Gruve 3 mine, Seed Vault and town tours

6 min read Updated October 2026 Compare all tours

Longyearbyen began as a mining town. An American company opened the first mine in the early 1900s, the Norwegian company Store Norske took over in 1916, and the place remained a company town until 1989. The last coal was mined in Gruve 7 in Adventdalen in 2025. You still see the history in town: one of the Seed Vault tours below stops at the central station of the old coal cableway, and the tradition of taking off your shoes indoors goes back to the coal dust of the mining years.

The tours on this page cover that history from three angles. One goes underground in a closed mine, several drive or walk out to the Global Seed Vault, and others stay in town.

Underground in Gruve 3

Gruve 3, or Mine 3, lies just outside town and produced coal from 1971 to 1996. Since it closed, the machines and equipment have been left where they were. Visits are run by Gruve 3 AS. Tours take three hours and start at 9:00 and 13:00, and you are collected from your hotel or guesthouse. The drive passes the Seed Vault on the way.

Inside you see maps and a model of the mine, the old workshops, then put on overalls, a helmet and a headlamp and walk into the mountain. Near the end you can crawl into one of the low production tunnels. Visit Svalbard warns that it is colder inside the mine than outside, and reviewers describe frost on the walls and ceilings, so keep your jacket on under the overalls. Food and drink are not included.

Reviews praise the guides more than anything, several of whom worked as miners themselves, and a short film at the start. The criticism is about language: tours run in English and Norwegian, and some guests found the English fast. A few reviews mention a missed pickup. Reviews come from every season, including December.

The Global Seed Vault, seen from outside

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is cut into a hillside above Longyearbyen airport, 130 metres above sea level. Its storage halls lie more than 100 metres inside the mountain and are kept at minus 18 degrees. The three halls have room for 4.5 million seed samples, and gene banks in the USA, Germany, Canada and the Netherlands are the largest national depositors. Norway built and paid for it, it opened on 26 February 2008, the Nordic gene bank NordGen runs it day to day, and the Crop Trust helps fund its operation. The entrance carries an illuminated art installation by the Norwegian artist Dyveke Sanne.

What you need to know before booking: you cannot go in. The vault's own website says only authorised personnel have access, and staff come only on the dates when new seeds are deposited. There is a virtual tour on seedvault.no instead. Every tour on this page stops outside, either at the entrance or at a viewpoint nearby.

The Seed Vault tours are short, and the stop at the building is shorter still. The car tour by Arctic Footsteps spends two hours driving through town and Adventdalen with photo stops and a halt at the entrance. Another two-hour tour adds places in Longyearbyen such as the polar bear warning sign and needs little walking; the operator calls it suitable for all ages. A taxi tour stops about 150 metres from the vault for half an hour and also passes Svalbard Church and the old coal cableway station. Reviews of all of them come back to the same points: some guests expected to look inside, several found the price high for two hours, and the taxi tour's title promises more depth than reviewers felt they got.

The guided walk goes on foot from town into Adventdalen and up to the entrance. It is listed at three and a half hours, though a review says it took about two and covered roughly 2.5 km. In bad weather the group has gone by car instead.

Fitting the tours into a day

The morning mine tour starts at 9:00 and lasts three hours, which leaves the afternoon free for a Seed Vault tour or the Svalbard Museum. The Seed Vault tour with iconic places is listed for the whole year, the car tour by Arctic Footsteps has reviews from June to October, and the guided walk from February to August. In the polar night from late October to mid-February every Seed Vault tour takes place in the dark.

Town tours

For an overview of Longyearbyen without the mine, the guided walking tour leads through the residential streets, past mining structures and up to viewpoints, and talks about the polar night, polar bears and politics in the Arctic. It runs from spring to early autumn. Reviews mention a start time moved at short notice and a meeting point that could have been clearer.

The small-group sightseeing tour takes at most eight people by vehicle to viewpoints in Adventdalen, the Seed Vault and the Arctic World Archive, then through Longyeardalen past the university, the church and the old mining installations. A German-language version of about two hours is aimed at cruise passengers and starts at the port. For photographers there is a private three-hour walk with help on camera settings, though its reviews date from 2024.

Svalbard Church, the world's northernmost civilian church, consecrated in 1958, is usually open around the clock and appears on several of these tours. More about the town itself is on our Longyearbyen town guide, and the Global Seed Vault page covers the building in more detail.