Svalbard

Again I need to start early - too early to get the proper breakfast I paid for. To save precious minutes, I take the airport express train. It’s a good system - just swipe your credit card before you get on, and again when you get off. The train is fast and ultra-smooth, and it has easy luggage racks by the door.

Airport check-in is uneventful - an unusual number of dogs travelling though. Down by the departure gates, the convenience stores have “happy hour” on ice creams - it’s about 8.30am. Well, why not - I’m on holiday, I haven’t had a proper breakfast, and I’ll not get the chance to try Norwegian ice cream for less than $5 otherwise. I choose a Daim Ball ice cream cone - it’s divine, try one if Ikea starts bringing these in.

Our flight stopped in Tromsø, and the approach was spectacular. Tromsø airport was surprisingly large (26 gates) and busy for a regional airport. There were internet terminals, but at 2Kr per minute (about $26 per hour) could this be the world’s most expensive?

Back on the plane, its about another 90 minutes to my goal - the furthest extent of my travels, Svalbard. I had secured a window seat which was nice - the scenery on the right was even more spectacular, but I’m not complaining about this. Here at last…

It’s about 1.30pm when we arrive. We are in between the midnight sun and the polar night - so there is a distinct night and day, but the sun remains quite low in the sky.

My inspiration for this destination? - it’s another website, and now that I think about it it’s probably the same website that introduced me to the wonderful world of Tourism in North Korea . The webcams of Svalbard captivated my entire office, and it gnawed away at me until eventually I had to come here. I wonder if Nicey realises how much power he wields?

There are two main types of accommodation here. There’s some expensive guest houses, and some really really expensive hotels. The least expensive places are in Nybyen, a couple of kilometres south of town; I originally booked in one of those places, but they told me they were closing down early for the polar night.

So rather than booking at the other Nybyen place, I booked at Mary Anne’s Polarrigg, which is much closer to town.

All the guest houses are former miners’ quarters. The rooms are basic, but here at least the common areas are very comfortable indeed - this is the restaurant and bar. And this is about the only green I will see for the next 3 days.

I go for a walk around town. It’s Sunday, so not much is open at first - but some stores including the main supermarket open later on. Considering the isolation here, the prices in the supermarket are remarkably reasonable, and there’s a great range - I needn’t have carted my emergency food halfway round the world. I bought a few things, my favourite among them - cloudberry yogurt, yum.

Gradually it gets darker, and by about 8.30pm you could say it was night.

Mary Anne’s website led me to believe that she would be personally cooking up a fairly meaty polar affair, the sort of thing that Fraser would enjoy. I was thinking I would have to go to town for a pizza.

But there have been some changes - Mary Anne has got herself a Thai chef, and the whole menu is now Thai. Is he any good? Oh yeah, he’s really good. WTF - this shouldn’t be happening, this was supposed to be the worst food of my holiday, not the best. Have I died and gone to heaven?

No, apparently out of a population of about 2000 in Longyearbyen, about 100 are Thai. It all has to do with the Svalbard Treaty of 1920 - quite a few countries, including Thailand, signed that treaty, and retain the right of settlement there. Right now I am very glad some Thais have chosen to do so (though don’t understand why… ) I don’t know how long it will sustain either - it’s very quiet in the restaurant tonight.

Later I wander out to the famous bar in town, which is supposed to have one of the biggest ranges of liquor in Europe. The barmaid there is Thai too. But while there are a lot of spirits, they have just three beers tonight, Carlsberg, Heineken and Corona. No thanks.

:::

The breakfast spread at Mary Anne’s is not bad, even for vegetarians. I am particularly intrigued by the brown cheese - it’s delicious, almost like caramel. I wonder why it hasn’t spread around the world like Jarlsberg?

Months earlier I had booked a day cruise, and they were to have left my tickets at the guesthouse. But they didn’t, and the agency wasn’t open yesterday. I was advised the safest thing to do would be to go wait outside the SAS Radisson hotel, so I did, and in due course a large coach arrived and picked me up along with a young Japanese couple.

