Highlighting my travels through mainland Norway and the Svalbard archipelago. My first tastes of life above the Arctic circle, shrimp, and a true polar plunge. Nothing could have prepared me for the sheer beauty of this Arctic gem - Svalbard was a dream from which I never wanted to wake.
In a word, Norway’s capital is vibrant. In other words, it is beautiful, stunning, eclectic, clean, and now sits near the top of my list of favorite European capitals. Despite fighting the grip of jetlag after crossing the Atlantic, Molly and I took the train from the airport into the city, made several wrong turns but eventually found our hotel, freshened up, and finally stepped out to explore our new surroundings. After our first stop at the Royal Palace, we set out to prove J.R.R. Tolkien correct: not all who wander are lost. Winding our way through Oslo’s cobbled streets, around a crowded music festival, past its bustling harbor and towards the rooftop of its famed Opera House, we often stopped to marvel at the beauty of the city and its people.
Ears buzzing with various languages, eyes brimming with delight and cameras happily snapping away, the most difficult part about our time in Oslo was deciding which streets to take and which to forgo. The city was magic – enveloping us each in its charm and begging us not to leave so soon. When the following morning arrived and we left Oslo with the excitement of the Arctic on our minds, I felt a hint of nostalgia as it slowly crept under my skin. Oslo, my dear, I’ll stay longer next time. Until then, ha det.
First
Sep 26, 2016
Mankind has long been captivated with the notion of firsts. Our history books are riddled with tales of adventure, perseverance and discovery. Accompanying them are a long line of firsts: the first climber to reach the summit of Mount Everest, the first man to step on the moon, the first outsider to marvel in the ruins of Machu Picchu. The desire to claim things and places for ourselves is rooted deep within humanity, and it’s a root that’s tripped us all at one point or another.
When we arrived in Longyearbyen, Molly and I experienced a rare first in the Adventure Life world: the first from our office to Svalbard. Getting the opportunity to explore the far corners of the earth is naturally one of the best parts about my job, but it’s true that the unexplored parts of the world seem to grow fewer and fewer as my colleagues collectively branch out to see more of it. Filled with pride as I stepped off the last stair, I turned around on the tarmac to snap a photograph of our plane on the runway: my eyes the first in a long line of colleagues to scan this particular horizon and breathe in its crisp air. Without having climbed the world’s tallest mountain, venturing out into celestial landscapes or discovering a lost and ancient world, I became the first, out of everyone I know, to claim this Arctic Archipelago for my own. I can say with full confidence that I will not be the last.
Svalbard
Sep 26, 2016
For me, learning the seven continents was easy. Learning the countries that reside within their borders was more difficult. Learning the landmasses which are neither continent nor country, however, was often downright impossible. So was the case with Svalbard – an Arctic archipelago halfway between Norway and the North Pole. If you’re anything like myself, you’ll have needed to pull out a world atlas or searched “Svalbard” on Googlemaps before gaining any sense of comprehension of its place in the world. Even then, merely knowing where it is located pales in comparison to knowing the dramatic landscapes and sense of wonder that one can find there.
I’ll admit that as a child, teenager, and even young adult, the world Arctic meant little more than icy, barren wasteland in my mind. I imagined that the Arctic, and everything it encompasses, was a giant sheet of ice. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Svalbard was a dream from which I never wanted to wake. Far from the lifeless, frozen expanse I had spent my lifetime picturing, Svalbard dazzled me with its jagged mountains, vivid green tundra, advancing glaciers (yes, you read that correctly), and icebergs so blue they might have been sculpted with kool-aid rather than water. Giddy each morning and full of anticipation every night, I constantly had to stop and remind myself that Svalbard was real – that I hadn’t fallen through Alice’s looking-glass and into my own Wonderland – which ironically would have looked exactly the same.
Penguins of the High Arctic
Sep 26, 2016
Fact: Regardless of what Coca-Cola would like us to believe, penguins and polar bears do not co-exist. As I child, I believed the commercials which depicted the two species meeting up and sharing icy bottles of soda at Christmastime. In my adult years, I learned that Coca-Cola lied to me. Penguins and polar bears live as far away from one another as you could possible imagine, and even if they did happen to share the same ice floe, you can bet that they would not get along.
That being said, I’ll admit that I felt very much like a penguin while completing our circumnavigation of Svalbard. One of many perks of traveling aboard the Sea Spirit was the fact that they provide parkas for each of their guests – and that we got to keep them! The parkas - red, warm, and basically waterproof – were an important staple that I couldn’t have imagined sailing without. Molly and I came to lovingly refer to them as our Penguin Suits, as they provided an additional layer of insulation and overall warmth. Never having been to Antarctica to witness the grand scale of a penguin colony for myself, seeing my fellow red-clad cruisers dot the Arctic landscape made me smile and wonder if the two sights would look at all the same.
