Seligerbreen

Seli­ger­breen is a lar­ge gla­cier in inner Lief­defjord.

The gla­cier Seli­ger­breen is next to the famous Mona­co­b­reen in Lief­defjord. They are sepa­ra­ted by the moun­tain Stortingspre­si­den­ten. Until 2014, both gla­ciers flew around Stortingspre­si­den­ten and shared a gla­cier front north of the moun­tain. Sin­ce 2015, both gla­ciers have retrea­ted so far that they are sepa­ra­ted by the moun­tain sin­ce then.

Seli­ger­breen con­tin­ued retrea­ting and a few small islets have thus appeared from under the gla­cier. They were initi­al­ly very clo­se to the gla­cier and still cover­ed with towers of dead gla­cier ice, making them inac­ces­si­ble. The aeri­al pho­to below, from my book Aeri­al Arc­tic shows the situa­ti­on as it was in Sep­tem­ber 2018.

Seli­ger­breen in Lief­defjord (Sep­tem­ber 2018).

Pano 1 – Seli­ger­breen

In Sep­tem­ber 2019 I got an oppor­tu­ni­ty to set foot on the­se new islands. Still an adven­ture that has to be done with some care, as cal­vings from the near­by gla­cier may still pro­du­ce lar­ge waves at any time. I was the­re tog­e­ther with Alex­an­der (“Sau­na-Alex”) Lembke and we both went ashore for a cou­ple of minu­tes while the other one kept the boat in deep water. I don’t know if anyo­ne had been the­re befo­re we went. If you hap­pen to know of any ear­lier landings, plea­se get in touch and let me know.

Pano 2 – Seli­ger­breen

The islets are too small, too steep and too clo­se to Seli­ger­breen to allow for regu­lar landings. But they do offer gre­at views of Seli­ger­breen and they are impres­si­ve wit­nesses to recent land­scape deve­lo­p­ment in the Arc­tic, which curr­ent­ly knows only one direc­tion: pro­no­un­ced and acce­le­ra­ting retre­at of almost all gla­ciers.

Pho­to gal­lery: Seli­ger­breen in Lief­defjord

Not­wi­th­stan­ding pro­no­un­ced retre­at, Seli­ger­breen is still a huge­ly impres­si­ve and beau­tiful gla­cier, as the­se pho­tos, taken from 2018 to 2022, may illus­tra­te:

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

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