Hei from 78°N

Glacier cave: Glaciology at its finest.

My new home for the next month.

A lot has happened since my last post over in snowy Sweden, I've moved to a place where cars have been replaces by snowmobiles, -5°C seems like a tropical memory, a stroll in the countryside requires a rifle and flare gun and the sky is more frequently lit with green than a sunny yellow. If you hadn't already figured, I'm currently living in Longyearbyen, Svalbard. I'll be here until 10th March for a Glaciology course at UNIS (the University here). Throughout my 5 week stay I'll be learning about glacier dynamics through lectures and snowmobiling out to numerous glaciers across the island.

Welcome to Svalbard, stuffed polar bears are found all over town.

My Svalbard adventure began with a slightly bumpy start, involving a mini tour of Norway, which resulted in me missing the first day of the course. On the morning of my departure from Sweden (3rd Feb) I awoke at 5am to over a foot of fresh snow and a continuing snow storm. Luckily, Charlotta is an experienced Swede with a Father who does the snow ploughing around my area so she was able to get me to the airport in plenty of time. I needn't have rushed though as it turns out the ground team at Arlanda weren't quite as prepared so my flight was delayed by 3 hours, resulting in a missed connection from Tromsø to Longyearbyen. The quickest route to my destination then meant flying back down to Oslo and catching the morning flight to Longyearbyen the next day.

Pauline, Jade and I on our first day in the field.

I met most of my course mates that evening as it turns out the majority of them are staying on the same floor of the student accommodation as me, sharing our 25 person kitchen. There are 26 of us on the course over all, with a mixture of PhD and Master's students and a wide range of nationalities (plenty of Norwegians, Germans and Austrians).

Here on Svalbard, we share the land with polar bears, so if you want to leave the town you either need to carry a rifle or find a friend with one to join you. My delayed arrival meant I missed the rifle training part of my course (probably for the best given my lack of coordination!) so for weekend trips I have to be nice to those who managed to get a gun.
The next day of safety training, that I was able to join for, was learning how to pack and drive the snowmobiles. It would be easy to get frost bite when whizzing along at 60 kmph out here so before heading out we are kitted head to toe in a ginormous snowmobile suit, complete with chunky boots, helmet and goggles. This makes it pretty tricky to tell who is who once we get out there!

Dieter and I, kitted out in the UNIS snowmobile gear.

We all paired up and set off one after another along the valley, it seemed quite daunting at first and a lot more shaky than I expected but I soon settled into it. We had to drive the scooters along the steep valley sides to get a feel for how much you have to lean to stop the scooters from toppling over and then the instructors drove their scooter into deep snow so we could practice digging them out (much easier than expected).

Polar bear limits. 'Applies to all of Svalbard'.

The next couple of days were filled with glaciology lectures as the course properly began with plenty of socialising in the evenings; my course is made up of a fun bunch of very active, outdoorsy people, I feel like a tame urbanite in comparison to many of them!
The first proper field trip of the course was a visit to some glacier caves; due to the restricted size of the caves this trip was split across two days and I was put into the Saturday group, leaving me free to celebrate my birthday back in Longyearbyen on the Friday.
After chatting to Mum and Grandma I went for a stroll (within the polar bear limits) with Emmy and Johannes from my course. It was 11 am so we had some pale blue light. The sun doesn't rise on Svalbard until this coming Saturday (16th Feb) and it won't reach Longyearbyen until 8th March, but the days are getting noticeably brighter all the time. The 3 of us walked out to the polar bear warning sign, snapping photos along the way and then up to the one 'supermarket' in town. Food here is eye-wateringly expensive so most of us are living on a staple diet of pasta and frozen veg.

Birthday tea, complete with bouncing frogs from Jade.

Johannes and Emmy very kindly bought me a birthday cake and Jade had made brownies while we were out so a group of us had a birthday afternoon tea, complete with a rendition of 'happy birthday' on Jade's kalimba. That evening was the usual Friday gathering at UNIS, complete with a quiz, at which our team came 3rd (some Norwegians would have helped!). After a few drinks in the local bar I headed to bed, ready for an early start for the glacier caves. As I was drifting off, there was hammering on my door to call me out to see the Northern lights. I grabbed my coat and ran out in my pajamas to watch them snake across the sky, such an incredible sight. Unfortunately my camera's exposure time isn't quite up to capturing them but others promise to send me theirs soon. Not a bad end to my 25th birthday!

Snowmobiling to the cave

Next day was an early start to get kitted out ready for our 2 hour skidoo to the glacier caves. We'd heard from Friday's group that they had managed to topple 5 skidoos and get 2 stuck in the snow so I decided I would go as passenger for this trip. We piled into the first cave and marveled at the 'cave thaw', this is large ice crystals that cover the ceiling of the cave. We then quickly filed back out as Andreas, our leader, noticed that a crack in the roof of the cave had opened up quite considerably since the day before!
The next cave was another 1.5hr drive through the valley (one scooter topple along the way) and was much larger than the last, stretching for hundreds of meters below the surface of the glacier. This is the cave that the tour companies take a lot of the tourists to. At this cave we carried out a mapping task with clinometers and tape measures, noting any cracks along the way to report back to the tour operators. By the end of the drive back we were all quite chilly and could no longer feel our toes so a good cup of tea and hot meal was in order, especially as any food we had taken for lunch was completely frozen by 2pm.

Glacier cave thaw.

Unfortunately none of our group managed to get a rifle in the rifle lottery this week so we were confined to the city limits, but Julien, Martim, Pauline, Alex, Dieter and I still managed to find a great walk up a nearby hill on the Sunday to take in the view over Longyearbyen with the pink stained sky providing a wonderful backdrop.

We're now back into lectures and reading

A stroll above town, my place is the orange building right in the middle.

during the days with board game and movies sessions in the evenings; and all being well should be making a 7 hour round trip to Tunabreen glacier tomorrow, will definitely need to charge up my heated gloves as temperatures have dropped to -26°C. So far I am sold on this icy land, I'll make sure to keep you updated on my upcoming Svalbard adventures.

Dieter, Pauline and Julien.