They were expecting another 30 people, but they didn’t have details of where they were staying. So we went for a drive around all the possible places. This included the Nybyen guesthouse, and seeing how far it was from town, I’m glad I stayed where I did.

But they weren’t waiting there, nor at any of the other places. A ring-around eventually determined that they were at the SAS Radisson all along - but they had decided to cancel en masse. That’s right - a group of 30 had chosen to stay at the most expensive hotel in town, and now decided they could not afford the day cruise. They aparently tried to ring the office yesterday but it was closed.

With only 3 paying passengers, that could only mean one thing - the cruise was canceled. The Japanese guy was devastated - he had his heart set on visiting the Russian settlement at Barentsburg, and would be leaving the next day.

We all went down to the travel agency to see what we could do. The few morning options had by now departed, but there was one possibility for the afternoon and as consolation prizes go, this was a pretty good one: a cruise up the fjord in a zodiac boat. We signed up.

But that didn’t start until 2pm, so time to check out what else the town had to offer. First up, the Svalbard Museum - the tourist guides say this is in the former pig sty, but not any more - it’s now in very modern and elaborate premises down at the Research Park. I easily pass an hour and a half here, could have gone longer.

Consensus has it that the only place with public internet is the Library in the shopping centre - it’s free, the only downside being you have to wait until the Library is open. So I go and get that out of my system, then go for a walk around the town.

I take a fairly wide circuit. There’s the cemetery, and the church. A little closer to town is the sundial - at the right time of year you can read midnight on this.

Then there’s the Funicular Centre - apparently a heritage listed building. I was expecting this to be funicular railways, but as far as I can determine it is more like a cable car centre, which would receive the coal from mines which are now disused and send it on to the port.

At 2.00pm we gathered at the travel agency and were taken down to the port, where we donned immersion suits, balaclavas, fur helmets, goggles, the works. So do we really need to keep on all our clothing under this? Ooh yeah, everything you’ve got. Out on the water, the temperature is about -5ºC, but at 25 knots, the wind chill takes this down to -20.

What you see on such a cruise is heavily dependent on the season. So for example, at the Guillemot cliff, the birds have migrated and there’s not much to see.

On the other hand, you might get lucky and see something special (you know it’s special if the skipper takes pictures!). There had been reports of a polar bear roaming this area near some cabins. We saw it wandering around - clear through the binoculars, not quite so easy to get a clear shot with a camera from a boat.

Or how about this natural ice sculpture?

We approach the glacier at the end of the fjord - from a safe distance, which is just as well because we can clearly hear it cracking.

Then we retreat to the opposite shore for our promised meal.

It’s just dehydrated rations, reconstituted with hot water from a thermos. But we have it outside this little cabin. We try to get a fire going with some scrap wood and several dousings of petrol, but it is only slightly successful. Meantime, we get a visit from one of the locals:

That’s pretty cool.

The return trip was pretty fast… and very very cold. The protective gear worked well, but next time I think I will bring something to cover the tip of my nose.

For dinner tonight, I decide to try the Radisson SAS hotel. They have two vegetarian mains, the price is relatively modest (100Kr or about $22) and what I have is most enjoyable. Wow, two good dinners in a row. I ask for a beer, and the waiter suggests Mack, a lacklustre Norwegian brew. I ask if they have anything else - “yeah, I feel the same way about Mack” he says, and brings me a quite generous list of options including my favourite Thai beer, Singha. So I have to have one of those, followed by an Estrella. A most satisfactory meal.

:::

When the cruise was canceled yesterday, there was talk that a cruise might be possible today, if enough people signed up. So I waited nervously to see if I would be picked up. 9.00am came and went; but at 9.15, a smaller bus turned up - 12 people had signed up, sufficient to run the cruise. But this being Tuesday, we wouldn’t be going to Barentsburg; we would be going to Pyramiden. Intriguingly, 10 of the 12 passengers are locals.

