Vic­to­ry day cele­bra­ti­ons to com­me­mo­ra­te the Soviet Union’s vic­to­ry over Nazi Ger­ma­ny were held not only in Rus­sia, but also in Barents­burg. Such cele­bra­ti­ons have tra­di­tio­nal­ly been held the­re also in pre­vious years, but they used to be of a civi­li­an and cul­tu­ral cha­rac­ter.

This time, things went a dif­fe­rent way. A lar­ge para­de was held with all available and sui­ta­ble vehic­les – cars, snow mobi­les and even a heli­c­op­ter. Lar­ge flags and other Rus­si­an sym­bols, inclu­ding ones of mili­ta­ry cha­rac­ter, were shown in lar­ge num­bers. This is in strong con­trast to pre­vious years.

Vic­to­ry day (2023) in Barents­burg: more of a mili­ta­ry-style pro­pa­gan­da event
(pho­to: Trust Ark­ti­ku­gol social media).

A few weeks ago, the Nor­we­gi­an news plat­form NRK reve­a­led con­nec­tions of the gene­ral con­sul in Barents­burg to the Rus­si­an mili­ta­ry secret ser­vice GRU.

Seve­ral lar­ge com­pa­nies in Lon­gye­ar­by­en inclu­ding Hur­tig­ru­ten Sval­bard and Visit Sval­bard have encou­ra­ged their employees not to visit Barents­burg, refer­ring to pri­va­te visits. Using local wifi is dis­cou­ra­ged in Barents­burg becau­se of data safe­ty con­side­ra­ti­ons, and care is advi­sed when using mobi­le pho­ne net­work. Both Nor­we­gi­an and Rus­si­an mobi­le net­work are available in and around Barents­burg, but mobi­le pho­nes may auto­ma­ti­cal­ly con­nect to Rus­si­an net­work when Nor­we­gi­an covera­ge is unavailable, accor­ding to Sval­bard­pos­ten.

Usual­ly we pre­fer the pas­sa­ge on the insi­de of the island of Sen­ja becau­se the wea­ther and sea con­di­ti­ons out­side tend to be pret­ty rough. But on a good day like this, the outer pas­sa­ge allows one to visit love­ly litt­le har­bours such as Hamn i Sen­ja, loca­ted on a cou­ple of sker­ries just off the coast of Sen­ja.

Later, again the­re was no wind to put up the sails, but the good thing was that this mean flat seas, so we went out to the edge of the con­ti­nen­tal shelf near Ande­nes, the famous sperm wha­le place. And we were lucky!

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

The gui­de­book “Spits­ber­gen-Sval­bard” is now for the first time available in an ebook-for­mat!

Through five updated edi­ti­ons, the gui­de­book has evol­ved into what many pro­fes­sio­nal col­le­agues refer to as the “Spits­ber­gen-bible”. But so much infor­ma­ti­on on 608 pages does have some weight, which is obvious­ly not always gre­at when you are tra­vel­ling.

The gui­de­book Spits­ber­gen-Sval­bard is now digi­tal­ly available on Apple Books.

No pro­blem, becau­se now the­re is an ebook ver­si­on available. To start with the bad news: it is curr­ent­ly only available on Apple Books. This is not what I want, but the­re are tech­ni­cal reasons for this.

Here is the link to the Eng­lish ver­si­on of the gui­de­book “Spits­ber­gen-Sval­bard” in Apple Books. You can also find the Ger­man ver­si­on of the book on Apple Books.

The eBook-ver­si­on of the Spits­ber­gen-gui­de­book is as rich­ly illus­tra­ted as the print edi­ti­on.

The con­tents of the ebook and the prin­ted edi­ti­on are iden­ti­cal. The prin­ted ver­si­on is and remains available, of cour­se.

Accor­ding to a recent sci­en­ti­fic stu­dy, glo­bal warm­ing in the nor­t­hern Barents Sea is 5-7 times fas­ter than the glo­bal avera­ge. Even com­pared to the avera­ge deve­lo­p­ment in the who­le Arc­tic, which is a hot­spot within glo­bal warm­ing, the cli­ma­tic deve­lo­p­ment of the nor­t­hern Barents Sea area is 2-2.5 times fas­ter.

Hea­vy rain and tha­wing tem­pe­ra­tures over days in Lon­gye­ar­by­en, mid March 2022, in the midd­le of what should be the col­dest part of the win­ter. Gene­ral­ly spea­king, wea­ther and cli­ma­te should not be con­fu­sed, but an incre­asing fre­quen­cy and inten­si­ty of such events signi­fies a cli­ma­tic trend.

