A win­dy ride Satur­day after­noon in Advent­da­len.

Wea­ther is always good, you always have some. Lon­gye­ar­by­en often has a lot of it, and the last few days have been no excep­ti­on. During the night from Thurs­day to Fri­day, the­re was a seve­re storm over parts of Spits­ber­gen, which cau­sed con­sidera­ble dama­ge to the tem­po­ra­ry faci­li­ties in the field.

On Satur­day evening, the flight from Oslo to Lon­gye­ar­by­en was can­cel­led, and the night was so stor­my that it was dif­fi­cult or impos­si­ble to get from A to B, even within the town. Ava­lan­che-expo­sed are­as were clo­sed by the Sys­sel­mes­ter.

Sun­day mor­ning in Lon­gye­ar­by­en.

Under such con­di­ti­ons it is bet­ter to work on new edi­ti­ons of books and other pro­jects. The­re are curr­ent­ly visi­ble results in the ‘This page should be more beau­tiful’ sec­tion: Seve­ral pages have been enhan­ced with maps, pho­to gal­le­ries and pos­si­bly text. It’s worth taking a vir­tu­al look at the pla­ne wreck at Kapp Bor­then (the pla­ne from the war), Svens­khu­set at Kapp Thord­sen (the ‘ghost house’) or the old trapper’s hut on Lågøya. Enjoy!

As always I love to work on this web­site, making new pages or making old ones bet­ter. Today I have got three new ones:

The ‘old hos­pi­tal stair­ca­se’ in Lon­gye­ar­by­en. Not far away, but an inte­gral part of Longyearbyen’s annu­al cul­tu­ral calen­dar.

Far away and dif­fi­cult to reach are Depotod­den with the Oxford House in Bren­ne­vins­fjord and the small Jäder­in­fjord in Lady Fran­k­lin­fjord, both on Nord­aus­t­land.

The Oxford House at Depotod­den in Bren­ne­vins­fjord has a beau­tiful page of its own.

All three sites are worth a litt­le digi­tal visit – have fun and enjoy the weekend!

A week in Lon­gye­ar­by­en, part 1: The sun fes­ti­val

It’s alre­a­dy been a week. On the 8th of March, peo­p­le gather at the stairs of the old hos­pi­tal, clo­se to Sval­bard church, as the first rays of sun­light reach Lon­gye­ar­by­en – for the first time sin­ce the begin­ning of Octo­ber! Of cour­se the­re are pro­per cele­bra­ti­ons. A bit more about that and more pic­tures can also be found on the new page about the loca­ti­on of the event, the old hos­pi­tal stair­ca­se.

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

Last Mon­day (24 Febru­ary) the­re was an encoun­ter bet­ween a polar bear and a group of tou­rists near Fred­heim in Tem­pel­fjord. Details have now emer­ged in an artic­le in Sval­bard­pos­ten, making it clear that the inci­dent was dra­ma­tic and that it was only by luck that no one was inju­red and the polar bear was not.

Fred­heim two days after the dan­ge­rous encoun­ter.

The group had been on a day trip by snow­mo­bi­le from Lon­gye­ar­by­en and had rea­ched Fred­heim and were pre­pa­ring to stop for a meal. Accor­ding to one of the French tou­rists invol­ved, the polar bear sud­den­ly appeared within two or three met­res of the group.

The details of what hap­pen­ed next are not public know­ledge, but accor­ding to wit­nesses, one woman fell as she ran away, and short­ly after­wards the bear had rea­ched her and was stan­ding with one paw on her back. Howe­ver, it is said that the bear was not aggres­si­ve and did not try to attack the woman or anyo­ne else. Accor­ding to Sval­bard­pos­ten, French­man Antoine Ter­ro­n­es descri­bed the polar bear’s beha­viour as fol­lows: “I did not per­cei­ve it as an attack, it was not as if the bear was hun­gry and deter­mi­ned. It see­med rela­xed, rai­sed its head as if it was snif­fing, and wal­ked slow­ly towards us.”

But then the bear picked up speed and star­ted fol­lo­wing the woman, who was soon on the ground with a bear’s paw on her back.

At this point, the gui­des fired with signal pis­tols and rif­les to sca­re the bear away, which was suc­cessful. One gui­de was said to have been rea­dy with a rif­le to shoot the bear, but befo­re that point came, the ani­mal was dri­ven away by a shot from a signal pis­tol. The bear then moved away from the group as more shots were fired.

The­re was ano­ther group of tou­rists near­by and their gui­des had pre­pared with signal pis­tols and rif­les.

The who­le inci­dent hap­pen­ed in a mat­ter of moments.

As soon as the imme­dia­te dan­ger had pas­sed, the group retur­ned to Lon­gye­ar­by­en and infor­med the Sys­sel­mes­ter. All tho­se direct­ly invol­ved then met with a cri­sis team to deal with the shock. Accor­ding to eye­wit­ness Ter­ro­n­es, some of the peo­p­le invol­ved were quite affec­ted by what had hap­pen­ed, and the dis­cus­sions with the cri­sis team were very hel­pful in deal­ing with the situa­ti­on.

