Svalbard

About a year ago, I booked this trip, and now it was finally happening. Off to Svalbard!

I'll admit, I'm not normally a fan of organized tours, but in Svalbard, there's simply no alternative. Due to the danger of polar bears, a guide with a rifle must always be present. A good reason, then, to choose a week on a relatively small expedition ship with only nine other enthusiastic photographers and a small crew on board.

To add some structure to this blog post, I thought it would be wise to group the photos by subject. In total, I've come up with seven different subjects, and the first of those is:

Human Activity

After a stopover in Oslo, we arrived in Longyearbyen early in the afternoon. A small village, or rather, a settlement, it was nevertheless well-equipped with all the necessary and desirable amenities. Because it had already snowed a bit shortly before our arrival (which is apparently unusual even for Spitsbergen in late September), we were immediately in luck.

In Longyearbyen itself, you are allowed to walk around freely. However, at the edge of the built-up area, you are reminded that the risk is too great to proceed unprepared from that point on.

We only saw a relatively small part of Svalbard that week, but I was amazed at how many traces of human activity we still encountered. We saw several (remains of) trapper huts, a washed-up boat, and quite a few remnants of mining activities.

We also visited Pyramide, a virtually abandoned Russian settlement that used to be a major coal mining hub. Currently, a handful of residents live there, running the hotel for tourists. If you didn't know better, you'd be forgiven for thinking you were in the Soviet Union in the 1970s. The snow that fell at one point was perfectly fitting, adding just that little bit of extra atmosphere.

Landscapes

In a previous blog post, I wrote about the vastness and wilderness of the Swedish landscape, which I find so appealing. It won't surprise you when I say that Svalbard truly excels in this respect. Fjords, mountains, tundra, and glaciers—it's one vast, inhospitable wilderness that makes a huge impression.

Not only were we incredibly lucky with the snow that had fallen recently, but we also couldn't have had better weather. We experienced every weather condition during those days. It was also striking how quickly the archipelago's geography changed these conditions. Sometimes, it was literally "four seasons in one day."

At the end of September, Svalbard is "simply" light during the day and dark at night. And because the sun doesn't rise very high above the horizon, cloud cover permitting, you have beautiful, soft light all day long. Sunrise and sunset last much longer than we're used to in the Netherlands. Wonderful, of course, for anyone who enjoys landscape photography.

Below is a selection of the landscapes we were presented with.

Wildlife

As mentioned, there's a real chance of seeing a polar bear in Svalbard. However, that chance remains slim, and I didn't expect it to happen. But aside from that Arctic goldfinch, there's plenty of other wildlife to observe. The prime birding season was, of course over, but despite that, we still regularly saw various birds flying around the ship or perched on an ice floe.

A few times we saw a seal pop up quite a distance away. It's always a fun sight, especially when you see how curious he is about us as we are about him. If I remember correctly, the one below is a bearded seal.

We saw reindeer regularly. The one below was well on its way to building up a substantial fat reserve for the winter. Luckily, it was busy eating, so I was able to take some nice photos while lying in the snow.

But as beautiful as all the sightings described above were, the highlight was an arctic fox, which appeared out of nowhere. What a wonderful experience to see such a beautiful animal in its natural habitat. It still had a small remnant of its summer coat, as a bit of gray was still visible in its white winter coat. Nevertheless, it almost blended in with the snowy slope.

To prevent this post from becoming too long, the remaining photos will appear in a future blog post. Click here for the second part of this report.