Most peo­p­le will never have the chan­ce to visit the famous Sval­bard Glo­bal Seed Vault bey­ond a glim­pse of the ent­rance from out­side. Col­lo­qui­al­ly also known as “doomsday vault”, it is used sin­ce 2008 to store seeds of food crops to make sure the spe­ci­es sur­vi­ve even when all other stocks are des­troy­ed by natu­ral or man-made eco­lo­gi­cal dis­as­ters or war.

The insi­de of the Sval­bard Glo­bal Seed Vault is, howe­ver, clo­sed to the public. Only tho­se who are working the­re, some VIP visi­tors and media teams, on cer­tain dates and with pri­or regis­tra­ti­on, get insi­de. During a media visit in 2016, I had the rare chan­ce to pho­to­graph the Seed Vault inclu­ding 360 degree pan­ora­mas, which can now be seen on this page (click here). Parts of the Seed Vault are curr­ent­ly under reno­va­ti­on.

The Sval­bard Glo­bal Seed Vault is now acces­si­ble as a pan­ora­ma tour on this web­site.

Today (Mon­day, 10 Sep­tem­ber), a polar bear fami­ly was seen near Ves­t­pyn­ten, not far from the air­port and camp­si­te at Lon­gye­ar­by­en. It was a fema­le bear with two first-year cubs, pro­ba­b­ly the same polar bears that were seen on Satur­day at Rev­ne­set, on the north side of Advent­fjord oppo­si­te of Lon­gye­ar­by­en. On Satur­day, the bears were cha­sed away by heli­c­op­ter towards Sas­senfjord, away rom Lon­gye­ar­by­en.

Polar bears inclu­ding fema­les with cubs regu­lar­ly cover lar­ge distances. A walk inclu­ding lon­ger swim­ming distances from Advent­fjord (Lon­gye­ar­by­en) to Sas­senfjord and back within 2 days is ful­ly rea­li­stic and nor­mal.

When the bears were seen near Ves­t­pyn­ten today around 16.00, both curious onloo­kers and the Sys­sel­man­nen (poli­ce) were soon on the sce­ne, as repor­ted by Sval­bard­pos­ten. The Sys­sel­man­nen fol­lo­wed the polar bear fami­ly by car slow­ly towards Bjørn­da­len fur­ther west.

The­re, hopes that the bears might con­ti­nue and dis­ap­pear from the Lon­gye­ar­by­en area soon vanis­hed in the haze, as the bears were seen fee­ding on a lar­ge wha­le car­cass, pos­si­bly from a sperm wha­le as appears on a pho­to taken by the Sys­sel­man­nen. This might pro­vi­de the bears in ques­ti­on with food for a lon­ger peri­od, if the wha­le does not start to float and drift away again. Chan­ces are also that the wha­le car­cass attracts fur­ther bears.

The Sys­sel­man­nen asks the public not to get clo­se to the bears and to be alert and to exer­cise usu­al safe­ty mea­su­res at any time in the field.

Polar bear fami­ly with a solid meal in Bjørn­da­len near Lon­gye­ar­by­en, Mon­day (10 Sep­tem­ber) after­noon. Pho­to © Sys­sel­man­nen.

Update: the polar bears were scared away from the wha­le car­cass by the Sys­sel­man­nen later on Mon­day, as Sval­bard­pos­ten wro­te. The dead wha­le was towed into the fjord by Polar­sys­sel, the Sysselmannen’s ship, and the bears were scared and moved up into Bjørn­da­len.

Our alre­a­dy almost tra­di­tio­nal Spits­ber­gen-calen­der ist now available for 2019. It is available as befo­re in the big­ger A3 for­mat (beau­tiful on the wall) and the smal­ler A5 (gre­at for exam­p­le on the table or on the wall whe­re not so much space is available).

With arc­tic impres­si­ons through the year: the new calen­dar Spits­ber­gen 2019 is now available.

As oppo­sed to other offers available on the mar­ket, we sel­ect a set of 12 enti­re­ly new pho­tos every year to crea­te a com­ple­te­ly new calen­dar with fresh impres­si­ons, show­ing some of Spitsbergen’s most beau­tiful sides inclu­ding sce­n­ery, wild­life and flowers.

Unu­su­al per­spec­ti­ve of an impres­si­ve land­scape: the ice cap Aus­t­fon­na seen from the air.

Unu­su­al per­spec­ti­ves of remo­te places tog­e­ther with stun­ning wild­life pho­tos form a good part of the sel­ec­tion, which is com­ple­ted by flowers and stun­ning sce­n­ery of polar land­scapes and ice.

Of cour­se the­re are some polar bears in the calen­dar 🙂

Click here to see all images of the Spits­bergn calen­der 2019, more infor­ma­ti­on and orde­ring.

The gre­at fear of a col­lap­se of the job mar­ket in Lon­gye­ar­by­en after the signi­fi­cant reduc­tion of coal mining, espe­ci­al­ly in Sveagru­va, did not beco­me rea­li­ty so far. This is indi­ca­ted by the latest sta­tis­tics of the Sta­tis­tik Sen­tral­by­rå, the Nor­we­gi­an direc­to­ry of sta­tis­tics. In 2017, the­re were 4.2 % more jobs in Sval­bard com­pared to 2016. The num­ber of jobs in mining were actual­ly redu­ced by 34 % down to 100, but this loss was more than com­pen­sa­ted by growth in other bran­ches, most­ly in rela­ti­on to tou­rism. Hotels and restau­rants crea­ted 36.3 % more jobs in 2017 than in 2016, total­ling 315 jobs in 2015. ´

Lon­gye­ar­by­en is gro­wing, also on the job mar­ket: 4,2 % more jobs in 2017.

This growth is mea­su­red in “Års­verk”, which may be best trans­la­ted with “man hours per year”. 315 “års­verk” do not neces­s­a­ri­ly mean 315 full-time employees, but an amount of paid work that could be done by 315 peo­p­le within one year. This amount of work may, howe­ver, be spread over a lar­ger num­ber of part-time or sea­so­nal jobs, which is cer­tain­ly the case to some degree in tou­rism. “Tou­rism” as such is not a cate­go­ry in the sta­tis­tics. Jobs crea­ted within tou­rism are mea­su­red in cate­go­ries such as hotels & restau­rants, ser­vice indus­try and trans­port and logi­stics.