Fred­heim with polar bear (the pho­to was taken years ago).

The use of a cri­sis team after a polar bear encoun­ter whe­re the­re were no inju­ries or worse to humans or ani­mals is unu­su­al and alre­a­dy sug­gested that the inci­dent was dra­ma­tic.

Unfort­u­na­te­ly, not enough is known about the exact cour­se of events to real­ly under­stand what hap­pen­ed and how the polar bear was able to get so clo­se to the group unno­ti­ced. Accor­ding to eye­wit­nesses, one of the gui­des had gone out to check the area for polar bears. In gene­ral, the beha­viour of ever­yo­ne invol­ved in the inci­dent was prai­sed and descri­bed as impec­ca­ble, accor­ding to others who have recei­ved first-hand reports just minu­tes befo­re the inci­dent. Sval­bard­pos­ten quo­tes French­man Ter­ro­n­es as say­ing: “When the bear came, the gui­des reac­ted quick­ly and cor­rect­ly. I think they saved our lives. I have not­hing nega­ti­ve to say about their reac­tion. They did ever­y­thing they could in a dif­fi­cult situa­ti­on.”

The bear can actual­ly be seen in a pho­to­graph taken befo­re it appeared, alt­hough it was not dis­co­ver­ed until later. When the pho­to was taken, the bear was on the shore of Tem­pel­fjord, about two or three kilo­me­t­res nor­the­ast of Fred­heim.

Com­men­ta­ry

So much for the infor­ma­ti­on actual­ly known in public. Bey­ond that, it would be inte­res­t­ing to know exact­ly how many peo­p­le were the­re in total, how many gui­des were the­re and, most important­ly, whe­re exact­ly the peo­p­le invol­ved were at the time in ques­ti­on. To be clear, this is not about poin­ting fin­gers, it is about try­ing to under­stand how a polar bear could get within a few met­res of a group of peo­p­le unno­ti­ced. But wit­hout real­ly accu­ra­te infor­ma­ti­on, we can only spe­cu­la­te.

Spe­cu­la­ti­on is never good, but not thin­king at all is even worse. So here is a bit of spe­cu­la­ti­on.

We know that the bear was on the shore north-east of Fred­heim befo­re the inci­dent. We also know that the group in ques­ti­on were pre­pa­ring their lunch at the Fred­heim huts when the bear sud­den­ly appeared next to them.

The Fred­heim huts are situa­ted on a ter­race a few met­res hig­her than the near­by shore. The slo­pe lea­ding down from the ter­race to the shore can only be seen if you are stan­ding clo­se to it; if you stand a litt­le fur­ther away, the­re is a blind spot. It is reasonable to assu­me that the bear was wal­king in this area when it approa­ched unno­ti­ced. This is also an obvious assump­ti­on as this is exact­ly the rou­te along the shore that bears often take.

Over­view pic­tu­re of Fred­heim and sur­roun­ding area with pos­si­ble posi­ti­ons to illus­tra­te the assu­med sequence of events. The bear was appro­xi­m­ate­ly at posi­ti­on 1 when it was pho­to­gra­phed but not seen (it was only dis­co­ver­ed later in the pho­to). If the bear was fol­lo­wing appro­xi­m­ate­ly the dot­ted rou­te, this could explain why it was not seen when – if – the group was at posi­ti­on 3. All posi­ti­ons are assu­med, espe­ci­al­ly posi­ti­on 3 is only assu­med based on the exis­ting descrip­ti­on and know­ledge of the ter­rain and the usu­al (but not the con­cre­te) pro­ce­du­res on site.

Assum­ing that this was the case (which is not a cer­tain­ty), the important takea­way would be to bear in mind that safe­ty always depends on the are­as of ter­rain that you can not see. It is not enough that the­re are no bears whe­re you can see them if they were the­re. The ques­ti­on is what is the­re whe­re the ter­rain obscu­res the view.

Con­stant vigi­lan­ce and ‘what-if’ thin­king, espe­ci­al­ly in rela­ti­on to are­as of ter­rain that can­not be seen, are and will remain key aspects of stay­ing as safe as pos­si­ble in polar bear coun­try.

The fact that the polar bear was visi­ble in a pho­to­graph taken pri­or to the inci­dent, but was not reco­g­nis­ed, is a point that may give pau­se to tho­se invol­ved.

The­se points should be taken into con­side­ra­ti­on, espe­ci­al­ly if you are one of tho­se respon­si­ble for others in the Arc­tic. But not only that, becau­se it is always the atten­ti­on of all tho­se pre­sent that can, should and must con­tri­bu­te to avo­i­ding dan­ge­rous situa­tions.

One final com­ment: If it were the case – and this is the impres­si­on given by the descrip­ti­ons available – that a woman was lying on the ground, the polar bear was stan­ding right next to her or even more or less on top of her, and a gui­de was stan­ding a few met­res away with a rif­le, rea­dy to shoot to kill, but did not do so, for exam­p­le in order not to end­an­ger peo­p­le in the con­fu­sed situa­ti­on with shots and/or to pro­tect the polar bear, as long as shoo­ting was not abso­lut­e­ly neces­sa­ry: hats off, you have to have the ner­ves to act like that!