The answer is most certainly no – I’m fairly positive that seeing thousands upon thousands of penguins is much different than seeing 99 red dots spread out over a few miles.
Signehamna
Sep 27, 2016
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I devour biographies and historical miniseries and have been known to spend hours pouring over museum exhibits. While I knew that much of the Arctic’s early years were rooted in the whaling industry, I was surprised to learn that whaling was just the tip of a long and fascinating history of Svalbard. I was even more surprised when I got to experience so much of it for myself.
Much of Svalbard’s coastline is dotted with its past: The mast to which Amundson moored the airship Norge prior to becoming the first man to reach the North Pole still stands in Ny Alesund. Beluga bones frame the beaches of Bamsebu and an old whaling station stands eerily by. Walrus bones fringe the tundra at Kapp Lee. Beached and wooden ships lie in wait for the ghosts of sailors past at Skansbukta, and a rusting train overlooks the remains of Camp Mansfield - the town which used to bear its name.
One of my favorite historical sites, however, was found at Signehamna. Already having identified myself as a history nerd, it’s important to know that World War II holds my particular interest. I never imagined that the Second World War would have left its mark on Svalbard, but the realm of fighting stretched even to the most remote of its shores. Built behind a hill and tucked away from sight, Signehamna, a weather station originally erected by the Germans, has been reduced to nothing more than a pile of rubble: rusted barrels, rubber boots, and trunks long beyond repair.
Bombed by the Norwegians upon its discovery, the remains of the station were abandoned by its survivors and left to quietly rust away. While much of the site has been looted over the years, what remains is a somber reminder that history is waiting to present itself to anyone willing to find it, even in the most remote corners of the earth.
Monacobreen
Sep 27, 2016
On the morning of our seventh day in Svalbard, I peeled back the curtains to see what playground awaited me and gasped out loud when I saw it. Monacobreen: A glacier so stunningly blue-hued that I thought my eyes had deceived me. Quickly turning around to tell Molly that it was the most beautiful sight I had ever beheld, I pulled back the curtains again to confirm: still blue. Throwing on a pair of jeans and flip flops and quickly zipping up a fleece jacket, I grabbed my camera and galloped down the hall in my eagerness to push my way into the open air.
Open and brisk, the air cut through my fleece and sent my teeth into a chattering frenzy, but nothing could tear me away from the sight which filled my vision. What I had glimpsed through my window was a mere fraction of the giant blue glacier and that fraction, beautiful though it was, did not do the rest of Monacobreen justice. Turning the dials on my camera after hungrily scanning the horizon, I pressed the shutter with a single thought on my mind: ‘please, just once, let me capture this moment exactly as it is.’ When I pulled back my camera and pressed review, I wasn’t disappointed. There it was: the blue face of Monacobreen and the mountains which rose up through its center (these are called Nunatak, by the way), with the entire landscape shrouded in sleepy fog. Pleased with my success, I crossed my fingers and took almost one hundred more before I even left the ship to see it up close.
After breakfast, we loaded into zodiacs at the stern of the ship and pushed away. Our guide steered us through the reaches of Monacrobreen’s icy fingers and straight into its beckoning arms, and I found myself breathless at the glacier’s frosted face. All around us, the bergy bits crackled like Rice Krispies in a bowl of milk and were occasionally drowned out by the sound of the monster itself: the glacier rumbling from deep within its core. Every time Monacobreen groaned underneath its own weight, our eyes peeled across the landscape to find the breaking point and we were delighted as it calved in front of us again and again.
Our guide occasionally stopped to pull glass-like ice boulders from the water and pass them around as we cruised through the ice field in gentle pursuit of the bearded seals which call it home and marveled in the sheer size and unbelievable beauty of the glacier. Seemingly immune to the cold - the more the air bit at my cheeks, the wider my smile became. This was the Arctic, and it was unlike anything I had ever seen before.
Wild
Sep 27, 2016
When it comes to wildlife, the Arctic has its own Big Five: Polar Bear, Walrus, Whale, Fox, and Seals. I’m pleased to report that we saw them all.
**Our first sighting of Svalbardic wildlife (not part of the Big Five) came in the form of three reindeer who watched us carefully as the enjoyed their mid-morning snack of moss and late-season flowers. We stood (almost) silently as a group – the clicks of our cameras disrupted the peaceful surroundings but little else did.
**Our second sighting: WHALES. And not just any whales: Fin whales! We had been told upon the beginning of our cruise that 2016 unfortunately hadn’t been a good season for whales. The temperatures of both air and water was off and, as a result, so were whale migrations. So, imagine our sheer delight when three fin whales, the largest in the ocean only after the blue whale, began spouting around our ship. One of our guides later told us that Fin Whales are uncommon in Svalbard. One of them had worked in the area for four years, and had only seen them once before.
