Running the Arctic’s Alt-Weekly Newspaper

thenation.com

42 points·Thevet··5 comments

That "international feeling" likely results from the unique (as far as I know) visa policy of not having any: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_Svalbard

Interesting place for sure.

So if you come to the mainland from Svalbard, do you have to go through an entry process as if you were coming from outside the Schengen area?

That you do.

While you do not need a visa to go to Svalbard, staying there for an extended period of time is non-trivial; there is not much housing for rent, and Svalbard... Well, isn't very tent friendly.

The governor, Sysselmannen, can ship you off to the mainland if you are not able to eke out a living and keep yourself housed.

Excerpt:

About three years ago, I was sitting in this cafe at 4pm on a Thursday and I got a call from someone in my building saying, you might wanna go home—our building is suffering massive structural damages from sinking into permafrost.

Well, I did exactly what she said: I got home and threw as many belongings as I could get my hands on into vehicles anyone could provide. In two hours, they blew up the building and that was that. I had a flat that was worth, I don’t know, $200,000 dollars and immediately it was worth nothing, I was bankrupt.

The only reason I’m still here is people chipped in and helped me find a place and also helped when I was injured. If I was in the US I’d be homeless and definitely dead because health care is that bad.

My rent is 23 days overdue and my landlord is tired of me being late.

If you can afford to support either The Nation (the source of this article) or Icepeople (the subject of this article), please do. Ads aren't sufficient these days and good journalism is currently in its death throes, which is a threat to little things like freedom.

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