Probably only a minority of Britons would have even heard of the Svalbard Islands, let alone just where they were or what they were like----that is, until the tragic event a few days ago.
The largest island of the Svalbard group is Spitsbergen, with its principal town, Longyearbyen, being the most northerly permanently settled town on the planet. At 78 degrees 13 minutes north, permanent daylight lasts from April 20th to August 22nd, with the sun never rising above the horizon from October 27th to February 15th. The northernmost tip of Norway, to which the Svalbard group belong, is 360 miles away. The North Pole is scarcely 600. The island of Spitsbergen is nearly as large as Scotland.
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