Spitsbergen, Svalbard. North of Norway Return to Home
We spent three months in Svalbard, taking tourists on 7 or 12 day trips. We saw spring, summer and autumn condensed into 3 months.
“This is lifeboat drill. Abandon ship, abandon ship,” The loudspeaker prompted us into action as the ship moved away from the small pier at Longyearbyen and set off to circumnavigate Spitsbergen.
We turned from the shelter of Isfjorden into the sea heading north but there are only a few standing watching from the bow as seasickness and weariness from travelling so far to 79ºN, north of Norway, sends passengers early to bed.
“Good morning, Good morning, Good morning. It is Friday 20th June and a tropical 4 degrees. Breakfast will be at 7.30.” This is obviously not your normal holiday. This is an expedition ship with a Dutch leader, 20 Russian crew, an Austrian chef, and hotel manager and bar person from New Zealand taking Europeans to experience Svalbard, the Norwegian archipelago 900kms from the North Pole.
The early spring is beautiful, the mountains of West Spitsbergen white with snow spiking the blue sky, the glaciers pristine in winter cover, the fiords white and often not navigable, frozen over still with sea ice. Seals doze fitfully, lifting their heads every minute to spot imminent danger and he is there – the polar bear. He walks unhurriedly across the ice yet covers great distances, smells the air and locates his prey. He sinks lower to the ground and moves cautiously forward until at the last moment he leaps but the seal slips away like mercury into its breather hole in the ice. The bear stands back. I’m sure he says damn it, and moves on.
The sea has broken up in the larger fiords and we break a way through it. The ship approaches the ice at a steady pace, surging through the soft ice on the edge, cracking ice floes to break a lead, but sometimes we are not enough and we shudder to a stop, firmly wedged into the ice. Captain Sergey and 3rd mate Nikolay seem to enjoy the ice cracking business and reverse the ship back a bit into open water, rev up the engines and come back for another go. We feel like explorers as we stand on the bow and watch the ice cracking wildly into the distance.
As the days pass the great expanses of snow and ice melt showing dark rocky patterns of uplifts and geological turmoil in the mountainsides. Thousands of tiny flowers emerge on the stony tundra, first the purple saxifrage and then the others follow in yellows and pinks and white, always tiny and sparse except beneath the bird colonies on the cliffs, then the natural fertilizer creates a wealth of nutrients for lush vegetation to grow.
This trip is different. A group of American wildlife photographers have come to “shoot” polar bears and walrus. They are single-minded in the hunt. Last night we went in search of ice and we found lots of it, and walruses of varying degrees of ugliness. But the descriptions were eloquent - absolutely beautiful, magnificent creature, a lovely experience, how wonderful – and the rolls of film rolled.
Then we came across a young bear, perhaps 2 years old, obviously on a mission. We stopped the ship at the edge of the pack ice and the bear came right up to us, a little bit curious, her tongue flicking, “smelling the air”. She was a beautiful soft yellow with fur that swung lightly as she walked. But she wasn’t stopping for long and slipped into the water. As she climbed out onto the next ice floe we could see her black skin beneath the thick, wet fur.
The ship pulled away and maneuvered further along the ice where Rinie had seen another bear with a recent kill – a ringed seal, a favourite food of polar bears. This older bear was a bit thin and though she was concerned as we drifted close she dragged the seal only a few metres away and continued to rip the skin and devour the blubber layer as fast as possible.
The young bear we had seen earlier appeared, lolloping easily across the uneven ice and snow – she had probably smelt the kill a long way off and approached hopefully, warily. The older bear growled but was perhaps too weak or hungry (or perhaps the mother), to expend energy fighting and she let Mishka share the seal – an extraordinary sight for all of us and Messrs Kodak and Fuji.
After maybe 20 minutes of gorging themselves on the blubber the older bear became aggressive and possessive and growling ferociously she sent the young bear off. Mishka had obviously had enough for now and played in the snow close by, rolling on her back, legs in the air; sliding along on her tummy with bum in the air; pushing her nose into the snow to clean off the fat and licking the blood from her feet.
The older bear stood over the seal and flicked snow over it moving in a full circle until it was completely covered, then lay down, resting her head on a hummock of snow.
A few ivory and glaucous gulls tried their luck pecking the blood and scraps of fat before the big bear snarled at them and then they kept their distance. The fog came across the ice and the light was not so good for photography. The wind was biting cold. We had been out since 1.30pm apart from hourly retreats to the bar for coffee and donuts, and our bodies were cold and tired enough to go down for dinner.
