7. LONGYEARBYEN, NORWAY
This Arctic town, with a population of some 2000 people, is the world’s northernmost settlement, and is mostly a mining town. In 1950, realizing that bodies in the local cemetery were not decomposing, the town stopped allowing new burials. The bodies hidden under the permafrost are so intact that they have actually allowed scientists to study the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, because the virus was still preserved with its buried victims. As Norway’s health benefits don’t extend that far into the Arctic, if you get sick, you have to go elsewhere.
via Mental Floss
