This template is ugly, I so swear. Hate it. But, who cares when you're going on a 14-day hike in the North? I don't!
So, tonight I'm going to the airpost to pick up my passengers who'll join me on this "Trekking at the North Pole Rim"-tour. Hehe, had a training walk yesterday with the military guide-group (three of the guides this year are retired officers from the Norwegian Air Force!!! - people in their early forties. Why can't ordinary people retire at forty??), I suspected them of being in terribly good shape but found out today that at least one of them had sore butt-muscles, just like I had! We walked up on one mountain, over it and then up another. Very ambitious, I dare say.
It's not my shape, though, that makes me maybe a bit worried about the trekking tour. It's rather the polar bears. They like hanging around in the fjord where we stay the first three days. Oh, what the heck, these tours have been running for 12 years now and no one has ever had serious problems with them. Cross my fingers. Saw on BBC Prime yesterday that Ewan McGregor (god, he's sooo handsome!) has made a documentary about polar bears. Why didn't he call me? Me being the only person who has survived mooning a polar bear!?! He's about to make a new one, couldn't someone point out my (still) existance to him???!!!!?!
Hope you will still remember me in two weeks time, even if no posts will be made in the meantime. I love you anyway :)
sunnudagur, júlí 28, 2002
föstudagur, júlí 26, 2002
Gee, this was another good cruise! I’ve added Zodiac-driving to my credit list, on board the Polar Star we the guides also take care of the Zodiac-driving on landings so I had to learn. Can’t say I was eager to do so in the beginning but the short lesson I had in Ny-Ålesund convinced me it wasn’t that terrible after all. Then the time came when I took my first boat-load of passengers. We had some waves and a snow-storm blowing, and the driving wasn’t exactly as easy as it had been on the flat-as-a-pancake surface of Kongsfjorden the day before (actually, we were making a first-ever (for us guides, that is) landing on Chermside Island, at 80°30´N). So, these passengers got to experience a rather weird and long Zodiac drive (there should have been someone filming this debut of mine!) that however was quite harmless; except for some cold hands and dripping noses, everyone got away in good health. Physical, that is. This Italian couple who was sitting in the stern (uh, am even learning seaman’s language, port and starboard and all that!) got absolutely hysterical when the boat approached the ship, they started jumping up and covering their heads in their arms and god knows what. Sometimes I can make no sense of tourists. Whatsoever.
The best thing, however, was to get around Spitzbergen Island for the first time. For me, that is. Now I’ve set my foot on islands I didn’t know existed and visited places that earlier seemed like a whole world away. And in a sense they still do. You don’t really get to know a place by dropping by for 2-3 hours. At least I don’t feel I do. The best landing we made was, in my opinion, the one at Barents Island; it was a calm day with low clouds and some drizzling rain every now and then. Jørn and I took a small group on a “less demanding” walk; while the other 70 guests walked to a small lake approx. 2 km from the shore (and were attacked by killer mosquitoes just arrived from man-eating in Ekmanfjorden) we took our ten guests for a 300 m stroll to a small pond where we saw a long-tailed duck and some barnacle geese, a million flowers and no mosquitoes. Then we had our guests sit down and listen to the silence, and these wonderful people actually managed to stay silent for 10 minutes. I have to quote Barry Lopez here:
“…quiteted, I sensed here the outlines of the oldest mysteries: the nature and extent of space, the fall of light from the heavens, the pooling of time in the present, as if it were water.”
It was Sigmund, another guide, who taught me to let people listen to silence. We were in fantastic weather up in Raudfjorden in the summer of 2000. It was late evening, we had the midnight sun high in the sky and about 30 people strolling behind us. On top of a small hill with view to imposing calving glaciers and steep mountains Sigmund asked us all to sit down, he had something he wanted us to hear. It would take a while, so we should just make ourselves comfortable. So we did, and waited for him to speak. He didn’t. And still he didn’t. And one after the other, our guests realized what it was all about. It was so good. It was the best experience I had that summer.
Anyway. I’ve copied for you the log of the cruise, the one our tourists get from us as a souvenir when they go home. That means you can read, day by day, what life on these cruise boats is like. It’s Helga and Merete who have written the log, and it’s excellent!
So, here it begins:
SPITSBERGEN EXPEDITION CRUISE
20th-26th July 2002
Aboard the POLAR STAR
Saturday, July 20
WELCOME aboard! We hope you have had a good night’s sleep – to some of us a very short one. Today is the first day of a lifetime experience, which we are very happy to share with you. We left the dock in Longyearbyen at 2:00 a.m. and during the night we steamed north towards Ny-Ålesund. The Polar Star drafts approximately 6.8 m so the route had to be on the outside of the Prins Karls Forland. In this dry area, we had the exclusive experience of rain. And to those of us nervous for rough sea, we had a pleasant and calm nigth.
After breakfast the second welcome ceremony was held with presentation of the guides and the captain. All of us participated in the mandatory emergency drill. With low cloud layers we were aiming for Kongsfjorden, King’s Bay. Here we had our first landing in Ny-Ålesund, a very special settlement and our last contact with civilization for a while - where almost everything is “the northernmost in the world”!
Ny-Ålesund is situated on the southern shore of one of the many beautiful fjords at Svalbard. At the head of the bay the mighty Kongsbreen, King’s Glacier, flows down between the mountains. The former coalmine community, which has been turned into the most technologically advanced research center in the High Arctic, was certainly worth a visit. It has also been the starting point for North Pole expeditions: e.g. Amundsen and Nobile. Walking in the settlement we saw some nesting birds, especially the Artic tern, nesting on the road, not paying much attention to people passing. This year they are only 13 couples nesting, compared to a few years ago when they were 300. The Arctic tern is one of the migratory birds which travel the longest distance between summer and winter residences. Some of them even go as long as to the Antarctic. Another beautiful sight were the Barnacle geese walking with their chicks.