For deca­des, most con­su­mers in Lon­gye­ar­by­en have pro­ba­b­ly not given much thought to their drin­king water. After all, it is drin­king water from the sur­roun­ding arc­tic natu­re, so sure­ly it should be clean? Even after inter­me­dia­te sto­rage in the arti­fi­ci­al lake Isdam­men in Advent­da­len or – depen­ding on the sea­son – in a drin­king water reser­voir on the out­skirts of Gru­ve­da­len. Of cour­se, the­re is also fil­te­ring and moni­to­ring.

The drin­king water lake ‘Isdam­men’ in Advent­da­len.

But the care­free tran­quil­li­ty around drin­king water has been over for a few months now: Legio­nella bac­te­ria have been detec­ted in drin­king water samples from Lon­gye­ar­by­en. This is initi­al­ly no reason to panic, as tap water that is com­ple­te­ly free of legio­nella is rather rare world­wi­de. It depends on the exact type of germ and its num­ber. Many Legio­nella types are harm­less to humans, and bac­te­ri­al counts below the per­mit­ted limits are almost always pre­sent, espe­ci­al­ly in older pipe net­works such as in Lon­gye­ar­by­en.

Howe­ver, due to the rather dribb­ling com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on stra­tegy of the local aut­ho­ri­ty (Lon­gye­ar­by­en Lokals­ty­re), the issue did beco­me, well, an issue. It was a bit like ‘we have legio­nella in our drin­king water, but don’t worry, ever­y­thing is fine’. More pre­cise details on the type and bac­te­ri­al count were not made public; accor­ding to offi­ci­al infor­ma­ti­on, the water was (and is, with one caveat, see below) still drinkable and safe for human health.

At the end of Febru­ary, Lokals­ty­re orga­nis­ed a resi­dents’ mee­ting to pro­vi­de infor­ma­ti­on on the cur­rent situa­ti­on regar­ding drin­king water (legio­nella and man­gane­se, see below), and the­re are now a num­ber of announce­ments and press releases on the Lokals­ty­re web­site as well as artic­les and let­ters to the edi­tor in the Sval­bard­pos­ten.

No health pro­blems due to Legio­nella are said to have occur­red so far. The­se could occur pri­ma­ri­ly by inha­ling germ-con­ta­mi­na­ted very small water dro­p­lets (aero­so­le) in the air, for exam­p­le when showe­ring. A poten­ti­al risk is said to exist abo­ve all for risk groups such as older or immu­n­o­com­pro­mi­sed peo­p­le.

Legio­nella noti­ce at the drin­king water tap in Lon­gye­ar­by­en har­bour.

A source for the germ could not be loca­li­sed; it is likely that lar­ge parts of the old pipe net­work and the bio­films con­tai­ned the­r­ein are the dif­fu­se source. The levels (bac­te­ri­al counts) were tem­po­r­a­ri­ly redu­ced by adding chlo­ri­ne and the pipes were flus­hed seve­ral times in sec­tions, but neither is a defi­ni­ti­ve solu­ti­on, at least not in the sen­se that Legio­nella will dis­ap­pear in the long term. At times, con­su­mers were advi­sed to take pre­cau­tio­na­ry mea­su­res, such as showe­ring wit­hout a show­er head to avo­id ato­mi­sing the water into fine dro­p­lets that could be inha­led. Sval­bard­hal­len (swim­ming and sports hall) was also clo­sed at times. All in all, the­re was quite a lot of fuss about a pro­blem that was actual­ly harm­less accor­ding to offi­ci­al infor­ma­ti­on, which led to a cer­tain amount of con­cern in town.

It will pro­ba­b­ly come down to the fact that chlo­ri­ne will have to be added to the drin­king water again and again in the long term in order to keep the bac­te­ri­al load within accep­ta­ble limits. The side effect is that the drin­king water tas­tes of chlo­ri­ne, just like in a swim­ming pool. It looks like you have to get used to it. The­re are also small, house­hold water fil­ters based on acti­va­ted car­bon that help the water regain its fresh fla­vour. Others have been buy­ing bot­t­led water from the Sval­bard­bu­tik­ken super­mar­ket for some time. The lar­ge (five lit­re) bot­t­les are now ratio­ned the­re: only three bot­t­les are sold per house­hold per day so that the­re is enough for ever­yo­ne.

Water bot­t­les in Sval­bard­bu­tik­ken.

But the­re is ano­ther pro­blem: man­gane­se, a metal (che­mi­cal­ly more pre­cise: tran­si­ti­on metal) that occurs fre­quent­ly in natu­re, inclu­ding in the sedi­men­ta­ry rocks around Lon­gye­ar­by­en. Man­gane­se is also pre­sent in pret­ty much every sip of drin­king water world­wi­de, but as always, the quan­ti­ty is the point.