**Our third sighting: Walrus. First, imagine 4,000 pounds of tusked blubber. Now imagine hundreds of them piled together. Our first sighting at Kapp Lee was that of a herd of about 7 individuals. Our second was closer to 200. After that, I lost track of my Walri count.
**Our fourth sighting: Seal. Spotted by our guide Dima as we zodiaced around Burgerbutka, the bearded seal dove beneath the ice and surfaced just shy of each zodiac - giving each of us a private show in turn.
**Our fifth sighting: Polar Bear. Not a single polar bear – EIGHT polar bears. Though none of them were close to the ship and all of them were best observed through binoculars, we saw eight. And that’s exciting.
**Our sixth sighting: Fox. Normally the hardest of the Big Five to spot due to their natural camouflage and quick movements, the two foxes we saw scouting the edge of Alkhornet had just begun to transition from their summer browns to winter whites. As such, they stood out against the green canvass of landscape quite nicely.
I'm not normally a person who goes nuts over wildlife, unless they have flukes and blowholes and make me feel impeccably small. Maybe it's because polar bears aren't common or because walrus are... well... walrus, but I loved every moment of wildlife-watching in Svalbard.
Frozen
Sep 27, 2016
Our Circumnavigation of Svalbard being a cruise, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to learn that we spent much of our time around water. The two weeks we spent abroad exposed us to a new Ocean (the Arctic) and three new seas (the Norwegian, Barents, and Greenland Seas). Large bodies of water aside, however, it surprised me to see just how much water surrounded me at any given time. Whether it was the glacial ice which was served in our cocktails or the gentle mist that surrounded the ship in the early mornings, the presence of water was a big aspect of our trip.
Our guides were delighted when Svalbard was dusted with the first snow of the season – transforming the islands from summer to early winter in a matter of hours. The large and imposing fronts of glaciers seemed to crop up regardless of which direction I looked, and the rain that seemed to reluctantly fall down as we sailed our way north only heightened our moods as the temperature dropped with it.
At our highest point, the MV Sea Spirit reached 81 degrees north - about 500 nautical miles from the North Pole. We reached this latitude after a day of sailing– leaving behind the jagged peaks of Svalbard in search of the Arctic ice shelf. Due to tricky ice conditions, the ship never reached the shelf but what we did find were its reaching tendrils as they stretched across the sea. We had reached the frozen top of the planet – and I shivered more from excitement than the cold as the earth’s horizon curved more and more.
Even though the pieces of ice surrounding the ship surely pale in comparison to the shelf from which they came, I marveled at the size of them as they went by. At one point, Molly leaned over the railing to get a better view of a particularly large berg and, after much consideration, rose her head with a very serious question on her mind: “how many elephants do you think it would take to sink it?”
Unfortunately, we’ll never know.
Ny Alesund
Sep 27, 2016
One of our last stops brought us to Ny Alesund: the world’s northernmost community. Boasting a permanent population between 30-35 people (and up to 120 in the summer months), visiting Ny Alesund was strikingly different from the rest of our cruise. The first time in two weeks that we’d walked off the ship rather than taking a zodiac to shore, the guides enjoyed a moment of supreme amusement as multiple people showed up at the gangway wearing their lifejackets over their parkas. Molly and I rebelled against our penguin suits and exited the ship wearing down jackets (a decision we later regretted, by the way. Always, always wear your penguin suit. It’s cold out there).
Originally founded in 1917 as a mining community, Ny Alesund now operates as a research base and houses fifteen permanent research stations. The point of visiting Ny Alesund was not for its scientific aspect, however, it was for its history. As previously mentioned, Svalbard is surprisingly historical. After being given a walking tour of the community, Sven, the ship’s historian, led us to a giant metal mast. Explaining that the mast was the mooring station for the Norge – the first airship to fly over the North Pole in 1926, Sven filled our heads with stories of northern adventure and the perils they likely faced. Pulling my scarf over my face and shivering from the wind, I could only imagine what it must have been like to survive the harsh conditions with nothing more than woolen sweaters and long socks to keep me warm.
Following our tour, the passengers of the Sea Spirit were set loose to wander the town (while steering clear of the insides of buildings). Despite our free reign, most of us battled the wind and made our way back to the post office – the northernmost post office in the world. Having bought my postcards in Longyearbyen and written them during our day at sea, I skipped the frenzy in the gift shop and postmarked my written souvenirs before sending them off.
