Daily Life in the World's Northernmost Town (24 hours of darkness)

Could you live in complete darkness for three months straight? Because that's exactly what the residents of Svalbard do every winter. They call this season Polar Night and we've traveled far above the Arctic Circle to the northernmost city on Earth to experience it for ourselves. Visiting Svalbard during Polar Night for a week as a tourist is one thing, but actually living here all winter long is totally different. Why would anyone choose to live in a place where the sun never rises? Aren't they sad? What do they do all day? That's what we're here to find out. Meet Cecilia. She's lived on Svalbard for over seven years. We fell in love with her YouTube channel where she shares her daily life with the world. This week we get to meet her and she's going to show us what it's like to be a local in this crazy, unique place and answer our never ending questions. A polar bear.

Our journey to the northernmost city in the world started in Lofoten in northern Norway with our friends Craig and Amy. It may look close on a map, but it wasn't exactly easy to get here. First, we rode a late night ferry back to the mainland where Nate attempted to sleep so we wouldn't get seasick. We got dropped off at 2am in a snowstorm and walked to our hotel. The next morning we jumped on a short flight to Troms Hill and then our final flight to Longyearbyen where we got one final glimpse of the sun.

We have officially made it to the northernmost city in the world.

Good morning from Spalbard. I'm pretty sure that there is a reindeer just wandering through town right outside of our window. Cara was like, is that a dog? Would be the biggest dog I've ever seen.

Meeting people you feel like you already know from the Internet is always kind of weird. But thankfully Grim broke the ice for it. Oh, he's so fluffy. How do I do this in the least awkward way possible?

This is Cecilia and this is her boyfriend Christopher. And of course this is where. So basically there are Internet friends that over the next few days are turning into our real life friends. And they're going to show us what it's like to be a local and spa barn during Polar night.

We're starting at proper with a nice calm hike.

Thank you.

Thanks Mom. I got you.

Real friends help other friends put on cramp.

Our relationship just went to a new level.

So we have polar bears here on Svalbard, which means that anytime you kind of leave the village, you need to bring a gun with you. And it's required, but it's also last resort. You have a gun? Only to save your own life. Like, not save my dog's life, you know, shoot. If it's not like immediate danger.

Apparently polar bears don't hibernate either. So this is a year round thing. Just constant alert.

But like I said before, we've got.

Our guard dog with us though, so we'll be okay.

Yeah, he's not at all neurotic or.

You know, I kind of expected there to be a hiking trail, but no, it's just knee deep snow. I feel like Svalbard is a pretty extreme place to live, so this feels like a very fitting way to start the trip. We're hiking to the top of the. That mountain is about 10 degrees Fahrenheit this morning. The wind's probably blowing 15 miles an hour. And I think this is just a normal day at Svalbard.

Whoo.

Did you feel your face?

It's like the right side of my face. Like the direction the wind's coming from. It's like dumb already.

You always want to make a good first impression on the people that you meet. So I try not to act like I'm freezing cold, but I think my fingers are about to fall off already.

Look how deep this is. This is wild.

I don't think I've ever climbed a.

Mountain in this much snow before. And just the wind, like, I just feel so hardcore right now. I love it. Grim really loves it.

Are you sure? Yeah.

I think these ones are quite difficult.

To go off with. Christopher. Losing a good soldier, that's why you need spikes. Good luck. Thank you. Have a good trip.

Thank you for your sacrifice.

All right. We lost Christopher. He couldn't handle the cold. No, just kidding. We're wearing what are called crampons, which are these spikes that go up to the bottom of your shoes. And they were nice enough to give us the good pairs. There was one pair that was really bad and it's just pretty much impossible to make it up this hill without the right spikes. Look at this snow. This is crazy.

So I was just thinking this is probably one of the most hardcore hikes I've ever done. And Cecilia says this is like warm, nice wind. I'm sweating a little bit.

I think I've done this hike like 200 times. It's my favorite go to hike.

So this truly is the way that their locals spend their time at small bar. I think you have to be a little crazy to live up here.

Backpack and my glove at the same Time. This is crazy.

I'm feeling a bit like a local. I am starting to sweat under this jacket. So you do warm up if you climb fast enough.

What's the matter, Grim? I don't know if you can hear Grim whining up there, but he's just running ahead. And then he'll sit and he'll turn around and look at us and just start whining, and he's like, why aren't you going faster?