At 11pm the ship set sail and we left, the stage still set – the big bear gnawing now at the bloody meat and entrails, the gulls deftly taking morsels from under the bear’s nose, the young bear sometimes approaching and always being scared off. Mishka would probably get some more but she would have to wait a bit longer.
It is hard not to attach human sentiments to animals. My glassy eyes and the little lump in my throat were just human misinterpretation of this perfectly natural existence as something harsh and lonely.
Each trip lasts only 11 days – so much to see and so little time and always we are at the mercy of the weather and the ice. Here we are at the end of July and still not able to get right around Spitsbergen. The last 2 years we could sail round Spitsbergen on schedule, as expected. This year the spring was white but the temperatures warm, often 11°C. The summer came but the drift ice stayed close to the northern shores. Impenetrable, we know because we tried.
We set off again from Longyearbyen with new passengers and with rumours that a small ship had found a way through the ice and had circumnavigated Spitsbergen, the largest island of the archipelago. We anchor in front of Fortendejuilbreen,14 July glacier. Sixty per cent of Svalbard is covered with ice caps and glaciers and here they fall down until they meet the sea. Warmly dressed against the cold air we climb down the gangway to the zodiacs, large rubber boats, and the Russian drivers skillfully take us towards the gleaming ice cliffs of white and blue and grey. We cruise through brash ice that crackles explosively as the tiny bubbles of air are released, past ice sculptures, delicate and clear, gently rocking, and around large bergy bits that are sometimes dense and deeply blue and sometimes white and opaque.
We come close to the glacier, dwarfed by it, in awe of it. The glaciers are formed by falling snow far inland, compressed and condensed to become a river of ice that pushes relentlessly down toward the sea. Here it melts, the face becomes unstable and huge blocks fall into the water. Will it happen? We hope, we wish, we implore and just as we are leaving it happens. With a thunderous crack, a mountain of ice crashes into the water, an enormous wave surfs towards us and the driver turns the zodiac to meet the wave. The boat easily rides the wave and we laugh in a slightly hysterical way.
Coming ashore on the beach not far away we step onto a field of flowers, now in full summer bloom -yellow, white, pink, and purple. The rocks are bright with orange lichens and the little mushrooms tower over the polar willow, only a few cms high.
The glaucous gulls fly past the kittiwake colonies high above us on the cliff, frightening the little gulls off their nests and stealing their eggs, or simply taking the kittiwake and tearing it to death. The brilliant green moss gardens we stand on are fed by the kittiwake guano and littered with their remains from the glaucous gull raids – egg shells, entire wings and skeletons picked clean, and unusual balls of refined and regurgitated indigestibles – feathers, shells and bones. Everything here is recycled and re-used and passed on. Life and death are one.
We head north knowing well that the chance of us going far is slim, but we expect to so we try. We sail into the fog and into the drift ice 1/10-4/10 – plenty of room to maneuver. We sail out of the fog, the sky has patches of blue, the sea becomes smooth as deep blue satin, the folds rippling away from the ship.
The ice closes together, 4/10- 7/10, the ship slows to 5 knots and pushes thru leads in the ice. We stand on the bow exhilarated with the power of cracking the ice floes and pushing the pieces aside. The floes jolt and push each other ricocheting in all directions. We move slowly and deliberately on. Now the ice is thicker, maybe 2 – 3 metres thick, and the pieces are larger and held closely together. We stop the ship and disembark onto the ice. We are at 80° North, 13° East and celebrate the occasion with hot chocolate, rum and chocolate biscuits. The fog closes in and the guides standing on the outer disappear. The ship is white and still and silent, the ice is white, the sky is white. Sound is muffled, interspersed with the sharp cracking of ice in the distance. We all feel very small and vulnerable and alone.
We sail south towards the land and try again to go east but closer to the shore this time. It is 11pm and the sun is lower and catches the angles and edges of the ice, and the wings of the fulmers and gulls that circle the ship. Hard to photograph but of course we try. Bearded and Ringed Seals bob up and look at us. Some lie on the ice floes until the last minute and then slip away. I love being here; the ice will stretch all the way to the North Pole. The sky is luminous with light reflecting from the sea ice. The ice is alive with sound and light and movement. There is no day or night.