Though I ultimately arrived back home long before any of my postcards did, knowing that several pieces of my Arctic journey were still circling the globe made me extremely happy. The happiness in sending my postcards, however, was greatly surpassed the day I opened my mailbox to find that two of them (addressed to my husband and not to myself) had made their way back into my eager hands. I begrudgingly handed them off to Forrest, who read my words with a smile before giving them back to me. “Take them to work and hang them up,” he told me. “They’re from your happy place, not mine.”
<3
Alkhornet
Sep 27, 2016
There are certain places which, despite having read their names thousands of times, mean nothing to me. The big places like Machu Picchu and Torres del Paine - the smaller places like Mount Kinabalu and the Ngorongoro Crater (neither of which are actually small, just lesser known) – often tantalize and fill me with whispers of wanderlust. Most days, however, when I show up to Adventure Life to work and not to travel, I see the names of these places and my eyes glaze over. Such was the case with the Galapagos: I read and wrote the names Santa Cruz and Isabela over and over again but, until I saw the piles of yellow iguanas and stilted flamingos for myself, the word was never real. A similar phenomenon occurred in both Mexico’s Baja Peninsula and Svalbard.
Alkefjellet… Faksevagen… Gasbergkilen… each of these names were previously no more than words on a page to me but are now places that I treasure deeply. It is Alkhornet, however, which has captivated my attention and refused to let go. Prior to leaving Missoula on our journey North, I’ll admit that I only read our itinerary a single time and that eyes glazed over – I didn’t care about the names as much as I cared about simply being there. When we arrived, it quickly became clear that my not having poured over the itinerary didn’t really matter - part of the fun of our trip was the spontaneity it required.
First of all, we completed a reverse circumnavigation. After carefully examining the weather patterns for the next two weeks, our Expedition Leader literally chose the path less traveled: while 15 other ships headed north up Svalbard’s Eastern coast, the Sea Spirit went south and rounded the archipelago counterclockwise. His decision was spot on – while other ships ended up having to cancel several landings over numerous days, we had blue skies almost every day. Secondly, due to weather which can never be completely avoided, we ended up sailing into fjords and climbing mountains which had not been outlined in the itinerary.
When we took the zodiacs to shore on the morning of our last full day, I was on an Arctic high. I didn’t know how Svalbard could possibly further impress me – I was already filled to the brim with the excitement of a trip of a lifetime. Splitting into two groups – I joined the longer, more strenuous hike while a second group chose to make a more leisurely walk to the mountain’s rocky cliff face. After making our way over the tundra, through a rocky ravine and down a winding slope – our hike’s destination finally came into view. As cliché as it sounds, Alkhornet, in all its glory, took my breath away. Wearing the sky like a crown, the dramatic peak rose up from the tundra. Just shy of 1,500 ft., the mountainous cliff towered over the surrounding tundra and bowed down to no one.
As if the mountain wasn’t enough, a herd of reindeer grazed at its bottom while several Arctic Fox scavenged the nearby land. I spent the next two hours frolicking across the tundra and fighting off the urge to sing “The Hills Are Alive” at the top of my lungs.
The perfect ending to the perfect trip – we left Svalbard the next morning feeling truly spoiled. The following is my advice: read the word Svalbard and tuck it into the folds of your mind. Plant the seed. And when you next seek adventure or a new stamp in your passport, go. I promise you won’t be disappointed.
Love Adventure Life, Mary is very experienced in the cruise department. Their post follow up after booking is great too.
Rita Shiver
4 months ago
kevin Moore, our agent, is very knowledgeable about the tours and details, and researches quickly any follow up ?s.
Emory
5 months ago
Tilly was thorough and efficient in answering questions and getting us the right information to make a trip decision.
Nancy Turner
5 months ago
Clara Tort was fantastic to work with, very professional.
Dan Twomey
5 months ago
I've been working w/ Franny and Phen on the Heart of the Arctic Cruise next year. They've both been very friendly and helpful in answering my many questions as we work out the details for the trip. Thank you!
Nita Hoops
10 months ago
Love Adventure Life, Mary is very experienced in the cruise department. Their post follow up after booking is great too.
Rita Shiver
4 months ago
kevin Moore, our agent, is very knowledgeable about the tours and details, and researches quickly any follow up ?s.
Emory
5 months ago
Tilly was thorough and efficient in answering questions and getting us the right information to make a trip decision.
Nancy Turner
5 months ago
Clara Tort was fantastic to work with, very professional.
Dan Twomey
5 months ago
I've been working w/ Franny and Phen on the Heart of the Arctic Cruise next year. They've both been very friendly and helpful in answering my many questions as we work out the details for the trip. Thank you!
Nita Hoops
10 months ago
Love Adventure Life, Mary is very experienced in the cruise department. Their post follow up after booking is great too.
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