The­se and other figu­res are com­mu­ni­ca­ted by the Fram Forum in a pos­ting based on a sci­en­ti­fic artic­le by Ketil Isak­sen (Nor­we­gi­an Meteo­ro­lo­gi­cal Insti­tu­te) and Co-aut­hors in the sci­en­ti­fic maga­zi­ne Natu­re.

Ice chart of the nor­t­hern Barents Sea / Sval­bard area from 12th April 2023
(© Nor­we­gi­an Meteo­ro­lo­gi­cal Insti­tu­te).

Loss of sea is is iden­ti­fied by Isak­sen and co-aut­hors as the main dri­ving mecha­nism behind this dra­ma­tic regio­nal trend. If pre­sent, sea ice effec­tively mini­mi­zes heat trans­fer bet­ween sea and atmo­sphe­re. Lack­ing sea ice in an area pre­vious­ly cover­ed by ice most of the year or even year round, howe­ver, enable warm (rela­tively warm, that is) sea water to release heat to the atmo­sphe­re.

Espe­ci­al­ly in nor­the­as­tern Sval­bard, sea ice was pre­sent almost year round most of the time until the recent past. The loss of sea ice in this par­ti­cu­lar area explains the espe­ci­al­ly pro­no­un­ced warm­ing in that part of the Arc­tic.

What many had assu­med is now offi­ci­al­ly con­firm­ed: the fema­le polar bear that drow­ned last Fri­day in Sas­senfjord was the famous polar bear “Frost”.

“Frost” was Spitsbergen’s most famous polar bear. Among­st others, she play­ed the star role in “Queen wit­hout land” by the Nor­we­gi­an pho­to­grapher Asge­ir Hel­ge­stad. Or, to be more pre­cise: she did not play the star role. She was the star.

In other docu­men­ta­ries she was cal­led “Misha”. She gra­ced the covers of seve­ral ones of my own books. Over the years, I had the pri­vi­le­ge to obser­ve Frost a cou­ple of times.

The polar bear Frost with her fami­ly,
in bet­ter times in Tem­pel­fjord.

Last Friday’s events at Vin­dod­den in Sas­senfjord will now be inves­ti­ga­ted by appro­pria­te aut­ho­ri­ties, main­ly Sys­sel­mes­te­ren. As of now, the­re is no indi­ca­ti­on of cri­mi­nal beha­viour, as Sval­bard­pos­ten reports.

It is said that Frost was mark­ed by sci­en­tists (Nor­we­gi­an Polar Insti­tu­te) during the days befo­re her dead. Mar­king polar bears always invol­ves gene­ral aenes­the­sia dis­pen­sed with a rif­le shot from a heli­c­op­ter. A poten­ti­al con­nec­tion of the aenes­the­sia and Frost’s death will be part of the inves­ti­ga­ti­on.

Frost had a cub with her that atta­cked the action forces as they retrie­ved her body from the sea. The cub was shot. Also this part of the inci­dent will be inves­ti­ga­ted.

During her long life, Frost and her off­spring had fre­quent cont­act with peo­p­le and infra­struc­tu­re, some of which was harmful or even tra­gic. This ran­ges from many dama­ged huts to the death of Johan (“Job”) Koot­te in August 2020, which was cau­sed by one of Frost’s cubs. Seve­ral of her cubs lost their lives during the­se and other inci­dents.

Two polar bears died on Good Fri­day in the ear­ly mor­ning at Vin­dod­den in Sas­senfjord. A fema­le bear drow­ned and her cub was later shot.

During the night – which is not dark any­mo­re, the mid­night sun is not far away – the litt­le bear fami­ly was seen by peo­p­le near Vin­dod­den. Vin­dod­den is a small pen­in­su­la in Sas­senfjord with a cou­ple of huts owned and used by locals from Lon­gye­ar­by­en, and during spring weekends, espe­ci­al­ly the Eas­ter weekend, it is very popu­lar to stay in a hut.

Vin­dod­den in Sas­senfjord: two polar bears died here in the ear­ly mor­ning on Good Fri­day.

The polar bears approa­ched the huts, whe­re peo­p­le tried to sca­re them away with war­ning shots fired from signal pis­tols. This work­ed, and the polar bears moved away, swim­ming in the fjord.

So far, so com­ple­te­ly nor­mal. Polar bears are excel­lent swim­mers and can easi­ly cover long distances in the water.

