Science & space · Arctic Norway · opened 2008
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault
A backup copy of the world's crops, tunneled into an Arctic mountain.
Research draft · editor review pending. Every claim below is linked to a checked source, but this dossier has not yet been reviewed by a human editor. Spot an error? Corrections are logged.
Dug into a mountainside on the island of Spitsbergen, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault stores duplicate samples of seeds from gene banks around the world. If a national collection is lost to war, disaster or accident, the backup survives here.
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Connected dossiers
The Library of AlexandriaContrast · A modern safeguard against the kind of loss Alexandria suffered.
The Dead Sea ScrollsSame open question · Preserving knowledge across centuries.See The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in the discovery universe →
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EstablishedSupported by strong, converging evidence.
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Hero image: Entrance to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Spitsbergen. Photo: Einar Jørgen Haraldseid · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons. Evidence labels describe the written claims, not the image. Version 1 · updated 2026-10-22.