and other valuables in the mountains around Ny-Ålesund, but only coal mining became a well-established industry until the Kings Bay accident in 1962. Ny-Ålesund was also the starting point for daring North Pole expeditions by plane and airship in the interwar period – not all of them successful. In recent decades, Ny-Ålesund has developed into an international research community. Every year, a large number of tourists also flock between the small wooden houses to see the traces of adventures, expeditions and mining.

Address Ny-Ålesund tells entertaining stories about people who have lived parts of their lives in or near Ny-Ålesund: a gold digger and adventurer, a lumberjack, a cook, a miner, a pair of siblings who grew up in the city, and a bird researcher.