Ultima Thule--the island of Spitsbergen located between Greenland, Norway, and the North Pole, was once considered the very -end of the world.- Sixty percent of its sparsley settled land mass--mountains, moors and fjords--is covered in perma-ice. Spitsbergen today is a sensitive site in the strategically delicate Arctic Sea, with the interests of the major powers colliding there. The Romantic beauty is impervious to this state of things. And Pyramiden, the coal mining town operated by the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1992 contributes to the Romantic feel: the ruins of a boomtown caught in the...