On the top of the world at Svalbard, an archipelago situated between Norway and the North Pole, is a place that the world forgot for nearly a decade, a Russian mining settlement established by Sweden in 1910 but then sold to the Soviet Union in 1927, then completely abandoned in 1998. It’s only reachable with driving 140 km with a snowmobile during winter.

The presentation of the award at the Nature Talks Photo Festival in the Netherlands marked the end of a competition at which over 14,000 images were submitted by photographers from 73 different countries. Entries were divided into 11 categories including Birds, Mammals, Plants and mushrooms, Landscapes, Underwater and Man and Nature. Category winners were then pitted against each other to decide the Grand Prize: the prestigious title of Nature Photographer Of The Year.