Before dinner we had a lecture by professor Yngvar Gjessing. Yngvar Gjessing is a professor in geo-physics at UNIS (University of Svalbard) and has stayed at Svalbard for 6 years. In addition he has been 7 seasons in Antarctica. The title of his lecture today was “Antarctica & the Arctic – a comparison”, and based on a slideshow.
After dinner we cruised into the Magdalenafjord, one of the most beautiful and visited fjords at Svalbard. On our way in we had a lecture on the front deck about William Barentz discovery of Spitsbergen in 1596. We also heard about the whalers in 17th and
18th century and their rough life were many lost their lives and some are buried at Gravneset in the Magdalenafjord. Cruising in front of the Waggonway-glacier we could admire the beautiful colours of the ice, especially the strong Turkish little iceberg. Kittywakes and a seal were resting peacefully on the floating ice.
Sunday, July 21
We woke up to a refreshing morning with some wind and plus 2 degrees Celsius. After breakfast Jørn gave us information about today’s happenings.
The first event was a lecture by Yngvar. He talked about “Glaciers as climate indicator”. We heard how the temperature affects the increase or decrease in glaciers, both in Norway and other countries in Europe. He also told us that if all the ice on earth melted, the sea level would rise by 80 meters. For those easy questions Yngvar could answer he offered drinks in the bar. That gave the courage to four drinks.
When we looked out of the windows, we could see the edge of the pack-ice in a distance. Everyone went on front deck where we enjoyed the ship cracking its way though the ice. Puffins did several “low passes” and Brünnich’s guillemots dived rapidly when the ship came too close. Because of the clear sea we could follow their movement down in the water. On the horizon we saw some huge ice bergs.
After lunch we had information about zodiac operations and landings. Followed by our first landing to the southern point of Chermsideøya. In a windy wet afternoon we had our first experience in the zodiac. The distance between the ship and the beach was 1,5 nautical miles. This coastal landscape outside the island of Nordaustlandet is generally much more barren than on Spitsbergen, as this region is much less rich in fauna and flora. Even though we saw some Saxifraga and one Svalbard poppy and granite-rocks with very big crystals. And one of the groups saw a seal by the beach.
The cultural remains with rocks letter formations gave us hints about the history of the area. In 1898 Jäderin was here with the reconnaissance expedition before the “Arch of Meredian Expedition” in 1899-1900. In addition we could read following: 1928 Krassin, USSR, Red Bear. Krassin was an icebreaker that rescued the crew of Umberto Nobile, the Italian airship expedition that failed to reach the North Pole. Blåsel 1937 is still a mystery.
In the end of our landing it started snowing and that made the return back to the ship a little bit cold.
By the way this was the first landing at Chermsideøya this year!
Before dinner we headed north towards the Sjuøyene. Halfway we were stopped by the pack-ice. The captain stopped the engine, and we could enjoy the peacefulness while we were spotting for animals.
In the evening we were invited to the front deck to celebrate 80o32“N 20o19”E. The northern most point of this journey, and also the furthest north the Polar Star has visited this summer! In the light rain, surrounded by pack-ice, we toasted in Linie Aquavit – the strong Norwegian national drink that has passed the Equator by ship.
Monday, July 22
Through the night we left the pack-ice and sailed in a southerly direction into the Hinlopenstredet. In the early morning we stopped at the birdcliff Alkefjellet, where 150 000 couples of Brünnich’s Guillemots were nesting. The sky was full of birds flying around in different heights all around us. It is amazing that they are able to find their way back in the chaos to their partner waiting for them with the egg. The cliff was also home for kittiwakes and the hungry Glaucous gull. The bedrock that formed the bird cliff was a dark intrusion of dolerite looking like towers in the limestone surrounding it.
Just before lunch we planned a landing in Augustabukta, but reaching the area we saw The King of the Arctic walking on the beach, so that place was occupied by the locals. Instead we got all seven zodiacs on the water and went for a zodiac-cruise in the bay and in front of the glacier Vegafonna. Not far from land we had the very exiting experience of meeting 4-5 walrus playing around in the water in front of us. You never know when they want to try their enormous ivory teeth in rubber-boats, so we had to keep the engines running. On our way back we stopped and had a look at the polar bear that had been swimming over to the other beach on the other side of the glacier.
Augustabukta is named after Marie Louise Augusta Catharine (1811-90). She was married to Friedrich William I, German Emperor 1871-88.
In the afternoon we cruised into Bjørnsundet where we had a stop in the ice - there were two seals having their afternoon rest. A little bit further on someone else also were resting - a polar bear mother with her two teenage children. One of them playing around and coming pretty close to our ship. But he lost interest in us and went to hunt for seals instead. In the bay on the port side of the ship some of us saw another polar bear resting. This day gave us a total of five bears.
After pushing through the bay we sailed over to the eastern side of the Hinlopenstredet again. This time we cruised with Polar Star in front of the largest glacier on Svalbard, Austfonna. The unbroken glacier front is 130 km long and the total of glacier front is 200 km. The meltwater followed small rivers on the surface and ended in the sea as waterfalls. Some places the meltwater came out from big tunnel systems. Huge icebergs were visible on the impressive colourful horizon.
Tuesday, July 23 (Polar bear-morning)
“Good morning, all passengers on Polar Star - by the way, there is a Polarbear outside!” our Expeditionleader Jørn announced half past seven in the morning. A young, curious Polarbear was laying on the ice in Freemansundet, and for 1 hour we could watch him walking around.
