I see the black sea is shining in the moonlight when we go in for landing. It is about 2 pm and still not a sign of daylight. There is minus degrees in the air and the snow is making a weak sound under my feet. Just like a winter is supposed to be. Gone is rain and slush. Gone is naked ground and floods.
The arrival hall is pretty small and full of people. It takes a while before everybody gets their bag and the university drives us by bus to Nybyen, the place where we are going to live.
It is situated about half an hour walk from the centre of Longyearbyen and consists of barracks where the workers in the mines used to live, but are now rebuilt for students.
I have arrived in Svalbard where I am going to stay until summer. I shall tell you how it is to live in a place like this, but there is so much to tell that it will become a book if I write about everything, so I will give you some short snapshots.
19 jan
It has gotten colder, but the wind ceased so it was nice to be outside. On the way to Nybyen there is a streetlight that is broken. I love standing there watching the sky. The northern light was hanging low, it looked like it almost touched the mountains. And it was like a floating bridge between the plateau mountains on both sides of Longyearbyen. With thousands of stars behind. And silence. Complete silence.
21 jan
The students are hunting the sun. Some people had been on Trollsteinen and told that they saw a red stripe of sunlight at the horizon. We wanted to do the same. I lost one of the skiskins on the first hill, and it was impossible to ski without, so I walked with one ski to the top. The snow was hard and windblown, so it wasn’t that bad. It was really much lighter up in the mountains than down in the valley where Longyearbyen is. It was this kind of blue light that was reflected in the snow and made the landscape look so dreamlike. There was the dramatic snow covered mountains with sharp angels and in the darkness in the valley where an island of orange lights. Longyearbyen. Like taken from a sciencefiction story. And we could really see where we where going. Not like last week when it was bad sight and I had no idea how steep the hill I climbed was or how fast I was going down it.
On the top it was so cold that everyone where shaking in their down jackets, trying to eat their frozen slices of bread. But it was beautiful, that very big stone boulder on the top looks like it is going to fall down any time. Like a giant putted it there. It is not hard to understand why it is called Trollsteinen. (The Troll stone)
On the way down it was dark again and hard an icy snow and cold. My skiboots froze in no time at all. In spite of that I had them on and where moving.
25 Jan
I have almost been in South Pole! On the opposite side of the earth! Well, not really, but there where a realtime videoconnection in the auditorium so we could see them and they where talking to us and we could ask questions… I got childishly fascinated. It was a lecture about Trollstationen, a permanent Norwegian research station in Dronning Mauds Land. It was cloudy where they where so we couldn’t see their midnight sun, but the daylight we could see. It is situated at 72 degree south so we are actually closer to the North Pole than they are to the South Pole. Many of them came from Svalbard. How fantastic it would be to work at the South Pole! If I ever get the chance I will go there.
9 Mars
I can feel that the snow is warm. It has this kind of sorbet-consistent that is common in the spring. The skis are sinking straight through it when I cross a ditch. We are half way between Nybyen and Longyearbyen and have already stopped to take off clothes. The plan is to get to Grumant, an abandoned Russian settlement, and sleep there. But it is avalanche danger around and we have to climb some steep valley sides to get there. If there is too much snow we will have to turn back.
The first part is flat and easy. We follow the track to the cabin area in Bjørndalen. On the way we meet people. When they see that we are packed for an over night trip they stop and talk to us, curious about where we are going. Then we continue up the Bjørndalen valley. As we move up it gets colder. It doesn’t feel very cold, but the snow is nicer. It is harder and not so slippery.
After lunch we get a nice surprise. The SUN!!! Until now it has been hiding behind clouds and mountain tops but now the clouds goes away just when we come out from the shadows of the mountains. The snow is glittering, all around, we can see our own, blue shadows and there is even use for sunglasses! It feels strange. I almost forgot how it is to ski in the sun. It is so familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.
In four hours we have made two thirds of the route. It seams like we will come early to Grumant. If the hills is possible to pass.
On the map there is 50 meters height difference between the contours. That mean that there can be 50 m high steeps or hills in the terrain that cannot be seen on the map. That we experience now. The river is running through a canyon with vertical sides. It would be nice to go there but the snow is piling up in the edges, threatening to fall down and release an avalanche at any time. We have to find another way.
We stick to the left side of the valley. Here the river is dividing into three branches and we have to cross them all. Slowly we find our way forward. We want to walk where there is enough snow for skiing but not so much that there is avalanche danger.
