Sørhamna

Sør­ham­na 1

The bay Sør­ham­na is the only bay on Bear Island that deser­ves to be cal­led a natu­ral har­bour. It offers good ancho­ra­ge unless wind and sea are coming in from the south. It has a nice beach, but no access to the island from the­re unless you climb up a rather steep cliff, some­thing that is not impos­si­ble the­re but should not be done for envi­ron­men­tal reasons (bree­ding sea­birds on the cliffs, ero­si­on).

It is late May, the time of the snow melt. Wide are­as of very wet, hea­vy snow make wal­king hard at this time of year.

Sør­ham­na 2

Sør­ham­na was the site of a remar­kab­le adven­ture, when the Ger­man jour­na­list and polar adven­turer Theo­dor Ler­ner star­ted to take parts of Bear Island in pos­ses­si­on in 1898. He con­side­red both the coal occur­ren­ces and the natu­ral har­bours to be stra­te­gi­cal­ly important and he wan­ted them to be under con­trol of the Ger­man empire of tho­se years. He even mana­ged to dri­ve the Rus­si­an batt­le­ship Svet­la­na away! Final­ly, howe­ver, he had to aban­don his Bear Island adven­tures due to lack of finan­cial and poli­ti­cal sup­port.

This must appro­xi­m­ate­ly have been the site of the hut that was Theo­dor Lerner’s head­quar­ter in tho­se years on Bear Island.

← Back