247. Journey to The Arctic
I’ve had this on my bucket list for over a decade. It’s the last item on that realistic list before ‘space tourism. I want to go to Svalbard to see the abandoned mining towns. I want to get an icebreaker towards the North Pole and be in the 12 most northerly people on this beautiful planet.
I walked out of an extremely well-paid job last year that I’d been working since July 2nd 2012. 9 years to the day on July 2nd 2021 I gave my notice in and my life changed. I started planning this trip, and set a ceremonial target 365 days away of July 2nd 2022.
July 1st 2022:
I kiss my wife and son goodbye and head to Hitchin, half way to Heathrow as my band has a big show. There’s some murmurs in the news about an airline strike, but nothing is definite. The airline emails to say that my first flight (to Oslo is safe) but my connection up to the arctic is at risk, if there is a strike, it will be cancelled.
“But what happens if I get stuck in Oslo?”
“You will be stranded. Alone. Far from home. We will not get you a hotel or refund as it is the pilots union, not us. You will have no way of getting home”
“Your trip and all expenses (icebreaker, gun hire, ATV hire, etc) are too late to be cancelled. You will loose [amount redacted as I know my wife will read this]”
The union talks were due to finish at 00:00 not long after I got off stage and was in my hotel room constantly refreshing my phone. No news. Do I even leave for Heathrow?
Then I got news. “Talks will go on to 4am. If there is no agreement, we strike at 4am.”
Fuck. I leave at 4am.
I set off. I park my car and get the bus to the terminal. I speak to the airline; There’s no news. They reiterate that news will probably come while I’m in the air in the way to Oslo.
I stand in the middle of Terminal 2, on my own and just openly cry with stress. Meeting new clients for work, I essentially have 2 job interviews a week and would like to think I’m pretty good with stress. But I didn’t cope and I just cried out loud like a man.
I wave goodbye to my luggage and get in the plane. I’m shifting in my seat. I’m biting my nails. I’m so so nervous. I land in Oslo. There’s no news. But my flight is showing as active. I get on it. It takes off. The pilot announces the strike is delayed by a couple of days.
A few hours later the blue sea below starts to turn white with snow and ice. I couldn’t believe I was here.
The pilot comes in the loud speaker “it’s a bit misty around the landing strip. I’m gonna twist it in through the mountains, but it’ll be blind. So you’ll see the landing strip the same time as me. Chances are I’ll be too high or low, so I’ll hit the gas, then come round for another go. Nothing to worry about”
The adventure begins:
So my basecamp for my Arctic shenanigans is Longyearbyen. It is the northernmost community in the world, with around 2,000 people and 3,400 polar bears, and it’s….green?
Wait what? Where’s the snow and sheet ice? (don’t worry, lot of pics of that later). I was as surprised as you. It is snow covered most of the year, but I went mid-summer after a hot spring, and it’s green. Besides, what else do we think the reindeer ate?
Longyearbyen was founded as we know it by an American tourist / businessman in 1906 after he had visited here as a tourist a few years previous. He set up coal mines and all of the associated facilities that miners would need, which eventually became the town / village / basecamp that we know and love today. He unimaginatively called it ‘Longyear-town’ after himself.
He suffered some financial difficulties back in the states during WW1, so in the early 1920s sold all of his mines to the Norwegian company Store Norske, who still own and operate the mines today. They renamed the town ‘Longyearbyen’ to put a Norwegian twist on it, and developed what was already here.
Welcome to Longyearbyen
Mines were set up all over the valley, and the relics of them remain today as protected monuments. They built them well, the first 6” x 6” miners cabins they built 108 years ago still survive to this day, and are where I actually slept for my time on Svalbard!
Miners huts (and bus)
Most of the buildings were razed to the ground by the Nazis during WW2, so virtually everything here now is post-war. Anyway, enough history, what is it like here today?
On my bike around Longyearbyen
So it looks like a normal town….ish.
All pavements are gravel, you wouldn’t want smooth tarmac when it’s frozen 90% of the year. All of the buildings are raised by 6ft to allow snow to drift under them. Bins are all enclosed with heavy hatches, to deter polar bears. All services (water, sewer, etc.) are above ground as it’s impossible to dig. So you find yourself having to climb over a lot of these. NASA installed one of the worlds beefiest fibre optic connections between here and the mainland to carry their satellite tracking data, and are kind enough to let everyone use it, so there’s also cracking 4G.
Longyearbyen Highstreet / village centre
Trees cannot grow here:
We’re over 1,000Km north of the tree line, and 1,298 Km north of the arctic circle. The grasses you see are on the tundra. Around 10cm below the surface is pure ice. I’ve attached a photo where the land has slipped and you can see it.
It is illegal to be born here or to die here.
The law states that you must be able to live completely independently, both from a health point of view and financial. Everyone who is here has chosen to be here, and has been through a lot to get here.
Nybyen (New Town)
It’s virtually impossible to bury people here in the thick permafrost. There is a disused cemetery which houses victims of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. The bodies will be in almost the same condition they were when they were buried over 100 years ago. There were plans to inter them in the early 1990s but fear that the virus might still be present put people off.
There just aren’t the medical facilities for births and deaths. There is one paramedic, but he works in catering, so if you call for an ambulance, he has to finish up there, change uniforms and commute to the ambulance. This gives the place a wonderful atmosphere where there isn’t a ‘local’ snobbery. Everyone who resides here is merely a custodian, before they move away. Those 2,000 people represent 50 nationalities.
Fuel arriving by helicopter
It is under Norwegian sovereignty…
But is truly international, with the Svalbard treaty stating that “No nationality will be treated any differently to Norwegian” Which includes commercial ventures. If you want to go and start pulling coal out the mountains, feel free, no visa required. It has its own set of laws, and taxes completely independently.
There are good facilities:
It may surprise you to learn that a village of only 2,000 people has a university! But it’s the ideal location for polar studies, so why not! There’s a couple of bars and a couple of restaurants, I tried them all while I was here and you’ll here more about them later. I’ll also be doing separate blog posts on prices, and guns!
