Spitsbergen

The largest of the Svalbard islands, Spitsbergen is home to the world’s northernmost town of Longyearbyen. Along its west coast, ships slip between its shores and Forlandet, a slim national park of an island with jagged, snowy peaks. Farther upcoast, the 79-meter-high (260-foot-high) ice wall of Lilliehöök glacier peeks out of the oft-present fog. In the eight-kilometer-long (five-mile-long) Magdalenafjord, visitors watch walruses play on the beach near remains of old whaling camps.