But in this par­ti­cu­lar case, the inci­dent soon had a tra­gic out­co­me. The fema­le bear was soon seen dead in the water, head down, with the cub swim­ming around her. The Sys­sel­mes­ter (poli­ce) was alar­med and came by heli­c­op­ter. The dead fema­le was retrie­ved from the water. The cub approa­ched, the per­so­nell tried to sca­re the cub away, but this time, it did not work and the cub was sub­se­quent­ly shot.

The case will now be inves­ti­ga­ted in details, inclu­ding hea­ring of wit­nesses and post­mor­tem exami­na­ti­on of the bear.

Fur­ther details are not yet released.

For years alre­a­dy, the­re has been a dis­cus­sion about a new ener­gy sup­p­ly for Lon­gye­ar­by­en. The old coal power plant should have been repla­ced years ago, pre­fer­a­b­ly with a more envi­ron­men­tal­ly fri­end­ly and relia­ble ener­gy source. A wide ran­ge of pos­si­ble solu­ti­ons has been dis­cus­sed over the years.

Final­ly, a decis­i­on is now been made. The result may sur­pri­se at a first glan­ce, but second thoughts will reve­al gre­at wis­dom, con­side­ring the solu­ti­on that has, in its essence, been used by indi­ge­nous cul­tures for ages around the glo­be, some­thing that will suit the litt­le arc­tic sett­le­ment in Spits­ber­gen well.

The new power sup­p­ly will be based on bio­mass. The high­light of the new sys­tem is that it will be based on a local ener­gy source, name­ly reinde­er drop­pings, just as camel muck that has been used by noma­dic peo­p­le in hot deserts for gene­ra­ti­ons.

Lon­gye­ar­by­en will get a power plant based on bio­mass, fired with reinde­er drop­pings.

The decis­i­on is based on con­side­ra­ti­ons and cal­cu­la­ti­ons that were made pos­si­ble by the local reinde­er popu­la­ti­on cen­sus of 2019, which yiel­ded a total num­ber of more than 22,000 ani­mals. The reinde­er don’t do any­thing else than tur­ning tun­dra vege­ta­ti­on into pre­cious fuel – and they pro­du­ce more than enough to gua­ran­tee a suf­fi­ci­ent sup­p­ly of ener­gy. Addi­tio­nal­ly, the drop­pings dry quick­ly in the arid high-arc­tic cli­ma­te.

Tech­no­lo­gy to auto­ma­ti­cal­ly coll­ect the drop­pings on the tun­dra is curr­ent­ly being deve­lo­ped, based on auto­ma­tic vacu­um clea­ners.

Words of almost refres­hing hones­ty: Accor­ding to the Nor­we­gi­an news web­site NRK, the Nor­we­gi­an govern­ment aims at making Longyearbyen’s popu­la­ti­on smal­ler and more Nor­we­gi­an.

Lon­gye­ar­by­en (here on 17th May, the Nor­we­gi­an natio­nal day) is a very Nor­we­gi­an sett­le­ment, regard­less of the inter­na­tio­nal parts of its popu­la­ti­on. Nobo­dy is ques­tio­ning that – with the pos­si­ble excep­ti­on of the Nor­we­gi­an govern­ment its­elf, which aims at redu­cing the popu­la­ti­on and incre­asing the Nor­we­gi­an part of it. To achie­ve this goal, Oslo poli­ti­ci­ans don’t seem to have any inhi­bi­ti­on to dis­cri­mi­na­te direct­ly against for­eig­ners, for exam­p­le by dis­pos­ses­sing them of their local voting rights.

“The popu­la­ti­on of the archi­pe­la­go is too high and it should not grow any fur­ther. The popu­la­ti­on needs a hig­her pro­por­ti­on of Nor­we­gi­an citi­zens”, this is how NRK quo­tes the govern­ment, name­ly under­se­cre­ta­ry of sate John-Erik Vika (Senterpartiet/Centre Par­ty) in the minis­try of jus­ti­ce, which is respon­si­ble for lar­ge parts of Norway’s Sval­bard poli­tics.

Lon­gye­ar­by­en locals with citi­zen­ship other than Norw­gi­an have expe­ri­en­ced Nor­we­gi­an Sval­bard and Lon­gye­ar­by­en poli­cy – the part that is made in Oslo, to be more pre­cise – in part as dis­cri­mi­na­ting. A pro­mi­nent exam­p­le is last year’s decis­i­on to dis­pos­sess most for­eig­ners of their local voting rights.