On a rugged mountain plateau of snow-dusted rocks in the remote Svalbard archipelago, glaciologist Andy Hodson points out the “ears” of ice—white against the rock—that gave Foxfonna glacier its name, after the Arctic fox. The small glacier, on a mountain 8 miles (15km) outside the Norwegian village of Longyearbyen, is a popular summer hike for tourists seeking an Arctic experience. But in Svalbard, where glaciers cover 57% of the land and temperatures are rising up to seven times faster than the global average—making it one of the fastest-warming places on Earth—Foxfonna is changing rapidly.
“It is slowly dying,” says Hodson, a professor at the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS). The telltale signs include a concave profile: Foxfonna is no longer accumulating snow. Precipitation here increasingly falls as rain. Its thinning rate is between 1 and 4 metres a year, making it unrecognisable from when Hodson was last here a few years ago.
Out in the fjords on the other side of the coastal village, the large glacial fronts extending into the sea—characteristic of the islands—are melting even faster: over the past two years, 10 have retreated entirely onto land. In 2024, “things went crazy,” Hodson says, after record-high summer temperatures led to a big ice loss of 1% across the archipelago. It is affected by Arctic amplification—a feedback loop in which sea-ice retreat and atmospheric warming make each other worse.
“Pretty much the whole island is losing ice now,” says Hodson.
Longyearbyen—a scatter of brightly coloured houses, research institutes and tourist hotels at the bottom of a steep valley—lies at a latitude of 78 degrees north, the last stop in the high Arctic before the north pole. An important outpost of Arctic science, it attracts explorers, adventurers and nature lovers. The village’s 2,600 inhabitants are used to extremes: winter temperatures can drop as low as -20C (-4F) and, from late October to early March, the sun does not rise, plunging the valley into more than 100 days of darkness.
But they now face new and unsettling challenges—things that many point out should serve as a warning for other Arctic regions. Not only is snow melting faster, but the permafrost—ground that once remained frozen all year—is thawing. This is having unexpected but significant consequences. People have recently been warned not to drink from their taps because heavy metals from the bedrock are leaching into the village’s water supply. Instead, they now have to fill containers from a central tank of filtered water in the village supermarket, while the municipality investigates and works out what to do in the long term. The thaw has also caused landslides, damaged foundations and cracked walls, rendering some homes uninhabitable and threatening the long-term stability of other buildings. As a result, there are no longer enough homes for the number of people who need them. The authorities in Longyearbyen have been forced to learn lessons, acclimatise and try to adapt to the changing conditions.
On the rooftop of the Svalbard Science Centre—which featured in the opening scenes of Vigil, the recent BBC thriller set in Svalbard—Gunhild B Sætren points out the site of the most devastating avalanche in the archipelago’s history. The avalanche, in December 2015, buried nine people, killing a man and an infant in their homes in the shadow of Mount Sukkertoppen. “It was terrible,” says Sætren, a professor of safety psychology who manages the UNIS Arctic Safety Centre (ASC), established after the tragedy to focus onIn hazard management and climate adaptation, “Climate change is affecting us in many ways. The biggest risk is avalanches. The area used to be an Arctic desert, but now there is more rain.”
“The melt is starting earlier,” says tour guide Matilda Weihs. The tragedy, followed by another non-fatal avalanche in 2017 that damaged two houses, was caused by warming strong easterly winds and drifting snow. At the time, the avalanche danger from Sukkertoppen was known, but no warning system was in place. Since then, snow fences to reduce drift and a wall of avalanche traps have been installed on the mountain, and some houses have been pulled down, including Sætren’s own. The centre now provides weekly snow observations for the municipality’s avalanche warning system. Sætren also works on a programme with other remote high Arctic settlements in Iceland and Greenland to address common problems, such as evacuation procedures for avalanches. A new tour guide approval system introduced by the governor of Svalbard to better assess climate and other risks is expected to be in force by 2027.
Arctic geology is complex and changing fast, and tour operators say the changes are limiting certain activities. At the Husky cafe, Matilda Weihs, 30, a guide for Svalbard Wildlife Expeditions trained by the ASC, says that this year they had to move the snowmobiles seven miles out of the village to find enough snow for tours.