The Nor­we­gi­an Health Aut­ho­ri­ty (FHI, Fol­ke­hels­e­insti­tutt), which was con­sul­ted, has now con­cluded that the man­gane­se levels in the drin­king water have been too high sin­ce Sep­tem­ber 2024 to sup­p­ly infants (0-12 months) with it. Affec­ted fami­lies can get free bot­t­led water at Sval­bard­bu­tik­ken. For ever­yo­ne else, howe­ver, the­re should be no health risk asso­cia­ted with the con­sump­ti­on of tap water; health-rele­vant expo­sure should only occur at hig­her con­cen­tra­ti­ons over lon­ger peri­ods of time (10 years and more). Acu­te poi­so­ning is only theo­re­ti­cal­ly pos­si­ble at extre­me­ly high con­cen­tra­ti­ons.

This is the offi­ci­al posi­ti­on. For adults (ever­y­bo­dy older than 12 months 😄), the fol­lo­wing the­r­e­fo­re still appli­es: rai­se your glas­ses and che­ers, it just some­ti­mes doesn’t tas­te quite fresh, but it doesn’t mat­ter.

I would like to express­ly point out that I am not an expert on drin­king water and Legio­nella and man­gane­se in it; I am sum­ma­ri­sing offi­ci­al reports to the best of my know­ledge, but not my own assess­ment or opi­ni­on.

One of the major annu­al events in Longyearbyen’s cul­tu­ral calen­dar is the “Arc­tic Cham­ber Music Fes­ti­val”, which this year is dedi­ca­ted to the art of sto­rytel­ling as well as music.

This year’s mot­to of the ‘Arc­tic Cham­ber Music Fes­ti­val’: Sto­rytel­lers.

As with the Dark Sea­sons Blues Fes­ti­val and Polar Jazz, the­re is ple­nty on offer for the audi­ence. For exam­p­le, at noon on Satur­day at the Sval­bard Muse­um, the sto­ry of Wil­lem Barent­sz’ expe­di­ti­on, who famously dis­co­ver­ed Spits­ber­gen in 1596, was told in music …

Tor­un Tor­bo with the ‘Barent­sz flu­te’ and Sol­mund Nysta­bakk on the lute
at the Sval­bard Muse­um.

… with con­tem­po­ra­ry music play­ed on a flu­te that is an exact copy of the flu­te found in the remains of Barent­sz’ win­ter camp on Nova­ya Zem­lya, accom­pa­nied by a lute. The ori­gi­nal flu­te can be seen in the Rijks­mu­se­um in Ams­ter­dam.

Tor­un Tor­bo with the ‘Barent­sz flu­te’:
‘Tonen i isen’, the Barent­sz sto­ry told musi­cal­ly.

Pro­ba­b­ly the high­light of this year’s cham­ber music fes­ti­val in Lon­gye­ar­by­en was the Satur­day evening con­cert. Not only becau­se the high­lights are pre­sen­ted at this prime time, but also becau­se the venue had to be moved at short noti­ce for tech­ni­cal reasons – to the day faci­li­ties of Mine 7! The venue its­elf thus beca­me an event of exclu­si­ve value, as this last Nor­we­gi­an coal mine still in ope­ra­ti­on is not nor­mal­ly open to the public.

Mine 7: sud­den­ly the venue for the Arc­tic Cham­ber Music Fes­ti­val.

In pro­se and music, the­re was the sto­ry of one of the lone­liest theat­re and bal­let stages in the world, in California’s Death Val­ley:

Mis­sy Mar­zo­li from New York intro­du­ces Mar­ta Becket and her (Marta’s) lonely theat­re
in Death Val­ley Junc­tion …

… musi­cal­ly rea­li­sed by the NOVO Quar­tet from Den­mark.

This was fol­lo­wed by the life and work of the Vene­ti­an com­po­ser Bar­ba­ra Stroz­zi, impres­si­ve­ly per­for­med with sopra­no and lute.

Berit Nor­bak­ken (sopra­no) and Sol­mund Nysta­bakk (lute).
The some­what unhap­py loo­king lady abo­ve is Bar­ba­ra Stroz­zi (appro­xi­m­ate­ly 1619-1677)

And of cour­se that wasn’t all that was on offer at the Arc­tic Cham­ber Music Fes­ti­val. The­re was so much more, from ‘Peter und der Wolf’ to the ‘Four Sea­sons’.

Tilia-Ensem­ble in Lon­gye­ar­by­en and Trom­sø

If you are spon­ta­neous or hap­pen to be in the area any­way, you can enjoy ano­ther musi­cal high­light next week, when the Tilia Ensem­ble from Dres­den per­forms a pro­gram­me of music from the far north in the Sval­bard Church on Tues­day (25 Febru­ary) and the famous Tromsda­len Cathe­dral in Trom­sø on Fri­day.

Tilia Ensem­ble: 25th Feb in Lon­gye­ar­by­en, 28th Feb in Trom­sø.

