My Arctic Summer

Spitsbergen is the largest island of the Svalbard archipelago which is situated between the Greenland and Barents Seas, approximately 600 miles from the North Pole. In the 16th century the islands were visited by Barents' expedition and in the ensuing centuries were used primarily as a base for hunting whales, polar bears, seals and walruses. In the 18th century the first scientific and research expeditions came to the island from many countries. Following the Svalbard Treaty in 1920, Polan...