Should you have the misfortune to fall gravely ill, you can expect to be despatched by aeroplane or ship to another part of Norway to end your days. And if you are terminally unlucky and succumb to misfortune or disease, no-one will bury you here.
The town's small graveyard stopped accepting newcomers 70 years ago, after it was discovered that the bodies were failing to decompose.
Corpses preserved by permafrost have since become objects of morbid curiosity. Scientists recently removed tissue from a man who did die here. They found traces of the influenza virus which carried him and many others away in an epidemic in 1917..."
(and tangentially related to this...)
"Every student at the university spends their first day learning how to shoot [polar] bears. Aim toward the chest, runs the advice, rather than the head which is easy to miss.If you are unarmed when you encounter a bear, toss your mittens on the snow in the hope of distracting it.
But if you see it snap its teeth with a smacking sound, it is readying for a kill.
At which point, I suppose, you could try reminding the bear that it is forbidden to die in Longyearbyen and hope it shows respect for local law."
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