The snow melt is start­ing in May. Time to put ski and snow mobi­le away and to set sail! Tra­di­tio­nal­ly, my arc­tic sum­mer starts with SV Anti­gua, sai­ling from Bodø in Nor­way to Bear Island and up to Spits­ber­gen. Lofo­ten are a gre­at place to start the sea­son. No polar bears, no Zodiacs, a rela­xed warm-up, but wit­hout any lack of scenic beau­ty. And then off to Bear Island. Always some­thing spe­cial!

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

But the­re was some­thing lack­ing else­whe­re. Money. The Nor­we­gi­an mining com­pa­ny Store Nor­ske does not get the pri­ce she needs for the coal on the world mar­kets, and this has brought her into gre­at trou­bles. Mining in the high arc­tic is expen­si­ve, and being a coal miner in Spits­ber­gen is dif­fi­cult the­se days. It invol­ves a gre­at risk to find a let­ter of can­cel­la­ti­on in your post box, and that’s what hap­pen­ed to many of them. Dif­fi­cult for the peo­p­le, for the com­pa­ny, for all of Lon­gye­ar­by­en. The place is small enough to suf­fer from a loss of major parts of the indus­try.