Spits­ber­gen, Ant­ar­c­ti­ca

The polar night has brought the usu­al mix­tu­re of cold, wind, snow, dark­ness and the Dark Sea­son Blues Fes­ti­val to Spits­ber­gen. The Blues Fes­ti­val was last weekend’s pro­gram­me, both locals and tou­rists were enthu­si­a­stic – as usu­al. The Dark Sea­son Blues Fes­ti­val has built up a good repu­ta­ti­on far bey­ond Lon­gye­ar­by­en and Nor­way, attrac­ting inter­na­tio­nal stars, guests and atten­ti­on.

Today (Tues­day, 04 Novem­ber), the lar­gest exer­cise of emer­gen­cy ser­vices is going on that Spits­ber­gen has ever seen. Seve­ral hundred reli­ef units and per­sons acting as inju­red peo­p­le are see­mingly tur­ning Lon­gye­ar­by­en into a place struck by a major dis­as­ter. This is exact­ly what they want to be pre­pared for, just in case. You never know. It seems to be a pret­ty safe place, but things can always hap­pen.

Com­pa­ra­tively calm times here in the web­site-publi­shing- and book­wri­ting- work­shop at spitsbergen-svalbard.com. The polar night has clo­sed the curtain for major acti­vi­ties in the far north, resul­ting in an unu­su­al amount of time to push on with pro­jects that have been wai­ting for far too long alre­a­dy. The­re has been so much tra­ve­ling in the last years and other things that have kept me busy, but now is the time to get going with pro­jects like the island info pages and the pan­ora­ma sides on spitsbergen-svalbard.com, which are under­go­ing impro­ve­ments and amend­ments. And I had almost for­got­ten that the arc­tic wild­life spe­ci­es did not yet have their indi­vi­du­al pages in Eng­lish – embar­ras­sing, real­ly! But now they are the­re, seve­ral dozen new indi­vi­du­al pages.

As an aut­hor, I am enjoy­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get going with seve­ral pro­jects. The­re will be new books, that is for sure. It will still take some time, but I am get­ting on with it. More about it when I am get­ting the­re.

Do you agree that spitsbergen-svalbard.com is a gre­at re­source for any arc­tic enthu­si­ast?

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