Explore Pyramiden: The Forgotten City at the End of the World

Nestled icily in the midst of Svalbard, a cluster of Arctic islands strung along the 79th parallel, the Soviet city of Pyramiden is one of the northernmost settlements in the world.

For centuries, the archipelago was a lawless land visited only by whalers and explorers. Then, in 1920, the Spitsbergen Treaty placed Svalbard under the sovereign rule of Norway, with commercial rights reserved for its other signatories. Although Russia lost its bid for the islands amid the civil unrest that followed World War I, its successor, the Soviet Union, was the only nation to take Norway up on an offer to exploit the land for economic gain.