Quiet on the nor­t­hern front ..?

“Quiet on the nor­t­hern front” is, of cour­se, not enti­re­ly true. The­re is always some­thing going on in Spits­ber­gen, but curr­ent­ly not much that would shake the world. The locals can still be hap­py about not having a sin­gle case of Corona/Covid 19 in Spits­ber­gen. Hur­tig­ru­ten Sval­bard con­siders to sell their local pro­per­ties to a “serious inves­tor” to rent their hotels etc. then on a long-term basis. I guess you have to have stu­di­ed some­thing other than geo­gra­phy to under­stand that kind of busi­ness model. The Sys­sel­man­nen will release 18 employees this year and replace them with new ones, most­ly becau­se the peo­p­le have to return to their long-term enga­ge­ments in main­land Nor­way if they want to keep them. Such as lar­ge tur­no­ver is, of cour­se, not what anyo­ne would want – the Sys­sel­man­nen has 45 posi­ti­ons in total, curr­ent­ly, so that is an exch­an­ge of staff of more than 30 %.

Polar bears and peo­p­le have recent­ly mana­ged to keep a healt­hy distance from each other. For­t­u­na­te­ly.

It’s things like that which are curr­ent­ly going on. Ever­y­thing is important for some peo­p­le, but it is not shaking the world.

New book pro­jects on the way

The coro­na-year has, among­st others, resul­ted in more time at the office table than ori­gi­nal­ly plan­ned. A new book pro­ject has alre­a­dy more than 300 pages of text, ano­ther one is also making some pro­gress. But many more pages will have to be writ­ten in both cases befo­re any­thing will be rea­dy for release. “New book pro­ject” is, of cour­se, not enti­re­ly true. Both have been work in pro­cess for more than just a cou­ple of months, to put it mild­ly. So the­re is some­thing posi­ti­ve in having more time than plan­ned.

New pages

Land­scape in cen­tral Dick­son Land: view from Ygg­dra­sil­kam­pen
Illus­tra­ti­on from the rene­wed page about Dick­son Land and Bil­lefjord.

Ano­ther thing that has taken up at least some speed is re-doing a num­ber of pages within spitsbergen-svalbard.com. Many pages that I was proud of 10 years ago are get­ting a bit … well, old now. A num­ber of pages have got new maps, illus­tra­ti­ons, pho­to gal­le­ries and revi­sed text as neces­sa­ry. This includes pages about beau­tiful fjords that many of you will know, and pages about more unknown places that you can explo­re if you feel like tra­vel­ling Spits­ber­gen online – the door is open, just come in, the­re is ple­nty of good stuff wai­ting!

• The rene­wed page about Dick­son Land and Bil­lefjord. One of the most beau­tiful and inte­res­t­ing parts of Spits­ber­gen, belie­ve it or not! An area that cer­tain­ly deser­ved some­thing bet­ter than what I had in that place until a few days ago.
• The same can be said about the page about the area in outer Isfjord bet­ween Kapp Lin­né and Fest­nin­gen.
• Kongsfjord Kross­fjord used to be mer­ged into one page until recent­ly, an unbe­ara­ble situa­ti­on 🙂 now both of the­se beau­tiful and fre­quent­ly visi­ted fjords have got their own, impro­ved page.
• The­re are, of cour­se, also a cou­ple of new pan­ora­ma pages, dedi­ca­ted to indi­vi­du­al sites rather than lar­ger are­as (in con­trast to the pages men­tio­ned abo­ve), some of them with many images (both pan­ora­ma and con­ven­tio­nal pho­tos) and a lot of back­ground infor­ma­ti­on, such as the page about Svenske­hu­set.
• The same is the case with the new page about Bruce­by­en, a love­ly and very inte­res­t­ing place in Bil­lefjord. I have a lot of fond memo­ries from Bruce­by­en, but the new page is, of cour­se, not about my own sto­ries. It is rather about the histo­ry of the famous Scot­tish polar explo­rer Wil­liam S. Bruce and his Scot­tish Spits­ber­gen Syn­di­ca­te.
• What else do we have? Oh, of cour­se, Coll­ins­od­den at the ent­rance of Kross­fjord. That’s a place I bett most of you won’t have been to, but it is worth a visit, the sce­n­ery is not exact­ly what you would initi­al­ly think of when you men­tal­ly pic­tu­re Spits­ber­gen, but it is beau­tiful and the­re is, of cour­se, an inte­res­t­ing litt­le sto­ry con­nec­ted to the place.
• And Wig­dehl­pyn­ten in Wood­fjord. Colours, colours … that is Chris­tia­ne Ritter’s red desert sand.

… to be con­tin­ued.

So the­re is ple­nty of rea­ding mate­ri­al for one or two rai­ny autumn days or dark win­ter evenings. By the way, as you may have noti­ced, it comes not only com­ple­te­ly free, but also wit­hout all the online ads pop­ping up that you have on most other “free” web­sites, which gather a lot of your data and redu­ce the rea­ding expe­ri­ence great­ly in my opi­ni­on. That’s how other web­site owners make their money. Not­hing like that on spitsbergen-svalbard.com. Not that eco­no­my didn’t play a role for me, obvious­ly, and this years I would have more reason than at other times to tap that resour­ce. But I don’t want to do that, becau­se I like my web­site as it is and I want to keep it this way. If you want to sup­port it – have a look at my web­shop, the­re is a lot of good arc­tic books and fine other things that might give you (or someone you like) plea­su­re.

So … have a look at the­se new/renewed pages lis­ted abo­ve. I great­ly enjoy­ed making them and I hope they find your inte­rest.

Spits­ber­gen-Sval­bard: the gui­de­book – now coming up in Dutch

The gui­de­book Spits­ber­gen-Sval­bard has been trans­la­ted and it is now prin­ted, soon it will be rea­dy for ship­ping 🙂 ano­ther big pro­ject that has come to an end – well, not real­ly, but the pro­cess of making the book in the first place. More about that soon.