Our ship, the Langøysund, is a former ferry boat, built in southern Norway in 1954. But it is fitted out with the latest navigational aids. It cruises at a leisurely 9 knots. The crew are very friendly, and the bridge is open to visitors. Our guide is studying Biological sciences - she is particularly interested in stromatalites, and hopes to visit Shark Bay in Western Australia sometime soon. Wow - that’s another very special part of the world, totally different from here and yet somehow equally strange.

Today’s cruise is to Billefjorden - to the north-west of Sassenfjorden, yesterday’s destination.

Lunch will be served later as part of the package, but while we wait the bar offers a range of snacks, drinks and freshly cooked waffles with jam and/or brown cheese - there it is again. I ask what it’s called: “We call it ‘Brown Cheese’” comes the reply.

We approach the glacier - again from a safe distance. There is more ice in the water here, and the captain is not complacent about it - he pays close attention to the radar.

Down on the main deck, they have fished out a piece of glacier and it’s drinks all round.

We pass a seal…

Then about 3pm, we dock at Pyramiden

Like Barentsburg, Pyramiden was a settlement established by the Russians to mine coal.

It was named after the mountain from which the coal was extracted.

In the Soviet era, it was something of a showpiece of the Soviet way for the benefit of the West.

By all accounts it was a great place to live - it had a sports and cultural centre, even a heated swimming pool. When the Soviet era ended, the folk who lived here had no real appetite to change their way of life.

Then in 1998, there were problems in the mine. The fjord also froze up more than usual, making shipping difficult.

Nobody knows exactly why, but Pyramiden was abandoned. Suddenly. Everything was left behind. Today it looks like the Marie Celeste. It is said that Barentsburg, having fallen on hard times, recently sent a boat up to collect all the flour and sugar.

Today, there is a small group of about 5 Russians working here - one of them joins us to help keep lookout for polar bears. Apparently the Governor of Svalbard has asked the Russians at Barentsburg to clean up the Pyramiden site - and scrap metal prices having risen recently, there is an incentive to do so.

We are told there is talk of developing this place into a resort. It’s such a crazy idea it might actually work.

We cruise slowly back to Longyearbyen. On the way we pass a couple of historic cabins with tragic stories attached. For example, one which was set up for a mine and stocked with provisions was discovered by trappers, who stayed in over the winter. They all died - it is suspected that lead leached into the tinned foods from the solder, and a winter’s worth was enough to kill them.

It has been an unforgettable day, and I top it off with another brilliant Thai dinner.

:::

There is only one flight daily at this time of year, which means you have an afternoon to kill the day you arrive and a morning to kill the day you leave. But it is possible to take a tour of a coal mine in a morning, and that’s just what I do.

We are given a brief history of mining in Svalbard. In 1920 there was a methane explosion in one of the early mines near where the church is now. Apparently it killed 26 out of 33 miners, and some of them were shot out of the tunnels like cannonballs. The fire burned for over 20 years.

Later as mines started they were numbered. Currently the only operational mine near Longyearbyen is no.7 - it uses the “room and pillar” method and supplies 25,000 tonnes of coal to the local power station and 45-55,000 tonnes of high grade coal to Germany for making steel. There are also operational mines at Svea and Barentsburg. Our guide works in Svea, but works as a guide on his weeks off - mainly to keep active.

Mine no.3 operated from 1971 to 1996 - its coal seams are only about 60-70cm, not enough for modern equipment. The longwall method was used, and we were able to feel the weight of the machinery and crawl into the seams. It was enough to convince us that these guys earned their money.

Mine no.3 also contains a seed bank - set up by the Norwegian Government to safeguard genetic content of about 3000 species. In 2008, a new and much larger International seed bank is to open just up the road.

This is it, as of September 2007. We are told the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation poured millions of dollars into this, but elsewhere the project is credited to the Norwegian Government. Apparently they wanted to build a completely new seed bank away from the coal mines to avoid any risks from the mines.

There’s just time to pop back into the village for a last look before departure. It’s comforting to know that the bank asks you not to bring your guns inside.

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