Thu
2 Jul
2015

As yes­ter­day, I am sit­ting to wri­te my litt­le blog late in the evening. The­se days are so full, the land­scape in nor­thwes­tern Spits­ber­gen is so den­se­ly packed with so many things. So many islands whe­re one could go to have a look to see what is the­re. And you are glued to your bino­cu­lars here. Behind every point, on every slo­pe the­re might be a polar bear. And on one slo­pe, the­re was a polar bear, slee­ping on a snow field. On many bea­ches, the­re could be wal­rus­ses. And on a litt­le sker­ry, the­re were two wal­rus­ses. Which is quite unu­sual­ly. Nor­mal­ly, they are lying on bea­ches or ice floes, not on rocks. Someone said the­se ones were pro­ba­b­ly rai­sed by Har­bour seals. They like to lie on rocks.

It was a bit of wha­lers’ wea­ther in the­se old wha­ling waters. Grey, a bit win­dy, the occa­sio­nal bit of snow and rain in the air. In the late after­noon, the sun came almost out, cas­ting light on the litt­le pen­in­su­la whe­re Wal­de­mar and Sal­ly lift a long, long time ago in their lonely hut, which they had once built on a whaler’s gra­ve.

The Nor­thwest: polar bear coun­try – 2nd July 2015

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

We saw two more polar bears during the later evening, both making their way on steep, rocky slo­pes. The first one, equip­ped with a col­lar with satel­li­te tra­cker from the Nor­we­gi­an Polar Insti­tu­te and thus obvious­ly a lady bear, was busy making hers­elf unpo­pu­lar among­st the owners of various birds’ nests on an island. The second one was stal­king a reinde­er for almost a kilo­met­re in Raud­fjord, befo­re it gave up.