Svalbardbutikken is a

department store A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic app ...

and the only

grocery store A grocery store ( AE), grocery shop ( BE) or simply grocery is a store that primarily retails a general range of food products, which may be fresh or packaged. In everyday U.S. usage, however, "grocery store" is a synonym for supermarket, a ...

Longyearbyen Longyearbyen (, locally �lɔ̀ŋjɑrˌbyːən "The Longyear Town") is the world's northernmost settlement with a population greater than 1,000 and the largest inhabited area of Svalbard, Norway. It stretches along the foot of the left bank ...

Svalbard Svalbard ( , ), also known as Spitsbergen, or Spitzbergen, is a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. North of mainland Europe, it is about midway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole. The islands of the group range ...

. Owned and operated by Coop Svalbard BA, it sells groceries, fresh produce,

duty-free A duty-free shop (or store) is a retail outlet whose goods are exempt from the payment of certain local or national taxes and duties, on the requirement that the goods sold will be sold to travelers who will take them out of the country, w ...

items,

souvenir A souvenir (), memento, keepsake, or token of remembrance is an object a person acquires for the memories the owner associates with it. A souvenir can be any object that can be collected or purchased and transported home by the traveler as a m ...

perfume Perfume (, ; french: parfum) is a mixture of fragrant essential oils or aroma compounds (fragrances), fixatives and solvents, usually in liquid form, used to give the human body, animals, food, objects, and living-spaces an agreeable scent. Th ...

s, and gifts. It previously featured an electronics department which closed in May 2010. Svalbard's

Vinmonopolet Vinmonopolet ( en, The Wine Monopoly), symbolized by Ⓥ and Colloquialism, colloquially shortened to Polet, is a government-owned alcoholic beverage retailer and the Alcohol monopoly, only company allowed to sell beverages containing an Alcohol b ...

, the government-owned alcoholic beverage retailer, is located inside the store. Coop Svalbard also operates a kiosk at

Svalbard Airport, Longyear Svalbard Airport ( no, Svalbard lufthavn; ) is the main airport serving Svalbard in Norway. It is northwest of Longyearbyen on the west coast, and is the northernmost airport in the world with scheduled public flights. The first airport near Lo ...

. Svalbardbutikken was established in 1992, and it took over the grocery business on the island from the Provianten grocery store, which opened in 1950. Longyear-Town-Centre

The fact that the business is located in Svalbard, an area remote from the rest of

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

, affects the prices of various goods differently. Svalbard is a tax-free area, and alcohol and tobacco products are therefore cheaper than in mainland Norway. During the summer, dry and frozen goods are transported to Svalbard by boat, and therefore food can cost about the same as on the mainland. But because all fresh

produce Produce is a generalized term for many farm-produced crops, including fruits and vegetables (grains, oats, etc. are also sometimes considered ''produce''). More specifically, the term ''produce'' often implies that the products are fresh and g ...

must be transported to Svalbard by plane, it is more expensive than in other parts of Norway. The dependence on air freight also means that Svalbardbutikken and other stores on Svalbard can run out of some goods when the weather is too poor for planes to land. There is no deposit on glass bottles and cans in Longyearbyen. There used to be a deposit scheme like the one on the mainland, but it was ended in 2000 because it was too expensive to transport empty bottles and cans back to the mainland for reuse.

References

External links

Official website
Companies based in Svalbard Norwegian companies established in 1992 Retail companies established in 1992 {{Svalbard-stub