78 degrees North: anything located at this latitude can boast of being “the northernmost point in the world” without fear of contradiction. We are 4,052 kilometers from Rome, 3,326 from Paris, 2,046 from Oslo, and just 1,309 kilometers from the North Pole. The Svalbard archipelago is not just a point on the map: it is the edge of the known world where Europe dissolves into ice and silence. A group of islands barely visible on the globe, crushed under the axis of the world map, which administratively belongs to Norway since 1925 but for many years was a “no-man’s land.” Covered (for now) by 60% of ice, the Svalbard Islands are a place where nature reigns supreme, unchallenged and sometimes even angry. They are the realm of the king of ice: the polar bear. Reaching this latitude is already an act of challenge in itself: it is not a trip but a secular pilgrimage, a reckoning with oneself. Everything takes time in Svalbard. The actual flight hours are not many – about seven from Italy – but the waits and layovers amplify the feeling of truly going very far, into another universe that surprisingly is a gastronomic Eldorado.
Night 1, the arrival
It’s mid-January and the journey begins in a cold but too warm Milan for winter boots. I chose to travel with only carry-on luggage due to the fear of a lost suitcase; therefore, I had to deal with rationalizing thermal clothing and planning to dress in layers. I spend the night at Copenhagen airport, moving between benches and chairs at gate B, make a two-hour stop in Oslo before boarding the final leg: destination Longyearbyen, the administrative capital of the Svalbard Islands and the northernmost permanently inhabited settlement in the world. As the plane begins its descent, the Norwegian archipelago emerges out of nowhere: a mosaic of steep mountains in a cloak of pure white. There’s no gradualness: the Svalbard Islands don’t reveal themselves gradually, they appear and strike you like a punch. I spot a blue thing shining like a diamond in the mountain; I will later discover that it is the Global Seed Vault, the large vault embedded in permafrost that preserves the botanical biodiversity of the entire planet at -18°C. A sort of insurance policy for the world’s agricultural future.
It’s polar night: twenty-four hours of constant darkness for about four months a year. The sun bid farewell to the islands in mid-November and will reappear on the horizon on March 8th to herald the start of the sunny winter. In the meantime, the day is as dark as the night, except when the aurora borealis dances in the sky with trails of green and violet phosphorescence. Time becomes an arbitrary decision, minutes expand to feel like hours. The body gravitates in a continuous sensation between “I woke up too early” and “it’s already late evening”, and unexpectedly all that darkness does not induce sleep. It relaxes, has even positive, regenerative effects. They explain to me that living with the midnight sun is much worse, a stressful and almost exhausting condition: “Imagine coming out fresh from the pub at two in the morning and finding yourself face to face with the powerful noonday sun,” explains a hiking guide.
Svalbard is a living oxymoron, a theater of extreme contrasts: land of polar bears and miners, of scientists and dreamers, of primordial landscapes that seem like a preview of an alien planet. Everything is covered in snow and ice. It’s a scenario that repels and seduces, forcing you to see what you would ignore elsewhere. The question is not “how do you survive,” but “how do you truly live” at the edge of the globe, where nature imposes its mysterious rhythm and man is a precarious guest, aware of his position. Here, everything seems to defy the laws of the possible, and life pulsates more vividly than ever. The three key words up here are: respect, inclusivity, and community.
Night 2, Culinary Longyearbyen
Longyearbyen is the city, the place where everything you need (or might need) is found. It is the largest settlement in the archipelago (the other small town – Barentsburg – is the Russian mining city with about 500 inhabitants), and it has around 2,800 residents, but “there are more polar bears than humans.” That’s a half-truth: there are about 3,000 polar bears living permanently throughout the archipelago, which is twice the size of Belgium. It’s important to note that the risk of a close encounter with the king of the Pole is real and always lurking around the corner. To venture out of the safety zone – the perimeter of the town marked by the iconic “beware of polar bear” road signs – you need to be armed with a rifle. It goes without saying that tourists are strongly advised to only venture outside of the center on organized tours led by trained guides responsible for everyone’s safety.
Small community, big gastronomic offering.
It is surprising to discover that at the edge of the world, there is a very diverse culinary offering. There are over fifteen different restaurants of all kinds, from various pizzerias to sushi bars, from pubs to gastropubs to Mexican food trucks, from Thai restaurants to fine dining establishments (plural, despite the small number of residents). Then there are the cafes: cozy, intimate, practically like everyone’s living room. The Café Huskies is a lovely place to think about: a small room with sofas, a library, and a selection of two husky dogs (rotating between many) that customers cuddle while enjoying long coffee breaks accompanied by homemade sweets. The Fruene is the meeting point for locals, in the “shopping center” next to the supermarket: it is a cafe, chocolate shop, pastry shop, a “light lunch” counter – with simple dishes prepared fresh and in plain view – a shop with unique souvenirs, and a wall of colorful wool and crochet tools: knitting is a popular activity in leisure time at this latitude.
