Discover the awe-inspiring landscape of the Arctic Circle’s most remote destination, Svalbard

Svalbard is tourism’s final frontier and a place at the limits of human endurance. A frozen archipelago between Greenland and Russia, it’s the most remote of the Arctic Circle’s wildernesses and an eerie, haunted place, full of ghost towns and abandoned mining settlements. The remains of trapper huts crumble along clifftops, a testament to lost dreams. For those attracted to the far reaches of the earth, it holds an almost mythical allure. To journey here is to follow in the footsteps of legendary explorers, who saw a stark, dangerous beauty in this unforgiving landscape of ice, where polar bears outnumber residents and the sun refuses to rise for almost half of the year.

Today, many of those who visit here—the most northerly inhabited place in the world, a three-hour flight from Oslo, and around 600 miles from the North Pole itself—hope to see bears, though the Norwegian government is fiercely protective of these elusive creatures and searching for them is forbidden. In fact, new sustainable tourism guidelines introduced last year discourage using polar bears as a focus for any marketing material. Svalbard is one of the best-protected ecosystems on earth, with seven national parks and 23 stunning nature reserves covering most of the islands. Still, it’s a fragile place and rising sea temperatures, resulting from climate change, mean the ice pack is shrinking, sending bears further north each year as their hunting grounds melt. Everyone is guaranteed at least one sighting, however: the arrivals hall at the tiny airport in Svalbard’s capital, Longyearbyen is dominated by a large polar bear, stuffed and forever frozen astride the baggage carousel.

We didn’t see any others when we visited in March. Instead, we found a big beast of a different kind: Tom Cruise. The filming for Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part Two began on Svalbard as we arrived, though not without controversy; Norway’s Environment Agency and the governor of the islands refused permission for any action scene or helicopter flights, citing a potential disturbance to wildlife. Let’s be clear: even a global superstar isn’t allowed to bother these bears. Walking around the bleakly beautiful town of Longyearbyen swathed in a fur-trimmed parka, Cruise was on a local charm offensive, taking selfies with anyone who asked on photogenic streets lined with colourful wooden houses raised on stilts against snowfall. The air is icy and impossibly clear; everything shimmering, crystalline in the pale sunshine—and here’s the most powerful man in Hollywood, cheeks reddening in -30 degree wind chill. Surreal doesn’t begin to describe it.

We found Cruise and the rest of his cast and crew when we checked into our hotel, which turned out to be the Mission: Impossible production base (this made breakfast interesting, with A-list celebrities appearing in their thermal underwear). Funken Lodge sits on a hill just beyond the town—though not so far out that you need to carry a rifle and flare gun for safety when leaving it. Recently renovated and surprisingly chic, with an award-winning restaurant and an unexpected champagne bar, it’s surrounded on three sides by jagged hills, showing the scars from old mines; the final side—and the view from our room—looks across town, over the frozen fjord to the glaciers beyond, glittering brilliantly. Svalbard also surpasses itself as a fine-dining destination and we had incredible food at the hotel and elsewhere—the farm-to-table concept has an interesting twist here, as one of the few remaining trappers on Spitsbergen supplies the best restaurants with meat, from bearded seal to reindeer and ptarmigan. The best of the best is Huset, a world-class place that offers up a gloriously inventive six-course tasting menu of delicacies that include sea urchin soup and king crab lollipop. Obviously, Cruise had already visited.

Besides the bears and whale burgers, you come here for adventure. In this world of tundra, glaciers, and fjords, the environment is everything: it demands respect as well as protection. It’s also uniquely challenging: there’s no infrastructure on Svalbard beyond 30 miles of road. In winter, except for a short drive to the airport, transport is by dog sled, snowcat or snowmobile. We visited an ice cave high on the glacier, moving slowly uphill on wide tracks until we came to a small door in the hillside with a ladder leading down into unimaginable depths, our head torches illuminating polished walls of ice studded with fossils and ancient plant matter. Travelling with huskies over frozen valleys was another thrill, their wild enthusiasm carrying us at speed across miles of hard-packed snow. But the biggest trip—literally, 125 miles—was by snowmobile from Longyearbyen to the edge of the pack ice on the east coast of Svalbard. Driving at a maximum speed of nearly 40 miles per hour, winding through mountains, over glaciers, and across frozen fjords, blinded by snow, freezing even inside our padded thermal overalls and balaclavas, this was an epic 12-hour journey to what felt like the end of the world. We found no polar bears, but it didn’t seem to matter. The awe this unconquerable landscape inspires is the thing you’ll always remember. Sorry, Tom Cruise.

This piece originally appeared in the Jan 2024/Feb 2024 issue of Harper's Bazaar UK.