Spitsbergen 06-24 August 2024 with SY Arctica II

Polar bear at Halv­må­neøya

Esca­ping the fog was the one and only thing to so, some­thing that tur­ned out to be not easy at all. We got rid of it, for a while at least, in Free­man­sund on Barent­søya, whe­re we wan­ted to land at Büdelf­jel­let (near Kapp Wald­burg), a clas­sic site well known for its kit­ti­wa­ke colo­ny and often fri­end­ly arc­tic foxes. But befo­re we got that far, our atten­ti­on was caught by a slight­ly lar­ger mammal. We were bles­sed with an ama­zing wild­life encoun­ter – have a look at my tra­vel blog from that day for a bunch of pho­tos. Later, we still got to the kit­ti­wa­kes and the foxes. Well, one fox. Any­way.

We pas­sed the remo­te, rare­ly visi­ted Ryke Yse­øya­ne befo­re rea­ching Halv­må­neøya, whe­re the fog cover­ed ever­y­thing again, but the ear­ly mor­ning visit (see pho­to on top of this page) more than made up for it. Stun­ning!

The next very rare expe­ri­ence was ente­ring Tjuv­fjord­la­gu­ne, a lar­ge lagoon in inner Tjuv­fjord on the south side of Edgeøya crea­ted by the retre­at of the lar­ge Delt­ab­reen gla­cier. I won­der if any ship had ever ancho­red the­re befo­re we did. It is at least pos­si­ble that we were the first ones. One should always be carefu­ly with any cla­im for being the first one to have done some­thing in Sval­bard, but in this case it is at least a plau­si­ble thought. The ent­rance is not straight­for­ward, cer­tain­ly not an opti­on for big­ger ships any­way and only in good con­di­ti­ons. If you know of any ear­lier visits the­re, plea­se let me know.

Delt­ab­reen in Tjuv­fjord­la­gu­ne.

Tusenøya­ne remain­ed hid­den in den­se fog. We could well have done with a bit less fog on this trip, but any­way, we nee­ded some rest, so may­be it wasn’t a bad thing after all. We set cour­se for the south cape – a delightful­ly uneventful pas­sa­ge – and went as far north as Bell­sund on the west coast, into Recher­chefjord, whe­re we stret­ched our legs at various places inclu­ding Cham­ber­lind­a­len and Obser­va­to­rief­jel­let.

Autum in Recher­chefjord.

Van Mijenfjord had a cou­ple of real­ly inte­res­t­ing places for us, start­ing with the stron­gly advan­cing gla­cier Schee­le­breen and then on to the aban­do­ned mining sett­le­ment Sveagru­va which has under­go­ne a major clean-up. Have a look at this page (with sub pages) to see what it used to be during its more recent acti­ve years and at the blog for what it looks like now. A strong con­trast.

Then we still had some miles ahead of us back to Lon­gye­ar­by­en, a pas­sa­ge bro­ken up by yet ano­ther polar bear sight­ing, our efforts to secu­re some fresh fish for our final din­ner which took place while we pas­sed Gru­mant­by­en on the very last miles of the voya­ge.

Pho­to gal­lery 3: from Barent­søya to Isfjord

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

To page/photo gal­lery:  → From Isfjord to Mos­sel­buk­ta  → Nord­aus­t­land and Hin­lo­pen Strait  → From Barent­søya to Isfjord

← Back