We made it.

Oh, nice work.

We did it.

Thanks for bringing us up here. Wow, look at that view. This is the entire town of Longyearby. This is a cliff that just drops straight off the hedge. And this is all ice that leads up to the edge of the cliff.

Oh, this is so cool.

How many times have you signed it?

Many times.

The fact that you keep doing it.

Really sets up, like, it's a really nice hike, you know, even though, like, okay, this might be a little bit too windy here right now. No, I love it.

Okay, so we've come over to the side of the mountain where the wind is not blowing us away, and Cecilia packed us coffees.

It's all you need. Coffee and crampons, guys.

Coffee and crampons. And look, even Grim settled in now.

Isn't it funny? He's warm and, like, minus 30.

How many people live down below?

2,400 people is about 40 different nationalities, which I think is pretty wild. So half of the village is Norwegian, which is the official language as well. Since we don't have, like, an indigenous population, everybody has moved here from somewhere, which I think also explains why it's not like a small town. It's more kind of like a, I don't know, resort is people come here, work, and then they leave. So the average time people stay here, I think, is two years. Because I think when you think about an arctic small town, you think small town, but it really isn't. It doesn't have that vibe.

It's a booming metropolis of just over 2,000 people. We've been sitting here for 10 minutes, and my backpack is almost frozen. Look at that. That's craziness.

Cecilia says the local way to get down is to slide on your butt. 3, 2, 1.

Don't get out of control.

Wow. I'm not sure this is the safest way down, but it's definitely the fastest. Yoo.

Ah.

The snow is not that soft. It's kind of like sliding on concrete. Swad. Swaddle.

I'm scared. I can't.

I can't stop.

Graham, you Think we're all crazy, buddy.

Real quick, before we go any further, I want to say a huge thank you to BetterHelp for sponsoring this video. It is so easy to watch people's lives on social media and just assume that they have it all together and that you don't. I do it all the time. But it could not be further from the truth. We all have our struggles, especially us. And you are not alone. And we truly believe that therapy is an awesome tool that everyone can benefit from. BetterHelp is the world's largest therapy platform, and it's 100% online, which is so convenient. The way that it works is, first you answer a few questions about yourself, and then since BetterHelp has over 30,000 licensed professional therapists, they can match you with the person who best meets your needs and expectations. Then you can start communicating with them whichever way you feel most comfortable, whether it be via chat, text phone, or video call. And if for some reason, the person you get matched up with isn't working out, you can switch therapists free of charge. So if you're ready to join over 3 million people taking charge of their mental health, you can get 10% off your first myth with better help. Try clicking the link in the description below, which is betterhelp.com K&N.

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H E L, P. Okay, back to the video.

Follow your footsteps.

So Cecilia was just telling us that the reason people first settled in Svalbard is because the mountains around here are really rich in coal. And that building right there behind me is where they used to process all of the coal. And these big wooden structures that you see, that was actually the cable way that brought the coal to the processing center. Nice work, team.

So proud of us. Nice work.

We held our own.

Yeah, it was great.

Got a coffee. Rogue coffee.

Welcome to heaven. Thank you. We're going to the Huskies. Let's go.

So Cecilia's brought us to the Husky Cafe, which is a coffee shop that has retired Husky skis that you can just hang out with while you drink your coffee. But Grim has to stay outside, and he's sad. So much snow.

Look at this sweet girl. Just relaxing. Nothing like cream.

Well freaking done.

We deserve to just relax. My hand is still like. Like it's not cold anymore, but it's, like, stiff. Like, the feeling's coming back. I feel like I can't really hold my spoon correctly.

Is that the puppy?

Oh, he's cleaning something.

Windex puppy. They sound the same.

I do not think of a better way to end this day, then a hot coffee, chocolate cake and huskies. It's not even the end of the day, it's only midday. It just feels like we've already accomplished so much.

One.

Yeah.

Isn't that crazy? The polar night is very long and it's very, very slow, which is super nice. But then, I mean, three months of it, it's a little bit much. So like in January you're pretty much ready for a little bit of lighting. But I mean, the sun doesn't rise on the village until 10th of March, so there's like a lot. We've got so long left that you can't really long too much.

Do you feel like you sleep way more in the winter time just because, like it's harder to wake up?

Yeah, definitely. If I don't have a wake up light that like wakes up my room with light, I don't think I would wake up at all.