Longyearbyen is a cosmopolitan town, a melting pot of offerings, experiences, and people from all over the world, with around fifty different nationalities. It is a vibrant and warm place that teems with events throughout the year such as the Polar Jazz, the Dark Season Blues, and above all, the Taste Svalbard for food enthusiasts: in October, a four-day gastronomic festival – the northernmost in the world, for sure – dedicated to Arctic cuisine, which has nothing to do with any tradition and is a matter of using (few) available ingredients and (a lot of) cultural mix. In Svalbard, you find a mix of the world, cultures, and people intersecting and integrating with absolute respect for the surrounding environment. Everyone is a foreigner, a temporary guest: you cannot be born or die in Svalbard. The hospital in Longyearbyen is not equipped for emergencies; expectant mothers must leave the island well before their due date, and there are no cemeteries: the permafrost and extreme temperatures prevent proper body decomposition. There are many other peculiarities to know: there is a high turnover of people – on average one-fifth of the population changes every year – and at the same time, anyone of any nationality can live and work here indefinitely, no visa required. The streets have numbers, not names, a legacy of the mining life, but even those unfamiliar with maps do not get lost: there is only one road leading to the mines and “zones of interest” close to the center; outside the city, one must travel by snowmobile. There are no banks or ATMs to withdraw money, only card payments. Life is so centered on community and mutual trust that cars and even house doors are not locked: they can serve as shelters in sudden snowstorms or in case a polar bear appears. There is one dog for every two people on the archipelago, while it is strictly forbidden to bring cats to safeguard the many bird species that visit during migrations. Structures are elevated to mitigate permafrost instability: houses are on stilts, and pipes and cables are exposed. There is a small church in Longyearbyen open around the clock for practitioners of every faith, with a café corner for relaxation; even the library is open 24/7. Social life revolves around Facebook in various dedicated groups, like the popular second-hand market regulated by bartering. Each citizen has a card for recording the amount of alcohol they can buy each month, but alcohol consumed in establishments is exempt from ID checks. Speaking of alcohol, in the city, you find one of the largest wine cellars in Scandinavia (at the Huset restaurant) and one of the most accurate selections of whisky and cognac in Europe (at the Karlsberger Pub). Incredible, right?
Night 3 – Chef Alberto Lozano Avilés and Huset
“You are eating from a plate sixty million years old“ says Alberto Lozano Avilés, the chef of the restaurant Huset, a culinary gem within a building that plays a crucial role in the mining community’s history, now serving a different but equally important purpose. Alberto’s cuisine could be termed Arctic cuisine, but it goes much deeper: it involves knowledge, intelligence, care, and respect. “On this rock, you see tropical leaves; on another, you’ll spot bamboo. They are all fossils I found here.” In a moment, I connect the dots from what I learned at the Svalbard Museum and realize that Svalbard is a geological history book. Millions of years ago, the archipelago was situated more or less at the Equator, hosting a lush tropical forest with all its accompanying vegetation. Dinosaurs roamed the land, and fantastical creatures swam in the seas. Now, all their traces lie as layers of rock in the island’s mountains. Over time, the Svalbard islands have shifted to their current location, beneath the North Pole, traversing a multitude of climates. They continue to move today, shifting 2.5 centimeters northeast each year.
Alberto and his brigade go searching for fossils, marine life, and vegetation, among the glaciers and fjords; “they are very easy to find,” he explains, “and in doing so, we also reduce the need for imports. We are gradually eliminating what comes from afar, for example, we produce our own vinegars with kitchen scraps. I haven’t reinvented the wheel with this, but our intention is to achieve acidity without importing fruit.” Alberto Lozano is Spanish, from Albacete, not exactly an ecosystem similar to that of Svalbard. Essentially, he is a globetrotter, or as he puts it, a hyperactive person: he has worked for years in international kitchens, from Madrid to Mallorca to Ibiza, then to London, the Caribbean, Greece, and Corsica. For five years, he had his restaurant in Albacete, Xantarella, and for ten years he was the executive chef of a Swedish hotel company. How did he decide to create Arctic cuisine in one of the northernmost restaurants in the world with the aim of making it a place to be? He answers: “Somewhat like everyone else, I discovered the archipelago thanks to a couple of Argentine friends who moved here and told me about Huset, this super interesting project by Hurtigruten Svalbard. Julien Carron, the food and beverage manager, contacted me, and after talking on the phone for half an hour, we immediately hit it off. We lived in the French Alps, in Val Thorens (his wife, Tiphaine, is from that area), and I was already used to living in Europe’s highest ski resort, amidst a lot of snow and no trees, and I loved that setting. Without hesitating, after two and a half years here, my wife and I feel like Svalbarians.”
