During a walk on any of Spitsbergen’s beau­tiful bea­ches, you can’t help it but be ama­zed about the impres­si­ve amounts of drift­wood. Not only does it add a aes­the­ti­cal aspect to the other­wi­se rather ste­ri­le shore­li­ne, but it does also have a fasci­na­ting histo­ry: Just as Fri­dt­jof Nan­sen did with his famous ship the Fram, did the wood drift all the way from Sibe­ria with the pack ice across the Arc­tic Oce­an and all the way to the north Atlan­tic, whe­re it was thrown onto an arc­tic beach in Sval­bard, Green­land, Ice­land, Jan May­en or Frans Josef Land.

Drift­wood at Wig­dehl­pyn­ten – Wood­fjord, Spits­ber­gen

And the­re we have it. If you are a trap­per, you can use it to build a hut (that was rare­ly done, too much effort) or as fire­wood (that was very com­mon). I am not a trap­per, but a pho­to­grapher, so it was an obvious idea to use the drift­wood to make pic­tu­re frames. Can you ima­gi­ne a more appro­pria­te pic­tu­re frame for arc­tic pic­tures than one made of drift­wood from Spits­ber­gen?

Tur­ning drif­tood into pic­tu­re frames requi­red more effort than we expec­ted to begin with. We made the first serious attempts seve­ral years ago, when mas­ter car­pen­ter Wolf­gang Zach ope­ned his carpenter’s work­shop in Lon­gye­ar­by­en. He cal­led his litt­le com­pa­ny “Alt i 3”, which is a play of words: “3” is “tre” in Nor­we­gi­an, which also means “tree” or “wood” at the same time. So it trans­la­tes to “Ever­y­thing out of wood”. We found also out that you do actual­ly need a licen­se to export drift­wood from Spits­ber­gen, so that was ano­ther thing we had to take care of.

So I star­ted coll­ec­ting drift­wood in small amounts. The first pro­ject was a books­helf for our flat in Lon­gye­ar­by­en, and at the same time we star­ted making the first pro­to­ty­pes of pic­tu­re frames. We just had to find out what works well with this very spe­cial mate­ri­al. One of the dis­co­veries that we made was that if you cut and sand it, it looks as fresh and new as a woo­den board that you just bought in the buil­ding sup­p­ly store. Which is of cour­se not the idea with pic­tu­re frames made from arc­tic drift­wood. So I star­ted loo­king for pie­ces of wood that had a good shape to start with. Most pie­ces of drift­wood are not natu­ral, but rather trees cut in forestry in Sibe­ria or even rea­dy-made boards. Com­ple­te­ly natu­ral drift­wood – trees with roots – are actual­ly quite rare.

Rolf Stan­ge trans­port­ing drift­wood to Lon­gye­ar­by­en.

I took this drift­wood in small amounts to Lon­gye­ar­by­en, were it had to be stored and slow­ly dried over lon­ger peri­ods of time. Then, Wolf­gang and I could start making the first pic­tu­re frames in his carpenter’s work­shop. After some expe­ri­men­ting, we had a pro­to­ty­pe that we both lik­ed, so the mas­ter car­pen­ter could start to pro­du­ce the first set of 16 pic­tu­re frames – all of them were made by Wolf­gang Zach in Lon­gye­ar­by­en.

Now, the­se had to get to Ger­ma­ny. If you know me, then it won’t sur­pri­se you to read that they tra­vel­led from Spits­ber­gen to Fra­n­eker in the Net­her­lands on the good sai­ling ship Anti­gua and from the­re via Müns­ter and Dres­den to my ship­ping depart­ment in nor­the­as­tern Ger­ma­ny.

After this long jour­ney from Sibe­ria, down a river, with the ice across the Arc­tic Oce­an to a beach in Spits­ber­gen, from the­re to Lon­gye­ar­by­en to Wolfang’s carpenter’s work­shop, from the­re on a sai­ling ship to Euro­pe. And the­re they are now, the very first series of 16 pic­tu­re frames from Spits­ber­gen drift­wood, available for the first time sin­ce Novem­ber 2017.

Every sin­gle pic­tu­re frame is a uni­que spe­ci­men. This has to do with the histo­ry of the wood, the natu­ral cha­rac­ter of the mate­ri­al, the manu­al pro­duc­tion. So I took pho­to­graphs of all frames, which you can see on this page (click here), which also has all the tech­ni­cal infor­ma­ti­on (dimen­si­ons, pri­ce etc.)

A new pan­ora­ma on this site gives a 360 degree view of Ball­stad on Ves­t­vå­gøy, one of the Lofo­ten islands in north Nor­way. I shot it free­hand and the wea­ther was quite typi­cal Novem­ber.

In Febru­ary, the Spits­ber­gen-calen­dar 2018 takes us to the east coast. In the win­ter sea­son, this is a popu­lar desti­na­ti­on for snow­mo­bi­le day-trips, enab­ling rela­tively many peo­p­le to see this grand win­ter sce­n­ery. Storfjor­den is fro­zen to fast ice here in Mohn­buk­ta, and some smal­ler bits and pie­ces of gla­cier ice are stuck in the ice. They bro­ke off last sum­mer from the com­bi­ned gla­cier fronts of Königsbergbreen/Hayesbreen/Heuglinbreen, of which we can see a small part in the back­ground.

It is quite com­mon that polar bears are roa­ming through this icy land­scape. We will see if we are lucky enough to spot them some­whe­re later …

The sun is just start­ing to rise abo­ve the hori­zon in Spits­ber­gen in mid-Febru­ary, and the days are still short. It is still too ear­ly for lon­ger trips. But the light can be breath­ta­kin­gly beau­tiful!

Spits­ber­gen-Calen­dar 2018: Febru­ary. Ice-land­scape on the east coast.

The wreck of the Rus­si­an heli­c­op­ter that cra­s­hed into Isfjord clo­se to Barents­burg pre­vious Thurs­day was lifted last night. The spe­cial ship Maersk For­za was brought to Spits­ber­gen for this task and com­ple­ted the work suc­cessful­ly on the night from Fri­day to Satur­day. The­re were 8 per­sons on board the MI-8-heli­c­op­ter when it cra­s­hed, inclu­ding 5 crew mem­bers and 3 sci­en­tists. One body had alre­a­dy been found some days ago about 130 m away from the wreck. The­re is no trace so far from the other crew mem­bers, and the search for them will be con­tin­ued.

The cock­pit voice recor­der could secu­red tog­e­ther with GPS units which are expec­ted to have the actu­al flight track saved. They will be brought to Mosk­va for fur­ther inves­ti­ga­ti­ons.

Mean­while, ques­ti­ons are rai­sed regar­ding the cau­se of the crash and the cir­cum­s­tances of the flight. The data recor­ders that were secu­red are likely to shed light on the actu­al crash. It seems that the flight was not legal accor­ding to appli­ca­ble Nor­we­gi­an legis­la­ti­on. The Nor­we­gi­an flight per­mit issued to the ope­ra­tor covers only flights in direct com­bi­na­ti­on to the ope­ra­ti­ons of the mining com­pa­ny Trust Ark­ti­ku­gol, for exam­p­le trans­port of com­pa­ny employees bet­ween Lon­gye­ar­by­en and Barents­burg. Com­mer­cial flights and trans­por­ta­ti­on of tou­rists and sci­en­tists are expli­ci­te­ly excluded.

The­re were 3 sci­en­tists on board the heli­c­op­ter when it cra­s­hed.

Source: Sval­bard­pos­ten