That's what we've been doing wrong all morning. We're like, how many cups of coffee is too many? Like it still feels like the middle of the night.

It was 10am this morning. I'd already had three cups of coffee when we were meeting up and I still felt like I had just rolled out of bed.

On our flight here yesterday, we weren't all the way north yet and we were above the clouds and I saw the actual sun itself for the first time in almost a month. You don't realize how much you love this sun until it's gone, just gone. Can we just stay here all day? Like, do we have anywhere else we need to go?

That was a good yawn.

Yeah.

Can I have a kiss? Oh, thank you.

So we have now been above the Arctic Circle for over three weeks and we have yet to see the northern whites.

How is that even possible?

Part of that is probably our fault. We tend to go to bed pretty early, but it is dark almost all.

Day here, so we are not leaving longer bend until we see the aurora.

And Cecilia sent us a website that has like a live cam of the sky that's a little ways outside of town. And we're pretty sure that just on the edge of the live cam we see some green. So we're heading outside of town to the darkness to hopefully see the northern lights for the first time on this trip.

But not too far outside because, you know, we're alone.

Just needed a little bit more exercise today. Why are you standing so far back there?

I don't even want to get close to it. So at the edge of town there are These polar bear signs, and anytime you go past those signs, you're supposed to be carrying a gun.

It's like a law.

It's been getting spookier and spookier the further we've walked. And we just made it to the sign, so we're calling it here.

And turning around, there was a guy running with his dog. And we were talking. We didn't hear him. And that dog ran past us, and we both came off of the ground and the guy started laughing at us.

I definitely thought I was about to get eaten. But it's funny because I feel like I'm protected as long as I'm behind this sign. But it's not like the polar bear knows the signs there. We start at like a mile back down there in the town. This road here is very quiet and spooky, and we're calling it here.

And we didn't see the northern lights.

So today, Cecilia and Christopher have invited us to their cabin for lunch. And we didn't want to show up in t handed. And yesterday during a conversation, we heard that they like Irish coffee. So we're going to head to the store and pick up the supplies.

No guns allowed in the liquor store.

So we had heard that there was a limit in Spard on how much alcohol you could buy, and we kind of just wanted to see how it worked. We thought it was just for locals, but it turns out that it's for tourists as well. Cara actually had to show her boarding pass in order to be able to purchase this bottle of whiskey. He also put a stamp on the boarding pass and these little numbers, they show how much alcohol Cara can purchase before she leaves. So she can purchase one more bottle of liquor, one more bottle of fortified wine, and 24 more beers. So I guess if we would have tossed our boarding pass, we just wouldn't have been able to buy anything. Okay, Go into the cabin.

Just a casual reindeer on the side of the road.

Is this how you take your groceries down?

Okay.

So we parked here in the road. The house is here. That's a pretty epic way to get home.

Oh, my goodness.

Welcome to our house cabin.

I guess it's even better in real life. I love all the candles. We brought some things to make Irish coffee.

Oh, nice.

If you want.

Absolutely love coffee. So this is the alcohol card that we have. It's a ration card for how much you can buy each year. So back in the day when it's fully coal mining here, the coal miners liked beer and liquor, so they put that on a Ration, so they would do their job and not drink too much. But the official people, like the officials, they drank a lot of wine, so it's unlimited wine.

So yesterday, Cecilia was explaining to me that the limit is actually pretty generous for individual consumption. But if you want to throw a party and buy extra alcohol, you have to use, like, four months worth of your ration card in order to be able to get enough for a party. So that's why we wanted to bring some.

We're having a party, so this is Swanborn code. Cold's like 500 meters out here. We fish every year, so we have cold the whole winter. So we just go out, come home, and I fix it, and vacuum it.

So Christopher is a proper chef. He actually worked in a kitchen for over 20 years, so hopefully I can learn a thing or two from him in the kitchen.

We have some white wine sauce that I made last week.

White wine sauce, casual. Here we have Norwegian potatoes, and then we're having some kind of cabbage.

Some.

Freshons, and it's peas.

I don't get it.

You don't get. Okay, it's like a.

Like a French saying I was going to say. Is that in English?

What does it translate to?

Let me just Google this for you.

American.

I almost laughed just to make you feel better. And then I was like, nah, you got it.

The most important, important features. So the peas.

Oh, the peas are, like, the best part.

Yes. So the.

Okay, let's start this over.

