• Date of visit: 4 September 2020, 5 January 2023
• Post office visited: Longyearbayen Post Office
• Postcards available at: Post office, gift shops
• Delivery time: fastest 4 days to Gemany

Tucked halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, Svalbard is a scatter of icy islands where midnight sun meets polar night — a place so remote that for centuries it had no flag, no post, and no permanent home for people or letters.

Norway’s sovereignty was recognized in 1920 through the Svalbard Treaty, and since 1925 the archipelago has officially been part of Norway. Yet Svalbard lives under a special treaty that keeps it demilitarized and open to citizens of many nations. More than forty countries — including Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and even Estonia — hold equal rights to engage in economic activity and settlement here.

But mail had reached these shores long before politics did. In the late 1890s, a shipping company from Hammerfest began carrying post to Advent Bay, using local Spitsbergen stamps — 10 øre chocolate and 20 øre red. The tiny hut that served as a post office stood at the edge of the bay, where mail began its long journey south through Tromsø and on to the world.

That hut is long gone, but its legacy remains. Today, Longyearbyen — built nearby and now the administrative heart of Svalbard — carries on the postal story that began more than a century ago..

Our Own Experience — Visiting Svalbard Twice

A couple of weeks ago, I was writing from the end of the Earth — Antarctica. Now I’ve climbed to the other pole. Not its exact opposite, but close enough. This time We’ve landed in Longyearbyen — Svalbard’s frozen capital, about 1,200 kilometers from the North Pole. We’ve been lucky enough to visit these islands twice: first in September 2020 and again in January 2023. But let’s start from the beginning.

In September 2020, we flew via Oslo and landed at Longyearbyen’s small airport, just three kilometers from Svalbard’s unofficial capital. It’s the world’s northernmost regular airport, and although masks had already become mandatory in most parts of the world, here they appeared only at the airport. We were tempted to walk into town, but we already knew that leaving the settlement without a weapon is not advised, so we took a taxi instead.

Longyearbyen has about 2,300 residents, making it by far the largest settlement on the islands. Nowhere is really far: every guesthouse is within walking distance, and right in the center, opposite the grocery store, stands the post office. Technically, the world’s northernmost post office is in Ny-Ålesund — a small research settlement even farther north — but it’s open only seasonally. Longyearbyen’s post office remains the northernmost permanent one, serving residents and travelers all year round.

The selection of stamps was nice — regular Norwegian issues and several personalized ones featuring different polar bear designs and the word Svalbard. The Norwegian stamps we used had smaller denominations, while the Svalbard ones carried international rate markings — either EUROPE or VERDEN, depending on whether the mail was bound for Europe or the rest of the world. These aren’t separate local stamps but custom creations through Posten Norge, which can also be used anywhere in Norway. All mail from here first travels to Tromsø, Svalbard’s official gateway city, before continuing to the rest of the world. Postcards are sold both in the post office and in nearly every souvenir shop — the most popular image, of course, being the polar bear. There are more polar bears on Svalbard than people, and though the human population is small, it represents more than fifty nationalities.

Our first visit took place about half a year after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Tourist numbers were noticeably lower than usual, which meant we didn’t have to book glacier hikes, local treks, or even the boat trip to Pyramiden in advance — everything could be arranged once we arrived.

The boat trip to Pyramiden with the Polargirl was another highlight. The journey took about two and a half hours each way, crossing open fjords and drifting ice before reaching the old Soviet town around midday. We brought postcards with us — just in case the post office happened to be open. There was one, in fact, but it was closed when we visited. Pyramiden was still a ghost town. Once a Soviet mining settlement, it still carries traces of that past: a large bust of Lenin looks out over the deserted main square, and Soviet symbols still decorate many of the buildings.

At the time of our visit, a film festival was taking place. When the miners left in 1998, they did so in a hurry — they had only 48 hours to pack — leaving behind pianos, sports trophies, books… and more than 300 film reels from the town’s cinema. Many of those reels have since been restored. Just a day before our visit, the festival had screened Tarkovsky’s cult classic Stalker — a film shot in my hometown, Tallinn, in 1979 — projected the old way, on flickering film stock. Watching that film here must have been quite an experience — but we had a different purpose, and soon we made our way back to the ship.

On the way back from Pyramiden, after a short stop by the Nordenskiöld Glacier, someone spotted movement on the shore. A polar bear mother lay on the ice, her cub peeking from behind her. From the deck it felt safe enough — and for everyone, it was the moment we had hoped for, the dream of seeing a polar bear come true.

Our second visit came in January 2023, this time to experience the polar night. Here the sun doesn’t rise for ninety-nine days, and when we turned on the hotel TV, the first line of information read: “Sunrise in 44 days.” It also showed an aurora forecast.

Despite joining several northern-lights excursions — by dog sled, ATV, and a strange glass-walled snow vehicle — I never managed to see them. Over breakfast, I often heard guests say they had appeared just after I’d gone to bed, when the clouds finally cleared. Even the locals still chase them, sharing quick messages when the sky turns green. I only discovered that informal “aurora group” when it was time to leave.

Making a small jump forward in time, I finally saw them a year later — faint green ribbons drifting above Kopli Bay in my hometown of Tallinn.

The post office, however, was still in the same place, still open and reliable. Although Christmas was already over, I learned an interesting detail: for local children, Santa doesn’t live in Rovaniemi. Instead, they deliver their letters to a mailbox placed at the entrance to Mine No. 2. Does Santa really live underground?

For all the postcrossers who write on their profiles that they’d love to receive postcards with cats — I couldn’t send one from here, since there are no cats (or cat postcards) on Svalbard. Or almost none. During my first visit, there was Kesha — the only cat said to have lived here. Officially, cats aren’t allowed, to protect the local birdlife, but Kesha supposedly arrived in Barentsburg with papers calling him a “fox.” When I came back in 2023, I was told he was gone.

We sent plenty of postcards, searched for northern lights, and crossed the dark polar night on every possible ride — by sled, by snowmobile, and on foot. The darkness wasn’t really dark at all; snow and stars gave it a soft glow.

But we saved our last Svalbard stamps — the ones with the polar bear — and mailed them elsewhere.
Eight months later, they were posted much farther south, on board the Silver Supporter, while sailing from Mangareva to Pitcairn. The ship flies the Norwegian flag, which means mail written at sea carries its own maritime mark, then enters the postal system at the next port of call. In our case, that was tiny Pitcairn Island — a British territory in the middle of the Pacific, where the postcard began its long journey home via New Zealand.
But that story of sea mail — or paquebot — belongs to another post, one still waiting to be written.

For now, this story ends here — a new post will follow in two weeks.

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