The polar night? “We receive nothing during the months of the great darkness, there is neither fishing nor hunting. Everything we need arrives at the restaurant by October, and we work to preserve it. We grow some edible flowers and mushrooms, a great passion of mine.” On the top floor, Alberto has created a small “greenhouse” where he grows flowers, herbs, and mushrooms, using plastic bottles from sparkling water as pots. A small laboratory with colored lamps to stimulate growth, with photos of dishes and plants hanging on the walls; it’s his thinking room. The menu of a polar night is like a preserved summer walk. It all seems surprisingly fresh. Algae flourish, “which we have a license to collect,” as well as plankton, for which a project has been started with Green Dog (a family-run company specializing in dog-sled excursions), “but it’s complicated because we are trying to collect only phytoplankton.” The team at Huset has also obtained a license for harvesting mountain sorrel – a protected native species of the archipelago resembling sorrel – an acidic, refreshing herb, “our vitamin C,” explains Alberto. Vegetables come from Norway, and all the proteins are solely from Svalbard: Arctic reindeer, with meat very different from continental reindeer, “it’s super pink because here the animal doesn’t run, it’s a meat similar to lamb”; ptarmigan, a kind of white, fat partridge that resides in the archipelago all year without migrating; seal:
“Our pig, we have an abundance of them, and we need to use their meats as much as possible even though it’s not easy to work with. It’s important to know that we don’t engage in seal slaughtering here; we hunt the individual animal only when necessary, one at a time.”
The seal is filleted, pickled, and smoked. On the menu, it is combined with a sort of béchamel – made with meat stew – in a Spanish-style croquette served with seal garum mayonnaise and seal garum powder. The reindeer becomes an amazing Arctic chorizo with the addition of seal fat; and it is served in various salami forms starting from the cap. Various preservation methods are applied: lacto-fermentation, brining, various levels of alcoholic fermentation, seal garum, juices, kombuchas, and non-alcoholic beverages. Additionally, the leftovers from the local brewery, Svalbard Brygger (yes, the northernmost brewery in the world), are turned into flour for bread. Cooking here is about understanding where you are and respecting it: you must combine everything the island provides with influences from all the cultures that have lived here. Zero waste is essential “because up here, you think twice before throwing anything away.” The Huset restaurant works to minimize waste and plastic use. For example, the yogurt containers used in hotels are repurposed into kitchen containers.
“I’m breaking the borders”, Alberto repeats several times. “After 25 years in the kitchen, I felt ready to take more risks. Stepping out of my comfort zone is important, especially when you feel a certain level of monotony, when you cook without thinking and, in my hyperactivity, that’s just bad news. It’s challenging, but that’s the beauty of being here: seeing limits as opportunities. When I arrived, I had three months to investigate a completely different ecosystem from the others, to get to know the place and the hunters – there are no breeders here, only hunters – to study proteins, fermentations.” Fermentations and proteins are certainly the key to understanding Alberto Lozano’s cuisine and his project, which has an importance beyond just the taste of things. Perhaps everyone should take a look at what is happening at Huset. “It’s an honest project that makes sense. It’s easy to do storytelling with something manageable, but behind everything we do, there’s something more that goes beyond the heart. If a machine breaks down, we know we may have to do without it for up to three months; we never know for sure if the ship carrying the food will reach the port until it’s docked, we don’t know how many reindeer we will have available… We suffer from isolation and difficulties, but we know what we want: for everything to come from here to preserve what we have.”
Alberto Lozano is being invited to many cooking congresses, and he is the chef to keep an eye on in the northern part of the world. He is surprised and proud, saying, “but we are happy that people come up here and understand our project in its context.” Although he enjoys mingling around and taking his polar work beyond borders, Huset is also a destination restaurant because it boasts one of the largest wine cellars in Scandinavia with over 6,000 bottles. This collection was started by former owner Hroar Holm in the 1980s and is now continued with a focus on New World wines, thanks to the work of Máxime Resse, the restaurant manager and sommelier of Huset. Furthermore, it is a piece of Svalbard’s history as it was the nerve center of the mining society since 1951, an establishment halfway between miners’ lodgings and managers’ residences which brought everyone together under one roof. It included a theater/cinema, various rooms for different activities, a post office, a restaurant/bistro where polar bears were consumed for a period, but only after the customer signed a declaration taking responsibility. What is now the fine dining restaurant Huset used to be a bridge room until 1977. To maintain some of that gathering place significance, every Saturday the second floor turns into a bakery/cafeteria, and the bistro rooms open for the traditional Saturday Steaks.
