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Into the wild blue yonder

Friday 29 August 2025 – What the taxi came to pick us up for was actually the principal reason we have come to this most northerly place – an expedition cruise in the Arctic Sea. Everything you’ve read so far has been a prelude to this (and a most enjoyable one it’s been, too); but today sees the start of eight days aboard R/V Kinfish.

She is a small vessel, originally a search and rescue ship and then used for research, now repurposed for expedition cruises. There are just six cabins for 12 guests, so it will be a small but (we hope) perfectly-formed group of people moseying around the Svalbard archipelago, and possibly the Arctic pack ice, in search of scenery, wildlife and (for many of the passengers) video content.

Like our Antarctic trip, this is an expedition cruise, involving scrambling about on Arctic Tundra and Zodiacs. Proper rubber boots were mandated, so we kept a 3pm appointment at a shed near the hotel

to pick up some appropriate footwear. We boarded just before 4pm, and went through the usual things that are a preamble to the week. Departure;

meeting the crew, who number 10, and the other guests;

Stewardess Anni does the necessary

being shown around and briefed about the ship

Chief engineer Morten briefs us on the vessel

The bridge: captain Jesper on the left

and about the possibilities of the week ahead.

Expedition leader Kuba briefing the group

We have an interesting group; there are two couples from Italy – Doina and Denis, who have spent time on a Kinfish expedition before and are labelled “specialist leaders” for their video and photographic expertise, and Agnese and Carlo, who are friends of theirs; a UK couple, Gill and Russell, who have also been on Kinfish before; Rolf, the Swedish father of the boat’s owner, Robin, and his wife Agneta; Annie, Robin’s sister and her boyfriend, Rex; and a young Norwegian couple, Ane and Haavard, who are experienced sailors but who are, like us, new to Arctic expeditions. They are all younger than us. Just wanted you to know this.

Unsurprisingly, given the photo- and videographer quotient of the group, there has been evidence so far of some reasonably sophisticated gear being used; I get the impression that these guys may well help enhance the photographic possibilities of the voyage.

Briefings over, it was time to congregate for dinner.  We had mentioned to (another) Anni, our stewardess, that we didn’t drink wine any more and she obligingly provided G&T based on a local gin.

Dinner was prepared by Roger, the (Swedish) chef and fairly swiftly dispensed with, because the plan was to head to the north-west of Spitsbergen island, a place called Smeerenburg, the site of early whaling in Svalbard. The passage was likely, we were told, to be a little bumpy, hence wanting to get dinner eaten in relative calm before heading into open water – after bolting the chairs to the deck in case it got really rough.

This is the view from our porthole, to give you an idea of what this open water meant.

And so passed the first few hours of our expedition. The expedition leader, Kuba*, has warned us (as Pippa did when we were in the Antarctic) that we have to be flexible and patient as plans change to take into account weather and other conditions.  All other things being equal, we will arrive oop narth tomorrow morning at about 8.30 and attempt a landing after breakfast starting at about 10am.  Let’s see how that develops, shall we?

 

* Kuba’s name is Jakob. He is German but was born in Poland. The name Jacob is spelt Jakub in Poland, and the diminutive is Kuba.

Intermission,  or maybe Pre-mission

Friday 29 August 2025 – The very final bit of this trip, Phase IIIb, starts soon and may see me absent from the connected world for a few days. Before we disappear off the radar, though, here are a few photos from our final day in Longyearbyen, for we didn’t just lounge about drinking coffee, oh dear me no. We went for a walk. Obviously.

Just down from the hotel is a statue of a miner entitled “Gruvebusen”, which is a local colloquialism for, would you believe, miner.

Given today’s much cloudier conditions, the light was much better suited to a photo of him than either of the previous days.

As one would expect from somewhere with a unique location and history, as well as somewhere Nordic, there are a couple of museums at the northern end of town,  so we walked down towards them, pausing at a viewpoint to, erm, look at the view. There was a cruise ship in which had a familiar outline.

It was reminiscent of the boat we’d visited the Kimberley coast in Australia, which was a cruise on Le Laperouse, a Ponant boat. Sure enough, on more detailed examination, this turned out also to be a Ponant boat, called Le Commandant Charcot. That resonated with our time at the other end of the world, actually;  we had come across the name of Jean Charcot as an explorer in Antarctica, and I hadn’t realised that he fossicked around up here, as well. 

The first of the two museums we visited was the North Pole Expedition Museum.

What I hadn’t realised before going in was the extent to which the race to reach the north pole was done in the air – airships and balloons were the vehicle of choice. People had claimed to have walked across the ice to the pole, for example Robert Peary in 1909, but these claims were disputed, and the first verified successful expedition was not until 1968. Amundsen successfully flew an airship over the pole in 1926 – after his successful expedition to the south pole. He was then involved in a rescue attempt for someone else’s failed expedition, during which he disappeared and neither he nor his remains were ever seen again. Not a lot of people know that.

