Spitsbergen
Spitsbergen. What, why, and how.
Whole April 15 was spent in travel arrangements: finalizing the tent, last moment shopping, and packing. We were completely busy till 2 am of the next day, that was just 30 minutes before a taxi to the airport.
It was surprise for us how difficult is to arrange a taxi to the airport in Seattle. We tried many companies. Half of them rejected our oreder immediately without explanation as soon as we mention the airport. The other half didn’t have cars big enough to fit out skies. Fortunately, we finally found a company that specialized on the airport transportation and has cars of any size.
When the taxi came, we even finished with packing and took all our stuff outside. We had a lot of luggage… Huge backpack and sledge pack for each of us plus ski bag with all our skis, poles, ice-axes and other heavy stuff.
Check-in in the airport shown that our total luggage weight was about 100 kg. Minus ski bag (it was left in hotel), minus skies and poles (we use them, but don’t carry during the trip), minus some clothes (same as for skis), plus cameras (they didn’t weight carry-on), plus gas (we bought it in Longyear), plus a rifle (rented in Lonlyear), so carry weight for each of was about 45 kg. Well, a little less for me.
Five hours of transit in Newark (I hate this airport, terminal B is specially unpleasant, at least thanks for the nice wine bar) and seven hours of the flight to Oslo.
A stream from outside cameras was available during the fight. Snow, fjords under ice, and no trace of human presence at all through whole Norway. In Oslo airport there were huge piles of snow and -2C.
Transfer in Oslo was short, but personal was nice and took us to a special place for Svalbard by the shortcut. Because Norway is Shengen, but Svalbard is not, there is a special place in the airport for Svalbard flights isolated from the rest of the airport. There is a small cafe in this place. It was 8 am, everybody drunk beer, wine, some even vodka. With my latte I felt myself as an ill pervert.
During flight to Longyear (SAS) they offer menu that “was created with special care on the base of local natural ingredients and Scandinavian tradition”. Menu mainly includes protein bars, granola bars, Italian pizza and other similar stuff.
Norway from the plane-view is humanless and completely covered with snow. Arctic ocean, some nice islands, again the ocean, and finally Svalbard. White and beautiful. The plane crosses the island from the east coast to the west.
Svalbard’s feature is Golfstream, the warm ocean stream that passes the archipelago near the west coast and makes Svalbard’s climate warmer than other places of the same latitude have. Mostly it effects the west coast. The east coast is much colder, the sea is longer covered with ice, and most polar bears spend their time here.
Part of the east coast from the plane. There is Stofjorden, behind it the coast of Barents island. We are right above the ice field Nordsmannsfonna (not in view). Fonna means a ice field on Norwegian. We found only on the map four different words for a glacier. Norwegian knows a lot about ice. A big bay- Mohnbukta, behind it the cape Telsberget. Glacier Hayesbreen (breen – glacier) disembogues into Mohnbukta.
By the way here. is nice detailed map of Svalbard by Norwegian Polar Institute.
As far as we get closer to Longyear, clouds became darker and thicker. Golfstream.
There is no any control in the airport (border or custom). Free zone.
There is a pole just in front of the airport with explanation where you are. Nordpolen means North Pole. It is the closest place (except places on the archipelago, of course), only 1300 km, the other places is much far-away.
Longyear is a capital of Svalbard (named after American John Munro Longyear which mining company founded the town). It is most norther town with population above 1000 (it has about 2000) and most norther airport with regular flights. Svalbard has a lot of most northern thing and proud about it.
The place is very special, so the town (and whole Svalbard) has its own very specific laws that doesn’t exist in inland Norway.
For example, anyone (any party) must carry a rifle outside a settlement.
it is prohibited to die on Svalbard. Actually it is prohibited to be buried on the archipelago. Anyone who might die soon (terminal disease, for example) must leave Svalbard. In the case of an unexpected death a body will be transferred to Oslo. This law was adopted in 1950 when was found that corpses of the residents who died in 1918 in a result of the flu pandemic didn’t even start to decomposed (it is understandable – permafrost) and can carefully keep virus that killed about 5% of world population. And other nice pathogens can be found after several hundred year of human presence. Permafrost is the best freezer, with the good reason The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was build exactly here. I only thing why they don’t built a crematorium. It should be cheaper than transportation of ill and dead ones. And no viruses can survive a fire.
Also cats is prohibited.
Longyear has 50 km of roads (there are no roads between the settlements on Svalbard, only inside them), so it has plenty of cars, Toyota dealership (northernmost dealership) and regular bus (northernmost scheduled bus with northernmost bus station).
So we took the bus from the airport to the hotel. It was rainy. Middle of April, 78 longitude, rain! Compliments from Golfstream. It can organize a short warming on the west coast at any time of the a year.
Our plane landed at 1 pm of April 17, and at 8-30 am of the next day we should stay near our hotel with all our stuff waiting to our delivery to an icebreaker that bring us to our start point.
No, we didn’t rented whole icebreaker, it provides tours from Longyear to Barentsburg via Ymerbuckta where tourists have lunch on board with view on the live glacier. The time of their lunch is a time of our landing.
Initially we wanted to spend in Longyear whole day (two nights) to organize everything not in a hurry, have some rest after two days without normal sleep, and start out travel without jitters.
Unfortunately we came just before Easter and started April 18 nothing work in the town. Well, of course, hotels and restaurants are working, and scheduled tours have place, but all shops and offices close for whole four days.
Also the next trip of our icebreaker to the Ymerbuckta was scheduled only a week later, and such delay was not in our plans.
In addition, the April 17 was short business day, so we had very small amount of time to rent a rifle, buy gas, and find thew icebreaker office to make a payment.
Surprisingly everything run smoothly, and already at 5 pm we were in the hotel with the rifle, the gas and the payment recite.
Fortunately Longyear is a small town and everything is reachable by foot.
Around hotel:
Hotel:
Every transport should have its own parking!
The hotel strongly cares about its patrons peace of mind, so thermometers don’t have the calibration below zero point. Minus is minus, don’t worry.
Formerly Lonlyear was a mining town, but now it has only one small mine that provides coal for the town itself. However all Norwegian miners of Svalbard still live here and work on weekly-shift base in Svea (big mine on the east coat of Spitsbergen).
However, there are many things of mining past in Longyear (some photos made after our return to the town, so don’t be surprise of blue sky).
According the Svalbard law, everything that made by human before 1946 has a historical value and protected. Because in Svalbard’s climate most everything is very stable, all this construction will exist very long.
The miner monument
Main street has a pedestrian zone. It contents shops, cafes, restaurants, a hospital, a kindergarten and other communal places. There is even a local brewery, the most northern one, of course. By he way, they do really good beer.
Svalbard’s law prohibits to drive on bare ground outside settlements. Anyway, there is no road outside settlements also. However driving on snow is permitted, and snowmobiles are very popular. There are more snowmobiles than people on the island.
The Lutheran church, the only church on the island. There is also an orthodox church in Barentsburg, but without a priest.
Because the island’s economic in nowadays is based on the science and tourism, there are plenty of tour possibilities for tourist – planes, icebreaker, boats, snowmobiles, dogs, even such strange aquariums.
We had dinner in hotel’s restaurant. Very nice place. I must said that every place where we ate during our visit of Svalbard was good or very good.
And after all we till late night packed and re-packed our stuff, so didn’t have enough time for the rest again.
Polar day started exactly with our arriving on Svalbard. It was my first experience of this phenomenon. I should sat, I love it very much.
To be continue….