Night 4, a bit of history
Not far from Huset, Funken Lodge was the residence dedicated to administrative staff, an elegant building. Today, it is an adorable boutique hotel that reflects a strong cultural and historical charm. Located slightly elevated compared to the town, it enjoys a privileged view of the inhabited center and the surrounding mountains. The Funktionærmessen is the hotel’s restaurant, a fine dining establishment with a very relaxed atmosphere (it’s worth noting that all guests wear the hotel’s standard wool slippers) and a cuisine described as international: using mainly Norwegian ingredients, especially Arctic proteins, with no boundaries in approach. The goal is to provide refined yet spontaneous food, with each flavor in its place, offering a universal experience. The wine cellar here is impressive, with a wide selection of Champagne and a wine list that encompasses all wine-producing countries “to make everyone feel at home.”
It is very important to know that life in the archipelago began in the 1920s with the first permanent mining settlements for coal extraction, one of the purest in the world. Initially, miners and managers came up here, all of them were men. Then women and children also arrived, and everything that was needed was created from scratch, starting with recreational opportunities. There were seven mines, all of them closed except one that will stop working this year (“so they say, they’ve been saying it for two years”). Certainly, the society has changed a lot, and from a place of miners, fur hunters, and polar heroes, it has become a magnet for scientists and tourists. Research and tourism will be the activities that will define the near future of this remote place with all the limitations that come with it: extremely responsible and highly controlled tourism development will be required. Nature is too fragile here.
Despite the polar night potentially suggesting otherwise, there are plenty of outdoor activities to enjoy even when it is dark outside. Hurtigruten Svalbard is the largest tourism agency to trust blindly; it owns Huset and Funken Lodge as well as Coal Miner’s Cabin, a sort of more Spartan hotel, perfect for the more adventurous. You can visit Mine 3, closed for some decades, crawl like the miners in the tunnels hoping not to have claustrophobia attacks and discover that right inside that mine, hidden under 250 meters of mountain in the permafrost, are the secrets of humanity. There is the first Seed Vault, still active for experimentation, with the seeds of the most important crops stored in the permafrost (at -4°C) without artificial refrigeration; it’s a sort of backup of the Global Seed Vault located near the airport. And then there’s the Arctic Memory Archive, the safety deposit box of the world’s memory in the form of film. There are works of art, sensitive information, the Bible… and it seems that McDonald’s stores the recipes of the famous burger sauces right there.
For a “back to basics” experience, you can take a trip to Camp Barentz: dinner and a northern lights show if you’re lucky enough to have clear skies. Inside a teepee around a large fire, you’ll hear stories blending history and legend of the expeditions of navigator William Barents (to whom the discovery of the archipelago, or at least its inclusion on world maps, is attributed) and scientific/astronomical tales about the aurora borealis. You’ll start with a steaming hot Arctic reindeer soup (a Sami recipe) and then enjoy a delicious Arctic brownie (featuring double butter, double chocolate, and double sugar). For the more adventurous, there’s the option to take a historical excursion to Adventdalen, a two-hour snowshoe trek in real darkness, surrounded by silence, closely connected with the wild nature. You’ll listen to narratives about the lives of Svalbard’s fur hunters and the evolution of modern society. It’s such an intense immersion that the -25°C directly on your face will fade into the background.
There is a big “but” in all that has been written so far: the archipelago is located in the part of the world that is warming up most rapidly; the ice and permafrost are melting, temperatures have risen sharply (last summer the thermometer reached over 20°C), and Arctic desert precipitation is no longer so rare. The Svalbard Islands have become a unique laboratory for studying climate change: they are a thermometer for the rest of the world. Alberto Lozano is traveling from congress to congress to raise awareness of this evident climate change up here, of which the polar bear is the main symbol. At the same time, Svalbard is a great environmental paradox, but this is another story, for which there are multiple books and scientific studies to delve into.
Night 5, back to the light
The fifth day has arrived, it’s time to return. There is a kind of storm that scares all the passengers, but the nonchalance of the SAS staff convinces us to board without too much concern. I look outside and gaze at those barren mountains. I believe that staying in the dark for a long time leads you to see things you would have never seen with light. Perhaps it’s called adaptation, but it’s more beautiful to call it magic. There’s something magical in facing the unknown, in living where the boundary between man and nature is thinner than ever. Perhaps, this is the true spirit of Svalbard: to live deeply feeling every heartbeat of the earth. One thing is certain, here at the world’s northernmost point, you possess a different perspective on things. As the plane takes off, the words of Alberto Lozano come to mind:
“The day I leave this place will be the hardest day of my life, work-wise, for the love I have for this place. Is there anything more extreme than what you experience here at the northernmost point in the world?” “This is what the Arctic tastes like“.
Ndr: To learn everything about life in the Svalbard, it is highly recommended to watch the videos by Giulia Di Marino, also known as @giuliaalpolo, on YouTube. Her videos truthfully and enthusiastically cover all the curiosities you need to know.
