Farmhamna

Trapper-station on Spitsbergen's west coast

Farmhamna is situated on Spitsbergen’s west coast, 60 km away from Longyearbyen.
It is about 40 km to Barentsburg and 65 km to Ny-Ålesund.

Farmhamna is in Forlandsund, not far north of Isfjord. The landscape is characterised by a wide-open coastal plain with low rocky hills and tundra areas, little lakes and wetlands.

Farmhamna from a bird’s perspective.

This photo, obviously taken from an aerial perspective, gives a good overview of the geography of Farmhamna. Strictly speaking, the name “Farmhamna” designates the bay and lagoon that separate the peninsula from the mainland. The peninsula itself is named “Hamnetangen”, which means “Harbour headland”, obviously referring to a natural harbour and not to any major piece of marine infrastructure. That doesn’t exist in this area. And the natural harbour is really only for small vessels with a shallow draft.

The trapper station known as Farmhamna is almost at the end of the long headland to the right of and just above the image centre, behind the little lakes.

Panorama 1 – Farmhamna: the trapper station

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Fangststasjon Farmhamna.

Farmhamna Fangststasjon (Trapper station, hunting cabin) was built in 1991 by the Danish-Norwegian couple Hans and Marianne Lund. They ran Farmhamna for a number of years as their base for hunting and living. Amongst others, their beuatiful seal skin products, handmade on site, achieved good reputation in Longyearbyen.

Later, the station was aquired by Rico and Karoline from Longyearbyen, who keep the place as a hunting station. Amongst their specialties is reindeer meat that is popular amongst locals in Longyearbyen in the season (early autumn). If you want to know more about what Rico and Karoline are doing in Farmhamna, then you can visit their webseite (click here). Even arctic hunters are online these days 🙂

The Farmhamna hunting station, built much more recently than most other huts in Spitsbergen related to hunting and trapping, is comparatively comfortable. Next to the reasonably spacious main hut, there is the so-called “A-hut”, so named due to its A-shaped cross section. The A-hut has a little workshop, storage and an emergency shelter where you can even survive for a while if you have to escape from the burning main hut with nothing but your underwear – indeed a worst case scenario!

Panorama 2 – Farmhamna: telephone hill (1)

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Farmhamna: telephone hill (1)

Here we are on “telephone hill”, a low rocky hill directly behind the main hut and named so because on top you have a reasonably reliable mobile phone connection. And although telephone hill is just a few metres high, it offers splendid views over the hunting station and its surroundings. From here, we can also see that there are two more subsidiary buildings between the main hut and the hill: the “battery house” (left) and the “garage”, both with storage, equipment, some technical infrastructure etc.

Panorama 3 – Farmhamna: telephone hill (2)

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Farmhamna: telephone hill (2)

Only some metres further north on telephone hill, you have a beautiful view of the northern end of the peninsula and a large part of Forlandsund.

Panorama 4 – Farmhamna in the polar night (1)

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Farmhamna under northern light

In the winter, Farmhamna is a completely different, yet utterly beautiful little world. Especially when the northern lights dance on the arctic winter sky! It is a great place to watch and photograph the northern light because there is hardly any light pollution. Of course the station has electrical light, also outside, but this is just a matter of pushing a button …

This panorama didn’t come out perfectly well, as you can see e.g. on the horizon which isn’t really a straight line. But the conditions were pretty challenging, with very low light, low temperatures and an icy breeze going.

Panorama 5 – Farmhamna in the polar night (2)

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Farmhamna in the polar night: the blue hours

Another panorama of Farmhamna during the polar night, taken in early February at the brightest time of day. There is already twilight for several hours during the day – enough to move and work outside largely without artificial light. Here, we are close to the bay of Farmhamna which is filled with pancake ice and to the “kjøttstativ” (“meat stand”), a wooden construction to store meat, from seals (not relevant in Farmhamna) or reindeer, in a polar-bear-proof manner.

Farmhamna: photo gallery 1 (summer)

Some impressions of Farmhamna and surroundings during the summer. Some of the photos (those with a grey sky) were taken in 2008; some things have changed since then.