With its ghost towns and armed men taking on a vast wilderness, one could almost mistake the Svalbard archipelago for the Wild West.
However, a tiny police force on these arctic islands halfway between Norway and the North Pole keeps outlaws and polar bear botherers at bay. Its 12 officers dash around on snowmobiles, in helicopters or on boats keeping the peace among the 3,000 hardy souls tough enough to endure the endless winter nights.
“Obviously most cases are pretty trivial,” Svalbard Police Chief Superintendent Stein Olav Bredli said from his office in the main town of Longyearbyen, with its