What life is like in one of the most remote places on Earth

Deep within the Arctic Circle, pocketed between giant glaciers and beneath polar ice floes, photographer and content creator Cecilia Blomdahl finds extraordinary warmth.

Deep within the Arctic Circle, pocketed between giant glaciers and beneath polar ice floes, Swedish photographer and content creator Cecilia Blomdahl found extraordinary warmth. The Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, lying roughly midway between Norway’s northern coast and the North Pole, is the site of the world’s northernmost permanent settlements. Blomdahl, who lives in Svalbard’s largest city of Longyearbyen, is one of about 2,500 residents in the region. Here, colorful cabins contrast colossal ice cap backdrops and vibrant celestial phenomena light the sky. Blomdahl moved to Svalbard in 2015 and documents her unique life to millions of fascinated social media followers. She has now captured her home’s serenity, sparkling in shades of blue, in a new photobook titled “Life on Svalbard.” “When you live here, you really get immersed in it; the quiet and peaceful nature,” Blomdahl, a former hospitality worker turned content creator, told CNN, “And every day being so close to the nature; it’s infatuating.” For all its natural beauty, Svalbard is much more than a pretty place. Its rich resources, such as fish, gas, and mineral deposits, have made it a topic of economic and diplomatic dispute in the past, and it now serves as a flourishing global hub for economic activities and scientific research. For those just coming for a spell, it’s a bucket list tourist destination. But as Blomdahl knows, life in Svalbard isn’t easy. From temperatures sometimes plummeting to below minus 30 (-34.4 Celsius), to polar bears and arctic foxes occasionally roaming local streets, it takes a unique individual to forgo life on the mainland and move to such a remote, and at times forbidding, place.