New pages

Things are pro­gres­sing here too. One of the most beau­tiful places on Spits­ber­gen final­ly got the page it deser­ves, name­ly Kapp Lin­né. Be sure to check it out! And the page about Gjert­se­nod­den in St. Jons­fjord is not new, but it has been impro­ved. Others too, but that’s enough for now.

And what else?

As I wri­te this (on Sun­day, 23rd Febru­ary), a few kilo­me­t­res away, on the north side of Advent­fjord, a polar bear is wal­king around, and Sysselmester’s heli­c­op­ter is alre­a­dy in the air to cha­se it away from town. It is the first polar bear to come clo­se to Lon­gye­ar­by­en this year, as far as I have heard.

Let the­re be light! Today, 16 Febru­ary, the peo­p­le in and around Lon­gye­ar­by­en were able to enjoy the first sun­ri­se sin­ce 25 Octo­ber, at least in theo­ry. In bet­ween was the polar night, which has now come to an end.

Short­ly after noon, howe­ver, the sun bare­ly mana­ged to reach 0.16 degrees abo­ve the hori­zon, hiding behind the moun­ta­ins of Lon­gye­ar­by­en. It will only return to Lon­gye­ar­by­en on 8 March.

But on the heights around Lon­gye­ar­by­en it was pos­si­ble to catch a few rays at mid­day today, like here on the slo­pe of Hiorth­fjel­let on the north side of the Advent­fjord.

The first sun­ri­se of the year on 16 Febru­ary at mid­day over Advent­da­len.

A few clouds made sure you didn’t get an over­do­se of suns­hi­ne.

And if that was too much, you can always take refu­ge in the gla­cier cave at Lon­gye­ar­breen.

Gla­cier cave in Lon­gye­ar­breen.

The­re it is real­ly – REAL­LY! – dark wit­hout a lamp.

Gla­cier cave in Lon­gye­ar­breen wit­hout lamp 😄.

The days when the polar night meant only dark­ness and scur­vy are long gone. Today Lon­gye­ar­by­en offers a lot of varie­ty even in the dark win­ter. The cul­tu­ral calen­dar always offers a lec­tu­re (often in Nor­we­gi­an) or other smal­ler events.

Some­ti­mes the­re are lar­ger events, such as the Polar­jazz jazz fes­ti­val last weekend. Just as the Dark Sea­sons Blues Fes­ti­val at the end of Octo­ber, Polar­jazz fea­tures local artists as well as well-known Nor­we­gi­an and inter­na­tio­nal musi­ci­ans. Both fes­ti­vals have been an inte­gral part of Svalbard’s cul­tu­ral calen­dar for many years.

Longyearbyen’s music sce­ne kicks off

Polar­jazz was ope­ned on Thurs­day evening in Kul­tur­hu­set (the cul­tu­ral cent­re) by a num­ber of local artists. It is impres­si­ve how many acti­ve musi­ci­ans Lon­gye­ar­by­en has to offer – after all, it is a vil­la­ge with a popu­la­ti­on of around 2500. But how many vil­la­ges with a popu­la­ti­on of 2500 can put tog­e­ther a pro­gram­me of almost three hours, with hard­ly anyo­ne on stage for more than one song?

Ope­ning evening of the Polar­jazz fes­ti­val
with musi­ci­ans from Lon­gye­ar­by­en at the Kul­tur­hus.

Com­mis­sio­ned work for the Spits­ber­gen Trea­ty

The pro­gram­me con­tin­ued until Sun­day, with num­e­rous events. One of the high­lights was undoub­ted­ly the world pre­mie­re of a work by Bug­ge Wes­selt­oft in the Huset, com­mis­sio­ned and rea­li­sed for the 100th anni­ver­sa­ry of the Spits­ber­gen Trea­ty, which came into force in 1925. In the nine sequen­ces of his work, Wes­selt­oft has incor­po­ra­ted ever­y­thing he asso­cia­tes with Sval­bard, both soni­cal­ly and visual­ly, to the delight of audi­en­ces and cri­tics ali­ke.

World pre­mie­re of the work by Bug­ge Wes­selt­oft at Huset.

Few, if any, seem to have noti­ced that he cho­se the Well­man-Bjør­vig-Bent­sen sto­ry, a dra­ma from 1898-99 set in the Rus­si­an archi­pe­la­go Franz Josefs Land, for the sec­tion devo­ted to the dra­ma­tic histo­ry of the various north pole expe­di­ti­ons, or they have sim­ply over­loo­ked it.

Ella Marie Hæt­ta Isak­sen

Ano­ther high­light was the per­for­mance of Sami sin­ger and actress Ella Marie in Kul­tur­hu­set. Here the music was hot and loud, with modern sounds that didn’t lose their cul­tu­ral roots. The poli­ti­cal mes­sa­ges were not negle­c­ted eit­her, such as the poli­ti­cal­ly com­mit­ted Sami singer’s unmist­aka­ble gree­ting to the Nor­we­gi­an govern­ment, in which two midd­le fin­gers play­ed the lea­ding roles. Anyo­ne who has the chan­ce to see Ella Marie Hæt­ta Isak­sen, as she is known in full, on stage should not miss it.

