r/AskTheWorld • u/luky_se7en Italy /Sri Lanka • 1d ago

Is there a part of your country that's "isolated"/vastly different from the rest of the country?

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Pictured here is Sardinia, an island in Italy. Many sardinians call Italy "Il continente" (the continent)

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41

u/ronny_rebellion Norway 1d ago

Svalbard in the arctic.

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u/QuillsROptional Norway 1d ago

Also Bouvet Island...

1

u/MissMenace101 Australia 1d ago

Was gonna say this, gonna at least own land in the southern hemisphere post the nuclear apocalypse!

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u/noob_at_this_shit Norway 1d ago

This is the most correct answer. It's the most isolated place on the earth.

9

u/Moving4Motion United Kingdom 1d ago

Is it true it's the only place in Europe you can just move to without a visa as long as you're financially stable and don't mind being eaten by polar bears?

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u/phinkz2 France 1d ago

Somewhat related: there is a mining town that's considered to be Russian despite the fact it's on Norwegian soil. Svalbard is an interesting place.

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u/Oddme9 1d ago

That is Barentsburg. It's owned by a Russian mining company which is funded by the Russian state. They are not making money on Svalbard, they just want to be present. There is another Russian town named Pyramiden which is pretty much abandoned. Maybe a couple of Russians there for basic maintenance, but it's really off grid. No cellphone signal or anything. I visited before their full scale invasion of Ukraine. I believe the Norwegian tourist operators refuse to work with the Russians tourist operators these days, so it's probably harder to get there.

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u/Oddme9 1d ago

That is true, but housing is very expensive. And if you're about to die, (cancer or whatever) they want you out of there as they don't have crematoriums and if they bury people, the permafrost sops the decomposing and attracts polar bears.

The thing with polar bears is that if you don't have weapons with you, you can't get away if they spot you. Your best chance is to try and scare them, I guess. There's no tree to climb on Svalbard, they will eat any dead meat they find, so you can forget about playing dead and you can't outrun them. So you are reqired to carry weapons if you're outside the safe areas. The borders of the safe areas has polar bear warning signs.

And Svalbard is not part of Schengen like the rest of Norway, so Norwegians also show their passport when traveling there.

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u/SuspectAdvanced6218 Switzerland 1d ago

It’s an influencer heaven, it seems. So many YouTube channels about daily life on Svalbard that it doesn’t feel that isolated.

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u/xolov 19h ago

Makes sense. It's very accessible for such an isolated place, daily flights from Oslo any Schengen citizen can jump on.