After a delayed breakfast we made a landing on the 4th biggest islands of Svalbard, Barentsøya. Named after the Dutch navigator Willem Barents, who was a leader of the three Dutch expeditions to the Arctic in the late 1500. We went by zodiacs to a bay called Sundbukta on the southwest end of Barentsøya. The sea was calm and we had fairly good weather with +10 degrees celcius. We were divided into one flora and bird group and one walking group. On the way to Andedammen, the duck lake, we saw many colourful flowers as e.g. Svalbard poppy, Mountain Avens and different sorts of saxifraga. We could also study 8 ooo years old whalebones, droppings from reindeer and suddenly someone discovered footprints of a polarbear.
This was the right place to enjoy the silence of the Arctic.
Quoting Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez:
Lying flat on your back … on rolling tundra without animals, without human
trace, you can feel the silence stretching all the way to Asia.
The next goal for the day was the 3rd biggest island of Svalbard, Edgeøya. The island is named after Thomas Edge (d. 1624), English merchant and whaler. We steamed for 3 hours to reach Diskobukta, the Disco Bay. The name “Probably the English Duckes Cove became Dusko in Dutch mouths… Scoresby (1820) is the first to misspell it Disco”. A trappers cabin met us at the beach, Villa Disco. Whalebones and walrusbones were spread all over the terrain. In a canyon the Kittiwakes were nesting on the shelves and the Glaucous gull, which is 4 times greater, sat with hungry eyes waiting for a delicate snack. The Svalbard poppy and Scurvy grass covered the mountainside and made the landscape look rich. On the way into the canyon we saw two reindeers resting, and two frightless Arctic foxes were drifting around looking for food.
The Discobukta had extremely shallow water, and we had to walk with the zodiacs along the beach to find a more suitable way out. Finally we made it, and Chris could announce that a late dinner was ready to be served ! Bon appétit!
Wednesday, July 24
During the night we rounded Sørkapp, the Cape South, and that was our southern most position ... Before entering the Hornsund, Yngvar gave us his lecture: “Drift-ice”. After lunch we cruised in front of the big glaciersystem of Storbreen and Hornbreen. The Hornsund is an interesting area from a geological point of view. In the east we have the sedimentary rocks from Tertiary “just” 60 million years old, and moving west the rocks get older and older, ending with an age of 1200 millions years at the entrance to the fjord. The magnificent mountain of Hornsundtind with its 1431 meters above sea level is an astonishing natural monument.
The afternoon landing was at Gåshamna, a wide bay on the southern side of Hornsund with steep colourful mountains around. It was a beautiful afternoon with no wind and sunny weather. Before we started walking we got a demonstration of how to use a foxtrap. The area had many beautiful green and purple Compass-roses – Mountain campions. 2-3 Arctic scuas were watching the area, and we could also feel the attacks from the Arctic terns.
There were also the remains of an observatory from the Russian reconnaissance expedition “Arc of Meredian Expedition” in 1899-1900. It is exiting to know that this is the same expedition we saw remains of at Chermsideøya earlier at this cruise! We also had a look inside the “five star” trapper-hut. It was interesting to see how well it was equipped with saucepans. Maybe the trapper was expecting a lot of guests?!
Flat sea and a beautiful coloured sky – a perfect evening for an unbelievable zodiac-cruise. A polar bear eating his freshly caught seal in front of the heavily crevassed Torellbreen, whose front rises about 50 meters from the sea surface. BANG - a tremendous calving that made the sea go up and down for a long time. A seal in the water and a bearded seal resting on one of the many turkish-blue icebergs.
Afterwards we visited the bar and had drinks served with glacier ice. Herdís and Anja and their zodiac “crew” picked up this ice from the sea in front of Torellbreen.
Thursday, July 25
The morning landing in Barentsburg was an interesting experience to see a piece of Russia in Norway! Our two guides Anna and Tamara gave us a nice idea of the life in Barentsburg. They helped us to visit the chapel and told us afterwards that we had been the best group till now! Some even visited the pig farm and the greenhouses.
During the afternoon we settled our accounts with Chris and Angela. Our last landing was in Skansbukta below Skansen, the Fortress. There was no doubt why it got its name. In 1911-1912 a Swedish company prospected the area and found gypsum, but it was not until 1918 that the Norwegian company Dalen Portland started the open mine. The first summer they did not build any houses except one cantina, the workers lived in tents. The ship “Sirius” with 200 tons of gypsum taken out her, never reached Norway. In the 1930’s the mine was reactivated and the railway was build. The houses are gone but the fundament is still there. Maybe the materials have been used for other buildings e.g. the cabin for the Hunters and Fish association in Longyearbyen. The boat is not stranded but left on shore, most likely it have been just to take gypsum to the bigger ship. Since they left the boat they probably planned to come back.
We finally found a flower with a smell: the nice blue Jacob’s Ladder. It is very seldom to find it on Svalbard but below the Skansen bird cliff we saw a lot. The other flowers there are much bigger than those we have found before most likely due to good conditions with both light and nutrition.
This was the only place where the bossy guides let you be a bit on your own just to have the possibility to feel some of the nature at Svalbard…
This last evening on board we were invited to Captains cocktail in the lounge and had a Captains barbeque on the aft deck.
The best thing, however, was to get around Spitzbergen Island for the first time. For me, that is. Now I’ve set my foot on islands I didn’t know existed and visited places that earlier seemed like a whole world away. And in a sense they still do. You don’t really get to know a place by dropping by for 2-3 hours. At least I don’t feel I do. The best landing we made was, in my opinion, the one at Barents Island; it was a calm day with low clouds and some drizzling rain every now and then. Jørn and I took a small group on a “less demanding” walk; while the other 70 guests walked to a small lake approx. 2 km from the shore (and were attacked by killer mosquitoes just arrived from man-eating in Ekmanfjorden) we took our ten guests for a 300 m stroll to a small pond where we saw a long-tailed duck and some barnacle geese, a million flowers and no mosquitoes. Then we had our guests sit down and listen to the silence, and these wonderful people actually managed to stay silent for 10 minutes. I have to quote Barry Lopez here:
“…quiteted, I sensed here the outlines of the oldest mysteries: the nature and extent of space, the fall of light from the heavens, the pooling of time in the present, as if it were water.”