“We are losing snow earlier and the melt is starting earlier,” says Weihs. “There are big changes in the fjords. You need to stay away from glacier fronts because of the danger of glaciers calving into the sea.”
The loss of drinking water has been a huge shock, says Terje Aunevik, mayor of Longyearbyen and a former husky musher. “In Norway, where we have always taken for granted that we can drink water from the tap, it’s hard to start thinking that we need to carry our water. People get angry, wondering ‘why don’t we have control over it?’” It has forced a rethink about how to tackle the problem in the long term, says Aunevik. “Now we are using a lot of resources to clean our tap water, when we use maybe 1-2% of that for drinking. That’s crazy energy use. We could have two different water-supply systems in our households, one for drinking and one for grey water.”
Aunevik says thawing permafrost is also forcing a rethink of how the village is built. The construction of new homes to tackle the housing crisis was delayed while the village dealt with a transition to a new energy system (a former mining camp, it previously used waste hot water from the mines for heating). And then, in 2025, scientists discovered that heavy metals were contaminating the water supply.
“I sometimes say that we are at the beginning of building a completely new town,” Aunevik says. “We need to change everything. There is a saying that wood does not rot in the Arctic, but now it does. It challenges how we construct our buildings.”
Ingvild Sæbu Vatn, a partner at the Longyearbyen architecture firm LPO Arkitekter, says one solution to melting permafrost affecting wooden foundations has been to drill into the bedrock. Another settlement in Svalbard, Ny-Ålesund, tried this, but Sæbu Vatn says some buildings began to be pushed up by movement in the ground. “They thought, ‘we’ll put the foundations in the bedrock and then we’ll be fine,’ but they were wrong,” says Sæbu Vatn., who adds that this needs to be done carefully. “If you put foundations in bedrock but you don’t do it properly, the buildings will still shift. We need to rethink how we build foundations.” Those working on solutions have also considered extraordinary measures. “One solution being explored [to stabilise building foundations] is to freeze the ground by blowing cold air under the buildings in winter,” says Sæbu Vatn. She says that while Longyearbyen is undoubtedly struggling, her hope is that by finding a way to survive, they can offer hope to other Arctic regions, such as those with Inuit populations in Greenland and Canada. “The big resource that Longyearbyen has is its population,” she says. “People are adventurous and resourceful, and many companies are very innovative. Maybe we can build knowledge from this strange little place that is rapidly warming. That would be a nice goal.”
Frequently Asked Questions
FAQs This Norwegian Village Is One of the FastestWarming Places on Earth How Can Its People Save It
1 Which Norwegian village is this about
Its Longyearbyen the main town on Svalbard a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Its one of the fastestwarming inhabited places on Earth
2 How fast is it actually warming
Average temperatures have risen by roughly 4C since 1970 several times faster than the global average Rain now falls in winter and permafrost is thawing
3 Why is the Arctic warming so much faster than the rest of the world
Mainly because of Arctic amplification shrinking sea ice and snow expose darker ocean and land which absorb more sunlight instead of reflecting it Extra heat also gets released from the thawing ground and open water
4 What does permafrost mean
Ground that stays frozen yearround When it thaws the ground shifts sinks and can no longer support buildings roads or pipes built on it
5 What problems is the village already facing
Thawing permafrost is destabilizing buildings and infrastructure avalanches and landslides have killed people winter travel on frozen ground and sea ice is less safe and traditional activities like dog sledding are harder
6 Can the village stop the warming itself
No local emissions are tiny compared to the global total But residents can adapt to the changes and push for wider climate action
7 So what can the people of Longyearbyen actually do
Adapt build on pilings or relocate buildings improve avalanche and landslide monitoring diversify the economy beyond coal and plan for a future where the ground is less stable
8 How do you build safely on thawing permafrost
Use elevated foundations on piles driven into stable ground insulation to keep the ground cold and careful drainage Some buildings have had to be moved or demolished
9 What happened with the avalanches
In 2015 an avalanche killed two people including a young girl and destroyed homes Another avalanche in 2016 killed one more person Since then avalanche barriers and better warning systems have been built and some homes were relocated
10 Why does coal matter here
Longyearbyen
