A remote town as left people baffled as dying has effectively been banned there for an unsettling reason – and the unnerving piece of trivia has blown some people’s minds
A town where it is effectively ‘illegal to die’ has blown people’s minds.
A Brit came across the bizarre piece of trivia noting a “surprising fact” attached to a piece of furniture he had purchased. Taking to Reddit, he shared a snap of the “fun” piece of information.
“My purchase came with a fun fact,” he declared in the Weird subreddit. “Longyearbyen, Svalbard, a remote Norwegian island, has made it illegal to die since 1950, when locals discovered that bodies were not decomposing in the cemetery due to the frigid weather,” the strange fact read.
Naturally, the post drew plenty of morbid jokes, with one user quipping: “Imagine dying of old age only to be labeled as a criminal at your funeral.” Another joked: “Fellas, we just discovered the secret to immortality! Just live in the city where it’s illegal to die, and then you can’t!”
A third pondered: “Can you be arrested for attempted dying if you’re like an octogenarian traveling in this town?” And a fourth mused: “Coincidentally, the sentence for dying in town is death. They take this law very seriously.”
Longyearbyen is the world’s most northern settlement and forms part of an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, with a population of around 1,700. The town has a series of other weird laws including a ban on cats and restrictions on how much alcohol each individual can purchase in a month.
The odd rules around death came into force in 1950 after it was discovered the bodies of those who succumbed to a flu pandemic in 1918 were yet to begin decomposing. Eerily, scientists believe their corpses have been preserved by the icy permafrost temperatures all year round – and may even contain live strains of the virus to this day, more than a century later.
While bodies are not permitted to be buried, ashes are exempt for the law. Terminally ill people are asked to move to the Norwegian mainland to avoid passing away in the region.