The rifle is kills good mood. When I don’t carry it the trip is exiting and I am positive. When it is hung over my shoulders it’s like a weight of tiredness and pessimism put on me.
After some heavy skiing up and down we finally find us selves on the right side of the river, on the hill side that will lead us to Grumant valley. The slope is pretty steep and I am no expert, but the snow feels hard and stable so I am not afraid of avalanches here. It is a north slope so the sun has not been able to melt it as it did around Longyearbyen.
It looks like a small hill, maybe ten meters or so, but as we start climbing it turns out to be much bigger. I have been in Greenland, Iceland, Cola peninsula and northern Scandinavia, but I never get used to the phenomena that distances seem so much shorter in the clear and clean air of the Arctic. In Greenland I watched something I thought was a rock wall with nice patter a few hundred meters away but it turned out to be the view of bare rock mountains several tens of kilometres away.
I am the one who reach the top first (it’s not me carrying the rifle). And there is it, I recognize it from the map immediately. A sharp cut into the mountains and steep, stony walls rushing down to a coast that I cannot spot from where I stand.
-The Grumant valley!
Now we shall just ski down to the houses, cook food and put out our sleepingbags. It look steep but I am sure we’ll find a way.
But it is getting darker and the valley is full of moraine and piles of stones. We don’t see any houses and we don’t even know how far more we have to go to get to the bottom. To the right is the steep mountain wall, to the left is also a nearly vertical slope down to a river.
We are not alone. We are the only people here, but snow is completely covered with footprints from foxes. Everywhere!
Because of the stone piles we don’t see the houses until we are very close. When we go down the last hill I see the roof of a house, and in front of it the icy, blue grey sea. It feels nearly unreal after all this skiing. But it is really there and Grumant is a beautiful place.
Behind is the valley we just came down through and in front of us is the sea with a few small ice floes and the view over snow covered mountains on the other side.
It took us 5 hours to walk the last third of the trip.
The houses are bad condition but we find a room where it is possible to sleep. It is luxury not needing to put up tent and tripwire. So much space!
On the first floor I find something that seems to have been the canteen. Second floor looks like a shower area. The floor is covered with broken tiles that have fallen down from the walls. The third floor seems so weak and broken in many places and we don’t want to fall through so we don’t go there.
I try to imagine the life in a Soviet mine in the fifties and sixties. I am sure it was hard. The people who came here left their homes to go far, far in the Arctic and mine coal in a foreign land. I make myself pictures of this building when it was still in use and full of people. Was the paint coming off the walls already before it was abandoned or did it happen later, when winds and weather could work in peace on the building? The windows where not closed with boards and the door didn’t hang on one hinge. What did they eat and how many people slept in one room?
10 Mars
We start early to walk up the long and stony valley that we came down through yesterday. It was hard to get down and will be ten times harder on the way up so we start early. I am happy about my steel edges when I go up the first hill.
A fox with white and fluffy fur is watching us from a stone while we are walking. It feels so much easier than yesterday. After one and a half hour the sun has raised and we are already up from the valley. I can’t understand how it could feel so long the night before. Maybe because we where tired and we where so eager to see what Grumant looked like.
The slopes along the rivers that we crossed look so much bigger now. Even if I see our own ski tracks and recognize the surroundings I can’t believe we skied up and down those big hills. Anyway it goes easy. After another one and a half hour we are back in the bottom of Bjørndalen. Temperature is well below zero here and it is nice to ski, but in the cabin area it is warmer. Again I struggle with warm sticky snow and wax disappearing to fast from my skis. Now it’s only the road past the airport left.
It is nice to see the houses of Longyearbyen again. The busy and well kept community stands in big contrast with the abandoned houses in Grumant. We ski direct to a pub and have pizza. It is not allowed to carry weapons inside but we can leave the rifle in the bar.
15 Mars
I am leaning against the wind looking at the ground with half-closed eyes. When I try to look up the snow hits my face like thousands of needles and everything I see is a wall of swirling white and the blurry, orange spots of streetlight behind it. It is not cold, it is just the wind that is blowing so hard. It stirs up snow several meters above the ground, try to push me backwards and it feels like I will never get home. Someone said that Svalbard is fascinating because of the fast changing weather. Indeed. Yesterday it was clear sky and the students where climbing the mountains to get a sight of the sun and then ski down in perfect powder snow. Today it feels like an expedition just to walk home from school.