It was Sigmund, another guide, who taught me to let people listen to silence. We were in fantastic weather up in Raudfjorden in the summer of 2000. It was late evening, we had the midnight sun high in the sky and about 30 people strolling behind us. On top of a small hill with view to imposing calving glaciers and steep mountains Sigmund asked us all to sit down, he had something he wanted us to hear. It would take a while, so we should just make ourselves comfortable. So we did, and waited for him to speak. He didn’t. And still he didn’t. And one after the other, our guests realized what it was all about. It was so good. It was the best experience I had that summer.
Anyway. I’ve copied for you the log of the cruise, the one our tourists get from us as a souvenir when they go home. That means you can read, day by day, what life on these cruise boats is like. It’s Helga and Merete who have written the log, and it’s excellent!
So, here it begins:
SPITSBERGEN EXPEDITION CRUISE
20th-26th July 2002
Aboard the POLAR STAR
Saturday, July 20
WELCOME aboard! We hope you have had a good night’s sleep – to some of us a very short one. Today is the first day of a lifetime experience, which we are very happy to share with you. We left the dock in Longyearbyen at 2:00 a.m. and during the night we steamed north towards Ny-Ålesund. The Polar Star drafts approximately 6.8 m so the route had to be on the outside of the Prins Karls Forland. In this dry area, we had the exclusive experience of rain. And to those of us nervous for rough sea, we had a pleasant and calm nigth.
After breakfast the second welcome ceremony was held with presentation of the guides and the captain. All of us participated in the mandatory emergency drill. With low cloud layers we were aiming for Kongsfjorden, King’s Bay. Here we had our first landing in Ny-Ålesund, a very special settlement and our last contact with civilization for a while - where almost everything is “the northernmost in the world”!
Ny-Ålesund is situated on the southern shore of one of the many beautiful fjords at Svalbard. At the head of the bay the mighty Kongsbreen, King’s Glacier, flows down between the mountains. The former coalmine community, which has been turned into the most technologically advanced research center in the High Arctic, was certainly worth a visit. It has also been the starting point for North Pole expeditions: e.g. Amundsen and Nobile. Walking in the settlement we saw some nesting birds, especially the Artic tern, nesting on the road, not paying much attention to people passing. This year they are only 13 couples nesting, compared to a few years ago when they were 300. The Arctic tern is one of the migratory birds which travel the longest distance between summer and winter residences. Some of them even go as long as to the Antarctic. Another beautiful sight were the Barnacle geese walking with their chicks.
Before dinner we had a lecture by professor Yngvar Gjessing. Yngvar Gjessing is a professor in geo-physics at UNIS (University of Svalbard) and has stayed at Svalbard for 6 years. In addition he has been 7 seasons in Antarctica. The title of his lecture today was “Antarctica & the Arctic – a comparison”, and based on a slideshow.
After dinner we cruised into the Magdalenafjord, one of the most beautiful and visited fjords at Svalbard. On our way in we had a lecture on the front deck about William Barentz discovery of Spitsbergen in 1596. We also heard about the whalers in 17th and
18th century and their rough life were many lost their lives and some are buried at Gravneset in the Magdalenafjord. Cruising in front of the Waggonway-glacier we could admire the beautiful colours of the ice, especially the strong Turkish little iceberg. Kittywakes and a seal were resting peacefully on the floating ice.
Sunday, July 21
We woke up to a refreshing morning with some wind and plus 2 degrees Celsius. After breakfast Jørn gave us information about today’s happenings.
The first event was a lecture by Yngvar. He talked about “Glaciers as climate indicator”. We heard how the temperature affects the increase or decrease in glaciers, both in Norway and other countries in Europe. He also told us that if all the ice on earth melted, the sea level would rise by 80 meters. For those easy questions Yngvar could answer he offered drinks in the bar. That gave the courage to four drinks.
When we looked out of the windows, we could see the edge of the pack-ice in a distance. Everyone went on front deck where we enjoyed the ship cracking its way though the ice. Puffins did several “low passes” and Brünnich’s guillemots dived rapidly when the ship came too close. Because of the clear sea we could follow their movement down in the water. On the horizon we saw some huge ice bergs.
After lunch we had information about zodiac operations and landings. Followed by our first landing to the southern point of Chermsideøya. In a windy wet afternoon we had our first experience in the zodiac. The distance between the ship and the beach was 1,5 nautical miles. This coastal landscape outside the island of Nordaustlandet is generally much more barren than on Spitsbergen, as this region is much less rich in fauna and flora. Even though we saw some Saxifraga and one Svalbard poppy and granite-rocks with very big crystals. And one of the groups saw a seal by the beach.
The cultural remains with rocks letter formations gave us hints about the history of the area. In 1898 Jäderin was here with the reconnaissance expedition before the “Arch of Meredian Expedition” in 1899-1900. In addition we could read following: 1928 Krassin, USSR, Red Bear. Krassin was an icebreaker that rescued the crew of Umberto Nobile, the Italian airship expedition that failed to reach the North Pole. Blåsel 1937 is still a mystery.
In the end of our landing it started snowing and that made the return back to the ship a little bit cold.
By the way this was the first landing at Chermsideøya this year!
Before dinner we headed north towards the Sjuøyene. Halfway we were stopped by the pack-ice. The captain stopped the engine, and we could enjoy the peacefulness while we were spotting for animals.
In the evening we were invited to the front deck to celebrate 80o32“N 20o19”E. The northern most point of this journey, and also the furthest north the Polar Star has visited this summer! In the light rain, surrounded by pack-ice, we toasted in Linie Aquavit – the strong Norwegian national drink that has passed the Equator by ship.
