Is it Forbidden to die in the Arctic?

Yes! you and anyone is forbidden to die in the Arctic. What if happens if you get terminally sick or maybe old, hmm, you will be deported to elsewhere to die. Not gonna happen in the Arctic.

It is forbidden to die in the Arctic town of Longyearbyen. If you unfortunately break the law and die, no one will bury you here.

The graveyard in this small town has stopped accepting bodies for burial almost 70 years ago.

But why? What happens if Longyearbyen is my hometown and I want to spend my last days there. Well, if you fall gravely ill, you can expect to be despatched by aeroplane or ship to another part of Norway to end your days.

The town’s graveyard has stopped accepting bodies for a reason. They just fail to decompose in the ice cold weather. There is absolutely no point in burying the bodies if they don’t 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.

Longyearbyen’s “no death” policy stems as much from its remote location as from its harsh climate.

At 78 degrees north, it lies on the archipelago of Svalbard, a group of islands between Norway’s northern coast and the North Pole.

About 1,500 people inhabit small wooden houses which are partly sheltered from the Arctic winds by the settlement’s location in a mountain valley.

Its pretty sad for the people of Longyearbyen that they can’t spend their last days peacefully in their home, well it is part of their culture now.

What do you think about this story?