Svalbard adventures
Welcome to the blog! My summer of 2018 has been off to a great, albeit rather late start. I spent five weeks in May and June in the high-Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, attending the course "Life-history adaptations to seasonality" at the University Centre of Svalbard (UNIS). The course is run by prof. Øystein Varpe, and I attended alongside 15 MSc and PhD students from Norway, the UK, Spain, France, Germany and the US. Not only was the course very interesting and entertaining, visiting Svalbard was also an amazing experience, incredibly intense and entirely different from anything else I've encountered. I've been back on the mainland - where there actually are trees, tendencies to diurnal rhythms, and less than one rifle per person - for two weeks now, but it already feels like ages ago. Was it all just a dream? In fear of this intense experience slipping away, I've decided to write a quick post on both the curricular and non-curricular activities I went through on Svalbard.
Here are scans of some of the pages, courtesy of Marie Mæland, my sister's high school friend whom I absurdly crossed paths with - she's studied librarianship and is now employed at the beautiful Longyearbyen public library. Ask if you need translation/interpretation!
Flying to Svalbard I immediately had the feeling that we shouldn't be here. It's so far away. It's so desolate. Our carbon footprint of visiting here is gigantic. Everything we consume has to be transported from half-way around the globe, and contributes to melt the glaciers we come here to photograph at an alarming and increasing rate. There's also a diverse array of interesting ways to die on Svalbard. After an intense day of safety training on the first day of the course, we were convinced that if the avalanches, glacial crevasses or sudden weather changes don't kill us, the polar bears (or the rifles we'd be using to protect ourselves from them) certainly will. Basically going anywhere outside of downtown Longyearbyen requires massive amounts of experience, equipment and planning. Even as an outdoorsy Norwegian I found it took quite an effort to put an excursion together.
But my oh my is it ever worth it. It doesn't take long before being 'trapped' in the Longyear valley starts to feel quite claustrophobic, so from my first hike the first weekend, every time I got out and about I could feel life returning to me, the widened horizons of experiencing the great Arctic wilderness fuelling me for work, studies and life in Longyearbyen. Less than an hour's hike from our student quarters in Nybyen, on the Larsbreen glacier, lies a stunning network of caves under the ice. Crawling around inside these narrow tunnels was an experience unlike any other I've had. On the micro scale we were stuck marvelling at the delicate and intricate structure of the ice particles, our gaze absorbed by the endless variation and infinite detail. Zooming out reveals the awesome sight of the ice twinkling and shimmering in the light from our headlamps, the magical colours sending our thoughts to rainbows rather than dark underground tunnels. And at the macro scale, the urgent sense of solid mass above and around us, the enormity of the sheet of ice twisting and morphing to create the caves we were in. It wasn't unsafe, and I don't notice much claustrophobia (despite having mentioned it only earlier in this very paragraph!), but there was certainly the feeling of being in the hands of something greater than us, our safety depending on factors well beyond our control.
A nice hike we did several times started from Nybyen up to the ice caves, went from there up to Sarkofagen (the sarcophagus-shaped mountain directly overlooking the Longyear valley), then involved some high-speed snow sliding down Sarkofagen on to the Longyear glacier, with a home stretch over ridges of glacial moraines where the chances of finding fossils were pretty high if you cared to look. This hike also has plenty of company from the super excited little auks (Alle alle), my new favorite bird which I realized has an outlook on life that surpasses any level of joyousness I've ever encountered. Imagine waking up and first thing in the morning going "WAAAAHOOO a new daaaay!!! I'm gonna FLYYY today and it's gonna be aMAAAZIIING!! waaaahhahahaha!!" (That's at least what I hear when I hear sounds like this.)
Here's to hoping I'll be able to finish this lengthy tome one day...
Longyearbyen
The largest settlement on Svalbard is Longyearbyen, with about 2000 year-round inhabitants. Arriving just at the beginning of summer (snow melted from the Longyearbyen valley just weeks before we arrived), I got to know the city a bit before the hoardes of tourists would start invading in June. To help me I had what is probably my favorite gift ever: A guidebook of Longyearbyen my sister made for me for Christmas last year. Having spent several years on Svalbard for studies (she's a geologist and Arctic nature guide), field work, and outdoor guiding, she was as excited as I was that I'd be going to her beloved Svalbard. And so she made this 'treasure map of Svalbard', and it's written in our private silly-language, virtually illegible for anyone besides ourselves, but stomach-cramp hilarious for us. Before arriving I'd read it several times, laughing my ass off each time, but exploring Longyearbyen myself the guidebook not only proved extremely useful, but also got even funnier.Here are scans of some of the pages, courtesy of Marie Mæland, my sister's high school friend whom I absurdly crossed paths with - she's studied librarianship and is now employed at the beautiful Longyearbyen public library. Ask if you need translation/interpretation!
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| It helps to be familiar with the Sandnes dialect. And to be very silly. |
Flying to Svalbard I immediately had the feeling that we shouldn't be here. It's so far away. It's so desolate. Our carbon footprint of visiting here is gigantic. Everything we consume has to be transported from half-way around the globe, and contributes to melt the glaciers we come here to photograph at an alarming and increasing rate. There's also a diverse array of interesting ways to die on Svalbard. After an intense day of safety training on the first day of the course, we were convinced that if the avalanches, glacial crevasses or sudden weather changes don't kill us, the polar bears (or the rifles we'd be using to protect ourselves from them) certainly will. Basically going anywhere outside of downtown Longyearbyen requires massive amounts of experience, equipment and planning. Even as an outdoorsy Norwegian I found it took quite an effort to put an excursion together.
But my oh my is it ever worth it. It doesn't take long before being 'trapped' in the Longyear valley starts to feel quite claustrophobic, so from my first hike the first weekend, every time I got out and about I could feel life returning to me, the widened horizons of experiencing the great Arctic wilderness fuelling me for work, studies and life in Longyearbyen. Less than an hour's hike from our student quarters in Nybyen, on the Larsbreen glacier, lies a stunning network of caves under the ice. Crawling around inside these narrow tunnels was an experience unlike any other I've had. On the micro scale we were stuck marvelling at the delicate and intricate structure of the ice particles, our gaze absorbed by the endless variation and infinite detail. Zooming out reveals the awesome sight of the ice twinkling and shimmering in the light from our headlamps, the magical colours sending our thoughts to rainbows rather than dark underground tunnels. And at the macro scale, the urgent sense of solid mass above and around us, the enormity of the sheet of ice twisting and morphing to create the caves we were in. It wasn't unsafe, and I don't notice much claustrophobia (despite having mentioned it only earlier in this very paragraph!), but there was certainly the feeling of being in the hands of something greater than us, our safety depending on factors well beyond our control.
A nice hike we did several times started from Nybyen up to the ice caves, went from there up to Sarkofagen (the sarcophagus-shaped mountain directly overlooking the Longyear valley), then involved some high-speed snow sliding down Sarkofagen on to the Longyear glacier, with a home stretch over ridges of glacial moraines where the chances of finding fossils were pretty high if you cared to look. This hike also has plenty of company from the super excited little auks (Alle alle), my new favorite bird which I realized has an outlook on life that surpasses any level of joyousness I've ever encountered. Imagine waking up and first thing in the morning going "WAAAAHOOO a new daaaay!!! I'm gonna FLYYY today and it's gonna be aMAAAZIIING!! waaaahhahahaha!!" (That's at least what I hear when I hear sounds like this.)
Here's to hoping I'll be able to finish this lengthy tome one day...
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