' You either like it and then you love it, or you can't take it.'
Norway's Spitsbergen islands, only a few hundred miles from the North Pole, are home to about 1.000 Norwegians but twice that number of Russians.
This is a look at life in the coal-mining communities, all daylight in summer and all darkness in winter, at the delicate relationship with the Soviet Union because of Spitsbergen's strategic position, and at the sudden flourishing of wildlife and plants each year in its hard and beautiful landscape.
Presented and produced by John Arnolt
7.0 Travel; programme news