Tag Archives: Arctic fox

Day 4 – Wet Out

Tuesday 2 September 2025 – In his evening briefing yesterday, Kuba had told us about Bråsvellbreen, which, at 160km, is the longest glacier cliff edge in northern Europe.  We would cruise from Kvitøya along the length of this cliff edge.

(It shows as rocky in places in the image above, but it’s all glacier, actually.)  To whet our appetites, he pointed us at a photo on the wall of the bar.

As a devoted reader of this blog, you’ll of course remember that Jane and I had seen something similar before, in Antarctica – the enormous tabular glacier A23a. At the time*, at 3,800 sq km – twice the size of Greater London – it would have had edges approximately 200km in  length and up to 40m in height, so even longer than this glacier cliff. That was spectacular, and so we wondered how the two would compare.

At first, the prospects of even seeing it looked a bit on the scant side, as it was very foggy.

You can see the small icebergs that have calved off the cliff. So Jesper had to navigate with care once we got to the cliff.

When I took a brisk walk outside, you could see the huge wall of ice disappearing into the distant fog.

Like A23a, it had ice caves, as the sea melted it from beneath.

I took a hyperlapse of our progress alongside the glacier, which I hope gives some idea of the scene.

Kuba announced that those that wanted could go up the mast to get a look from a higher viewpoint.  To do this, one needed to get harnessed up

A.B. Malte helps Rolf into the harness

and good cold weather gear was recommended.  Initially, I declined the opportunity, but Jane didn’t.

Having made the decision not to go up, immediately after I took these photos of Jane, I looked to starboard and saw this,

at which point I changed my mind about climbing the mast, as it now seemed like a really good idea. To be honest, I was underdressed for the endeavour,

but it was worth the relative faff of getting the harness on and climbing up.  Between us, Jane and I got some great photos.

As we reached towards the end of the glacial cliff, Kuba announced that we all had an opportunity for an experience we would not forget.

A polar plunge.

Yes, an opportunity to leave a perfectly safe, warm boat and jump into water at a temperature that science describes as “fucking freezing”. Astonishingly, several of the guests were up for this. Less astonishingly, Jane and I were not among them. We watched as the preparations were made: some you would expect, like towels for afterwards

And drinks to warm the lunatics participants;

some less expected, but perfectly sensible given the environment – an armed guard keeping watch.

Lunatics Potential participants gathered to check out the possibilities

And, amazingly, still decided to jump in. One of them, Doina, even did it twice because Denis, her expert videographer boyfriend, didn’t get the footage he wanted first time around!

Magnificent idiocy, rewarded by a shot of Fernet Branca and a re-heat session in the ship’s new sauna. Jane and I (not the only non-participants, I hasten to add) went for a cup of tea to calm down.

There had been a plan for a landing a little further in to the archipelago, but the fog kyboshed that one; it’s not safe to go ashore if you can’t first establish that there are no dangerous creatures around. So we cruised on. Kuba arranged a viewing of a film called “Polar Bears on the Field of Bones”, an extraordinary documentary made single-handedly by Nikita Ovsyanikov, a lunatic researcher who spent several consecutive summers among polar bears on Wrangel Island with only a large stick as a defensive weapon.

Plan B was a Zodiac cruise in Alkefjellet, with the attraction of majestic scenery, some bird life and possibly even arctic foxes, and with dinner brought forward to 6pm so we could go out at 7.30pm into the light arctic evening for the cruise.

The cruise started in a very unusual manner – the skipper grounded the boat. Intentionally, I mean.  We’d been warned, and so thought it might be great to go on to the bow and join the throng who would doubtless be there to record this unusual event.

Actually, a couple of people did eventually join us as, out of the mist, the land loomed

and loomed a bit more.

In due course we grounded, very gently, into the sandy shallows, with quite a spectacular view over the cove – and the mist lifted obligingly.

