This is the world’s most northerly town, where at church they pray for the climate
- Longyearbyen, in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, is the world’s most northerly town – and one that is rapidly warming
- At Svalbard Church, prayers about climate feature in regular worship services, and a former pastor even helped create a climate-change Mass
The warm glow of Svalbard Church’s lights gleams on the snow-covered mountain slope where the church stands like a beacon over a remote Norwegian Arctic village, cloaked in the polar night’s constant darkness.
A century after it was founded to minister to the coal miners who settled Longyearbyen, the Lutheran house of faith is open 24/7, serving as a crucial gathering point for a community navigating a drastic change in its identity.
The last Norwegian coal mine in Svalbard – an archipelago that is one of the world’s fastest-warming spots – was slated to close this year and only got a reprieve until 2025 because of the energy crisis driven by the war in Ukraine.
For the lone pastor in this fragile, starkly beautiful environment, the challenge is to fulfil the church’s historical mission of ministering to those in crisis while addressing a pressing and divisive contemporary challenge.
“We pray every Sunday for everyone who’s affected by climate change,” the Reverend Siv Limstrand said. “We also have a role to play as church when it comes to thinking theologically about what are we doing to Creation.”
On treeless land hemmed by glaciers, mountains and deep fiords, Longyearbyen is a town of visible paradoxes.