Ella Marie and band on stage in kul­tur­hu­set.

If you are thin­king about taking a cul­tu­ral trip to the polar night, you can take a look at the pro­gram­me on their own web­site (2026 is still a long way off, alt­hough pre­pa­ra­ti­ons are alre­a­dy under­way behind the sce­nes).

And what else? The light is coming back, the dark core of the polar night is giving way to day­light. But it will be a few weeks befo­re the sun real­ly comes back again.

View over the camp­si­te on Tues­day at noon­ti­me: the polar night is coming to an end.

As usu­al, a few more pic­tures for fur­ther impres­si­ons:

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

The title might make your thoughts go astray 🤪 but don’t worry, this post doesn’t need an age limit.

I recent­ly men­tio­ned ‘Jern­sen­ga’, ‘the iron bed’ in Advent­da­len. If you want to know what that is all about and what the sto­ry behind it is, you can take a look at a new page I have crea­ted sin­ce then. Just click here and you’ll be in Advent­da­len in your mind’s eye.

And as a visu­al high­light, the­re is a pan­o­r­amic view on that page, taken in this incre­di­bly beau­tiful red light that we recent­ly had. It real­ly looks like what I ima­gi­ne it would look like on Mars, it was quite incre­di­ble!

So as not to spoil any­thing, there’s no pic­tu­re here now. But you will of cour­se find pic­tures on the new Jern­sen­ga page.

And if you want even more of the beau­tiful red light, you should take a look at Inne­rhyt­ta.

… is over. At least if you defi­ne the end of the polar night as the day on which ‘civil twi­light’ returns at noon, i.e. the sun is 6 degrees or more below the hori­zon. This was the case yes­ter­day (30 Janu­ary) at just after 12 noon for the first time sin­ce 11 Novem­ber.

Twi­light: civil, nau­ti­cal, astro­no­mic­al

When the sun is lower than -6 degrees around the clock (i.e. 6 degrees below the hori­zon), this is cal­led polar night. Befo­re and after this, the­re are seve­ral weeks when the sun does not rise, but is very low below the hori­zon at mid­day (bet­ween 0 and 6 degrees), so that the­re is a clear twi­light. This is known as ‘civil twi­light’, which peo­p­le expe­ri­ence as dawn. The­re is also nau­ti­cal twi­light (the sun is 6-12 degrees below the hori­zon, which can still be seen by navi­ga­tors at sea) and astro­no­mic­al twi­light (the sun is 12-18 degrees below the hori­zon, which can still be seen by astro­no­mers with a trai­ned eye), and only when the sun is lower than 18 degrees below the hori­zon do we offi­ci­al­ly speak of dark­ness.

In Lon­gye­ar­by­en, it does never hap­pen that the sun is lower than 18 degrees below the hori­zon for 24 hours. Even at the dar­kest time, around 21 Decem­ber, the sun is still bet­ween 11 and 12 degrees below the hori­zon at mid­day, so that when the sky is clear the­re is a hint of twi­light to the south. Strict­ly spea­king, it is never com­ple­te­ly dark for 24 hours in Lon­gye­ar­by­en.

The end of the polar night: view of Hiorth­fjel­let on 30 Janu­ary, spi­ced up with a dose of red light (Ray­leigh-scat­te­ring).

You can read more about this on the cor­re­spon­ding page mid­night sun and polar night.

Pic­tures: the end of the polar night

A few impres­si­ons from yes­ter­day (30 Janu­ary) at noon, alt­hough I had alre­a­dy missed the brigh­test point. The­re was inde­ed a good whiff of that won­derful red light in the air again, alt­hough it wasn’t as inten­se as it was a week ago.

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

Red light

I need to come back to the stun­ning phe­no­me­non of the red light again. First­ly, in last week’s post (‘Red sky’) I somehow for­got to men­ti­on the name of the phe­no­me­non that is ulti­m­ate­ly respon­si­ble for this red light. It is cal­led Ray­leigh scat­te­ring. That should be added.

And I also cap­tu­red the red light in a com­ple­te 360 degree pan­ora­ma last week, it just had to be pro­ces­sed first. Here is an exam­p­le from Advent­da­len, at ‘Jern­sen­ga’ (‘the iron bed’, the­re is inde­ed a beds­tead stan­ding in the land­scape. But that is ano­ther sto­ry, for ano­ther day). The­re is ano­ther red light pano on the Inne­rhyt­ta page, taken on a pin­go a litt­le fur­ther into Advent­da­len.

In Lon­gye­ar­by­en, as in many other places, not ever­yo­ne is hap­py to see crui­se ships in the har­bour. The crui­se indus­try, espe­ci­al­ly with its lar­ger ships, is not always wel­co­med in Lon­gye­ar­by­en.

