… 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.

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.

• Mid­ter­huk­ham­na: coas­tal land­scape in Bell­sund.
• Gås­ber­get at Mid­ter­hu­ken: pan­o­r­amic view over Bell­sund.

View from Mid­ter­hu­ken in Bell­sund: a mou­se click wort­hwhile. The pic­tu­re here is just a screen­shot, the real pan­ora­mas can be rota­ted 360 degrees on the screen.

If you fan­cy more of Bell­sund, you should for exam­p­le visit Obser­va­to­rief­jel­let and Snat­cher­pyn­ten in Recher­chefjord, or Akseløya inclu­ding Rus­selt­ved­tod­den. The­re is ple­nty of good stuff.

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.

Hap­py new year!

Fire­works in Lon­gye­ar­by­en

From earth and the sky.

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