Adventures in Spitsbergen

Spitsbergen is the largest of the Svalbard archipelago’s islands, whose capital, Longyearbyen, is the most northerly point in the world reachable by scheduled flight and where (between April 20th and August 22nd) the sun never sets.  The name means “land of the jagged peaks” and geologists estimate that millions of years ago the archipelago was at the equator, subsequently drifting north over millennia to produce a dramatic cornucopia of mountain rock formations; heat hardened sea beds now pointing skywards and glacier walls, some as long as 200 km.

The largest settlements are Longyearbyen, with a population of about 1400, the Russian mining town of Barentsburg that is frozen in time and Ny Ålesund from where Amundsen began his epic voyage across the North Pole by airship.  The old trappers’ huts, made from drift wood and logs carried down the Barents Sea, bear witness to the winter hardships still borne by a handful of hunters.