Svalbard and Jan Mayen: good to know
The general-information half of trip planning: how expensive Svalbard and Jan Mayen feels, what is considered polite, what is not, and the everyday practicalities - alongside our 36 written places.
A tiny frontier town of guides, scientists and miners' traditions, friendly in a practical Arctic way.
✓ Considered polite
- Take your shoes off indoors - hotels, guesthouses and even the museum keep the old mining-town rule
- Join guided tours to leave town - travel beyond Longyearbyen legally requires polar bear protection
- Dress in proper layers all year - July averages only a few degrees above freezing
- Try the pubs and surprisingly good restaurants - Longyearbyen dines well for 78 degrees north
✗ Better avoided
- Expect roads between settlements - travel is by boat, snowmobile or small plane
- Disturb anything historic - all human traces from before 1946 are protected by law
- Pick flowers or damage tundra vegetation - it is protected and takes decades to regrow
- Count on visiting Jan Mayen - it is a weather station with no visitor facilities
Worth knowing
- Cards cover everything in Norwegian kroner - the place is effectively cashless
- Shopping is tax-free - Svalbard sits outside Norway's VAT zone
- Alcohol is rationed - visitors show a boarding pass or return ticket to buy at the Nordpolet store
- The sun stays up from late April to late August and never rises in midwinter
Plugs and voltage: not in Wikipedia's «Mains electricity by country» table - shown as for Norway, whose grid it uses; check locally.
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Keep planning
Customs are living things - regions differ, cities relax, generations shift. Take these notes as a friendly head start, watch what locals do, and when in doubt a smile and a greeting in the local language cover almost everything.