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:
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.
… 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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
There may be more attractive things to talk about than going into the small print of a comprehensive new set of rules, but the much-discussed new rules will from now on determine where we can and cannot go in Svalbard, and much more besides. So they are important. And above all, it is clear that there is a lot of uncertainty and a need for clarification. There are now rumours and misinformation circulating, which I would like to counter.
So there’s only one thing to do: you have to get into the details to see what it is all about. This is not only important for guides who need to know the facts, but also if you are wondering whether a trip to Spitsbergen will still be worthwhile in the future (the short answer: yes).
Spitsbergen under sail: still possible, still beautiful. In future, especially in key regions where we will continue to have freedom of movement as usual.
However, I won’t be doing this as part of a post that will be pushed down more and more by newer posts over time, but on a separate page within the ‘Spitsbergen information’ section, which will remain where it is. Click here to open this new page.
Rumours and nonsense
The following is not true:
‘You are only allowed to go ashore in 43 places on boat trips in Svalbare.’ That’s rubbish, we still have plenty of space for landings and hikes. Refer to the new page for further details.
‘Many bird colonies are now closed and may no longer be visited.’ That’s rubbish, but there are speed limits in many places. Details … You can guess where they are.
‘You can no longer see polar bears in Spitsbergen.’ Yes, you can, but distances apply (500 metres until the end of June, 300 metres from the beginning of July). Close-ups are no longer possible in Svalbard, but with binoculars and a good telephoto lens, you can still have a great experience and take some great photos. And this law does not apply at the drift ice outside the twelve-mile zone.
‘You are no longer allowed to visit walrus colonies.’ Yes, you can. The minimum distances that are now prescribed for walruses apply to boats. As soon as you are on land, you can visit walrus colonies as usual.
‘Svalbard is no longer an interesting travel destination.’ This is wrong, Svalbard is and remains a beautiful, interesting destination with many possibilities. We still have plenty of space for shore excursions and hikes and we will still be able to see lots of wildlife, including walruses, polar bears (the latter at the distances mentioned above) and bird colonies.
During the polar night and in the relative calm of the beginning of the new year, you can relax and create beautiful new pages, also to take your mind off the sometimes somewhat routine work on the updated editions of the Svalbard guidebook. This reference to these beautiful new pages is intended as an easily digestible introduction to the Svalbard news section 2025.
Panorama landscape Bellsund
Bellsund has so far been somewhat sparsely represented in the Svalbard panorama section, which of course does not do justice to this varied and beautiful area, and there is certainly more than enough material for corresponding pages in the archive, they just have to be created bit by bit. Midterhukhamna and Gåsberget (Midterhuken) are a nice step forward with two brandnew pages. Enjoy the virtual trip there, the view over Bellsund is fantastic and the whole area really is a natural gem.
The fireworks in Longyearbyen are certainly not the most spectacular in the world. There are hardly any private fireworks, but there are two public fireworks displays on New Year’s Eve: one family-friendly at 7 pm, the second classic at midnight.
While the fireworks themselves may not be the biggest on the planet – for which some people and certainly all animals are grateful – there was a very quiet, beautiful firework display from above as an encore 😀 and that was certainly quite unique.