And the locals have cer­tain­ly been annoy­ed by the queu­es at the post office, the super­mar­ket or the over­c­row­ded café, and dri­vers regu­lar­ly react with incom­pre­hen­si­on to tou­rists who mista­ke the road bet­ween the har­bour and the town cent­re for a foot­path. It’s all the­re for all to see on the days in ques­ti­on.

Ships of all sizes come to Lon­gye­ar­by­en. They all lea­ve money the­re.

What is invi­si­ble, howe­ver, is what the ships bring to Lon­gye­ar­by­en: eco­no­mic power in the form of a lot of money. Of cour­se, tho­se who don’t get a seat in the café or sla­lom down the street at wal­king pace are not neces­s­a­ri­ly the ones who­se bank accounts fill up. But the amounts are con­sidera­ble, and a signi­fi­cant part of it is dis­tri­bu­ted wide­ly through the wages of num­e­rous ser­vice pro­vi­ders and sales in shops.

Now we have some figu­res for 2024:

• The some­what smal­ler ships (‘expe­di­ti­on ships’) left 235 mil­li­on kro­ner (around 20 mil­li­on euros) in Lon­gye­ar­by­en.
• The cor­re­spon­ding figu­re for the lar­ger crui­se ships is 112.5 mil­li­on kro­ner (around 9.6 mil­li­on euros).
• Pas­sen­gers on smal­ler ships are also ahead when it comes to per­so­nal spen­ding: on avera­ge, expe­di­ti­on ship pas­sen­gers spent 8090 kro­ner (around 690 euros) per per­son, while crui­se ship pas­sen­gers spent 1886 kro­ner (160 euros).
• Ny-Åle­sund bene­fi­ted from 21,000 visi­tors who came as tou­rists on ships with 14 mil­li­on kro­ner (approx. 1.2 mil­li­on euros).

The­se figu­res are con­sidera­ble, espe­ci­al­ly as the­se are very small towns: In purely mathe­ma­ti­cal terms, ship tou­rists lea­ve behind around 12,000 euros for each of Longyearbyen’s 2500 inha­bi­tants. This includes fees for the har­bour, which the muni­ci­pa­li­ty owns but can­not free­ly dis­po­se of for legal reasons, but also hotels, retail­ers, restau­rants and local tour ope­ra­tors.

It would be inte­res­t­ing to know exact­ly what the­se sums are spent on and whe­re the money goes. Howe­ver, this is not clear from the infor­ma­ti­on available. It comes from a report by the Danish con­sul­tancy Epi­ni­on for the indus­try asso­cia­ti­on Visit Sval­bard. They found the figu­res so high that they asked Epi­ni­on to check for errors befo­re they took it fur­ther. Howe­ver, the report tur­ned out to be cor­rect and some of the key figu­res have now been published in Sval­bard­pos­ten.

Thurs­day (23 Janu­ary) was one of tho­se rare pur­ple days. It real­ly is rare. When this light comes, it seems to hap­pen pre­fer­a­b­ly during the polar night, as it is coming near the end, as was the case on 10 Janu­ary 2018, when the­re was an artic­le about it in Sval­bard­pos­ten.

It pro­ba­b­ly hap­pens less than once a year that the sky turns red in such a magni­fi­cent way. Yes­ter­day was one of tho­se days when you can count yours­elf lucky if you’re in the right place. And even more so if you’re able to spon­ta­neous­ly drop the ham­mer and head out into Advent­da­len with your came­ra, away from the arti­fi­ci­al light.

A few impres­si­ons:

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

The colour of the pho­tos real­ly cor­re­sponds to the impres­si­on you got on the spot.

The phy­sics of the red sky

In the Sval­bard­pos­ten artic­le lin­ked abo­ve, Dag A. Lorent­zen, then as now pro­fes­sor of geo­phy­sics at UNIS, explains the phe­no­me­non by the refrac­tion of sun­light in high atmo­sphe­ric lay­ers, at an alti­tu­de of about 20 kilo­me­t­res. Howe­ver, the meteo­ro­lo­gi­cal con­di­ti­ons must be just right: The­se include a very cold atmo­sphe­re in the­se lay­ers of air and the for­ma­ti­on of spe­cial clouds that refract the light in exact­ly the way that pro­du­ces this colou­ring. The­se ‘clouds’ them­sel­ves are not visi­ble; they are weak con­cen­tra­ti­ons of ice crys­tals rather than what is com­mon­ly thought of as clouds. In this case, the parts of the spec­trum from vio­let to green are most­ly lost due to refrac­tion and scat­te­ring, lea­ving the remai­ning wave­lengths (main­ly red) to domi­na­te.

The actu­al cir­cum­s­tances must be so exact that the phe­no­me­non of the ‘red sky’ is so rare. In my opi­ni­on, the colour impres­si­on is more vio­let, but as the vio­let part of the spec­trum of visi­ble sun­light is the first to be lost, the term red is pro­ba­b­ly more appro­pria­te from a phy­si­cal point of view.

Pur­ple haze

The appro­pria­te sound­track is of cour­se ‘Pur­ple Haze’ by Jimi Hen­drix 🙂.