We went out on the Zodiacs along the coast, past basalt cliffs which are the nesting site, in the right season, for tens of thousands of guillemots, both of the common and Brünnich’s persuasion. The cliffs are perfect in providing nesting sites for the birds.  By this time of year most have left, having hatched and fledged their young, leaving only a cliff face full of guillemot shit.

The red on the snow, by the way, is not what you might think – it’s actually algae which flourish here.

There were still some guillemots here, some solitary,

others in gangs,

and some still with chicks who haven’t yet left the safety of their perch.

Leaving the nesting site is perilous for the chicks, because of kittiwakes and glaucous gulls swarming in the cliffs above in great numbers,

making a great racket and waiting for the chance to pounce on a chick in the water if it appears to be in difficulties.  We actually witnessed one poor chick being taken by a gull, and saw another gull being chased away by an adult guillemot – a surprise to me, since the gulls are big bully bastards compared with the smaller birds.

As well as guillemots on the cliffs, there were several in the water

making a wonderful noise (sorry, not my classiest video, here).

I had a go at taking some shots of the birds in flight

and coming in to land on the water, something they don’t do very elegantly.

They also appear to be able to move across the surface quite rapidly in a manner similar to penguins porpoising.  I think that’s what’s happening here…

Either that, or it couldn’t quite get airborne – they’re not the world’s most natural fliers.

In places the lower reaches of the guillemot cliffs change from sheer rock to gentler grassy slopes,

inhabited by a different sort of wildlife.

There’s an arctic fox in the picture above.  Yes, there is. There, look.

We had been told that this area had good potential for sighting them, but I hadn’t held out much hope; I guess I was influenced by Jakob in Dovrefjell, who said that they were very rare and shy. Not in this area of Spitzbergen, they aren’t – we saw at least half a dozen of them over the next hour or so, and I was delighted; they’re such pretty creatures. They were in a variety of coats as they morphed from their summer grey into their winter white.

They’re elegant and catlike in their movement – lovely to watch.

They too are on the lookout for any scraps, which might include vulnerable chicks falling from the nesting ledges onto the slopes rather than directly into the sea; this one has made a catch.

The general scenery was pretty striking, too.

On top of one of the towers was a rock formation that looked like a polar bear, watching us.

Right at the end of the Zodiac cruise was a very dramatic glacier.

The scene reveals some interesting geology, too (for those that notice this stuff). On the right-hand side, there’s a very marked demarcation line between basalt (the upper layer) and marble (the lower layer). Basalt is an igneous rock, typically volcanic in origin; marble is sedimentary (my dear Watson). How the one came to lay on top of the other is a mystery to me.

So, this was a pretty varied day, and included some pretty creatures. I was really delighted to see the foxes – an unexpected pleasure. We were very lucky to see them in such numbers, apparently.

The morrow holds in store some opportunities to see some more great scenery, but who knows what the weather will bring? Stay tuned to find out.

 

 

* The BBC has a post describing A23a roughly as we saw it. It once weighed a trillion tons. But its situation is now very different. Because it is now free floating, it is breaking up, according to The News. It’s now half the size it was, at 1,770 sq. km.

Day 5 – What the fox that?

Saturday 3rd July, 2021.  One gets to be obsessed with the weather while on holiday in Iceland.  It’s not a conversation-easer like in England; here, it really matters.  The forecast for the day was hopeful.

but the reality was much better.

Ísafjörður looked lovely in the sunshine; and Jane pointed out that it also has an unusual-looking church. It seems to be a thing here.

We set off into the sunshine with a song in our hearts and a long day’s driving ahead.

Then we ran into the fog.

However, Dagur Had A Plan, and so took us up into the hills, where we could get some good views looking down on the clouds, which is always nice.

