From the Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. I'm Manvine Rana.

I arrived in Svalbard in early March on a flight from Oslo. So far in the north, you're almost at the North Pole.

And everything from the plane over Svalbard was white.

Svalbard has often been used as a starting point for expeditions to the North Pole,

famously in the late 19th century when people tried to get there in hot air balloons and things

like that.

Earlier this year, Matthew Campbell, the Foreign Features Editor at the Sunday Times,

took a trip to a land of wonder at the top of the world.

The first thing you see when you go into the airport terminal is a giant polar bear by the suitcase carousel.

And the first thing I noticed was all the Chinese tourists posing for selfies.

Spalbard is home to more polar bears than people.

There are whales and reindeer, although the tourists are a relatively new phenomenon.

And one little town in the remote Arctic tundra is drawing more international interest than most.

It's a little place called Berensburg.

Well, to get there, we had to travel for half a day on snowmobiles across this frozen

wasteland from Longyibyan, the Norwegian-administered hub. We went past herds of grazing reindeer

and the odd Arctic fox. And then suddenly you see the name of a town.

And it's in the Cyrillic script.

It says Barrensburg.

The sign is in Cyrillic script,

because this is a corner of Norway,

a corner of NATO territory

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