Moose Burger
There’s a lot of wildlife:
Within hours of arriving I’d seen my first Arctic fox run past. There’s the obvious bear risk, but it’s way more likely you’ll see whales frolicking in the fjord, or seals and walruses chilling on the beach. There are so many reindeer just wandering about too, like this guy.
The Polar Bear threat is real:
There are constant reminders about our neighbours. There are 2,000 people on Svalbard and 3,400 polar bears. There are posters around town advising you about what to do if you encounter one, as well as more subtle things like; all of the bins have heavy hatches to deter bears from wandering into town to find food.
So Store Norske bought the mines off of the American tourist / businessman John Longyear in 1916, and set about building some timber huts for its miners to sleep in. They done a cracking job, as 108 harsh winters later they’re still here, and will also be where I’m going to sleep.
In 1999 a local eccentric lady by the name of Mary-Ann Dahle bought the old barracks and began making it more appealing to visitors. She’s done it perfectly, keeping the authenticity, but adding her own unique eccentric touches. I hang my thick parka coat up between two thicker miners coats. I take my boots off (as is tradition) and place them between some mining boots and a helmet with ear defenders and head torch.
Passing through a dimly lit corridor, past a stuffed polar bear bursting through one of the walls I settle into my room. I realise I haven’t eaten in 24 hours, so decide to see what’s cooking. We’re currently 1,300 Km deep into the arctic circle, meaning were also around 1000Km above the planets tree line. That’s right, the nearest tree is over 1,000Km away. So Mary Ann decided to add a conservatory to the back of the barracks and fill it with trees. This must be the only place in the world where you can watch the Northern Lights sat under a palm tree. I’m admiring the polar bear skull under the palm tree when Vitali approaches me to tell me he’s roasting a seal.
Apologies now to any vegetarians, but is was gorgeous. The nicest meat I’ve ever tasted. It’s so soft, somewhere between lamb and marshmallow. Some fat, but mainly meat, and not at all fishy. I’m on the red wine, it’s expensive, but then again when you visualise a bottle making the journey I’ve just made, but all the way from Italy, it’s not bad. Then of course you have to factor in that you can’t bury or recycle here, so the empty bottle has to be shipped to the Swedish mainland when I’m done with it.
I’m not sure whether it’s the conservatory, the meat sweats, or the palm trees, but I’m actually feeling a little bit warm! I head outside with my glass of wine into the cool arctic air, and spot the old miners bus parked up. That’s one advantage of being so isolated here, nothing is fake – It’ll cost too much to import a fake bus, this is the real deal.
I climb aboard and settle into the drivers seat. The brown leather is cracked beyond belief, creating an abstract tapestry in the shape of an arse print. It is however still surprisingly comfy and as I sink into the leather, I rest one hand on the well worn gear knob and take a sip of my wine, this beats any gentleman’s club.
I want to get out of basecamp, over land. There’s no roads out and I cant use a snowmobile as it’s a mixture of snow and gravel at the moment. I need an ATV (all terrain vehicle) or as us Brits call them ‘Quads’.
So I met up with an American ATV instructor called Joey who gave me some lessons. For full disclosure I’ve never driven anything like a quad or motorbike before. I passed a short assessment and was deemed competent enough to be let loose on any Norwegian public road. With Joeys quad tooled up with a rifle safe and a .46 Smith & Wesson on his belt (Did I mention he was American?) we sped out of basecamp past the polar bear limit sign.
We stopped off at Gruve #7, the last remaining active mine in Longyearbyen. We could hear the coal rattling through the crinkly tin shafts above us, and occasionally a truck full of coal would thunder past us to the power station in Longyearbyen. I loved the simplicity of this place that you can see the coal being mined, driven a few miles, and burnt to provide power for my camera charger and hair straighteners.
That said, burning coal in the Arctic doesn’t sound a great idea does it? Well Store Norske seem to agree and are planning to close the mine next year (2023) The plan is to temporarily go to diesel, which again sounds a terrible idea, but I was surprised to learn it is twice as clean as coal still. It was planned to go to diesel for a couple of years while a more eco solution was sought. However with the Ukraine crisis (about 3 months in at the time of writing) is looking like this will not happen.
We passed a husky farm (Svalbard Huskies) and the owners were outside tending to the 120 dogs that call this place home, so we pulled in for a natter. Humans only get fed and watered after the dogs, so I chipped in by filling up the water bowls, well TBH it was more cuddles than work. It was easy to tell which dogs had been out that morning as they just wanted rest, while others were going spare at the attention.
Eventually we sat down for coffee and cakes. I was keen to know what would happen if you created the Lamborghini of dog sleds, and just had all 120 dogs on (because I’m a 12 year old at heart). I learned that it’s all down to braking, and how much force you can exert. I joked that I’d be pretty good as I’m on the Pasta and of body shapes. But the host said that while she was a mere 60Kg, she could excerpt 100Kg of braking by pushing up on the handle bar with all her might.
Back on the ATV and I was curious to go and see what looked like the remains of an old control tower a few miles up the fjord. Just behind the control tower was the old landing strip from WW2. During the war our fantastic RAF evacuated all 965 residents to the Scottish highlands, just before the Germans arrived to burn the whole town to the ground. Their main interest in the archipelago was actually for weather prediction. The further North you go the better notice you get on the weather.
When the war had ended the RAF were flying everyone back here, but were surprised to see a German JU-88 plane still parked up on the strip. So they made another pass and emptied the remains of their ammunition into it. What they didn’t know was it had been abandoned as it had damaged its landing gear landing in the soft ground. Riddled with bullet holes, it has sat there since. Spending most of its year covered in protective snow, the metalwork is still of great integrity.
