The quiet hillside by Longyearbyen’s church gives visitors to the capital of Norway’s Svalbard archipelago an austere but beautiful panorama of the bay that cradles the town. Tall, sharply steep mountains, blanketed with snow, collide with the blue-grey waters of the Arctic below.

From that hillside, I watched the quiet bustle of Longyearbyen. Since Donald Trump threatened Nato with the biggest crisis in the alliance’s history by stating his desire to take control of Greenland in the name of US ‘national security’, Svalbard’s residents have been uneasily looking westward. The US President has repeatedly claimed that only he can prevent the island, which is just 185 miles from Svalbard, being used as a staging post for an attack on the West by Russia or China.

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Svalbard, a collection of islands whose area is roughly twice the size of Belgium, is home to only about 3,000 people. For centuries, explorers hoping to reach the North Pole used Svalbard as their Arctic base camp. Despite the raw wilderness, it also has a distinct sense of claustrophobia.

Sitting at 78 degrees north, the archipelago is rich in natural resources and home to Svalsat, the world’s largest satellite ground station, which provides services to Nasa and the European space agency. But while Svalbard belongs to Norway, it is a unique – and particularly vulnerable – territory thanks to the treaty under which it is governed.

Signed in 1920, the Svalbard Treaty grants its signatories unfettered access to the archipelago’s natural resources and the right to live and work there visa-free. It also prevents the islands from being used for ‘warlike purposes’ – including by Norway, meaning that the country is unable to garrison troops permanently on the territory.

There are two main settlements on Svalbard: Longyearbyen, home to 2,490 people of approximately 50 different nationalities, is the only one controlled by Norway. Thirty miles down the coast is Barentsburg, a so-called ‘company town’ run by the Russian state-owned mining firm Arktikugol, home to 386 inhabitants (just over half of whom are Russian). No roads connect........

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