Eighty degrees north, by Elizabeth Kay

 

Svalbard

I read a lot of books about the Arctic before I managed to go there.  I would like to recommend Dark Matter, by Michelle Paver. Also Michael Palin’s Erebus, and An African in Greenland, by Tete-Michel Kpomassie. These are both more or less factual, and there is of course a whole host of of Children’s fiction featuring snow and ice from The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe to Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights. It may well have been Narnia that first attracted me to the snowy landscapes that were all too uncommon in my childhood, and even more so today with global warming. Although I have been north four times, I have only seen the Northern Lights once, and then faintly for fifteen minutes in Norway. Iceland and Greenland both failed to deliver anything except heavy cloud cover. However, my trip in June was during was during 24 hour daylight, and the object of the exercise was to see a polar bear in its natural environment.

 The Arctic is expensive. I went with a company called BalticTravel, who organised both my Norway trip, and the Greenland one, and are very reasonable. I was to have just four days on a boat, not one of the huge monstrosities on which I vowed never to travel again (once used in China, never forgotten); the Nordstjernen was carrying just 50 passengers rather than five hundred, and is operated by Hurtigruten. A good friend of mine did a longer trip than me with a different company and failed to see any bears at all, so I went with realistic expectations, especially when the first meeting on board told us that two out of three trips never saw any bears.

 We left Longyearbyen in the afternoon; it was 4⁰ Celsius, sunny, and not too cold at all. We saw lots of little auks flying along just above the surface, not a bird I had seen before. Dinner that evening was really good, but bedtime revealed that although the bottom bunk was fine, the top one required someone who wasn’t that large and was physically fit as the ladder required a few contortions to navigate successfully. That was the only drawback to the whole trip, and it was my poor husband, not me, who had to use it, as I had been suffering from sciatica for a few weeks. If I’d realised he would find it so difficult I might have booked the more expensive option, which has beds rather than bunks. We were to travel ashore a few times on small Polarcirkel boats – RBBs (Rigid Buoyancy Boats) rather than the inflatable Zodiacs which are used by many other companies. These are self-bailing, unlike conventional RIBs, and virtually unsinkable and designed for extreme conditions. On the first morning we all got togged up in our life jackets, ready to go ashore with our armed expedition crew, when there was an announcement that the trip had been cancelled – because there was a male polar bear at the landing site! We all rushed to the upper deck, and there it was, close enough to photograph with the zoom on my Nikon. We watched it walking along the shoreline for some considerable time, looking for anything that might be edible. We couldn’t believe our luck, a bear first thing on the first morning.

And not just a speck in the distance! When there isn’t enough sea ice for the bears to go out on it and hunt for seals, their main source of food during the summer months is the carcases of cetaceans and other creatures that have been washed up on the beach. However, it’s as well to remember that polar bears are the only carnivore left that regards human beings as potential prey, and our expedition team were on the lookout all the time when we were on land.

 After a wonderful lunch – the ship had a remarkably good kitchen, and we ate extremely well – we were relaxing in the lounge before the second trip ashore when there was another announcement. A female bear this time – and with two cubs! The mother was eating a walrus on the shoreline, and the five-month-old cubs were chilling out in the snow nearby. And once again, we were close enough for photographs. Apparently not only is it unusual to see so many different bears, it’s also pretty amazing to see one eating. Although we didn’t see any more polar bears after that we did see an arctic fox and the biggest pod of walruses the crew had ever encountered. We did have other trips ashore, and the notice on the outskirts of Ny-Alesund said that nobody should leave the settlement without a rifle.

 

We had some really good talks from the guides, who were experts on glaciology and the history of the islands. Many of them had come to Svalbard to do postgraduate study, and liked it so much they decided to stay. When we crossed the 80^th parallel, (690 miles from the north pole!) we were all called on deck to drink champagne, which was no hardship. We visited several fjords on the way back and saw some very beautiful glaciers, along with the pale blue icebergs they shed into the water. The scenery was magnificent throughout. The biggest surprise, on shore visits, were the yellow and purple saxifrages. Really tiny, and really pretty flowers. We were asked to avoid stepping on them if possible, as it anything takes a long time to grow that far north.

Arctic fox, halfway between
winter and summer coat

 All I have to do now is to write about the whole experience – a poem seems to be the most suitable reaction, once I find the time to do it! I still have a hankering after the Northern Lights, though, especially as they were visible just a few miles from our house in the UK this winter, and we never caught a single glimpse.…

Walruses