Icebreakers:
Even with the services of an icebreaker, getting over to Pyramiden and Barnetsberg still comes with its own complications. You cant just charge an icebreaker at it in mid winter, or even spring and autumn as the thick ice would get shunted into the timber landing stage and smash it. In Spring and autumn the ice isn’t consistent enough to snowmobile over it. Leaving us with just a few weeks in summer when you can sail the 110Km from Longyearbyen basecamp to Pyramiden, or Barentsberg.
So with my flights booked for a very specific period, I was confident I could make it. Then around 4 months before my trip Russia invaded Ukraine and everyone quite rightly started boycotting anything Russian. Including all of the Norwegian icebreaker owners. My heart sank and I cried a little bit. Through my tear stained face, I stayed up night after night trawling the net, looking for someone who owned an icebreaker, and was willing to sail me to the Russian territory.
Most of my Google searches ended with the Foreign Office webpage that warned me in big bold letters “We advise against all travel to any Russian occupied territory due to the volatility of the current situation. All travel insurance is invalid, so if you do travel, please ensure you have sufficient funds to repatriate your body in the event of death”.
Then one night came a reply from one of the hundreds of people I’d contacted “I see these people as my neighbours. We both celebrate the same sun rising. To visit them is not supporting Moscow”. He claimed to have an icebreaker, and was willing to sail me to Pyramiden and Barentsberg. He gave me his bank details before signing off “С уважением” (Kind Regards in Russian) “Stig”
Zodiac and spare fuel
So I done what anyone else would have done, and emptied my bank account into his and crossed my fingers that he was genuine.
A few months later I’m standing on the floating pontoon at Longyearbyen harbour, looking out across the foggy Adventfjorden. Cometh the hour, cometh the Stig. In front of me is the 35m long MS Billefjord, sporting the Faroe flag and I’m welcomed on board with open arms. I’m shown around the roomy ship which usually holds up to 100 or so passengers which is split across two internal decks and the poop deck.
I was given a safety briefing on the lifejackets, which would make my corpse easier to find (You’re dead within the minute in waters this temperature) and worked through the itinerary of the day. We set sail and I climbed up the ladder to the small ‘sun deck’ above the bridge and stood in the sub zero winds looking out for the wildlife. Fulmars, which I’d previously dismissed as ‘brown seagulls’ playfully flew alongside, within touching distance. Puffins would occasionally scarper out of our way, doing their ‘running on water while flapping’ thing.
After around three house of sailing I smell a familiar smell; BBQ charcoals being lit. I look down off roof of the bridge and see the Filipino crew have a decent fire going below. I chat to them for half an hour about how they ended up on Svalbard while the flames died down.
We filled the grill with ribs and I went to the bar for some wine. We sat on deck in the sun (despite it being in the minus temperatures) and enjoyed the food together, surrounded by endless ocean, sky, and the freshest Arctic air.
After lunch we pressed on for another couple of hours before shutting off the engine and drifting in close to the Nordenskiöldbreen glacier. There was pure silence. The birds that had followed us for hours had peeled off and not come this far. The quiet swishing of water was occasionally broken by a scraping ‘thunk’ sound as lumps of ice scratched past the hull. My eyes scanned the glacier for polar bears, but there were none, there hasn’t been a sighting here for over a month now.
An almighty crack sounded across the water, similar to a thunder strike as a huge chunk of ice, the size of a house broke off from the glacier and hit the sea water in a huge splash. Rising temperature are hitting the Arctic at seven times the rate of Europe, and it’s starkly apparent. The glacier in front of me now is significantly smaller than it was this time last year.
I stood for a whole hour breathing in the fresh Arctic air and just watching the glacier, taking in its smooth curves and sharp ridges. Some areas of the ice appear a cool shade of blue; this is where bubbles have been trapped in the ice, probably around 3,000 years ago, and are now reflecting the sea and the sky.
The captain offers me a whisky, but I awkwardly reply that I cant stand the stuff, and that the only spirit I really drink is Jägermeister. He appears a couple of minutes later with a glass of Jaeger and hands it to me, asking “Ice?” I wonder why he didn’t get any when he was getting it? I hear a whirring and realise that the crane at the front of the ship is hoisting the zodiac rib boat over me. As soon as the rib has hit the ocean the captain has throw in a rifle, an ice pick, and himself and is soon speeding towards the huge chunk of ice that broke off the glacier. He returns a couple of minutes later, proudly brandishing a chunk of ice about the size of a rugby ball. He skilfully strikes it with the ice pick and an almost perfect ice cube drops into my drink. “C’mon, lets take you to Pyramiden” he laughs as he climbs back up to the bridge and fire up the engines.
Speaking of wine, there was a fantastic bar on board! I ordered a glass of red and when I was told that the card machine wasn't working as we were in Russian waters... Well I kinda ordered 4 more thinking I'd get away with it. But as soon as we got back into international waters, the captain caught up with me brandishing this:
The journey to Barentsberg was an almost identical experience to this. Different day, but same boat, same crew, Ice from a different glacier. The only difference being was when I boarded the captain asked if I minded a slightly different itinerary, to drop off some scientists at the Czech Polar Research Station the other side of the archipelago. It was a 5 hour spike out of our way, but I didn’t mind one bit.
Stranded:
You may remember my anguish and distress travelling here due to the pilot strikes. These were luckily delayed for a couple of days until after I’d arrived and were quickly forgotten about as I settled into Svalbard life. Then came the email I was dreading “Your flight home has been cancelled”
Originally, I just needed two flights home, LYB to OSL, then OSL to LHR. I found out that it was only my OSL-LHR that was cancelled. I found myself another one a few hours after the cancelled one and booked that. Simples.
Then they emailed me to say the first flight was now also cancelled so my second flight would be useless. But this was followed by some good news: “The following replacement flights have automatically been booked”.
After a sigh of relief I continued reading:
“Longyearbyen to Tromso”
Oh OK
“Then Tromso to Oslo”
Go on…
“Then Oslo to Stavanger”
Wait what?
“Then a 19 hour wait in Stavanger airport, then fly to Copenhagen in Denmark”
What? Why? Denmark?!
