Bohem­an­flya – 28th July 2017

Fri
28 Jul
2017

Today is the day to start the next tour, „advan­ced Spits­ber­gen“ with Arc­ti­ca II. Ano­ther high­light of the ongo­ing arc­tic sum­mer sea­son!

The sun is smi­ling as we gather on bord, skip­per Hein­rich, my col­le­ague Timon and 9 bra­ve tra­vel­lers. We have got 18 exci­ting days ahead of us to explo­re Spits­ber­gen tog­e­ther.

The water is flat as a mir­ror as we move out into Isfjord, so we do not want to miss the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make a landing at Bohe­man­nes­et. This wide, flat pen­in­su­la is so expo­sed in the midd­le of Isfjord, sur­roun­ded by shal­low waters, that it takes some luck with the wea­ther to get here. And of cour­se we do take the oppor­tu­ni­ty as we have it today! So we make our first landing just about 2 hours after depar­tu­re from Lon­gye­ar­by­en, and it turns out to be quite a long excur­si­on of seve­ral hours. It is as if natu­re had crea­ted a bota­ni­cal gar­den here, a the­me park „flo­ra of the tun­dra“. So many spe­ci­es, inclu­ding some unu­su­al ones. What a colourful abun­dance!

We walk to the huts of Rijps­burg, whe­re the time of com­mer­cial coal mining in Spits­ber­gen was star­ted in 1899. Some years later, Hjal­mar Johan­sen win­tered here, Fri­dt­jof Nansen’s famous com­ra­de and slee­ping bag mate from the Fram expe­di­ti­on, tog­e­ther with the Ger­man jour­na­list Theo­dor Ler­ner. Hil­mar Nøis, who beca­me a local legend as a trap­per, fol­lo­wed in later years. So gre­at to be here, whe­re all this hap­pen­ed – I have told some of tho­se stores in my new book about arc­tic christ­mas sto­ries, which I sent to the prin­ter today! How gre­at is that? How appro­pria­te to get to the sce­ne of the­se adven­tures a cou­ple of hours later?

Gal­lery – Bohem­an­flya – 28th July 2017

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

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