Blue icebergs drifting on dark Arctic water below snowy peaks

Svalbardway · 78° North

Your way to Svalbard.

We plan your whole trip to Svalbard: where to stay, what to do, and how the days fit together. You arrive with everything arranged and nothing left to chase.

Longyearbyen now 78° North · Arctic climate

What a Svalbard trip actually looks like

You fly into Longyearbyen, 3 hours from Oslo, 78° North. From there it's either a land trip with daily guided activities, or a ship expedition along the coastline. Two seasons, two very different trips: pick the time first, everything else follows.

Aurora borealis over snowy Arctic peaks

The wildlife

The animals you might meet

Sightings are never promised, but this is the cast: from the famous polar bear to cliffs full of puffins.

Wildlife photos: polar bear & cub, AWeith (CC BY-SA 4.0); walrus, Gary Bembridge (CC BY 2.0); Arctic fox, Joxean Koret (CC BY-SA 2.0); whale, puffin & reindeer, Pexels.

How to go

3 Ways to travel in Svalbard

When to travel

Svalbard is worth visiting all year round!

Should you come in winter or summer? Two seasons, two very different trips.

Arctic cottage by a fjord below snow-streaked peaks in summer

May to Oct

Summer

Midnight sun, boat trips to glacier fronts, walrus and whales, and hiking across the open tundra.

Longyearbyen and its frozen fjord under deep snow, seen from above

Nov to April

Winter

Polar night and aurora, then full daylight on deep snow: husky, snowmobile and blue ice caves.

From the archive

What 78° North looks like, unfiltered

Aerial view of Longyearbyen town beside the fjord and snow-streaked peaks in summer
Longyearbyen between mountains and fjord
Longyearbyen houses under deep snow in the blue winter dusk
Longyearbyen in the blue winter light
The cracked blue ice face of a Svalbard glacier
The blue face of a glacier
Wooden research-station houses and a radio mast under snow at Ny-Ålesund
Ny-Ålesund, the northernmost settlement
An orca surfacing in a fjord below snow-covered mountains
An orca out on the open fjord
A disused coal-loading crane on a frozen Svalbard fjord below snowy mountains
The old coal-loading crane
Green northern lights over snow-covered peaks above a dark fjord
The northern lights over the fjord
Snow peaks over a dark fjord at dusk
Peaks over the fjord at dusk

The far north, in numbers

What Svalbard actually means in numbers

78° N

The northernmost airport on earth sits at Longyearbyen

4 months

Of unbroken polar night, late October to mid-February

3,000

Polar bears across the Svalbard and Barents Sea region

0

No people are allowed to be born on the island

A vast blue iceberg drifting before snowy Arctic peaks

The scale of it

A coastline measured in glaciers, not kilometres

Most of Svalbard has never felt a footprint. You travel it the way it has always been travelled, by ship or snowmobile, with an armed guide who reads the ice.

See the voyages

Photo · Svalbard pack ice

Ready to map your route north?

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