Sorry! I didn't plan to die here.
:sorry1: Why dying is forbidden in the Arctic
By Duncan Bartlett
BBC, Norway
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Residents of Norway's Svalbard Islands are used to dealing with the dangers of polar bears but, for one remote settlement, wild animals are not the only worry.
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It is forbidden to die in the Arctic town of Longyearbyen.
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.
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https://teakdoor.com/images/imported/2005/08/29.jpg Longyearbyen is in the land of the polar bear, an animal which causes real dread among its residents https://teakdoor.com/images/imported/2005/08/30.jpg
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.