The exhibition was full of information

but a bit low-key. Round the corner is the Svalbard Museum, which is very much bigger and better laid out, with huge amounts of information about the archipelago – history, geography, culture, politics, everything. A very impressive piece of work,

and giving me probably the only picture I’ll get of an arctic fox.

We walked back up through the town, and stopped off at the Radisson hotel to investigate a Small World story. An ex-colleague with whom I’d kept in contact via Facebook had noticed that we were in Svalbard and told me that her stepdaughter was working there, which is a pretty amazing coincidence. So we were able to meet Ruth, who was running the bar in the world’s most northerly pub.

She had come to Longyearbyen on a 9-month contract, and, like many, was still here two years later, really enjoying her life and also having success as an artist and illustrator (that’s her work on the blackboard, for example). It was a lovely encounter, and all the better for being entirely serendipitous.

All we had to do then was to buy some more tea, just in case Phase IIIb couldn’t provide, and make our way back to the hotel to await pickup to be taken to its start point. We passed the final statue that we would see in Longyearbyen, another nod to its mining history

before the taxi came to take us away.

These are final hasty notes before leaving Longyearbyen, and i don’t know when I’ll be able to update you on the progress of Phase IIIb. But bear with me for any errors in the above and I’ll write again when I can.

Skidoo Row

Thursday 28 August 2025 – Our time in Longyearbyen is, I suppose, Phase IIIa; Phase IIIb starts tomorrow afternoon and you’ll have to wait to read all about it, possibly for quite some while. But between now and then, we had free time in Longyearbyen, and the sun shone today, unsurprisingly giving the whole place a different and lighter vibe. (We learned later that weather like today’s was unusual; cloudy like yesterday’s is the norm, so we have been very lucky.)

We had a coach tour of the place booked for 4pm, but nothing to do beforehand but go for a walk. Obviously.

The church

was something we certainly wanted to visit. As the arctic tern flies, it’s some 500 metres from our hotel, and Jane plotted a route which would take us down through the town, across and up the church. It also gave me an opportunity to take some more photos of the place in its summer coat.

It was not a warm day, probably around 7°C, but it was nice to sit outside one of the cafes and have coffee and cake in the sunshine.

The route took us past an object so mysterious that even Google Lens can’t identify it,

and past an interesting statue, labelled “Jason Roberts Productions”,

towards the industrial quarter.

I noticed that the fuel prices at the Toyota dealership here were much less than we’d paid when driving around in Norway’s mainland, which was a surprise – in these remote parts, one might expect higher prices. However, Svalbard is a tax-free zone, hence the cheap petrol.

We turned up the road to the church. Which was closed for roadworks – no way through.

Bugger.

We had no choice but to retrace our footsteps and seek a different route to the church. Simply heading across was not an option, as there was, rather inconveniently, a river in the way.

We ended up going all the way back up the town and across the river from the top end, so our 500 metres ended up as a 5km walk. However, it ended up being really interesting.

As we approached the church, we noticed some regular formations of what looked like tree stumps.

We were entirely puzzled as to what these could be, until we passed a stone plinth.

Looking closer,

we discovered it was a monument to John Munroe Longyear, an American from Boston, who visited as a cruise tourist in 1901, decided he liked the place and in 1906 effectively founded the town by establishing a mining operation there. The stumps are the wooden piles which underpinned the buildings of the original Longyearbyen town (the only way of building on permafrost) and are virtually the only remnant of it – with the exception of only a couple of buildings, it was burnt to the ground by the Germans as the second world war drew to a close, to stop the facility falling into the hands of the Allies. This information was vouchsafed on info boards by the site.

You can see traces of one of the old mines high up in the side of the hills above these remnants.

We went into the church, which is light and pleasant, open at all hours and to all religious denominations.

Half of the hall is given over as a community space, and it was being used by a toddlers and parents group when we were there, which was rather charming.

We made our way back to the hotel and at 4pm waited for our tour bus to arrive. As we waited a group of young things walked past. At first, I thought they were carrying some kind of surveying equipment,

but, no; they were carrying rifles. Maybe they were learning how to deal with importunate polar bear intruders?

Our minibus turned up, piloted by a very engaging chap called Kai. We collected two other couples, one from the very eccentric-looking place called Mary-Ann’s Polar Rigg,

which, as well as a collection of trees from past Christmases (apparently all lit up each Christmas) has one of those signposts.

