Gallery 3: Nordaustland

Nord­aus­t­land is Svalbard’s second lar­gest island. Bar­ren and wild, remo­te and beau­tiful, still lar­ge­ly dif­fi­cult to reach. That is due to the nau­ti­cal­ly dif­fi­cult waters, which are lar­ge­ly still poo­re­ly char­ted. Few cap­ta­ins take their ships through Fran­k­lin­sund. Hein­rich does, and his boat SY Arc­ti­ca II is well sui­ted for this chall­enge. As a result, we had a gre­at time in Lady Fran­k­lin­fjord and Bren­ne­vins­fjord, see­ing stun­ning high arc­tic sce­n­ery and polar bears rather than other ships. The fau­ni­stic high­light was, howe­ver, a pair of rare Sabine’s gulls. A much more sel­dom sight­ing than a polar bear! But one of the­se guys also show­ed up …

The next fau­ni­stic sur­pri­se, after the stun­ning sce­n­ery and gla­ciers in Lady Fran­k­lin­fjord, was the abun­dance of mos­qui­tos in Frank­lind­a­len. Later, we made it far north, up to Sjuøya­ne. Stun­ning views of Nel­sonøya and neigh­bou­ring Par­ry­øya with mir­ror images and drift ice around! After our fur­thest north landing on Phippsøya, we made ano­ther landing, even fur­ther north, on Ros­søya. Who would have expec­ted that? Of cour­se we enjoy­ed the ice and some of the asso­cia­ted wild­life, alt­hough we were not lucky with polar bears at that stage (that comes later …).

The com­bi­na­ti­on of ice and fog in Rijpfjord was just too much. Ins­tead, we had a look at the geo­glyphs on Cherm­si­deøya and a landing on desert-like Lang­grun­nod­den pro­vi­ded us with the final impres­si­ons of Nord­aus­t­land for this time.

Gal­lery 3: Nord­aus­t­land – Lady Fran­k­lin­fjord

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

To Gal­lery:  → west coast (1)  → north coast  → Nord­aus­t­land  → Hin­lo­pen Strait  → Storfjord  → west coast (2)

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