Svalbard

It's hard to put into words just how far north the island of Svalbard is, so I will put it in visuals and numbers:

Svalbard is closer to the North Pole than it is the Arctic Circle.  The town of Longyearbyen, where I visited, is at 78 degrees latitude.  Reykjavik, Iceland, by contrast, the northernmost capital city in Europe, sits at a mere 64 degrees.

It seems every single thing there is the most northern of its kind on the planet.  The northernmost settled town, commercial flight, brewery, daycare.  The northernmost misspelled baked potato food truck!

Similar to my trip to Mumbai, India five years prior, this was a work trip, but with a twist.  The college I work for does an annual travel course to Svalbard, but my tagging along with 11 students was on my own time and my own dime.

Sadly the only polar bears I saw were taxidermy'd, but that was fully expected since I didn't venture too far out into the wilderness.  But polar bears can come right up into town, so one must be prepared and watch their back at all times!

I was fascinated to learn that my hotel, the Radisson Blu Longyearbyen, previously lived in Lillehammer during the 1994 Olympics!

But how?!  And why?  I imagine little 'ol Lillehammer, where we visited at the end of last year, doesn't have quite the need for hotel rooms today as it did during the Olympics, but this solution fascinated me. 

We set out on a tour of town to get our bearings - not hard in a town with pretty much one street - and stock up on some provisions before the shop (singular) closed at 7 p.m.

But no bringing guns into the liquor store!

Guns are quite ubiquitous here, because of the aforementioned polar bears.  If you are going out of town, even a little ways, you are required to be packin'.  They even have lockers around town where you can store your gun while you shop, go to the post office, etc.

We had a big group dinner, our only one of the trip, where some exotic meats were on the menu:

I remain committed to my abstinence to whale, but some of the students braved it and this appeared to be dried or a whale jerky, which I thought was an interesting preparation method.  Though I personally never saw it on a menu I know some students also ate seal.

My first (and only) wildlife experience happened the very next morning at breakfast, with a reindeer grazing right outside my hotel:

Being isolated on an island, these reindeer are a fair bit smaller than the Rudolph-esque kind of the mainland, making them very adorable.  They are also very docile and relaxed, as evidenced by their wandering around town, unafraid of the people taking photos of them. 

Visit Svalbard Tourism Information Centre

Our first academic stop of the trip was the tourist information center:

We had one mandatory event for each of the three full days we were there, and students had a mandate to do "something else" each day with the 23 free hours available to them.

We had a sit down discussion with the CEO of Visit Svalbard to talk about the tourism landscape present and future, relations with their many Russian neighbors, and their role as the de facto government relations office, balancing the wants and needs of industry and tourism operators with the mandates handed down by the Norwegian government.

Which brings me to my next point: Svalbard is Norway, but it is very, very different from regular Norway.  Namely, the social welfare system here is non-existent.  You support yourself, or you're shipped out.  As any heavily taxed person who lives in Norway can tell you, this is night and day different.

Nobody is born on Svalbard.  Nobody dies on Svalbard - the medical system simply cannot handle either.  Though there is a "hospital", major medical procedures are handled in Tromso, a 1.5 hour flight away.  Taxes, both income and sales, are substantially lower.

Most interesting of all, one does not need a visa to live and work in Svalbard.  You just show up, regardless of citizenship, and you can stay indefinitely and work.  I don't think I've heard of this anywhere else in the world!  But on the flip side, living here doesn't earn you (or your kids) any right toward Norwegian permanent residency or citizenship. 

After Norwegians, who make up about half of the 2,600 population of Longyearbyen, the largest groups of people are Thai and Filipino.  There's something like 50+ citizenships represented in the population.  A truly fascinating place!

My two colleagues and I went to Cafe Huskies for lunch, an adorable concept where dogs just hang out around the joint.

This trip is the only time this year I will get time away, meaning get a break from my kids.  Five straight days of sweet, sweet peace.  Even if there were a few work elements, my main goal for the trip was to relax and veg out.  Behold, one of my favorite things ever, which I didn't know the hotel had until I arrived, the outdoor hot tub:

Alone!  With a beautiful view, and an outdoor temperature hovering around freezing.  It was truly magical.

I could have soaked all day long (if it were allowed, which it's not as there is a booking system and limited spots) but adventure awaited me.

Dog sledding

This was such a cool experience!  We first got to hang out with the dogs, while the guide got everything set up.

It is crazy how loud and energetic these dogs get when they feel that departure is imminent.  They live outside all year round, even in 30-40 below zero, and insanely they love it.

We drove 7km out of town, and 7km back in, therefore the guide had a rifle and flare gun strapped to his back - the flare being the first point of call if there is a run-in with a polar bear. 

I was a passenger on the guide's sled, which allowed me plenty of time to talk to him and ask questions about life in Svalbard, the dogs and his guiding experiences all over Svalbard.  I was too chicken to drive, but was happy as a clam to sit back, enjoy the scenery and learn a lot from this knowledgeable, adventurous French dude.

Fun fact: these dogs aren't huskies, they are Greenlanders.  They are slower than huskies, but strong and low maintenance.  The guide said huskies are Ferraris while Greenlanders are tractors, which sounds rather derogatory to me.