“Then a 40 min transfer, meaning you’ll probably miss your last flight to London”
But how will I….
“Total travel time 47 hours”
Oh God this cant get any worse….
“Replacement flights are being booked a week after next”
Right…
I know what you’re thinking, “Boo hoo, you’re stuck on holiday” and to a point I accept that, I’m loving it here, but there are a lot of complications. Where will I stay? There’s a very limited number of bed spaces here. What about my medication? What about my work? My airport parking? But most of all I desperately missed my wife and son.
There’s not that many regular flights here, and they’re generally only by one airline. 80% of the striking pilots belong to this one airline. So for a week – no one came, and no one left. Rival airlines applied to run ‘rescue flights’ but these do not happen instantly, and passenger lists must be submitted 48 hours in advance etc.
This created a very strange, but very comforting sense of camaraderie at basecamp. We were all here together, on this rock in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, cut off from the next closest town even by 950Km of sea.
We were isolated. When the International Space station passed 250Km overhead, they were the closest human life to us.
The atmosphere in the village was lovely and throughout Saturday it felt as if it was building. Meetups were starting to be arranged on Facebook and I’d agreed to meet some strangers later that night. It was a beautiful day with not a cloud in the sky, so I decided to treat myself to a pint of the local beer while contemplating my situation. I went to Kroa, which has a lovely outdoor seating area. The staff there are super friendly and if you’re travelling alone, they go out of their way to strike up conversation; I told them of my situation and they joked I should start work there. I sat with the sun on my face, cold beer in hand, feeling guilty about all of the sympathy I was getting for being ‘stranded’.
I’m always keen to always try new foods and have been blessed with no intolerances or allergies, so will pretty much eat anything that is presented to me. The one thing that has always straddled my curiosity and conscience is whale meat. I’m not sure what makes a whale more sentient in my mind than a cow or a pig, maybe it’s the way in which they’re hunted? But a whale is up there in the league table of meats, somewhere near ‘human’.
But also, opportunities like this don’t come up very often and I knew I’d regret not trying it – I just hoped I didn’t like it. The meat is really dark, almost black. It’s beefy like a mammal and not at all fishy. It’s cooked quite rare and is soft with a similar texture to lamb. It smells a like you’d expect whale to smell, like the sea, but not fish. I hate to say it, but it was delicious. I finished the whole meal and agreed with myself that my curiosity has been satisfied and I’ll never eat it again.
There’s a clever arrangement where the end of the shopping centre with the toilets can be closed off of an evening to provide a cloaks room between the Stationen restaurant and the Karlsberger bar. So I headed across the corridor to the world’s most northern bar. It’s uncomfortably dark when you walk in, but your eyes soon become adjusted. I sat down with a wine waiting for the Facebook strangers to arrive. There was a small group on the next table with a fantastically drunk elderly gent, enthusiastically telling a story to which his group were captivated. I do not speak a word of Norwegian, so cant tell you what the story was about. However, as well as wild hand movements he punctuated the story with sound effects; It definitely involved an old and unreliable vehicle, an angry wild animal, and an explosion.
I recognised a guy at the bar from the Facbook group, Issac. He instantly reminded me of the straight edge guy from the Beastie Boys, so I wasn’t at all surprised to learn he was from New York. He kindly bought the next round; a wine for me and an exotic whisky for himself. The bar has over 1,000 types of cognac and as such has quite an impressive shelving / racking system of spirits. The moment he learnt that the bar lady had to physically climb the racking to fetch his drink a new game was born.
We were soon joined by Birk, a Norwegian tour guide who couldn’t have been a day over 23. Conversation seamlessly flowed through what bought us here, gun laws in our respective lands, and of course the pilot situation. The way men’s conversations work is that one person tells an anecdote, then the next person says “that’s nothing…” before giving a slightly more extreme version of that. Standard. Everyone has a story or two about being stopped at an airport, but Birks definitely won and delivered in an almost cartoon Norwegian accent had me in stitches. See, Birk is into his extreme sports and base jumping and was on his way to an extreme sports festival in the US. The only thing he couldn’t fit in his hold luggage was his parachute. You can imagine the questioning he got trying to board a 747 clutching his own parachute!
The night grew old and Birk got news of another group celebrating our isolation out in the midnight sun. Feeling like a third wheel I made my excuses as we were putting on our coats. I suggested a selfie before we leave.
A random guy in a group just arriving photobombed us and we all laughed. We made small talk as the others left and I found he was a sailor from Ireland called Ed. When he found out I was on Svalbard to celebrate a birthday he wouldn’t let me leave until he’d bought me a drink. So off came the coat and I staggered back into Karlsberger.
The two couples and myself began chatting and I found out that Mark the other guy in the group was from a town close to where I grew up, and we had even shared some pubs in our youths. I asked him about his pilot strike situation, and he responded “Oh no, we sailed here”. I couldn’t believe it, he was a cruise ship w*nker, they all seemed so normal too. He saw the disappointment in my face “No, we sailed here. From Essex”. He showed me photos of his tiny boat and I was amazed it made it here. I asked how long it took, not really knowing what to expect “Seven months” came the reply.
Mark was only just older than me and retired, when I asked about his career he wouldn’t elaborate beyond “I was a w*nker in an office in London” and I didn’t want to push it. Blown away by their sense of adventure and my own stranded situation I staggered through the blazing midnight sun back to my miners cabin.
Epilogue:
I managed to extend my stay at the accommodation. They were fully booked, but inevitably as people were unable to arrive my room became vacant and I just continued my stay. I extended my car parking at double the cost. My work clients were sympathetic. My wife and son were amazing, although she does still mention it…
A day before my epic replacement flights, ONE of them was cancelled, and the whole journey fell through. The airline never offered me a replacement and as far as they know, I’m still stranded there.
I booked all of my own replacement flights at extremely short notice on credit card. They were more than the whole holiday combined (inc. flights, accommodation, icebreakers, ATVs, guides, etc.) But enough was enough and I had to get home. That said, I can’t recommend enough being stranded in a 6”x6” hut in the middle of the arctic for 11 days.
