About Rolf Stange and this website

Born in 1973 in West Ger­ma­ny, I star­ted tra­vel­ling to the north in 1993 and have never stop­ped it sin­ce. I stu­di­ed geo­gra­phy and geo­lo­gy first in Müns­ter, later in Bonn and finis­hed in 2002 with a »Diplom«. Now I am living part­ly in Dres­den (Ger­ma­ny) and part­ly Lon­gye­ar­by­en (Spits­ber­gen).

I am in Spits­ber­gen at least once per year sin­ce 1997. For the first 3 arc­tic sum­mers, I had the chan­ce of ‘explo­ring’ the island both with groups, with fri­ends and alo­ne, thus wal­king seve­ral thousand kilo­me­ters over tun­dra, rocks and gla­cier ice – and I don’t reg­ret a sin­gle meter! In late win­ter 1999, I work­ed at Isfjord Radio/Kapp Lin­né at the west coast of Spits­ber­gen, whe­re I saw the the beau­tiful arc­tic win­ter for the first time. An expe­ri­ence that quick­ly got me on the hook, and one good reason to live in Spits­ber­gen for some time every year not only during the sum­mer sai­ling sea­son.

During the Arc­tic sum­mer 2000 I work­ed for the first time on board the ice-streng­the­ned ves­sels of Rus­si­an ori­gin now ope­ra­ting for Ocean­wi­de Expe­di­ti­ons. I enjoy­ed this way of tra­vel­ling from the very first day, as the­se trips offer an inten­se expe­ri­ence of very remo­te are­as with all the beau­ty and exci­te­ment they have to offer, land­scape, histo­ry, wild­life,… sin­ce then, I am regu­lar­ly tra­vel­ling Spits­ber­gen, East Green­land and Ant­ar­c­ti­ca, working as a gui­de and lec­tu­rer or as expe­di­ti­on lea­der on expe­di­ti­on style crui­ses.

While at home in Lon­gye­ar­by­en or Dres­den, I am put­ting as much time as I can into publi­shing books, calen­dars etc. and into orga­ni­zing polar voy­a­ges … and pho­to­gra­phy is of gre­at importance to me, I enjoy it and I use the results to illus­tra­te my books and this web­site. More about my pho­to­gra­phy here.