The French saying is the peas. The resistance. Yeah. And then peasants. They're peas. No, I'm sorry.

I wish I did.

They're peas, you guys.

So this is not talking about peas.

The saying in French is piece de resistance, right? It means, like, the most remarkable feature. And they are peace.

Ah, peace.

I still don't get it.

Okay, I won't do anymore.

For proof. This has not been opened. This is just after coffee.

I have had a lot of coffee today. It's still dark outside, if you didn't know.

Action.

We're gonna call this scene Kara and Christopher's Kitchen.

What do you think?

That sounds nice.

So we just mix it, and then when it's all mixed up, we add some milk and butter.

I've only used a mixer like, twice my whole life.

She's like, I love cooking.

Cooking's my favorite. How do you turn it on? I'm scared the potatoes are gonna go flat.

All right, let's go number one.

Okay, this is calm. This is fine.

Up the speed, girl.

Get it?

You think taking on the lowest now.

What'S that?

Milk and butter.

Are there ever times where, like, the weather is so bad that the stores don't have any food because they couldn't get it here?

No, but it could be a good place.

He worked at the place where they have all the food before. And in case something happens, since we are so remote, they have three months worth of food, so we'll be fine.

How often does the boat come?

Every 10 days. You can never plan anything here. You can't say, I'm gonna have chicken today. I want. I want a chicken one day. And I came to the chicken counter and said, no chicken. Come back in three days. I was like, okay. How are the potatoes?

Delicious.

If she does say so herself.

Then you can take the fish in.

Is this like softening the thigh?

We're just gonna boil it.

So the fish.

I think they.

One more time.

A few seconds more.

That's what I was thinking.

It's gonna be so good.

Thank you very much. Sure. How do you say thank you in Norwegian? Oh, tak.

I knew that.

What about Swedish?

Tak.

Same. Oh, wow. These potatoes look like extra creamy.

Who made these? I don't know. It must have been some fruit.

It must have been the peas. Presentation. It's like de renaissance.

Yeah, whatever that. Oy, oy, oy, oy, oi, yoi. That's my favorite thing to say. Oy, oi, yoyo. This is insanely good.

It's so good.

Thank you, chef. Thanks.

You bow and then you take some care.

Some more love and more love.

Then it's really okay.

So I wouldn't usually just give a tour of someone's house that we're being guest in. But just like everything in Spar, there's some unique parts of living in a house or a cabin in this part of the world, north most town. So Cecilia's gonna show us around and show us some of the fun, unique, quirky things.

Yes. Let's do a little tour. So this is the old part of the cabin. It was built in 2002. And this is the new part, but we're gonna take that later.

So before it was just.

Just this.

They might be the same person.

Just this part.

But we do have a beautiful view. But we can see right now. But on the other side, we have seven glaciers. So that makes a little bit more sense. Cuz otherwise it's like. Like what's right here?

Dark windows. The view out these windows is just.

We can see whales.

Spectacular. Wait, did you just say you could see whales from your room?

Yeah. You Walk right out and you hear. And then you're like whale the dream.

To give you an idea of how close we are to the ocean. You won't be able to see it because it's dark, but right there you can hear it. This keeps the house very, very warm.

So this is mostly now for coziness and extra heat. But we are mostly going by the heater. So it's like a. What's it called?

Heating unit.

A heating unit that goes from either warm to cold. This part costs like 140kroners, which is 14 bucks.

That's a lot of money. That's like one fire.

Yeah. Because we don't have any trees here. We're out by the polar bears.

Yeah.

So it's nice to have different exits. So also notice the size of the doors.

They're tiny.

Tiny. Because it's kind of also extra protection. Like they're just making smaller. Cuz it's more difficult to like go.

Through a polar bear.

Yeah.

Polar bears would generally just kind of walk right through the wall. Right. They don't like knock or like open the door. So I'm thinking if somebody comes in here, you need to be able to get out. Yeah. So we have doors everywhere and we generally keep them pretty open.

The bedroom door is so skinny as well.

It's literally just for me. Wait, hold on. Why is there only one blanket?

Two.

This is just a cover. So under here you have Swedish style 2 duvets.

So ever since we've been in Scandinavia, we haven't been in a single Airbnb or hotel that has one duvet.

So for the Americans, this is a duvet. This is a duvet. And they're separate. You sleep under separate blankets because you.

Need to be able to regulate your own temperature. Imagine in the winter it's really cold and you have different preferences.

