One of the expat influencers I follow on Instagram, Cecilia, lives on Svalbard—an island close to the North Pole. As you can imagine, it’s cold there. The extremely low daily temperature features heavily in this influencer’s stories. On Svalbard, there are no trees. The land is frozen tundra—permafrost—so there are no gardens. The sun shines twenty-four hours a day through the summer, but the high is only six degrees celsius. They call that the Polar Day. And in the winter, Svalbard experiences four months of complete darkness, called the Polar Night, and even longer without actually seeing the sun. It’s fun that Svalbard claims to be Santa Claus’ home, but it is literally the last place on earth I even want to visit, much less live.

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