It’s forbidden to be buried in Longyearbyen, Norway. The town’s only cemetery closed over 70 years ago because it’s so cold that bodies previously buried there have never decomposed, and some still carry traces of an influenza virus that caused an epidemic in 1917.
Dying has been banned on the island since 1950, when it was discovered that bodies in the local cemetery were not decomposing because of the chilly temperatures.
The island’s climate is so Arctic that in the 2000s, scientists, morbidly fascinated by the discovery, tested corpses buried there who succumbed to the 1917 influenza virus — and to their amazement, retrieved live samples of the virus.
Residents had been living among the deadly virus for decades, without even realizing it.
The graveyard no longer takes any new inhabitants because of fears disease will spread throughout the island, meaning that even those who have lived their whole life on the island, cannot be buried there.
