I live on top of the world – in the most northern urban community on the planet: Here’s why I’m staying put, despite -30C temperatures, no trees and months of darkness every year [Video]

02:28 EST 09 Nov 2024, updated 07:25 EST 09 Nov 2024

Svalbard is one of the world’s northernmost inhabited areas – and certainly isn’t for everyone.

As resident Cecilia Blomdahl reveals.

The Swedish author moved there from Gothenburg in 2015, because it ‘felt like a fun adventure’.

There is fun, but from her cabin near the town of Longyearbyen, the largest inhabited area of the Svalbard archipelago, she tells MailOnline Travel that life at the top of the world on the Arctic Ocean island, is full of challenges, too.

Temperatures can plummet to -30C, she notes, there are months of darkness – then daylight – at a time, brutal storms, and polar bears.

Cecilia, 34, describes Svalbard, which lies close to the North Pole, as a ‘land of extreme seasons and weather’, explaining that the sun sets at the end of October and isn’t seen again until early March.

She says: ‘In summer, the sun stays above the horizon for nearly …