Monday, July 22
Through the night we left the pack-ice and sailed in a southerly direction into the Hinlopenstredet. In the early morning we stopped at the birdcliff Alkefjellet, where 150 000 couples of Brünnich’s Guillemots were nesting. The sky was full of birds flying around in different heights all around us. It is amazing that they are able to find their way back in the chaos to their partner waiting for them with the egg. The cliff was also home for kittiwakes and the hungry Glaucous gull. The bedrock that formed the bird cliff was a dark intrusion of dolerite looking like towers in the limestone surrounding it.
Just before lunch we planned a landing in Augustabukta, but reaching the area we saw The King of the Arctic walking on the beach, so that place was occupied by the locals. Instead we got all seven zodiacs on the water and went for a zodiac-cruise in the bay and in front of the glacier Vegafonna. Not far from land we had the very exiting experience of meeting 4-5 walrus playing around in the water in front of us. You never know when they want to try their enormous ivory teeth in rubber-boats, so we had to keep the engines running. On our way back we stopped and had a look at the polar bear that had been swimming over to the other beach on the other side of the glacier.
Augustabukta is named after Marie Louise Augusta Catharine (1811-90). She was married to Friedrich William I, German Emperor 1871-88.
In the afternoon we cruised into Bjørnsundet where we had a stop in the ice - there were two seals having their afternoon rest. A little bit further on someone else also were resting - a polar bear mother with her two teenage children. One of them playing around and coming pretty close to our ship. But he lost interest in us and went to hunt for seals instead. In the bay on the port side of the ship some of us saw another polar bear resting. This day gave us a total of five bears.
After pushing through the bay we sailed over to the eastern side of the Hinlopenstredet again. This time we cruised with Polar Star in front of the largest glacier on Svalbard, Austfonna. The unbroken glacier front is 130 km long and the total of glacier front is 200 km. The meltwater followed small rivers on the surface and ended in the sea as waterfalls. Some places the meltwater came out from big tunnel systems. Huge icebergs were visible on the impressive colourful horizon.
Tuesday, July 23 (Polar bear-morning)
“Good morning, all passengers on Polar Star - by the way, there is a Polarbear outside!” our Expeditionleader Jørn announced half past seven in the morning. A young, curious Polarbear was laying on the ice in Freemansundet, and for 1 hour we could watch him walking around.
After a delayed breakfast we made a landing on the 4th biggest islands of Svalbard, Barentsøya. Named after the Dutch navigator Willem Barents, who was a leader of the three Dutch expeditions to the Arctic in the late 1500. We went by zodiacs to a bay called Sundbukta on the southwest end of Barentsøya. The sea was calm and we had fairly good weather with +10 degrees celcius. We were divided into one flora and bird group and one walking group. On the way to Andedammen, the duck lake, we saw many colourful flowers as e.g. Svalbard poppy, Mountain Avens and different sorts of saxifraga. We could also study 8 ooo years old whalebones, droppings from reindeer and suddenly someone discovered footprints of a polarbear.
This was the right place to enjoy the silence of the Arctic.
Quoting Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez:
Lying flat on your back … on rolling tundra without animals, without human
trace, you can feel the silence stretching all the way to Asia.
The next goal for the day was the 3rd biggest island of Svalbard, Edgeøya. The island is named after Thomas Edge (d. 1624), English merchant and whaler. We steamed for 3 hours to reach Diskobukta, the Disco Bay. The name “Probably the English Duckes Cove became Dusko in Dutch mouths… Scoresby (1820) is the first to misspell it Disco”. A trappers cabin met us at the beach, Villa Disco. Whalebones and walrusbones were spread all over the terrain. In a canyon the Kittiwakes were nesting on the shelves and the Glaucous gull, which is 4 times greater, sat with hungry eyes waiting for a delicate snack. The Svalbard poppy and Scurvy grass covered the mountainside and made the landscape look rich. On the way into the canyon we saw two reindeers resting, and two frightless Arctic foxes were drifting around looking for food.
The Discobukta had extremely shallow water, and we had to walk with the zodiacs along the beach to find a more suitable way out. Finally we made it, and Chris could announce that a late dinner was ready to be served ! Bon appétit!
Wednesday, July 24
During the night we rounded Sørkapp, the Cape South, and that was our southern most position ... Before entering the Hornsund, Yngvar gave us his lecture: “Drift-ice”. After lunch we cruised in front of the big glaciersystem of Storbreen and Hornbreen. The Hornsund is an interesting area from a geological point of view. In the east we have the sedimentary rocks from Tertiary “just” 60 million years old, and moving west the rocks get older and older, ending with an age of 1200 millions years at the entrance to the fjord. The magnificent mountain of Hornsundtind with its 1431 meters above sea level is an astonishing natural monument.
The afternoon landing was at Gåshamna, a wide bay on the southern side of Hornsund with steep colourful mountains around. It was a beautiful afternoon with no wind and sunny weather. Before we started walking we got a demonstration of how to use a foxtrap. The area had many beautiful green and purple Compass-roses – Mountain campions. 2-3 Arctic scuas were watching the area, and we could also feel the attacks from the Arctic terns.
There were also the remains of an observatory from the Russian reconnaissance expedition “Arc of Meredian Expedition” in 1899-1900. It is exiting to know that this is the same expedition we saw remains of at Chermsideøya earlier at this cruise! We also had a look inside the “five star” trapper-hut. It was interesting to see how well it was equipped with saucepans. Maybe the trapper was expecting a lot of guests?!
Flat sea and a beautiful coloured sky – a perfect evening for an unbelievable zodiac-cruise. A polar bear eating his freshly caught seal in front of the heavily crevassed Torellbreen, whose front rises about 50 meters from the sea surface. BANG - a tremendous calving that made the sea go up and down for a long time. A seal in the water and a bearded seal resting on one of the many turkish-blue icebergs.