… are curr­ent­ly a bit dif­fi­cult in Lon­gye­ar­by­en. This has hap­pen­ed befo­re, after all, it is still at the end of the world or at least not far off. But things are get­ting thin­ner now and will pro­ba­b­ly stay that way for a while. This is what some of the shel­ves in the fresh pro­du­ce sec­tion of the Sval­bard­bu­tik­ken super­mar­ket look like the­se days:

Emp­ty shel­ves in Sval­bard­bu­tik­ken.

The regu­lar car­go pla­ne stop­ped ope­ra­ting at the end of last year. A repla­ce­ment is plan­ned, but not yet in sight.

Car­go ships come regu­lar­ly to Lon­gye­ar­by­en, the pas­sa­ge from Trom­sø takes 3-4 days. Howe­ver, the logi­stics are obvious­ly not yet per­fect, and depen­ding on the wea­ther, it is not unhe­ard of that a car­go of eggs arri­ves in the shape of of scram­bled eggs mixed with card­board and eggshells.

At the moment, Sval­bard­bu­tik­ken has no choice but to ask its cus­to­mers to be pati­ent.

Noti­ce on an emp­ty shelf: ‘Due to the new flight and freight situa­ti­on, the­re will be a shorta­ge of peri­s­ha­ble goods bet­ween deli­veries for some time.

Until the air­port ope­ned in 1975, Lon­gye­ar­by­en was cut off from sup­pli­es for months in win­ter. After the war and until 1975, the­re was a mail pla­ne that occa­sio­nal­ly made deli­veries by ‘mail drop’ (lite­ral­ly). The­re were pro­ba­b­ly no bana­nas or eggs in it eit­her, and the con­tents of many a tin of apri­cots had to be scraped out of the snow later, fro­zen 🙂. At that time the­re was a ‘jern­ku’, an ‘iron cow’, in which milk was made from pow­de­red milk. The term ‘jern­ku’ is often used in Lon­gye­ar­by­en the­se days, with a slight­ly sar­ca­stic under­to­ne. The­re was inde­ed a real cow, and some­ti­mes seve­ral ones, but the milk it pro­du­ced was reser­ved for pregnant women and fami­lies with small child­ren.

Cows in Lon­gye­ar­by­en (1937). Pho­to: Odd Dani­el­sen.

For now, we have to make do with what we have. The car­go ship is due to arri­ve on Mon­day.

New pages

By the way, if you have the time and incli­na­ti­on to let your mind wan­der a litt­le more towards Spits­ber­gen, you can do so on the new pages that are being crea­ted during the long evenings of the polar night. After years of explo­ring remo­te cor­ners of the island also regar­ding new pages within this web­site, I’m now con­cen­t­ra­ting more on the beau­tiful places we’ll be visi­ting in the future. The­re are still many unknown cor­ners to be dis­co­ver­ed, but I’m going to take a more or less sys­te­ma­tic approach, start­ing with a few well-known spots. Trygg­ham­na with Alk­hor­net and Ymer­buk­ta tog­e­ther with the neigh­bou­ring beau­tiful Erd­mann­flya will cer­tain­ly be remem­be­red fondly by some.

• Trygg­ham­na, Alk­hor­net
• Ymer­buk­ta & Erd­mann­flya

I men­tio­ned Sas­senfjord and Tem­pel­fjord in this con­text back in Decem­ber. The gap bet­ween them will also be clo­sed in the future.

Esmark­breen in Ymer­buk­ta: still one of my favou­ri­te gla­cier pho­tos,
in beau­tiful light at the end of Sep­tem­ber. One of many pho­tos on the new Trygg­ham­na, Alk­hor­net and Ymer­buk­ta & Erd­mann­flya pages.

Have a nice weekend!

It can hap­pen that quick­ly. It loo­ked like this the other day:

Nor­t­hern lights over Lon­gye­ar­by­en.

And today like this. It can hap­pen that quick­ly.

Snow­storm in Lon­gye­ar­by­en.

Wind and lots of snow, that’s a com­bi­na­ti­on that brings some exci­te­ment. The­se amounts of snow are unu­su­al for Lon­gye­ar­by­en, whe­re the over­all cli­ma­te is still arc­tic and thus rather low in pre­ci­pi­ta­ti­on, and bring chal­lenges with them: air traf­fic is impai­red and indi­vi­du­al buil­dings and sec­tions of ter­rain have alre­a­dy been evacua­ted or clo­sed by the Sys­sel­mes­ter due to the risk of ava­lan­ches. So far, this affects litt­le used buil­dings and snow­mo­bi­le trails near slo­pes in Lon­gye­ar­by­en, but on a day like this it’s bet­ter to lea­ve the hor­ses in the sta­ble any­way.

The slo­pes at Suk­ker­top­pen near the cen­tral resi­den­ti­al are­as have been equip­ped with exten­si­ve ava­lan­che bar­riers sin­ce the dead­ly ava­lan­che in 2015, other­wi­se the resi­den­ti­al are­as in this area might also have alre­a­dy been affec­ted by evacua­tions.

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