I walked out of an extremely well-paid job last year that I’d been working since July 2nd 2012. 9 years to the day on July 2nd 2021 I gave my notice in and my life changed. I started planning this trip, and set a ceremonial target 365 days away of July 2nd 2022.
July 1st 2022:
I kiss my wife and son goodbye and head to Hitchin, half way to Heathrow as my band has a big show. There’s some murmurs in the news about an airline strike, but nothing is definite. The airline emails to say that my first flight (to Oslo is safe) but my connection up to the arctic is at risk, if there is a strike, it will be cancelled.
“But what happens if I get stuck in Oslo?”
“You will be stranded. Alone. Far from home. We will not get you a hotel or refund as it is the pilots union, not us. You will have no way of getting home”
“Your trip and all expenses (icebreaker, gun hire, ATV hire, etc) are too late to be cancelled. You will loose [amount redacted as I know my wife will read this]”
The union talks were due to finish at 00:00 not long after I got off stage and was in my hotel room constantly refreshing my phone. No news. Do I even leave for Heathrow?
Then I got news. “Talks will go on to 4am. If there is no agreement, we strike at 4am.”
Fuck. I leave at 4am.
I set off. I park my car and get the bus to the terminal. I speak to the airline; There’s no news. They reiterate that news will probably come while I’m in the air in the way to Oslo.
I stand in the middle of Terminal 2, on my own and just openly cry with stress. Meeting new clients for work, I essentially have 2 job interviews a week and would like to think I’m pretty good with stress. But I didn’t cope and I just cried out loud like a man.
I wave goodbye to my luggage and get in the plane. I’m shifting in my seat. I’m biting my nails. I’m so so nervous. I land in Oslo. There’s no news. But my flight is showing as active. I get on it. It takes off. The pilot announces the strike is delayed by a couple of days.
A few hours later the blue sea below starts to turn white with snow and ice. I couldn’t believe I was here.
The pilot comes in the loud speaker “it’s a bit misty around the landing strip. I’m gonna twist it in through the mountains, but it’ll be blind. So you’ll see the landing strip the same time as me. Chances are I’ll be too high or low, so I’ll hit the gas, then come round for another go. Nothing to worry about”
The adventure begins:
So my basecamp for my Arctic shenanigans is Longyearbyen. It is the northernmost community in the world, with around 2,000 people and 3,400 polar bears, and it’s….green?
Wait what? Where’s the snow and sheet ice? (don’t worry, lot of pics of that later). I was as surprised as you. It is snow covered most of the year, but I went mid-summer after a hot spring, and it’s green. Besides, what else do we think the reindeer ate?
Longyearbyen was founded as we know it by an American tourist / businessman in 1906 after he had visited here as a tourist a few years previous. He set up coal mines and all of the associated facilities that miners would need, which eventually became the town / village / basecamp that we know and love today. He unimaginatively called it ‘Longyear-town’ after himself.
He suffered some financial difficulties back in the states during WW1, so in the early 1920s sold all of his mines to the Norwegian company Store Norske, who still own and operate the mines today. They renamed the town ‘Longyearbyen’ to put a Norwegian twist on it, and developed what was already here.
Welcome to Longyearbyen
Mines were set up all over the valley, and the relics of them remain today as protected monuments. They built them well, the first 6” x 6” miners cabins they built 108 years ago still survive to this day, and are where I actually slept for my time on Svalbard!
Miners huts (and bus) Most of the buildings were razed to the ground by the Nazis during WW2, so virtually everything here now is post-war. Anyway, enough history, what is it like here today?
On my bike around Longyearbyen
So it looks like a normal town….ish.
All pavements are gravel, you wouldn’t want smooth tarmac when it’s frozen 90% of the year. All of the buildings are raised by 6ft to allow snow to drift under them. Bins are all enclosed with heavy hatches, to deter polar bears. All services (water, sewer, etc.) are above ground as it’s impossible to dig. So you find yourself having to climb over a lot of these. NASA installed one of the worlds beefiest fibre optic connections between here and the mainland to carry their satellite tracking data, and are kind enough to let everyone use it, so there’s also cracking 4G.
Longyearbyen Highstreet / village centreTrees cannot grow here:
We’re over 1,000Km north of the tree line, and 1,298 Km north of the arctic circle. The grasses you see are on the tundra. Around 10cm below the surface is pure ice. I’ve attached a photo where the land has slipped and you can see it.
It is illegal to be born here or to die here.
The law states that you must be able to live completely independently, both from a health point of view and financial. Everyone who is here has chosen to be here, and has been through a lot to get here.
Nybyen (New Town) It’s virtually impossible to bury people here in the thick permafrost. There is a disused cemetery which houses victims of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. The bodies will be in almost the same condition they were when they were buried over 100 years ago. There were plans to inter them in the early 1990s but fear that the virus might still be present put people off.
There just aren’t the medical facilities for births and deaths. There is one paramedic, but he works in catering, so if you call for an ambulance, he has to finish up there, change uniforms and commute to the ambulance. This gives the place a wonderful atmosphere where there isn’t a ‘local’ snobbery. Everyone who resides here is merely a custodian, before they move away. Those 2,000 people represent 50 nationalities.
Fuel arriving by helicopter
It is under Norwegian sovereignty…
But is truly international, with the Svalbard treaty stating that “No nationality will be treated any differently to Norwegian” Which includes commercial ventures. If you want to go and start pulling coal out the mountains, feel free, no visa required. It has its own set of laws, and taxes completely independently.
There are good facilities:
It may surprise you to learn that a village of only 2,000 people has a university! But it’s the ideal location for polar studies, so why not! There’s a couple of bars and a couple of restaurants, I tried them all while I was here and you’ll here more about them later. I’ll also be doing separate blog posts on prices, and guns!