We were so lucky with the weather the entire trip, and especially dog sledding that runs regardless of weather.  It was hovering around freezing, as where previous trips the college has taken it was 20 below zero and windy.  

Svalbard Museum

Our second mandatory educational activity was a trip to the museum, which covers the history of Svalbard from its early days as a whaling outpost to its more recent, soon-to-be former, industry of coal mining.  The Norwegian government is putting the kibosh on that industry effective next year, but allowing the tiny nearby Russian settlement of Barentsburg to keep on keeping on with their mine.

There is no indigenous population, so when Arctic explorers came snooping around it was literally the first people to step foot there.  For most of history it was just polar bears, reindeer, birds, Arctic foxes and seals.

 

There are more snowmobiles than people on Svalbard.

Their license plates are different than the rest of Norway:

You need a passport to get on and off the island, as it is outside of the Schengen zone.

My second goal of the trip was to learn as much about this place as possible.  I am genuinely interested in learning about places when I visit them, and I feel like I excelled at that on this trip.  I was tempted to write a 3-page reflection paper like the students were required to, though quickly came to my senses as someone who is staunchly against any more formal education.

Longyearbyen in a Nutshell tour

This maxi taxi tour took us around town, telling us facts about Svalbard and stopping at various landmarks.  The polar bear sign at the edge of town was cool:

I bought a miniature one of these to keep in my office to always remind me of this trip while I'm slaving away at my desk (jokes, I really do love my job). 

We stopped to look at the coal railway, visible on the mountains above town, that could carry 700 kg (1,500+ pounds) of coal in each bucket:

Also visible in the mountains around town are avalanche fences.  Tragically two people uncomfortably similar to my family's demographics died when their house was buried by snow, not that many years ago.  I could have happily lived without that tidbit of information.

But the coolest thing we saw, and the absolute highlight of the whole trip, was a stop at the Global Seed Vault:

I could go on about this place for hours.  It is that cool!  In fact, I did just that with the students who were also on the tour, and again the next day when we had a group wrap-up meeting.

Basically, this place houses seeds from all around the world as a back-up copy, in case they are lost due to weather catastrophe, war or whatever else.  It is an insurance policy for regional "genebanks", of which there are 1,700+ in the world, who are tasked with keeping seeds safe and accessible to farmers, crop breeders and scientists.  But if those get destroyed, as they were in Syria a few years back, Svalbard will be there to bring the seeds back to life.  Literally! 

I am endlessly fascinated and I want everybody in the world to know about this place, and genebanks, and why they are so important.  Without seeds there is no agriculture, and without agriculture there is no us.  It is so important to back them up because crops go extinct all the time.  Once they're gone, they're gone forever. 

The plane ride there is one of the few child-less plane rides in the next few decades of my life, so I spent that peaceful time reading Seeds on Ice by Cary Fowler, the agriculturalist who had the idea for the seed vault in the first place.

If you order this book from a library in Norway you might just see this dork-ass picture of me that I taped inside the book, LOL!  I consider this benign vandalism, a victimless crime.

You can't go inside, as this is one of the most secure buildings in the world.  So the entrance is as far as we got to go, but that alone was worth it.  So, so worth it.

UNIS - University Centre in Svalbard

This conglomeration of various Norwegian universities is a major hub of Arctic research.  Students from undergraduate to PhD from all over the world study abroad here to take classes and do field work on Arctic-related subjects like glaciers and polar bears.

We talked to their head of media relations about their operations, and of course about life living and working on Svalbard.  Each person has such an interesting story to tell of how they wound up there.  Some of our students were interested in studying there but the subjects covered are exclusively in science, sadly nothing in the Humanities or Social Sciences, which our students gravitate towards (that and Business). 

The coolest thing we saw was their emergency kit that all groups have to take when out doing field work:

There are extra warm clothes and boots in here, a tent, cooking and fire making utensils, and who knows what else.  And don't forget your gun!

I thought this was funny.  Right here is storage of BYOGuns.  University issued guns - again, mandatory for anybody leaving city limits - are stored elsewhere.  A big part of the week-long orientation session for new students is marksmanship.  Pew pew!

I wrapped up my last day on Svalbard doing some of my favorite things in the whole world:

Drinking champagne in a hot tub, and thrift store shopping.

In that order - what a classy combination!

The greatest thrifting concept I've ever seen anywhere, Bruktikken (a combination of the Norwegian words for 'used' and 'store') is FREE!  Run by volunteers, they take in used items and "sell" them to the public. 

I felt bad taking from the island, where resources are limited, so I donated a wool blend sweater and (clean!) wool blend socks that I bought just for the trip, knowing the people of Svalbard need them more than my indoor dwelling self will in the future. 

The day we left, March 8, marks the first day each year that the sun reenters town.  On sunny days we could see the sun up in the mountains surrounding Longyearbyen, but it doesn't officially hit town until March 8.

There are several months of "polar night" per year, when the sun simply does not rise.  On the flip side, in the summer months, the sun never sets and is up 24/7.

I'm trying to think of a more unique place I have been in the world and am coming up blank.  Svalbard is so different from anywhere I've ever been and I'm very grateful to be a hanger-on with my college to a place I wouldn't normally go. 

It's crazy to think that this is, guaranteed, the farthest north I will ever travel on this pale blue dot!