Sas­send­a­len

Sat
28 Mar
2015

Sas­send­a­len is one of Spitsbergen’s big­gest val­leys: 30 km long from Rabot­breen to Tem­pel­fjord and 5 km wide, it is making a strong impres­si­on of a very wide land­scape when you stand in the midd­le of it, whe­re a big melt­wa­ter river is run­ning in the sum­mer.

But it is espe­ci­al­ly some of the smal­ler tri­bu­t­a­ry val­leys that have scenic aspects which catch the eye of the obser­ver and the atten­ti­on of the pho­to­grapher. The fro­zen water­fall in Eskerd­a­len and the can­yon-like gor­ge in Bratt­li­da­len, whe­re you can touch the steep rock­walls on both sides at the same time in some places.

Click on thumb­nail to open an enlar­ged ver­si­on of the spe­ci­fic pho­to.

Fred­heim, the famous hut of the legen­da­ry hun­ter Hil­mar Nøis, is rea­dy to move. The three old buil­dings, inclu­ding the uni­que main buil­ding with two flo­ors, initi­al­ly built by Hil­mar Nøis in 1924 and regu­lar­ly used by him and his fami­ly until 1963, are threa­ten­ed by coas­tal ero­si­on and would not have sur­vi­ved the next cou­ple of years in their pre­sent posi­ti­on. Now they are stan­ding on hea­vy struc­tu­ral steel work, sta­bi­li­zed with woo­den beams and rea­dy to be pul­led up one ter­race on to safe ter­rain (this has been done suc­cessful­ly mean­while).

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