Moose Burger
There’s a lot of wildlife:
Within hours of arriving I’d seen my first Arctic fox run past. There’s the obvious bear risk, but it’s way more likely you’ll see whales frolicking in the fjord, or seals and walruses chilling on the beach. There are so many reindeer just wandering about too, like this guy.
The Polar Bear threat is real:
There are constant reminders about our neighbours. There are 2,000 people on Svalbard and 3,400 polar bears. There are posters around town advising you about what to do if you encounter one, as well as more subtle things like; all of the bins have heavy hatches to deter bears from wandering into town to find food.
So Store Norske bought the mines off of the American tourist / businessman John Longyear in 1916, and set about building some timber huts for its miners to sleep in. They done a cracking job, as 108 harsh winters later they’re still here, and will also be where I’m going to sleep.
In 1999 a local eccentric lady by the name of Mary-Ann Dahle bought the old barracks and began making it more appealing to visitors. She’s done it perfectly, keeping the authenticity, but adding her own unique eccentric touches. I hang my thick parka coat up between two thicker miners coats. I take my boots off (as is tradition) and place them between some mining boots and a helmet with ear defenders and head torch.
Passing through a dimly lit corridor, past a stuffed polar bear bursting through one of the walls I settle into my room. I realise I haven’t eaten in 24 hours, so decide to see what’s cooking. We’re currently 1,300 Km deep into the arctic circle, meaning were also around 1000Km above the planets tree line. That’s right, the nearest tree is over 1,000Km away. So Mary Ann decided to add a conservatory to the back of the barracks and fill it with trees. This must be the only place in the world where you can watch the Northern Lights sat under a palm tree. I’m admiring the polar bear skull under the palm tree when Vitali approaches me to tell me he’s roasting a seal.
Apologies now to any vegetarians, but is was gorgeous. The nicest meat I’ve ever tasted. It’s so soft, somewhere between lamb and marshmallow. Some fat, but mainly meat, and not at all fishy. I’m on the red wine, it’s expensive, but then again when you visualise a bottle making the journey I’ve just made, but all the way from Italy, it’s not bad. Then of course you have to factor in that you can’t bury or recycle here, so the empty bottle has to be shipped to the Swedish mainland when I’m done with it.
I’m not sure whether it’s the conservatory, the meat sweats, or the palm trees, but I’m actually feeling a little bit warm! I head outside with my glass of wine into the cool arctic air, and spot the old miners bus parked up. That’s one advantage of being so isolated here, nothing is fake – It’ll cost too much to import a fake bus, this is the real deal.
I climb aboard and settle into the drivers seat. The brown leather is cracked beyond belief, creating an abstract tapestry in the shape of an arse print. It is however still surprisingly comfy and as I sink into the leather, I rest one hand on the well worn gear knob and take a sip of my wine, this beats any gentleman’s club.
I want to get out of basecamp, over land. There’s no roads out and I cant use a snowmobile as it’s a mixture of snow and gravel at the moment. I need an ATV (all terrain vehicle) or as us Brits call them ‘Quads’.
So I met up with an American ATV instructor called Joey who gave me some lessons. For full disclosure I’ve never driven anything like a quad or motorbike before. I passed a short assessment and was deemed competent enough to be let loose on any Norwegian public road. With Joeys quad tooled up with a rifle safe and a .46 Smith & Wesson on his belt (Did I mention he was American?) we sped out of basecamp past the polar bear limit sign.
We stopped off at Gruve #7, the last remaining active mine in Longyearbyen. We could hear the coal rattling through the crinkly tin shafts above us, and occasionally a truck full of coal would thunder past us to the power station in Longyearbyen. I loved the simplicity of this place that you can see the coal being mined, driven a few miles, and burnt to provide power for my camera charger and hair straighteners.
That said, burning coal in the Arctic doesn’t sound a great idea does it? Well Store Norske seem to agree and are planning to close the mine next year (2023) The plan is to temporarily go to diesel, which again sounds a terrible idea, but I was surprised to learn it is twice as clean as coal still. It was planned to go to diesel for a couple of years while a more eco solution was sought. However with the Ukraine crisis (about 3 months in at the time of writing) is looking like this will not happen.
We passed a husky farm (Svalbard Huskies) and the owners were outside tending to the 120 dogs that call this place home, so we pulled in for a natter. Humans only get fed and watered after the dogs, so I chipped in by filling up the water bowls, well TBH it was more cuddles than work. It was easy to tell which dogs had been out that morning as they just wanted rest, while others were going spare at the attention.
Eventually we sat down for coffee and cakes. I was keen to know what would happen if you created the Lamborghini of dog sleds, and just had all 120 dogs on (because I’m a 12 year old at heart). I learned that it’s all down to braking, and how much force you can exert. I joked that I’d be pretty good as I’m on the Pasta and of body shapes. But the host said that while she was a mere 60Kg, she could excerpt 100Kg of braking by pushing up on the handle bar with all her might.
Back on the ATV and I was curious to go and see what looked like the remains of an old control tower a few miles up the fjord. Just behind the control tower was the old landing strip from WW2. During the war our fantastic RAF evacuated all 965 residents to the Scottish highlands, just before the Germans arrived to burn the whole town to the ground. Their main interest in the archipelago was actually for weather prediction. The further North you go the better notice you get on the weather.
When the war had ended the RAF were flying everyone back here, but were surprised to see a German JU-88 plane still parked up on the strip. So they made another pass and emptied the remains of their ammunition into it. What they didn’t know was it had been abandoned as it had damaged its landing gear landing in the soft ground. Riddled with bullet holes, it has sat there since. Spending most of its year covered in protective snow, the metalwork is still of great integrity.
Icebreakers:
Even with the services of an icebreaker, getting over to Pyramiden and Barnetsberg still comes with its own complications. You cant just charge an icebreaker at it in mid winter, or even spring and autumn as the thick ice would get shunted into the timber landing stage and smash it. In Spring and autumn the ice isn’t consistent enough to snowmobile over it. Leaving us with just a few weeks in summer when you can sail the 110Km from Longyearbyen basecamp to Pyramiden, or Barentsberg.