Afterwards we visited the bar and had drinks served with glacier ice. Herdís and Anja and their zodiac “crew” picked up this ice from the sea in front of Torellbreen.
Thursday, July 25
The morning landing in Barentsburg was an interesting experience to see a piece of Russia in Norway! Our two guides Anna and Tamara gave us a nice idea of the life in Barentsburg. They helped us to visit the chapel and told us afterwards that we had been the best group till now! Some even visited the pig farm and the greenhouses.
During the afternoon we settled our accounts with Chris and Angela. Our last landing was in Skansbukta below Skansen, the Fortress. There was no doubt why it got its name. In 1911-1912 a Swedish company prospected the area and found gypsum, but it was not until 1918 that the Norwegian company Dalen Portland started the open mine. The first summer they did not build any houses except one cantina, the workers lived in tents. The ship “Sirius” with 200 tons of gypsum taken out her, never reached Norway. In the 1930’s the mine was reactivated and the railway was build. The houses are gone but the fundament is still there. Maybe the materials have been used for other buildings e.g. the cabin for the Hunters and Fish association in Longyearbyen. The boat is not stranded but left on shore, most likely it have been just to take gypsum to the bigger ship. Since they left the boat they probably planned to come back.
We finally found a flower with a smell: the nice blue Jacob’s Ladder. It is very seldom to find it on Svalbard but below the Skansen bird cliff we saw a lot. The other flowers there are much bigger than those we have found before most likely due to good conditions with both light and nutrition.
This was the only place where the bossy guides let you be a bit on your own just to have the possibility to feel some of the nature at Svalbard…
This last evening on board we were invited to Captains cocktail in the lounge and had a Captains barbeque on the aft deck.
föstudagur, júlí 19, 2002
Have had a most wonderful and needed holiday, living life like a savage with some friends in a fjord two-hour Zodiac-drive away from town. We all thoroughly enjoyed the company of a billion zillion mosquitoes, some of them managed to commit suicide on the barbeque (I was peeling them off the salmon, believe it or not) while most of them fed on our blood instead. I look gorgeous, after counting 20+ bites and not making it to below my eyebrows I quit counting. One sonofabitch stuck me in the left eyelid and it got so swollen I hardly could keep the eye open for one whole day, and another indecent bastard sneaked up on me as I was peeing and now my buttock itches uncontrollably. Peeing on Svalbard is always a risky business :( If I were in charge I'd be sykemeldt until I look like a human again.
mánudagur, júlí 15, 2002
Now this trip that is just about to end now must be the second best cruise I’ve had up here in Spitzbergen. I mean, nothing will ever outdo the cruise on Viktor Bunitskiy (Russian names, am I supposed to remember how to spell them??!!) in summer 2000, when my friend Tine Borgen form Oslo and I cruised in Svalbard waters for 6 days with 15 or 17 passengers, had two hilarious Russian sailors like BREIMAKETTIR around us all the time, saw a polar bear mommy and her two two-year old cubs (who were so curious about us that they ignored their mom nagging in the distance and came so close to the ship we almost could touch them) and had a swim in the ocean next to a walrus colony where a walrus actually stuck its head and a good portion of its 2 ton body out of the water where we had been 10 seconds earlier. I got a small adrenaline kick there, as you might imagine.
This time we didn’t actually see any animals, apart from the birds that we find all over, but we had the most fantastic weather a person can ask for up by nearly 80°N. It was 16-20°C yesterday and we made a landing in the morning with our T-shirts on, not the usual thermal underwear, fleece jacket and Gore-tex jacket and pants. I was even able to sport my Bolivian sunhat instead of my windproof fleece hat and actually looked so much like a tourist, with my camera on my belly and my pants rolled up to the knees, that Håkon, the Expedition Leader, didn’t find me in the crowd! That sort of sums up how the day felt for me, it wasn’t work yesterday but rather pure enjoying and relaxing. The first day ever on the boats that I don’t feel like I’m at work but actually just travelling with a bunch of nice people.
After this trip I have five days off, until I go on the Polar Star for a 6-day cruise that will hopefully take us all around Spitzbergen Island. I’ve never been around and I’m dying to do it, actually in my wildest fantasies I’m hoping that we can make it all the way around the archipelago, including around the island of Nordaustlandet. On that island the glacier Austfonna reigns supreme, a glacier pretty much the size of Vatnajökull glacier in Iceland. It calves into the Barents Sea along a front 110 km long, by far the longest glacier front on the northern hemisphere. Now that would be something for me, to cruise along that wall of ice.
I really can’t understand what you guys are doing down there in temperate climates. You have no idea what you are missing.
This time we didn’t actually see any animals, apart from the birds that we find all over, but we had the most fantastic weather a person can ask for up by nearly 80°N. It was 16-20°C yesterday and we made a landing in the morning with our T-shirts on, not the usual thermal underwear, fleece jacket and Gore-tex jacket and pants. I was even able to sport my Bolivian sunhat instead of my windproof fleece hat and actually looked so much like a tourist, with my camera on my belly and my pants rolled up to the knees, that Håkon, the Expedition Leader, didn’t find me in the crowd! That sort of sums up how the day felt for me, it wasn’t work yesterday but rather pure enjoying and relaxing. The first day ever on the boats that I don’t feel like I’m at work but actually just travelling with a bunch of nice people.
After this trip I have five days off, until I go on the Polar Star for a 6-day cruise that will hopefully take us all around Spitzbergen Island. I’ve never been around and I’m dying to do it, actually in my wildest fantasies I’m hoping that we can make it all the way around the archipelago, including around the island of Nordaustlandet. On that island the glacier Austfonna reigns supreme, a glacier pretty much the size of Vatnajökull glacier in Iceland. It calves into the Barents Sea along a front 110 km long, by far the longest glacier front on the northern hemisphere. Now that would be something for me, to cruise along that wall of ice.
