Dog Team, Longyearbyen, Svalbard
Tuesday, 31st July 2007 by Alex Turnbull
Could these be the shadows of one or more dog sleds following old tracks through the snow on Svalbard, the northernmost part of Norway?
Unfortunately these are only medium resolution images1 (which disappear in Google Maps if you get too close), but zooming right in on Google Earth certainly seems to add weight to the theory.
Perhaps they're travelling from the nearby EISCAT radar station to the nearest town - the administrative centre of Svalbard, Longyearbyen?
Actually Longyearbyen is interesting too, as it's the world's northernmost town2 and therefore has the world's northernmost of quite a few things, including the world's most northern bank, ATM, hospital, library, night club, bus station, taxi rank, tourist office, supermarket, school and not not forgetting pub!
Oh yeah, they've also got the world's most northern permanent airport with scheduled flights - Svalbard Airport.
See Wikipedia for more on dog sleds, Longyearbyen, Svalbard and the world's most northern things.
Thanks to Harry.
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I'm not sure if these images have appeared in this weekend's image update or not, but I wasn't previously aware of any coverage of this part of the world. ↩︎
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With 1000 people or more. Longyearbyen has 1800. ↩︎
Great find if it is a dog team and I think it could be. Viewing in Google Earth if you turn on “Populated Places” just to the north west on the runway over the bay is a highly populated place called “Abandoned” with a population of exactly 0
Abandoned
I think you might find the world’s most northerly university campus there too.