So with my flights booked for a very specific period, I was confident I could make it. Then around 4 months before my trip Russia invaded Ukraine and everyone quite rightly started boycotting anything Russian. Including all of the Norwegian icebreaker owners. My heart sank and I cried a little bit. Through my tear stained face, I stayed up night after night trawling the net, looking for someone who owned an icebreaker, and was willing to sail me to the Russian territory.
Most of my Google searches ended with the Foreign Office webpage that warned me in big bold letters “We advise against all travel to any Russian occupied territory due to the volatility of the current situation. All travel insurance is invalid, so if you do travel, please ensure you have sufficient funds to repatriate your body in the event of death”.
Then one night came a reply from one of the hundreds of people I’d contacted “I see these people as my neighbours. We both celebrate the same sun rising. To visit them is not supporting Moscow”. He claimed to have an icebreaker, and was willing to sail me to Pyramiden and Barentsberg. He gave me his bank details before signing off “С уважением” (Kind Regards in Russian) “Stig”
Zodiac and spare fuel
So I done what anyone else would have done, and emptied my bank account into his and crossed my fingers that he was genuine.
A few months later I’m standing on the floating pontoon at Longyearbyen harbour, looking out across the foggy Adventfjorden. Cometh the hour, cometh the Stig. In front of me is the 35m long MS Billefjord, sporting the Faroe flag and I’m welcomed on board with open arms. I’m shown around the roomy ship which usually holds up to 100 or so passengers which is split across two internal decks and the poop deck.
I was given a safety briefing on the lifejackets, which would make my corpse easier to find (You’re dead within the minute in waters this temperature) and worked through the itinerary of the day. We set sail and I climbed up the ladder to the small ‘sun deck’ above the bridge and stood in the sub zero winds looking out for the wildlife. Fulmars, which I’d previously dismissed as ‘brown seagulls’ playfully flew alongside, within touching distance. Puffins would occasionally scarper out of our way, doing their ‘running on water while flapping’ thing.
After around three house of sailing I smell a familiar smell; BBQ charcoals being lit. I look down off roof of the bridge and see the Filipino crew have a decent fire going below. I chat to them for half an hour about how they ended up on Svalbard while the flames died down.
We filled the grill with ribs and I went to the bar for some wine. We sat on deck in the sun (despite it being in the minus temperatures) and enjoyed the food together, surrounded by endless ocean, sky, and the freshest Arctic air.
After lunch we pressed on for another couple of hours before shutting off the engine and drifting in close to the Nordenskiöldbreen glacier. There was pure silence. The birds that had followed us for hours had peeled off and not come this far. The quiet swishing of water was occasionally broken by a scraping ‘thunk’ sound as lumps of ice scratched past the hull. My eyes scanned the glacier for polar bears, but there were none, there hasn’t been a sighting here for over a month now.
An almighty crack sounded across the water, similar to a thunder strike as a huge chunk of ice, the size of a house broke off from the glacier and hit the sea water in a huge splash. Rising temperature are hitting the Arctic at seven times the rate of Europe, and it’s starkly apparent. The glacier in front of me now is significantly smaller than it was this time last year.
I stood for a whole hour breathing in the fresh Arctic air and just watching the glacier, taking in its smooth curves and sharp ridges. Some areas of the ice appear a cool shade of blue; this is where bubbles have been trapped in the ice, probably around 3,000 years ago, and are now reflecting the sea and the sky.
The captain offers me a whisky, but I awkwardly reply that I cant stand the stuff, and that the only spirit I really drink is Jägermeister. He appears a couple of minutes later with a glass of Jaeger and hands it to me, asking “Ice?” I wonder why he didn’t get any when he was getting it? I hear a whirring and realise that the crane at the front of the ship is hoisting the zodiac rib boat over me. As soon as the rib has hit the ocean the captain has throw in a rifle, an ice pick, and himself and is soon speeding towards the huge chunk of ice that broke off the glacier. He returns a couple of minutes later, proudly brandishing a chunk of ice about the size of a rugby ball. He skilfully strikes it with the ice pick and an almost perfect ice cube drops into my drink. “C’mon, lets take you to Pyramiden” he laughs as he climbs back up to the bridge and fire up the engines.
Speaking of wine, there was a fantastic bar on board! I ordered a glass of red and when I was told that the card machine wasn't working as we were in Russian waters... Well I kinda ordered 4 more thinking I'd get away with it. But as soon as we got back into international waters, the captain caught up with me brandishing this:
The journey to Barentsberg was an almost identical experience to this. Different day, but same boat, same crew, Ice from a different glacier. The only difference being was when I boarded the captain asked if I minded a slightly different itinerary, to drop off some scientists at the Czech Polar Research Station the other side of the archipelago. It was a 5 hour spike out of our way, but I didn’t mind one bit.
Stranded:
You may remember my anguish and distress travelling here due to the pilot strikes. These were luckily delayed for a couple of days until after I’d arrived and were quickly forgotten about as I settled into Svalbard life. Then came the email I was dreading “Your flight home has been cancelled”
Originally, I just needed two flights home, LYB to OSL, then OSL to LHR. I found out that it was only my OSL-LHR that was cancelled. I found myself another one a few hours after the cancelled one and booked that. Simples.
Then they emailed me to say the first flight was now also cancelled so my second flight would be useless. But this was followed by some good news: “The following replacement flights have automatically been booked”.
After a sigh of relief I continued reading:
“Longyearbyen to Tromso”
Oh OK
“Then Tromso to Oslo”
Go on…
“Then Oslo to Stavanger”
Wait what?
“Then a 19 hour wait in Stavanger airport, then fly to Copenhagen in Denmark”
What? Why? Denmark?!
“Then a 40 min transfer, meaning you’ll probably miss your last flight to London”
But how will I….
“Total travel time 47 hours”
Oh God this cant get any worse….