Yeah, well, that's when I steal all the covers. And then Nate freezes and he's freeze. How great are these lights? There are just lights everywhere in the darkness. And the candles, like, it's just so cozy.

So we lived here for one and a half years without any water or anything. And then we decided that we're gonna, you know, really invest in our home. So we built it bigger. And there's a limit on how much you can build though. So you can build. Is it 135 square meters? And we maxed it out. We put in water, but a closed cabin system. System. So we do have running, but it's very limited. So we're very conscious of how much we use kind of like Van Life. And then we have a dishwasher because that actually saves water. It's so much less.

Six liters to do dishes.

And then we have the bathroom with the toilet. That is quite exciting. So this is actually an incineration toilet because we have no plumbing. Nothing is connected to that kind of network here. So what you do is you open it, then you take.

Never been able to see myself in the toilet.

And then you take one of these, these little sheets. This is where you do your business in. Sounds crazy, but it's so smart. And then you put that in there. Do your business. Yeah, right in there. You can pee as well. This one, it's okay. Costs a little bit extra. And then you just press this button and it goes down to the bottom. And We've calculated that one poo costs 5 kroners, which is 50 cent. Do your math.

So where. What do you do with the ash.

That goes into this one? And then after like three months or so, you just take it out. It's like a fertilizer. But for up here it doesn't matter. You can throw it in the trash if you want, or you can just. Because it's just.

And then. Does it have any poopy smell? Is it just smell like burp?

None. Because there's a fan and all the air goes outside.

Can you just pee and you throw the toilet paper away? No water whatsoever.

Perfect.

Like, how much do we waste by flushing? Fun fact. They have fiber Internet here.

Yeah.

I expected the Internet to be really trash when we came this far north. Like, I feel like we're in the middle of nowhere, but it's actually faster than the rest of Norway where we've been.

I think why they put really good Internet up here is because we have satellite station, one of the world's biggest one with customers like NASA. So I think because of all the research and everything, they really needed that. So when we built this, we had to think about polar bears building on the poles, size restrictions, electricity restrictions, and how the are we going to heat a cabin in the winter? And here we are.

You don't have Amazon here, do you?

Amazon?

Yeah.

Like you can buy from Amazon if you trick them and say you're in Norway. But I bought something that cost 30 bucks. And the shipping and handling it all ended up being 90 just in shipping and handing.

After talking to Cecilia about just what life is like up here, like you don't value stuff as much as the average person. Like if you live up here, it's because you value other things like nature and the outdoors and community and just doing epic stuff. So there's actually a spot store. I. I guess you can't even call it a store. You bring your leftover stuff, kind of like a Goodwill, but everything is free. So you come drop stuff off and then somebody else may have dropped off their old computer. So if you're here and you're studying, you could pick up a computer or like somebody's clothes or like a kitchen table that somebody doesn't want anymore. So a lot of their stuff here they were able to just get from that place. It's just a different breed of people that live here. It's really cool.

Bye.

Okay, that's it for the video. Hope you enjoyed it. If you want to see more about life at Svalbard, go and follow Cecilia's channel. She makes incredible videos. We're going back to town.

That was the best. It was way bumpier than I thought it was going to be. If you spot a polar bear in laundry bin or nearby, notify the Governor as soon as possible.

The Governor. It's not like.

Not anyone that's gonna help you. Flare gun, signal pin or Thunder.

Thunder Flash. I wonder what Thunder Flash is.

What is it?

I don't know. Christopher.

What is Thunder Flash? I know what a signal. I think somebody might have just directly translated something.

Maybe it was like a pot and you just bang it.

Thunder. It feels like Pokemon. I call it Thunder Flash. Just.

Kind of sounds creepy. Like the Grim Reaper.

This is so fun. I can't wait to come back in the summer. By the way, we have a whole summer series planned out now. So we will be back and we'll do all the summer activities.

We're hiking, we're swimming, we're running, we're fishing. You're like Viking. Like I don't care.

I think I stayed there for a couple years and didn't even go down to the mainland anymore.

He had like a three year period.

Where he didn't leave.

So he doesn't count on anything normal. He's just Viking.

Yeah.

Mountain man.

Mountain man.

Viking Christopher, the quiet, wise mountain man. I is.

I do feel like you're so wise. Like you know all things Father S.

But like he has taught me so much about adventure. Like I said.