Some new ideas for exciting travels to Spitsbergen in winter 2016: together with Spitzbergen Adventures, we are doing a photo trip into the arctic winter. In March, the regular change between sunlight and darkness is bringing constantly changing light and colours into the arctic winter landscape. Based in Longyearbyen and Barentsburg, we will spend a full week to enjoy and explore the scenic beauty of Spitsbergen, mostly using snow mobiles for transportation, at a time when the light is often at its best, from glacial ice caves to wide valleys and the cold coast (literally: “Svalbard”). Click here for more information about this trip.
By snow mobile into Svalbard’s winter landscape. Sunsets can create stunning light in March.
Additionally, Spitzbergen Adventures has come up with something really new and special: the arctic balloon Adventure. Arctic scenery enjoyed from a bird’s eye view. Since flightseeing using motorized aircraft including planes and helicopters is completely banned, this is a unique and environmentally sound opportunity to see amazing scenery from a totally new perspective. The method has proven to work spectacularly during the solar eclipse in Svalbard in March 2015. Now, Spitzbergen Adventures is offering several departures for those who are keen on this adventure (click here for more info).
Hiking from Longyearbyen to Pyramiden in the polar night does not sound like a good plan. Not having serious equipment does not make it better. If you start such a demanding journey without at least a good sleeping bag, solid winter hiking boots and a weapon (and a lot of other stuff), then you are either crazy or suicidal.
So nobody would even think of this? Wrong. Yesterday (November 23), the Sysselmannen (police; search and rescue agency) had to go out by helicopter to search for a tourist from England who had left Longyearbyen and told people before that this was exactly what he intended to do – on his own. Some locals he had been talking to had contacted the Sysselmannen.
As it turned out, the many warning the man had received had already been enough to make him change his mind: he had already abandoned his ideas of a hike to Pyramiden, instead opting for a much more reasonable walk to mine 7.
The distance to Pyramiden is 50 km as the crow flies, but the distance over land is well over 100 km, especially as the fjords are still open. There are several crevassed glaciers on the way: altogether, an impossible task in darkness for a single person.
The last part of the overland route to Pyramiden: Nordenskiöldbreen and Billefjord (frozen).
While Europe is debating tougher border regimes, the Norwegian government has implemented stricter border controls on flights between Norway and Svalbard. Passport controls in Oslo or Tromsø have to be expected now, where ID cards had been sufficient so far for non-Norwegian Europeans.
It is important to make sure that the name on the ticket is exactly the same as it is in the passport, otherwise airline website will not allow online check-in. Staff at check-in counters may deny check-in and boarding if the name on the ticket deviates from the one in the passport.
Svalbard is under Norwegian sovereignty, but with limitations as defined by the Spitsbergen Treaty of 1920. Due to the treaty regulations, Svalbard is not treated as part of Norway by customs. Flights from Oslo to Longyearbyen start at the international part of the airport Oslo Gardermoen. Norway is part of the Schengen treaty area, Svalbard is not, and this means that you are crossing a Schengen boundary when traveling to or from Svalbard.
The recent tightening has probably little to do with the current debate about Schengen borders, refugees and security. It is more likely that the surprise visit of the Russian vice premier Rogosin in spring made the Norwegian government take these steps. If Norway would legally have been able to deny Rogosin access to Spitsbergen is controversial.
No check-in for flights to Longyearbyen without passport now. This applies also to moose.
During September and October the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (Oljedirektoratet) arranged seven test drillings northeast of Svalbard. The financing for these drillings was approved by the Norwegian Parliament (Storting).
Such activities are highly contentious, particularly because Norway clearly defined that there should be no drilling for oil or gas beyond the sea ice edge, the line of maximum sea ice expansion in spring. This time the drillings were done along Svalbard´s east side, up to the island Kvitøya and were going down to 200 meters below the seafloor. This area lies outside the protection zone of the archipelago but it lies far north of the sea ice edge. In accordance with this fact, the Petroleum Directorate declared that the drillings had nothing to do with the oil and gas industry. They were just surveys of the geological structure in this area.
The dissenting opposition parties in the parliament, the social liberal Venstre and the green MDG, condemned this operation sharply. If so far in the north, oil and gas extraction is not intended anyway and is not even allowed, at least so far, this operation was simply a waste of money, a speaker of the Venstre said.
In recent years Norway pushed forward the exploration of oil and gas fields in the North Atlantic – off Lofoten and Vesterålen – and in the Barents Sea. But not even there extraction is approved everywhere, and it is still controversial. It is rejected among others by parts of the local population, environmental associations and by the fishing industry. However, when large oil and gas fields are discovered and explored continuously, as recently happened in the Barents Sea northwest of Hammerfest, this will obviously create facts, regardless of the current legal situation. Political decisions will be influenced by the prospect of economical profit. In 2012 the former foreign minister Espen Barth Eide of the social democratic Arbeiderpartiet already made clear that economic considerations are prioritized when it comes to the Norwegian oil and gas resources. Environmental politics can be adjusted, if necessary (see also Spitsbergen-Svalbard.com news Norwegian foreign minister about arctic oil and gas from November 2012).
Northeastern Svalbard: a place for polar bears, ice and wilderness, not for oil and gas.