A cluster of islands belonging to Norway in the increasingly strategic Arctic region, Svalbard is home to an odd mix of Russian and Norwegian miners, rejected asylum seekers and international researchers, including scientists watching for damage from global warming.

It is also thought to contain massive oil and gas reserves that would be easier to reach as climate change melts the ice caps -- a prospect prompting border countries, including the United States, to rush to stake territorial claims in the Arctic Sea bed.

As the geopolitical race accelerates around them, Svalbard residents carry on life as usual in the world's northernmost permanent settlement.

Longyearbyen, the capital, is a cosmopolitan little town home to 1,800 people from 30 countries.

Surprisingly, Thais are the biggest minority with some 60 nationals.

Conditions here are a far cry from sunny and warm Thailand -- the average temperature is 12 degrees C below zero (10.4 degrees F) in winter, when the sun completely disappears for more than two months.

This former mining town is dwarfed by the surrounding mountains, and miners' barracks dot the treeless, rocky landscape. Colourful wooden houses line the roads, where reindeer traipse along as they please and polar bears make an occasional appearance.

The first Thais to come to Svalbard were women who met Norwegian men holidaying in Thailand. The others came as word of mouth spread.

"In the beginning I was frozen, I didn't like Svalbard. Now it's fine. It's work, work, work," said Pranom Ubonrat, a 48-year-old Thai woman who holds down three jobs as a cook at an inn, a maid and a masseuse.

Svalbard has an open-door policy: no visas or residency permits are necessary and anyone can settle here as long as they can provide for themselves financially.

But beware to those who think Svalbard is an El Dorado.

Some Romanians who dropped everything to seek their fortune here had to return home penniless after they were unable to find housing or work, which is hard to come by if you don't have the proper language or professional skills.

Kazem Ariaiwand, a 48-year-old Iranian, has been stranded in Svalbard for five years.

His asylum request was rejected by Oslo and now he can't leave -- the only air link is with the Norwegian town of Tromsoe, and if he takes that flight to the mainland he risks being deported back to Iran.

"I've made a fair amount of money but the problem is that I don't know how to spend it," said Ariaiwand, who works in a supermarket by day and sells kebabs in an old US Army truck by night.

Apart from very few exceptions, people are neither born nor die in Svalbard. Because of the lack of a health care infrastructure, pregnant women and the elderly are transported to the mainland when the time comes for care.

"Last year, a little girl was born prematurely, then a little boy. They were the first babies born here in 15 years," said Solbjoerg Skadberg, a local government official.

Accidents and suicides claim one or two lives a year, and local pastor Leif Magne Helgesen -- the world's northernmost clergyman -- is rarely called upon to hold funeral services.

"That enables me to spend more of my time praying for a solution to global warming ... and meeting people," said Helgesen, clad in jeans and sporting shoulder-length hair.

Like everyone else in Svalbard, the pastor makes the rounds of his parish with his rifle slung over his shoulder in case of an impromptu encounter with a polar bear.

Here there are almost as many polar bears as people. Signs are however posted outside banks, bars and supermarkets asking patrons to kindly leave their rifles at the door.

At Ny-Aalesund, a scientific research station that is also open to everyone, dozens of researchers from around the world are tackling complex issues such as glaciology and climatology.

Farther south, in the odd Russian enclave of Barentsburg, 350 Russian and Ukrainian miners are emptying the mountain of its coal in a town reminiscent of the Soviet era, where a statue of Lenin still stands.

The Treaty of Svalbard, which gave Svalbard to Norway in 1920, grants all of the citizens' of the signatory countries the right to share the local resources equally.

Production at the Barentsburg mine is modest and the coal is of mediocre quality, but Moscow's permanent presence is a strategic demonstration of its claim to the Arctic's natural resources -- as illustrated on August 2 when a submarine expedition planted a Russian flag beneath the North Pole, drawing worldwide attention and sharpening the claims' race.

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