Lofoten, Bear Island (Bjørnøya), Spitsbergen - SV Antigua, 2018

Thanks to fair winds and our ear­ly depar­tu­re from Nor­way, we still had quite a lot of time to spend in Spits­ber­gen, much to ever­y­bo­dies delight. So we could not only explo­re in Horn­sund and Bell­sund, but even ven­tu­red as far north as Kongsfjord, to Ny-Åle­sund and just across 79° north! During the­se beau­tiful days, we got a good impres­si­on of Spitsbergen’s stun­ning varie­ty: the dif­fe­rent, con­trast-rich land­scapes and the ama­zing wild­life, from many birds, wal­ru­ses and reinde­er to a fri­end­ly Hump­back wha­le that gree­ted us with his flu­ke. Fin­ding a polar bear tur­ned out to be hard work, but we did find one in the end, with a bit of luck. It was a distant bear, but a bear!

This year’s ear­ly snow melt had yiel­ded some space to walk at least at sea level, but a bit sur­pri­sin­gly, outer Isfjord was the place whe­re the arc­tic win­ter still had a strong foot­hold. While the first flowers were alre­a­dy brin­ging some colour to the tun­dra fur­ther north and south, almost ever­y­thing was still under snow at Alk­hor­net and around Barents­burg. Hence, during this voya­ge of 1184 nau­ti­cal miles from Bodø to Lon­gye­ar­by­en, what we saw was not just a wide ran­ge of nor­t­hern land­scape from Norway’s small vil­la­ges hid­den in stun­ning fjords and on love­ly islands and up to high-arc­tic Spits­ber­gen, but also a sea­so­nal spec­trum cove­ring ever­y­thing from ear­ly sum­mer to late win­ter (in this order) within just 2 weeks!

Gal­lery 3: Spits­ber­gen

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

To the gal­lery:  → Lofo­ten  → Bear Island (Bjørnøya)  → Spits­ber­gen (Sval­bard)

← back