I really can’t understand what you guys are doing down there in temperate climates. You have no idea what you are missing.
fimmtudagur, júlí 11, 2002
Just some few words before I go down to my cabin and collapse into bed. It’s already yesterday by the time you see this, we are in Kongsfjorden on our way to Blomstrand to switch trekking groups. The weather is soooo beautiful, the midnight sun shining through this incredibly varied cloud cover down on the ocean and the glaciers.
It’s been a good cruise. We haven’t come across any polar bears but we made it over 80° N for the 8th time this summer, this time by Moffen island where we were greeted by the walrus lying like oversized Havana cigars on the beach. Walrus is always good to see!
Then it’s the passengers. No Mr. India, or Mr. Curry as the waitresses call him, this time. Amazing how the smell of spices always lingered in the air wherever he went. No hiding away for him. This time we’ve had a lot of German people and the trip’s oddity: Four Catalanes, from Catalonia in Spain. Not much of an oddity that… We also have a journalist on board, she writes a travel column in the Sunday Telegraph; you might find something interesting about Svalbard there in coming weeks. I sat next to her at dinner tonight and we chatted away about travelling and writing, travel litterature and garbage, it was the most interesting conversation I’ve had with a passenger for a long time. You know, it’s company policy to have us mingle with the guests at all meals and quite often I hate it, when working 16 hrs. a day and sometimes more I consider it ridiculous not being allowed to breathe freely if you want during meals. I, and some others on board, have had quite a few heated talks about this topic with various bosses in the company so that now we are allowed our own guide-table at breakfast (i.e. for our start-of-the-day meeting) and dinner. What generosity!!! Then according to Murphy’s law some grumpy tourists whose life seems to depend on them being able to sit with 5 other grumpy tourists at the same table have two cruises in a row gotten our table. And it’s only two cruises ago that we got the generous permission from our generous employer. Sometimes, life sucks a bit.
But tonight it didn’t. Usually it doesn’t. But I can’t help sometimes feeling utterly sorry for the poor people who are trying to enjoy the fabulous view and their hard-earned holiday dinner, and find themselves having to politely try to entertain an exhausted, momentarily braindead tour guide who just wants to shut up, close her ears and eat. Nothing more. Absolutely nothing more.
It’s been a good cruise. We haven’t come across any polar bears but we made it over 80° N for the 8th time this summer, this time by Moffen island where we were greeted by the walrus lying like oversized Havana cigars on the beach. Walrus is always good to see!
Then it’s the passengers. No Mr. India, or Mr. Curry as the waitresses call him, this time. Amazing how the smell of spices always lingered in the air wherever he went. No hiding away for him. This time we’ve had a lot of German people and the trip’s oddity: Four Catalanes, from Catalonia in Spain. Not much of an oddity that… We also have a journalist on board, she writes a travel column in the Sunday Telegraph; you might find something interesting about Svalbard there in coming weeks. I sat next to her at dinner tonight and we chatted away about travelling and writing, travel litterature and garbage, it was the most interesting conversation I’ve had with a passenger for a long time. You know, it’s company policy to have us mingle with the guests at all meals and quite often I hate it, when working 16 hrs. a day and sometimes more I consider it ridiculous not being allowed to breathe freely if you want during meals. I, and some others on board, have had quite a few heated talks about this topic with various bosses in the company so that now we are allowed our own guide-table at breakfast (i.e. for our start-of-the-day meeting) and dinner. What generosity!!! Then according to Murphy’s law some grumpy tourists whose life seems to depend on them being able to sit with 5 other grumpy tourists at the same table have two cruises in a row gotten our table. And it’s only two cruises ago that we got the generous permission from our generous employer. Sometimes, life sucks a bit.
But tonight it didn’t. Usually it doesn’t. But I can’t help sometimes feeling utterly sorry for the poor people who are trying to enjoy the fabulous view and their hard-earned holiday dinner, and find themselves having to politely try to entertain an exhausted, momentarily braindead tour guide who just wants to shut up, close her ears and eat. Nothing more. Absolutely nothing more.
mánudagur, júlí 08, 2002
saw walrus and a polar bear and made the most fantastic landing in Bockfjorden, site of recent volcanism with "hot" springs. Great!!!! We had 85 passengers on board, a slight change from the 26 of last cruise. Everything went very smoothly however, but I'm kind of tired now. Am setting off on the next cruise now at 1300, hope it'll be as good as this last one!!
fimmtudagur, júlí 04, 2002
This one was a hectic cruise! Started as one big mess due to the fog; the planes couldn’t land in Longyearbyen. Because of that, we had to wait quite a while for starting and then, as we had finally set off, we had to return in the evening in the hope that some more of our passangers would be on the evening flight. Fortunately they were, so we could run the tour with only one passenger missing.
When we finally had left town and the Isfjorden area, things calmed down a bit. Although it was only my third cruise this summer I have almost completely forgotten what we did, where we went on shore etc., but it was good! We the guides and leaders had a great time and I think we passed that over to the guests quite well… On the third day the fog finally lifted and we sailed between the icebergs in brilliant sunshine, something that sent some of the guests up to the seventh sky!!
Then, in the afternoon of that day (which was yesterday…), we went ashore on an island in Kongsfjorden called Blomstrandhalvøya. That means B. Peninsula, because people took it for one such while it was still partially covered by the glacier with the same name. In the last fifty years or so the glacier has retreated enormously, turning the peninsula into an island with a navigable sound where the glacier earlier lay. This island is made of lime- and dolostones and even some marble and it has been my dream and ambition to go there since I first came to Svalbard. You can imagine I was happy to finally set foot there!
