Longyearbyen – the capital of Svalbard, has approximately 2 000 inhabitants. This is coal mining and also airport. The name becomes from the American businessmen John Munroe Longyear, the main owner of the Arctic Coal Company of Boston, which developed the mining operation in what was called Longyear City, later the Norwegian Longyearbyen (byen in Norwegian means the town/city).

The main authority of Svalabard is the Governor, who is the Norwegian government's supreme representative in the archipelago. The institution is quite unique in Norway in that it heads a department of environment conservation and a police unit. It also deals with several other fields.

Ilona stayed at Polish Polar Station at Hornsund. Now Agnieszka will be in charge with our blog. News from her:

At 7 am we reached Longyerabyen, the capital of Spitsbergen, located in Isfjord. We missed the contact with land/peopled the best. Thus we woke up very early morning and was looking forwards impatiently to nod from the captain that we can go on land! Many of us were interested in it. We used pontoon in three tours. We regeret but we had to say goodbye to Przemek and Roberto (from University of Florence) who completed their adventure at this stage. Instead we did welcome new scientic member Francesco, who will be continuing the work of Roberto on aerosol. It appears that Francesco is also the master of latin dance, so we all do hope to use from that during our free time.

After we touched the land most of us went to the library where we managed to contact our relatives, check our emails’ box and to get know how people enjoyed summer in Poland what we are missing here. Happily the beautiful wild landscape around is worth of design from hot summer.

The summer here is also fine and views are superb. You can have two beautiful at the same time: picturesque and secret mountains covered often with fog and the water, though not so warm and not inviting to take a swim.