Wed
2 Feb
2022

Arri­ved!

Farm­ham­na is a litt­le hun­ting sta­ti­on on the west coast of Spits­ber­gen in For­lands­und, north of Isfjord. A wide-open, wea­ther-bea­ten low­land; often, it is win­dy on this rather expo­sed coast­li­ne.

You can find a lot of small bay and bea­ches, some well known and others well hid­den, behind small islets, rocks and pen­in­su­las. We have explo­red and enjoy­ed many of them during our sum­mer sai­ling ship trips. Also now, in the polar night, they can be useful; get­ting here and away is any­thing but straight­for­ward, and the litt­le bit of traf­fic the­re is is usual­ly by boat. Over land, the area is pret­ty inac­ces­si­ble.

Farm­ham­na.

This pho­to gives an impres­si­on of Farm­ham­na at this time, end of January/early Febru­ary. Around noon, the brigh­test time of the day.

The light of the north!

Farm­ham­na: mid-day twi­light.

And here an impres­si­on of the outer coast of Farm­ham­na, loo­king to the south, around mid-day. The­re is curr­ent­ly no more than twi­light, we won’t see the sun befo­re 16 Febru­ary at the ear­liest. Depen­ding on the wea­ther, it may well be later. Or, actual­ly, even a litt­le bit ear­lier … we’ll see.

In any case, it is still two weeks away. But we have alre­a­dy got seve­ral hours of twi­light, when the sun tra­vels bet­ween 5 and 7 degrees below the hori­zon, pro­du­cing the most beau­tiful shades of yel­low, oran­ge and red on the sou­thern sky and all sorts of blue else­whe­re.

And the­re is, as you may expect, some­ti­mes a total­ly dif­fe­rent kind of light shi­ning in the evening. Much wea­k­er than the sun, but infi­ni­te­ly beau­tiful.

The light of the north!

Nor­t­hern light abo­ve Farm­ham­na.
A bit weak, but a beau­tiful start on my very first evening here!

Yes, the­re may be the odd nor­t­hern light pho­to coming up here the next weeks … 🙂

Sun
30 Jan
2022

The light is about to return to high lati­tu­des in the north, and I have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to fol­low. Or, actual­ly, to be a bit ahead of it.

Just in case anyo­ne wants to know: tra­vel­ling from Ger­ma­ny to Nor­way and fur­ther to Lon­gye­ar­by­en was remar­kab­ly easy. Somehow I expec­ted some kind of trou­ble, I was cer­tain­ly men­tal­ly pre­pared for it. As long as you have regis­tered your plan­ned ent­ry to Nor­way befo­re you actual­ly come and you are tes­ted nega­ti­ve direct­ly after arri­val and again within 24 hours befo­re depar­tu­re to Lon­gye­ar­by­en, not­hing should keep things from going smooth­ly (it may depend a bit on whe­re you come from – this is by no means legal advice, it is just recent expe­ri­ence). If the time bet­ween arri­val in Oslo and depar­tu­re to Lon­gye­ar­by­en is shorter than 24 hours, then one test will do. A lot depends obvious­ly on the amount of traf­fic in the air­port.

Don’t ask me how this may chan­ge in the future. Things are likely to chan­ge also in Nor­way soo­ner rather than later. Gene­ral­ly spea­king, the­re is talk about making things easier. What and for whom, I don’t know.

Ice in the har­bour of Long­sye­ar­by­en (små­båt­hav­na, “small boat har­bour”)

My stay in Lon­gye­ar­by­en was short and hec­tic this time. Shorter and more hec­tic than plan­ned. Ori­gi­nal­ly, the idea was to have a cou­ple of days here befo­re I would car­ry on, but this didn’t hap­pen. The boat trip to the place that I was going to was moved to the next rather ear­ly mor­ning after my arri­val. The­re wasn’t much time to put the feet on the table, as you may well guess.

The litt­le but stur­dy MS Farm of Hen­nigsen, the only boat on the water here at this – from a sailor’s point of view – ungod­ly time of year. It was a trip of 6-7 hours, and the chall­enge star­ted alre­a­dy in the har­bour, which was kinf of half fro­zen. Ice on the water, a fine nor­t­hern light on the sky. A good way to start a new adven­ture.

With MS Farm across Isfjord during the polar night.

The­re are alre­a­dy seve­ral hours of day­light around noon, and we mana­ged to arri­ve at our desti­na­ti­on still with some light. Farm­ham­na on the west coast. Here, I will help Rico for a cou­ple of weeks. He and his part­ner Karo­li­ne own this beau­tiful trap­per sta­ti­on, and here they do theirs to keep the tra­di­ti­on of over­win­te­ring hun­ting ali­ve, which has a histo­ry span­ning cen­tu­ries here in Spits­ber­gen.

Farm­ham­na: arri­ved hap­pi­ly – arri­ved and hap­py.

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