Svalbard is an Arctic land and sea scape that is the way you imagined the Far North would be like.
Svalbard is a destination in itself or can be used as a starting or end point for a wider Arctic visit. It is the land of the midnight sun (there are 4 months of constant daylight in the summer), the land of the polar bear, the Aurora Borealis, endless green tundra, walruses, reindeer, thousands and thousands of birds and a variety of historic sites dating back to the early 1600's.
There is one main town of Longyearbyen with a number of places to stay, cafes and restaurants, the Russian mining settlement at Barentsburg also has a hotel and places to eat, Ny Alesund is a research "town" with museum exhibits and gift shop but no other tourist facilities, Pyramiden is an abandoned Russian mining settlement. The main attraction of Svalbard is its largely pristine wilderness, wide open spaces and wildlife with no indication of human interference, the Norwegian government does a very good job in protecting this and also ensuring a positive visitor experience.
In the summer months, Svalbard becomes the land of polar bears, they are concentrated onto the land by the contracting sea ice and numbers build up to around 3,500 (against a human population of about 2,650) making it one of the best places to see them in the whole Arctic. The bears are part of a population that inhabits the region east of Svalbard to Franz Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya and the Northern Barents region of Russia.
Bears in summer are often hungry as they can't hunt for seals once the sea-ice has gone, so they can be dangerous on land and can be encountered almost anywhere on the islands. A cruise is the best and safest way to see polar bears on Svalbard, they are often seen along the shore line in the summer.