Today, we learned the proper Icelandic word for the “Valley Fog” that we’d first noticed yesterday. It’s called “dalalæða”; “dala” means valley, if my knowledge of Swedish is anything to go by.  This is a form of sea mist, but it’s pretty much unique to Iceland, as far as I can make out. Every so often for the rest of the day we entered a bank of mist, or it figured as part of the view.  So, for example, we stopped at an outdoor maritime museum at Bolungarvik, and could barely make it out through the mist.

But the mist also provided a lovely backdrop to a photo of Ísafjörður.

Our next stop was at a museum dedicated to the Icelandic Arctic Fox.  Officially, this is the same as arctic foxes found elsewhere; but an interesting information film gave the impression that actually the genetic makeup of most of the Iceland population is diverging from those elsewhere. It’s an appealing place

with coffee and cake if you want it, and several (stuffed) examples of foxes, such as this, which we judged to be the finest specimen on display.

Both Jane and I were under the impression that arctic foxes had a winter (white) coat, which changed into a summer (dark) coat.  It turns out that we were wrong; there are two “morphs”, white and blue, and while their coats may change a little in colour, it’s not the transformation that we’d previously thought.

And outside, in a large caged-off area, they have a real, live, fox.

Arctic fox cub

It’s just a pup; a Bambi fox, because apparently it’s parents were shot. It’s not known what its future holds, but for now, it is supremely cute.

Further cuteness was on display a short while later, as Dagur suddenly braked, turned round and went back along the road we’d come along.  It turned out that he’d spotted a lone seal on a rock, and so stopped and took some photos.

There is an “official” place to view seals a little further around the coast, so we stopped there; but one really needed binoculars to see the seals; my general-purpose lens could barely pick them out.

and my phone couldn’t do the scene justice, either.

(though, once again, this image is a tribute to the imaging power of modern phone cameras.  I could barely distinguish between seals and stones with the naked eye).

Shortly after this, we had a scenery stop at Rjukandi, where there’s a pretty cascade. But this is Iceland, so it’s not a real waterfall.  We did venture off-piste to try for a photo of three others.

I particularly wanted to capture this as a wonderful demonstration, suitable for any geography/geology lesson, of water’s power of erosion.

It was time for lunch, and serendipity stepped in at this point, as we were near a place where we could see a round of Vestfjarðavíkingurinn 2021, the Icelandic Strongest Man competition.

It was slightly surreal to see these large chaps congregating

and I was lucky enough to get a little video footage of a couple of the contestants

after which they came into the restaurant for lunch.

The commentator is a very big name in Iceland – Magnus Ver Magnusson, who won the World’s Strongest Man competition four times.

After this unusual lunch stop, we next visited Saltverk, a small factory producing some of Iceland’s (apparently) famous sea salt in a 100% sustainable fashion, based on a geothermal source at Sudureyri.

This heat is used to evaporate salt water taken from the sea from its normal salinity of around 3.5%, in stages, to around 28%, where the salt starts to separate out in its tanks and sink to the bottom, where it can be collected.

and then put into drying racks before being packaged up.

The salt is mixed with other ingredients such as thyme, or smoked, or sold untouched by further processing.

The rest of the day consisted of simply getting to our hotel, and thus completing a journey of over 350km.  The scarcity of towns and villages as we travelled underlines how isolated these parts of Iceland are, and goes some way to explaining why some places are struggling – the distances are too large for any kind of convenience in living.

We passed a couple of noteworthy buildings on our route to the hotel:  a house that looks more like a small castle (unoccupied definitely, and abandoned, it would seem);

and another for our informal collection of unusual church buildings – this one at Holmavik with rainbow steps.

And so here we are at our hotel, at Laugarbakki – a modern and quite imposing edifice, with, as we’ve now come to expect, very good food in the restaurant.  Jane had a salad which included unusual-coloured pea pods:

She didn’t eat it, of course, as she’s not a Purple Peapod Eater.

So here we are at the end of a varied day. We have a similarly mixed programme of things to look forward to tomorrow, so I’d be very glad if you were to come back and Read All About It then. For now, good night!