Svalbard, 2025
I took a Seabourn cruise to Svalbard in May-June, 2025. Svalbard is a territory of Norway and is north of the Arctic Circle, between Norway and the North Pole. Svalbard has 112 days of Polar Night, when the sun does not rise, and 125 days of Midnight Sun, when the sun does not set. During the cruise, the sun did not set at all. The cruise was roundtrip from Longyearbyen, but included an overnight stay in Edinburgh before and after the cruise, allowing us to fly to and from Edinburgh. A car picked me up from Edinburgh airport, and took me to the hotel, which was just off the Royal Mile, close to St Giles. I had been to Edinburgh several times before, so I just walked around the Royal Mile.
The next morning, after a complimentary breakfast, a bus picked up all the passengers and took us to the airport, where we boarded a charter flight to Longyearbyen, which has a population of about 2500-3000. We were driven around Longyearbyen. We stopped at the Global Seed Vault. We could not go inside. The actual vault is underground. Many countries store seeds in case crops get destroyed due to a natural disaster or war. The vault is climate controlled, but even if the climate control fails, the seeds will be fine, since Svalbard is below zero Centigrade, year round. Only countries that store seeds can withdraw seeds. Recently, Syria lost their crops due to war, and withdrew seeds. Once the crops grew again, they deposited the seeds back in the vault. We saw a couple of Svalbard reindeer. THese are smaller and don't have the antlers you see on traditional reindeer. The town has Avalanche guards above the town, to protect against an avalanche. Because of permafrost, bodies can't be buried in Longyearbyen. If you are a long time resident, you can get permission to have your ashes spread in the cemetery. There are signs on the town edges, warning people to carry rifles and flare guns beyond that point, to scare off Polar Bears.
Each day, we had a zodiac cruise or a landing, one in the morning and another in the afternoon. We saw Arctic Foxes, Beluga Whales, Seals and a few Polar Bear, a long way off. A small sail boat was anchored close to the shore, in one place. We took a zodiac cruise to the rock cliffs of Alkefjellet, where there were 60,000+ birds nesting. They were quite noisy. The ship sailed to Brasvellbreen glacier and stayed there for a while. We saw some walrus on ice floes. and took a zodiac cruise to the pack ice.
We reached almost 81 degrees north, not too far from the North Pole, which is 90 degrees north. The temperature was negative 3.2 degrees Centigrade. The captain drove the ship into the pack ice. The ship has a strengthened bow, which allows it to break ice up to 6-8 feet thick. Once the ship was in the ice, we were able to walk down the gangway, directly onto the ice, and walk around on the ice.
We then landed on Mollerhamna, which has great views and a smnall hut called Lloyd's Hotel. Originally, Zepellin planned on using this as a base to send balloons to the North Pole, but that did not work out. During WWII, Germany occupied Norway and decided to stake a claim to Svalbard. The shipping company Norddeutscher LLoyd put up this hut. People used to stay in the hut and sit outside on beach chairs and have a barbeque. That stopped after a Polar Bear killed one person. The ship served caviar and drinks on deck.
We spotted some walrus at the end of a gravel beach. We landed a little way off, and walked very quietly to take a closer look at the walrus. The beach was littered with logs that had apparently washed up from Siberia.
On the last day, we landed back on Longyearbyen, where we visited the Museum, then had a buffet lunch at a restaurant, before we were dropped off at the airport, for a charter flight back to Edinburgh. We flew back home the next day. The Museum had a replica of a trapper's log cabin (003-004), and a self triggered rifle trap (001-002). The trap consisted of a wooden box on legs, with an open space for bait, which was wired to the trigger of a sawn off rifle. When a bear takes the bait, it pulls the trigger and kills itself.
