Svalbard is an archipelago to the north of Norway. Way, way north. The capital, Longyearbyen, at 78°N, is the world’s most northerly settlement (>1,000), approximately halfway between Norway and the North Pole. It is also the furthest north either of us have been and indeed, the highest latitude I have ever been to. From Denmark we took the ferry to Gothenburg and then drove to Oslo airport. Parking here, if booked well in advance, is remarkably cheap, for Norway.
We flew to Tromsø in the north of Norway. On arrival we had to leave the aircraft, taking all our hand luggage, and then go through security checks. After this came passport control. Then we were herded back to the original plane where we could pack our hand luggage back in the overhead lockers and retake our earlier seats. Svalbard, formerly known as Spitzbergen, was established in the early twentieth century, when the high quality coal reserves became important. While the whole archipelago, annexed by the Svalbard Act 1925, has Norwegian sovereignty, it remains outside of Schengen and the EEA. Hence the passport and security checks. No visas are required to visit or work here and this appears to attract a wide variety of people from around the world. The main island is now known as Spitzbergen while the whole archipelago is called Svalbard.
It took nearly two hours to fly from Tromsø to Longyearbyn. We dropped out of the clouds to an expanse of glacier covered islands and snowy tundra. As we landed, snow was drifting across the runway. The sun never sets here. Not in the summer. It just goes around in a circle in the sky. In the winter it sets for three months but while we were there it was complete daylight. Longyearbyn airport is small. Just one luggage carousel and just one bus outside. The bus calls at all the hotels. Our hotel, the “Coal Miner’s Cabin” was basic but comfortable. The room was just big enough for two single beds and the shared bathrooms were a short walk down the corridor.
Less than an hour after arriving at our hotel, we were standing outside it waiting for the snowcat. Roads on Svalbard are limited to the town. There are very few cars. To get elsewhere needs something more capable. The Volvo snowcat is a very capable rough terrain vehicle. We were soon bouncing up the track out of town to visit an ice cave along with a guide and two other aspirant glacio-speleologists.
This particular cave had formed underneath a glacier. During the summer meltwater works its way through cracks in the ice and runs down the valley underneath the glacier making a cave. Arriving at a rather windy and bleak part of what was otherwise plain, snow covered hillside, we were taken to a door. A door in a snow bank. Inside a small tunnel angled sharply downwards. We switched on our headtorches and dived in. There was a rope to hang on to. This was essential because blowing snow had filled in the steps previously cut into the hard snow. After a bit of lowering, sliding and generally scrabbling around we arrived inside the cave on a rock floor with ice all around us.
The passageway was, for the most part, quite narrow. For about forty minutes we worked our way downwards. Once section involved a bit of crawling. Eventually we got to a large chamber with handprints on the wall. Not ancient cave art but prints made by the warm hands of previous visitors. In the roof were ice crystals. Given the right circumstances, water can freeze directly out of the air and makes incredibly delicate angular crystals. The walls of the cave were smoothed off by the water revealing layers in the glacial ice. Remnant of how it has formed over the years. There we also a variety of stones and pebbles shaped by the water and ice. After pondering the 40m or so of ice above our heads, we made our way back. Exiting the small tunnel proved even more interesting than getting in. A fair amount of grunting and heaving was required.
Heading back down the valley the wind dropped a bit. We stopped on top of a moraine hill overlooking the town for a quick brew and a biscuit. The wind may have dropped but the whole view was still grey and sombre. We hoped it would improve for the next day when we were embarking on a dog sledding trip.