We zigzag, looking for a way thru, we become disoriented, the land to starboard, now in front, now behind. We move slowly, we have only covered 4 miles in the last two hours. We pushed thru the ice all night and were making good enough progress to warrant continuing. At breakfast we were around and on our way south through Hinlopenstretet having crossed 80° N a few times during the night. The ice was still around us alive with seals but no bears. One ice floe had a very picturesque group of walrus looking like Mum, Dad and the kids. The big male had a pinky purple blotchy neck and strong gleaming white tusks. The two younger ones had little “vampire” teeth. They looked at us from their contented dream world, occasionally lifting their little heads with great neckless bodies to see what the intrusion was then flopped down having to vie again for best position to return to sleep. They heaved their huge blubbery forms, with what must be super strong muscles, pushing each other and poking each other’s tough hides with their sharp tusks until they settled into a snorting, farting mass that could have been a single body. They lazily drag their flippers over an itch, or cover their faces with their flippers in very human gestures. They are repulsive yet endearing with goggle eyed faces and whiskers spiky as an old yard broom.
Later in the day we went ashore to visit a walrus “haul out”. We counted at least 90 of these formidable creatures that can grow up to 4 metres long and sometimes reach the incredible weight of 1500kg, their diet being the meat from mollusks which they suck from the shells growing on the seabed. They were sprawled on their backs in a lethargic heap, obviously enjoying the closeness of each other’s touch and smell – so strong you could taste it. We moved as a group slowly closer until we were a mere 4m away from the walrus. Then we passed by to the beach where some were playing in the water’s edge, ducking each other, rolling over and diving. Here they were sleek and alert, quick to move and curious of us. They glided through the water, their heads often underneath, attracted to Alwyn “talking” to them with his rubber boots in the shallows. They came closer and closer snorting water out of their nostrils until they were within cms of the most daring of humans. They were as curious of us as we were of them. We stayed watching for over two hours before retreating, contemplating the meaning of life and suspecting that the walrus had already discovered it, eat, sleep, play, sleep.
By now it is autumn and the snow has almost disappeared from the mountainsides.
What a wonderful day – maybe it was just the sunshine and the blue sea, the cool crisp air and the exercise. Maybe it was the autumn colours of the polar willow and mountain avens, the sedges and the bog saxifrage turning he tundra into a warm, glowing meadow of orange and crimson and gold.
We saw 2 polar bears, one sleeping in the sun, one walking up close to the first, but not too close then lying down in a niche in the basalt columns of a rocky outcrop. They would probably semi hibernate, unable to find anything of substance to eat now, until the ice pushed back into the southern parts accompanied by the seals.
We changed our route and crossed the marshy depressions in the tundra. Inevitably people get stuck. You have to walk as if walking in bare feet on glass, but people take big strides leaping heavily, one leg goes in and the other is too far away to lever yourself out. The rescuers sank down in to the sucking mud. “Try to remain calm”. Big stones brought from around help and careful tugging and eventually the last person is pulled free albeit without a boot. Oh well, there are some spares on the ship and he did retain his thick muddy sock.
We crossed the scree one eye on the sleeping bears and the other on the tiny Svalbard poppies dotted sparsely amongst the stones. We cross several streams, there is lots of water in the autumn as the mountains give up their snow.
The scree becomes a lush meadow of grasses and mosses, and the cotton grass blows photogenically in the wind. A small group of Svalbard reindeer nibbles their way passed us. There are two calves almost as big as their mother, but still drinking from her. Both the male and female reindeer have antlers but the males’ are more impressive, in fact they almost look silly to have such fantastic antlers on such short animals – they are only 1 metre high at the shoulder. Their coats glisten silver in the low sun and they disappear into the distance.
It is one of the guide’s birthdays and Alwyn and the chef have brought a magnificent cake and some wine for a toast on the beach. Nice touch! Home to the ship for dinner and a short party for the crew to celebrate the birthday as well. “Just a short party, Vladimir.” ‘I don’t understand, Jenny”. “Short, 10pm – midnight”. “Russians don’t understand short party”. Party obviously means until the drink has all gone. I begin with good intentions and eventually say spakwena noychi at 1.45am. The sun hasn’t gone to bed but I must. Alwyn and Rinie have already disappeared without anyone noticing, a tactic I’ll probably never learn.
It is the end of August and time to leave Svalbard, the midnight sun has begun to set and the air is cold, only 0degreesC today. Soon the pack ice will drift south again and the fjords will freeze over. The bears will have something to eat again and the reindeer will have to live on what they can find in the snow. The birds have gone out to sea and some have migrated far south. We will too, home to New Zealand.