“Replacement flights are being booked a week after next”
Right…
I know what you’re thinking, “Boo hoo, you’re stuck on holiday” and to a point I accept that, I’m loving it here, but there are a lot of complications. Where will I stay? There’s a very limited number of bed spaces here. What about my medication? What about my work? My airport parking? But most of all I desperately missed my wife and son.
There’s not that many regular flights here, and they’re generally only by one airline. 80% of the striking pilots belong to this one airline. So for a week – no one came, and no one left. Rival airlines applied to run ‘rescue flights’ but these do not happen instantly, and passenger lists must be submitted 48 hours in advance etc.
This created a very strange, but very comforting sense of camaraderie at basecamp. We were all here together, on this rock in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, cut off from the next closest town even by 950Km of sea.
We were isolated. When the International Space station passed 250Km overhead, they were the closest human life to us.
The atmosphere in the village was lovely and throughout Saturday it felt as if it was building. Meetups were starting to be arranged on Facebook and I’d agreed to meet some strangers later that night. It was a beautiful day with not a cloud in the sky, so I decided to treat myself to a pint of the local beer while contemplating my situation. I went to Kroa, which has a lovely outdoor seating area. The staff there are super friendly and if you’re travelling alone, they go out of their way to strike up conversation; I told them of my situation and they joked I should start work there. I sat with the sun on my face, cold beer in hand, feeling guilty about all of the sympathy I was getting for being ‘stranded’.
I’m always keen to always try new foods and have been blessed with no intolerances or allergies, so will pretty much eat anything that is presented to me. The one thing that has always straddled my curiosity and conscience is whale meat. I’m not sure what makes a whale more sentient in my mind than a cow or a pig, maybe it’s the way in which they’re hunted? But a whale is up there in the league table of meats, somewhere near ‘human’.
But also, opportunities like this don’t come up very often and I knew I’d regret not trying it – I just hoped I didn’t like it. The meat is really dark, almost black. It’s beefy like a mammal and not at all fishy. It’s cooked quite rare and is soft with a similar texture to lamb. It smells a like you’d expect whale to smell, like the sea, but not fish. I hate to say it, but it was delicious. I finished the whole meal and agreed with myself that my curiosity has been satisfied and I’ll never eat it again.
There’s a clever arrangement where the end of the shopping centre with the toilets can be closed off of an evening to provide a cloaks room between the Stationen restaurant and the Karlsberger bar. So I headed across the corridor to the world’s most northern bar. It’s uncomfortably dark when you walk in, but your eyes soon become adjusted. I sat down with a wine waiting for the Facebook strangers to arrive. There was a small group on the next table with a fantastically drunk elderly gent, enthusiastically telling a story to which his group were captivated. I do not speak a word of Norwegian, so cant tell you what the story was about. However, as well as wild hand movements he punctuated the story with sound effects; It definitely involved an old and unreliable vehicle, an angry wild animal, and an explosion.
I recognised a guy at the bar from the Facbook group, Issac. He instantly reminded me of the straight edge guy from the Beastie Boys, so I wasn’t at all surprised to learn he was from New York. He kindly bought the next round; a wine for me and an exotic whisky for himself. The bar has over 1,000 types of cognac and as such has quite an impressive shelving / racking system of spirits. The moment he learnt that the bar lady had to physically climb the racking to fetch his drink a new game was born.
We were soon joined by Birk, a Norwegian tour guide who couldn’t have been a day over 23. Conversation seamlessly flowed through what bought us here, gun laws in our respective lands, and of course the pilot situation. The way men’s conversations work is that one person tells an anecdote, then the next person says “that’s nothing…” before giving a slightly more extreme version of that. Standard. Everyone has a story or two about being stopped at an airport, but Birks definitely won and delivered in an almost cartoon Norwegian accent had me in stitches. See, Birk is into his extreme sports and base jumping and was on his way to an extreme sports festival in the US. The only thing he couldn’t fit in his hold luggage was his parachute. You can imagine the questioning he got trying to board a 747 clutching his own parachute!
The night grew old and Birk got news of another group celebrating our isolation out in the midnight sun. Feeling like a third wheel I made my excuses as we were putting on our coats. I suggested a selfie before we leave.
A random guy in a group just arriving photobombed us and we all laughed. We made small talk as the others left and I found he was a sailor from Ireland called Ed. When he found out I was on Svalbard to celebrate a birthday he wouldn’t let me leave until he’d bought me a drink. So off came the coat and I staggered back into Karlsberger.
The two couples and myself began chatting and I found out that Mark the other guy in the group was from a town close to where I grew up, and we had even shared some pubs in our youths. I asked him about his pilot strike situation, and he responded “Oh no, we sailed here”. I couldn’t believe it, he was a cruise ship w*nker, they all seemed so normal too. He saw the disappointment in my face “No, we sailed here. From Essex”. He showed me photos of his tiny boat and I was amazed it made it here. I asked how long it took, not really knowing what to expect “Seven months” came the reply.
Mark was only just older than me and retired, when I asked about his career he wouldn’t elaborate beyond “I was a w*nker in an office in London” and I didn’t want to push it. Blown away by their sense of adventure and my own stranded situation I staggered through the blazing midnight sun back to my miners cabin.
Epilogue:
I managed to extend my stay at the accommodation. They were fully booked, but inevitably as people were unable to arrive my room became vacant and I just continued my stay. I extended my car parking at double the cost. My work clients were sympathetic. My wife and son were amazing, although she does still mention it…
A day before my epic replacement flights, ONE of them was cancelled, and the whole journey fell through. The airline never offered me a replacement and as far as they know, I’m still stranded there.
I booked all of my own replacement flights at extremely short notice on credit card. They were more than the whole holiday combined (inc. flights, accommodation, icebreakers, ATVs, guides, etc.) But enough was enough and I had to get home. That said, I can’t recommend enough being stranded in a 6”x6” hut in the middle of the arctic for 11 days.
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