Permafrost research makes you happy Photo: Dominik Langhamer Thanks to Hanne H. Christiansen from UNIS for the text of this clog, sent from the field. To follow their adventures or get more details about the course have a look at www.tspnorway.com ! In just one long day 10 m of mainly frozen sediment cores were collected from 4 different parts of the landscape here in NE Greenland using hand held drilling machines. Thermistor strings were installed down to 3.2 m below the terrain surface in the deepest hole. This was done by the Interna...

Read Part One Here 22 April We have made a lot of holes in the ice for the instruments. Now we make a hole for our selves. I can’t wait. I rush inside to get my towel, then I am standing on the ice in woollen socks and swimming suit. I jump into the black water and it’s deeper than I thought but I don’t have time to feel if it is cold or not before I am up again. But obviously it was because then the kick comes that makes me love bathing in cold water. When everybody who wants has taken a bath we pack and soon the ship is going again. We are heading north to find a drifting ice floe to work on and again there is the sound of ice crushing against th...

16th April Lance, the research vessel of the Norwegian Polar institute, is laying in the harbour. I am standing on the deck and watch it from the front to the back, from the bridge in the top down to the cargo room. On this space 29 persons are going to live for to weeks. It is calm and sunny. If it wasn’t because of the cold you could take it for a nice summer day on the mainland. The sun makes the water and snow sparkle and the waves in the harbour give a relaxing sound of summer vacation. Maybe it is getting summer, but not the kind of summer I am used to. We are going north, and if this is summer it’s a summer with ice. The plan was to go to Rijpfjorden at Nordaustlandet but it is closed by ice so we will try to find a fjord further sout...

Since the next expedition to Rijpfjorden is starting today, it is time to publish the last part of the story! If you missed second part, try this. This part is dedicated to the people somewhere in the dark basement in the city of Tromsø. Let’s finish the story: 10.3.2007 Day 10. Saturday Since we had almost done all must-do sampling and we needed some free time after last evening’s event, we decided to take off Saturday morning. We slept 30 minutes longer and took a walk on the mountain on north side of the camp. Regardless of their earlier names, we decided that we have a claim to rename some particula...

The twilight of Tromsø is shrinking into a more and more narrow and deeper and deeper red band at the horizon as we are moving further north. I am watching through the airplane window on my way to Svalbard. 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 co...

If you missed first part of this story, read it from here. The first part was published about three weeks ago. The second part is coming right now. Let’s continue the story… 6.3.2007. Day 6. Tuesday Today we continued the work that had been interrupted by the polar bears. This was the best day for sampling so far. Excellent weather (calm & warm) and no problems with equipment. There were a lot of ringed seals resting on the ice all over the fjord. We used one of their holes as a place for zooplankton sampling. That’s why the station has the name Seal-hole. We got zooplankton samples with WP 2 and WP ...

I promised to write something for this blog from our field trips in Northeastern Svalbard. I have been terribly busy (and maybe little lazy in writing) with my project, so this piece comes little late. Anyway – it comes – and it is quite long. That’s why the whole story is published in three parts. I am planning to add one part a week to the blog, so you won't (maybe ;-) ) drown in the text. This piece is dedicated to all the friends, to other members of the project, and to everyone who is interested in the biological fieldwork in the High Arctic. I hope that you enjoy it. Rijpfjorden is a one of the many fjords in Svalbard. It is located on the Northeastern isla...

One of the best things about being a UNIS student is the opportunities one gets. Usually this involves knowing somebody who knows somebody who needs some help or a field assistant. That’s exactly how I got the chance to boat- and dog-sit on the east coast. Eric Brossier and France Pinzon du Sel, who have let their boat freeze in for the 3rd overwintering on Svalbard, went to Tromsø for a couple of weeks and needed someone to look after their beloved Vagabond, a 15.3m long boat designed for sailing in waters with ice. What luck for three Arctic-loving girls like Sanja (Finnish), Helle...

Now that the light is coming back, getting visitors is a very welcome excuse to take some days off and enjoy the beautiful landscape that’s finally visible again. After 3 weeks without a day off and 10 to 12 hours in the lab nearly each day, it is a wonderful feeling to be outside again. I’m about to finish off the lab work for my master's thesis and hoped to be finished with everything before my friends would arrive. But that was already the plan for Christmas, and lab always takes much more time than assumed. Having a lab on my own, at least I can listen to music as often as I want to. ...

As this week starts I am already feeling like a potato. Extremely busy weeks have gone by, filled with all the wonderful exiting stuff you can do in Svalbard, both science and non-science. I am working on my master's thesis at the moment. It is about the Mediumfjellet thrust stack, located at the western side of Isforden on Svalbard, and I am making fracture models for predicting reservoir quality. At the moment I am trying to get into stratigraphy and other work that has been done in the area, to be ready for my five-week long fieldwork trip in august. Being a student at UNIS and at Svalbard does not only mean hard work. Nevertheless, I think this is the place where I have developed my skills the most. Lots of extremely great and exclusive things are going ...