How is Norway's Arctic archipelago of Svalbard policed? thelocal.no - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thelocal.no Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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
Tor Selnes owes his life to a lamp. He miraculously survived a fatal avalanche that shed light on the vulnerability of Svalbard, a region warming faster than anywhere else, to human-caused climate change. On the morning of December 19, 2015, the 54-year-old school monitor was napping at home in Longyearbyen,…