Mushamna in Woodfjord

Mus­ham­na: Bucht und Lagu­ne im Wood­fjord

Mus­ham­na is a bay on the east side of Wood­fjord on the north coast of Spits­ber­gen. The bay is actual­ly a lagoon, almost com­ple­te­ly cut of from the fjord by a long, nar­row gra­vel bar. The ent­rance is just a few met­res wide, but lar­ge enough for small ships to enter, which can find a well-shel­te­red ancho­ra­ge insi­de.

Mush­ham­na: the Hovels­rud-Hut from 1987

The­re are a cou­ple of huts a short way north of Mus­ham­na. In this lone­so­me arc­tic wil­der­ness, they almost make the impres­si­on of a litt­le sett­le­ment. The most eye-cat­ching one is a lar­ge trap­per hut built in solid log-cabin style. This is pret­ty unu­su­al for Spits­ber­gen, whe­re most trap­per huts were built in a very simp­le and less solid way with woo­den boards. This one was built in 1987 by the Nor­we­gi­an dog-sledge-man, adven­turer and hun­ter Kjell Reidar Hovels­rud, who nar­ra­tes his adven­tures in his book Sval­bard: Et even­tyr­lig polar­liv (Nor­we­gi­an).

The­re are a few small buil­dings next to the main hut, inclu­ding a litt­le sau­na.

Later, Hovels­rud han­ded his hut over to the Sys­sel­man­nen. Sin­ce then, it is locked.

This second hut is more like the way most trap­pers’ huts were built in Spits­ber­gen. It is much older and dates into the most acti­ve years of Nor­we­gi­an win­tering trap­pers. It was the famous trap­per Hil­mar Nøis, who lived almost 40 years in Spits­ber­gen, who built this hut in 1927. Nøis cal­led it Svend­sen Bay, after his Swe­dish neigh­bour who lived in Raud­fjord. Today, it is a pro­tec­ted his­to­ri­cal relict and not used any­mo­re. Nøis had a cou­ple of huts in the Wood­fjord and Lief­defjord area, inclu­ding the famous one at Gråhu­ken whe­re Chris­tia­ne Rit­ter win­tered (“A woman in the polar night”) and Texas Bar in Lief­defjord.

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