Fri
25 Jan
2019

The days are just fly­ing, or rather this end­less night. It will still take a while until you can talk of “days” again in Spits­ber­gen. But the light is coming back! The­re is cle­ar­ly some faint dawn on the sou­thern hori­zon around noon. The sun is not far any­mo­re.

First daw­ning in late Janu­ary, mid-day in Lon­gye­ar­by­en.

Still, the polar night is obvious­ly a good time to do things insi­de. And the­re is no lack of good oppor­tu­ni­ties. Next to all the work that never takes an end, the­re is, just to give one exam­p­le, the alre­a­dy men­tio­ned Sval­barse­mi­nar. And for Per Kyr­re Rey­mert, the “cul­tu­ral heri­ta­ge ora­cle”, the same is true as for Maar­ten Loo­nen (see pre­vious blog): you are gua­ran­teed to get a solid por­ti­on of inte­res­t­ing arc­tic know­ledge, and it is fun to lis­ten to! A very enter­tai­ning hour whe­re you can only try to memo­ri­se as much as you pos­si­bly can. Today, it was about the French Recher­che-expe­di­ti­on (1838, 1839). Yes, that was the one with Leo­nie D’Aunet, the first woman who visi­ted Spits­ber­gen. As far as we know, that is.

Per Kyr­re Rey­mert spea­king in the Sval­bard­se­mi­nar at UNIS about the Recher­che-expe­di­ti­on (in Spits­ber­gen 1838 and 1839).

And it is cer­tain­ly good to know what the guys from the Sys­sel­man­nen (govern­ment repre­sen­ta­ti­ve, poli­ce and other sove­reign duties) are kee­ping them­sel­ves busy with. Fly­ing dro­nes, for exam­p­le. Of cour­se they are only doing sen­si­ble things with the­se dro­nes! Who would thing of any­thing dif­fe­rent … Poli­ce inves­ti­ga­ti­ons, search and res­cue ope­ra­ti­ons, docu­men­ting ero­si­on and wear and tear on cul­tu­ral heri­ta­ge sites … the list is long.

The “dro­ne-squa­dron” of the Sys­sel­man­nen pre­sen­ting their work in the Sval­bard­se­mi­nar at UNIS.

It is and remains stun­nin­gly beau­tiful out­side. The light of the moon is now less bright than last week, but the retur­ning sun – still well below the hori­zon – brings seve­ral hours of blue light into the dark­ness during day­ti­me.

The blue light hours are coming back to Spits­ber­gen during day­ti­me.

A litt­le trip into Advent­da­len, far enough to escape the “big city” light pol­lu­ti­on. The silence and the blue light are ama­zing! And the view into Advent­da­len wet­tens the appe­ti­te for more. That is the way to Sas­send­a­len, to Tem­pel­fjord, to the east coast, … soon will the days be lon­ger and the same goes for the trips out into natu­re!

View into Advent­da­len during the blue light hour(s).

Soon, howe­ver, the blue light gives way to dark­ness again, the “days” are still short. But the night does always have some­thing to offer. In recent days, nor­t­hern light acti­vi­ty was a bit limi­t­ed. Not that the­re weren’t any at all, but limi­t­ed, and some­ti­mes you do also have to sleep, so it is ine­vi­ta­ble to miss out some­ti­mes. It is all about being in the right time at the right place, and that litt­le bit of luck!

Nor­t­hern light over Advent­da­len (I).
The lights of mine 7 and some huts in the lower right cor­ner.

Today, we were – once again – at the right time in the right place. We just had that bit of luck. Kind of on the way to go shop­ping. Never lea­ve the house wit­hout the came­ra 🙂

Nor­t­hern light over Advent­da­len (II).