Longyearbyen: the Norwegian city where inhabitants cannot die
Except for certain situations, the truth is that most do not have so much control over the exact moment when they will boot, don't you agree? For there is a town in Norway called Longyearbyen where the inhabitants are forbidden to die. So much so that patients who are about to bend the Cape of Good Hope, are basically transported to larger cities in advance so that the Ultimate does not decide to visit the small town. But why?
According to Lyndsey Matthews of Men's Health, Longyearbyen is a small town of about 2, 000 in the Norwegian Svalbard archipelago. This little place lies between Norway and the North Pole, and during the winter, as well as freezing cold as it is so far north of the European continent, it remains in darkness for three whole months. By the way, the cracking cold that is there is the main reason that people are forbidden to stretch their shins in Longyearbyen. To die of cold, only metaphorically indeed!
Natural freezer
The ban on dying was instituted in the 1950s, after the population discovered that the bodies buried in the local cemetery were not decomposing since the soil of the holy field functioned as a kind of natural freezer. However, the restriction on burying people in Longyearbyen is not motivated solely by fear of someday lacking space to “freeze” the dead. The preservation of corpses could also be dangerous.
So much so that in the late 1990s, decades after the ban was passed, a team of researchers who went to Longyearbyen to find out the situation killed bodies of people who died during the Spanish flu epidemic that ravaged Europe in the early 20th century. and managed to collect viable virus samples! So the truth is that there is a risk that diseases will spread.
According to Lyndsey, urns containing the cremated people's ashes are allowed to be deposited in the cemetery, but as this option of burial does not seem to be very popular with the inhabitants, terminally ill and individuals who have a foot in the grave are encouraged to move. to spend their last days elsewhere than in Longyearbyen - and the Norwegian authorities help with whatever is necessary to take all necessary steps to facilitate the process.
In fact, according to Lyndsey, even pregnant women are motivated to move to larger centers with enough time to have their children in better prepared places, since Longyearbyen only has a small hospital to serve the population. Fascinating, right?
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