But why would I want to go to this Gods forsaken little island? Well, the landscape is beautiful, the flowers in full bloom are pretty (and enormous for Svalbard standards, the Purple Saxifrage flowers measure 1.5 cm across!) and the birds nesting in the cliffs and on the flatland are fun to watch. However, it is this bloke called Ernest Mansfield, and his New-London, that fascinate me; the ”marble” quarry he operated there (actually, when the wooden boxes containing the ”marble” were opened in England they were found to contain only sand and gravel, and some water; upon being taken from the permafrost of Svalbard the marble crumbled together. In this adventure Mansfield managed to let many people invest huge sums of money!) and his apparent megalomania as someone who at one time claimed more than 10.000 km2 of Svalbard land as his. I still don’t know if he was simply naive, or a wicked crook, or extremely optimistic, but I like to think of him as the Felix Krull of Svalbard: An incredibly charming "Hochstapler". Or maybe even similar to Hannes Hafstein, one of Iceland’s most famous poets and politicians, who once sold the Northern Lights to an American millionaire. If I ever sit down to write a biography, it will be Mansfield’s.
Then there’s Mr. India. Mind you, we’re not used to people from that far side of the world joining us on our cruises here in the high north, so having someone from India on board was fun! He is a herbalist and also reads palms, so as you can imagine we guides besieged him in the bar one evening and had him read our fortune. That was interesting! Sigurd, who is a petroleum geologist (and doesn’t shave or cut his hair unless he really really has to, thus looking quite like a cave man), was told that he should refrain from anything involving too much thinking and concentrate on hard labour instead (prejudice, anyone?!?!). The rest of us he got pretty well, the most common reaction to a new palm being: ”Oh, this is a very good hand!”, with wonderful Indian accent. Then we all got an offer to have our Indian horoscopes made, and complete palm reading as well, straight from India: Put our hands on the photocopy machine, cover with a towel and press the green button, send the copy to him and receive in turn a 30-page book with everything about us! I’ve got his e-mail, if you’re interested ;)
Now it’s a few hours of meetings and relaxing in town before we set off again. I’m the Expedition Leader’s assistant now, that’s a good change from being a guide. Better paid, too J Means that I stay on the boat the whole time and don’t go off to follow up the group as the guides do. It also means that I have access to a computer on board the boat and can write these ramblings of mine there, not having to use too much of my precious time in town in front of the Blogger ”edit your blog” page. Now that’s a real benefit from changing jobs!
When we finally had left town and the Isfjorden area, things calmed down a bit. Although it was only my third cruise this summer I have almost completely forgotten what we did, where we went on shore etc., but it was good! We the guides and leaders had a great time and I think we passed that over to the guests quite well… On the third day the fog finally lifted and we sailed between the icebergs in brilliant sunshine, something that sent some of the guests up to the seventh sky!!
Then, in the afternoon of that day (which was yesterday…), we went ashore on an island in Kongsfjorden called Blomstrandhalvøya. That means B. Peninsula, because people took it for one such while it was still partially covered by the glacier with the same name. In the last fifty years or so the glacier has retreated enormously, turning the peninsula into an island with a navigable sound where the glacier earlier lay. This island is made of lime- and dolostones and even some marble and it has been my dream and ambition to go there since I first came to Svalbard. You can imagine I was happy to finally set foot there!
But why would I want to go to this Gods forsaken little island? Well, the landscape is beautiful, the flowers in full bloom are pretty (and enormous for Svalbard standards, the Purple Saxifrage flowers measure 1.5 cm across!) and the birds nesting in the cliffs and on the flatland are fun to watch. However, it is this bloke called Ernest Mansfield, and his New-London, that fascinate me; the ”marble” quarry he operated there (actually, when the wooden boxes containing the ”marble” were opened in England they were found to contain only sand and gravel, and some water; upon being taken from the permafrost of Svalbard the marble crumbled together. In this adventure Mansfield managed to let many people invest huge sums of money!) and his apparent megalomania as someone who at one time claimed more than 10.000 km2 of Svalbard land as his. I still don’t know if he was simply naive, or a wicked crook, or extremely optimistic, but I like to think of him as the Felix Krull of Svalbard: An incredibly charming "Hochstapler". Or maybe even similar to Hannes Hafstein, one of Iceland’s most famous poets and politicians, who once sold the Northern Lights to an American millionaire. If I ever sit down to write a biography, it will be Mansfield’s.
Then there’s Mr. India. Mind you, we’re not used to people from that far side of the world joining us on our cruises here in the high north, so having someone from India on board was fun! He is a herbalist and also reads palms, so as you can imagine we guides besieged him in the bar one evening and had him read our fortune. That was interesting! Sigurd, who is a petroleum geologist (and doesn’t shave or cut his hair unless he really really has to, thus looking quite like a cave man), was told that he should refrain from anything involving too much thinking and concentrate on hard labour instead (prejudice, anyone?!?!). The rest of us he got pretty well, the most common reaction to a new palm being: ”Oh, this is a very good hand!”, with wonderful Indian accent. Then we all got an offer to have our Indian horoscopes made, and complete palm reading as well, straight from India: Put our hands on the photocopy machine, cover with a towel and press the green button, send the copy to him and receive in turn a 30-page book with everything about us! I’ve got his e-mail, if you’re interested ;)
Now it’s a few hours of meetings and relaxing in town before we set off again. I’m the Expedition Leader’s assistant now, that’s a good change from being a guide. Better paid, too J Means that I stay on the boat the whole time and don’t go off to follow up the group as the guides do. It also means that I have access to a computer on board the boat and can write these ramblings of mine there, not having to use too much of my precious time in town in front of the Blogger ”edit your blog” page. Now that’s a real benefit from changing jobs!
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