I found it interesting, beside the fact that it pointed the way to various of the mines that were once operational, because it also mentions Pyramiden, a Russian settlement of some 450 souls on the island. This brought back memories of our Antarctic trip, on which one of the guides, Sasha, had spent a couple of years as a tour guide there.

We then went on a tour of the town and its environs. Kai gave us huge amounts of information about the history and culture of the place throughout two very interesting hours. Here are some of the nuggets he imparted:

  • Norway has sovereignty over the archipelago, according to a treaty signed in 1920 between 43 nationalities. Among the conditions of the treaty is the stipulation of no military presence or activity in the archipelago.
  • The population of Longyearbyen is about 2400 souls, of about 53 nationalities.
  • 60% are Norwegian, and a very large number of the remainder are Thai and Philippino, who do a lot of the jobs that Norwegians are not prepared to – cleaners, waiters, etc. (Such a common situation in so many western countries, eh?)
  • The Norwegian government, in pursuit of eco aspirations, is trying to reduce the population there, and are doing so by some fairly draconian measures, such as: forbidding the building of any new houses (even to replace ones which have been demolished); closing mining operations which not only bring in revenue but, as a by-product, also heat the houses (with the only viable alternative for energy being the distinctly non-eco use of diesel); and – this I find quite shocking – removing the right of any non-Norwegians to vote, no matter how well-established they are in the town. We found this reminiscent of the shabby treatment that Madagascar gets at the hands of the French government.

Kai took us to the edge of the town, to see (allegedly) the most Instagrammed polar bear signpost in the world.

There are a couple of hundred polar bears on Spitzbergen and about 3,000 in the whole archipelago, if I remember my figures correctly.

Our next port of call was the Global Seed Vault, which is up in the hills overlooking the town.

There’s not a lot to see, really,

the vault is way down in a mine shaft in what was No. 3 mine, kept at -18.4°C, and no-one’s allowed in. But its job is potentially vital – countries can contribute seeds for preservation, and this allows them to take seeds out in the case of disaster. The example Kai quoted was Syria, whose seed bank in Aleppo was completely destroyed in the Syrian civil war; courtesy of the Global Seed Vault, they have been able to repopulate their crops and lands.

We also got a great view over the airport and the port,

where you can see a huge pile of coal waiting to be exported (mainly, I think, to Germany, where it’s used in their steel industry), and the arses of a couple of reindeer which were wandering around in the area.

Photographic note: Jane took this photo with her phone. It’s better than I managed with my Nikon

The next port of call was the church, where we had a chance to take pictures in the now-empty community hall.

The church site offers good views over the town, for example of its characteristic coloured houses.

The snow fences on the hill overlooking the town were also clear to be seen,

and you can see where coal is still leaking out of the hillside.

We passed the town’s “cemetery”

where crosses pay tribute to people who had been buried in the early 20th century before it was discovered that burying coffins in permafrost is not a good idea, as they tend to reappear after a while. This caused the whole area to be cleared and the crosses put there as a marker. Some seven of the deceased had died from the Spanish flu of 1918, and there were fears that the permafrost had preserved the pathogens, so great care was taken in the clearing up. It is now illegal to be buried in Longyearbyen, although in special cases ashes can be spread or interred. It’s also, we learned, against the rules to be born in Longyearbyen. For normal pregnancies, the mothers-to-be are sent away some four weeks before the birth is due, to somewhere, often Tromsø, where there are proper medical facilities; the Sykhus on Longyearbyen is an emergency room, not a fully-equipped hospital.

Up the road from the cemetery is a viewpoint over the town and also the oldest part of the town rebuilt after the war which, counterintuitively, is called Nybyen, or “the new town”. It actually includes a couple of buildings which survived the German exit, which are understandably now culturally listed and reserved sites, and several that were built in the 1950s, well before those that sprang up further down the valley.

The shadows from the sun going down over the horizon* made photos of the town tricky, although you could see the glacier clearly,

and mine no. 2b (or not) across the hillside.

And so ended a most informative and engaging tour, as part of a very good day. We took dinner at a restaurant next door to the hotel called Kroa, which we’d heard was renowned for its pizzas. What we ate would not have been called a pizza by an Italian, but it was delicious, as was the smoked whale meat that we shared as a starter. Whale met again, indeed.

Tomorrow, we leave Longyearbyen to embark on Phase IIIb, which will very likely involve us going completely off grid for several days. I promise to regale you with our exploits when I next have decent internet access, but I don’t actually know when that will be. The best way to ensure that you can continue to read my deathless prose is to subscribe to these pages. If you haven’t already done so, simply leave a comment and tick the “stay informed” box and All Will Be Revealed.

* I had been expecting that we were in the area of the midnight sun. We weren’t. Like many other things on this trip, we’d missed it by a couple of days – the sun first set on August 23rd.