Elly Brooks Photography

Oslo – Spitsbergen July 2012

 Oslo  July 2012
Arriving at Oslo for a short stay, hitting the hotel after midnight, the boys were for a quiet drink in the room, but Elly and Bev wanted to explore the City. They headed off together, after being warned by the hotel staff about where not to go. They wandered awhile, found a gelati shop and treated themselves, then came back to the hotel and decided to have a drink. To bed at 2 am for a 7:30 wake up. Some people can do this, and some people can’t. I can’t.

Up in the morning for a short day in Oslo, we took a tram out to Vigelander Park, whilst the weather was behaving. This is a beautiful, 80 acre park which is associated with a local sculptor, Gustav Vigeland, 1869-1943. The city provided him with a studio and accommodation in the 1920s in exchange for a significant proportion of his life’s work. The park is dominated by his sculptures, which are primarily focused on human family statues, apparently modelled on members of his extended family ( he was married 3 times), and are all depicted naked. A central monolith consisting of intertwined human figures reaching 14 metres high required 3 stone carvers, working daily form a single stone pillar, from 1929 to 1943.

After the park we took the tram back to the harbour and visited the Nobel Museum, which has displays featuring information on the numerous people over the years who have won the Nobel Peace Prize. Currently it is focussing on Liberia and Yemen, primarily concentrating on the role of women in those countries, and their ongoing efforts to achieve democracy and addressing women’s rights in those countries.

From there we then went, via small harbour ferry to the Fram Museum. This was a really fascinating and superbly presented display of the Fram, which, among other things, was the ship used by Amundsen on his successful voyage to the South Pole in 1911. The complete history of the Fram and it’s voyages was displayed on various levels surrounding the ship itself, and you can explore the ship completely and be amazed at the sheer structural strength built into it to withstand the massive pressures of the ice.

Longyearbyen

In the evening we flew to Tromso, for our connecting flight to Longyearbyen, in Spitsbergen, only to find our next flight delayed. We were originally scheduled to arrive in Longyearbyen at 00:30, which was bad enough, but now it was an hour later.

We finally left Tromso at 00:30 for the 1 hour 30 min flight to Longyearbyen. The scenery as we flew over Svalbard, which is the archipelago to which Spisbergen belongs, was simply spectacular. Snow covered mountains which looked more winter like than summer, the spaces between the mountains filled with cloud. This was a magical, light filled spectacle, as bright as midday, but actually approaching 2 am. We made the approach from quite a high altitude in the full landing configuration with landing flap and gear down from the beginning of the approach, and then descended down between the mountains into the cloud, breaking out below cloud in a somewhat dimmer environment, but still eerily bright for 2 am.

We settled into our hotel at 3 am and managed a few hours sleep before breakfast. We had a short, investigative walk around Longyearbyen in the morning. It is a very frontier type of town, and is primarily dependent on coal mining for its existence. It’s coal mines were taken over by a gentleman named John Longyear and his business partner in the early 1900s, and eventually became Longyear’s town, i.e. Longyear(byen).

We boarded our ship, The Quest, at around 4 pm. Elly and I and Bev and Andrew, felt very much at home, because it turns out that the Quest is the sister ship of the Ocean Nova, the ship in which we travelled to Antarctica. It looks very much the same, only smaller, taking only 54 passengers instead of the 75 on the Ocean Nova. But the layout and style of the ship is very much the same. The views from the observation lounge are great as is the service.

From the beginning, things were busy, after we finished dinner, the ship pulled into a wharf, and we disembarked for a guided tour of a town called Barentsburg. This town was established by the Russians supplying workers primarily for the mines, and it shows.

We had a Russian guy from the town give us a guided walking tour of the town, and it was quite amazing listening to him describing this very basic town filled with dilapidated buildings, as models of a wonderful society. It was very much a Soviet Union type interpretation, and he made a big deal of so- called technical advances, which, basically included having a debit card, allowing them to shop for food – but only in the one store.

He kept referring to ” the bosses” who were “going to do this” and “going to do that” , although it appears that nothing much at all gets done. He was very defensive about his town, ” Our Barentsburg, Our school, Our apartment buildings” etc. We all adjourned to the newly renovated ( to 1950s style) bar, where John latched onto the Vodka in keeping with our surroundings.

Back to the Quest saw a few drinks, and Elly and some other stalwarts out on the deck looking for wildlife. They thought they had spotted a Polar Bear, and, in fact convinced the crew enough to turn the ship around, but it turned out to be a Reindeer.

Next morning after breakfast we had a zodiac ride to shore at 14 th July Bay and glacier, so named by the French who discovered it on Bastille Day. A bit of a zodiac cruise through crushed ice and a walk along the tundra checking out the birds and the reindeer, was followed by a zodiac cruise along the face of the glacier. The weather was a bit drizzly, so made photography a bit awkward with rain drops on the lens, but Elly had the poncho out for the camera. This is the first time that the weather has been less than kind to us.

After lunch we berthed at a settlement named Ny Ålesund, which is an absolute frontier town. It is the northernmost year round settlement in the world. It used to be a mining town, but is now a science research station monitoring all things Arctic. You can post postcards ( does anybody anymore?) from the unmanned post office here, so you can say you sent them from the northernmost post office in the world. Cloudy but not raining, temperature around 5 degrees. This is also the settlement from which Amundsen set out on his successful attempt to fly to the North Pole by airship.

Sailing all night put us at Virgohamna, which was a sheltered fjord surrounded by magnificent snow and ice covered mountains. Our usual wake up call was pre-empted by a call advising us that there were polar bears walking along the shore outside. Elly leapt out of bed, piling jackets on top of her pyjamas and grabbing camera and lenses, only to return shortly saying they were too far away to see.

Soon after that, it was announced that we would be taking zodiacs out before breakfast to check out the polar bears. On these voyages, it is hoped that you will see polar bears, although it isn’t guaranteed. To have this happen so early in the voyage was really exciting.

Out in the zodiacs, we saw the 2 polar bears, a female in the lead, followed about 200 metres behind by a male. They were walking along the shore, or very close to the shore, quite close to us, and we followed them as they strolled along. They look as though they are strolling, but with their large paces, they cover ground amazingly quickly. Apparently when polar bears are sighted, it is often at a considerable distance, and taking photos isn’t easy, however, with these two, Elly managed to get some really good photos, and I managed to get some video as well. To see them in the wild is awe inspiring.

Our resident polar bear expert deduced that the female had lost her cubs, possibly because the male had killed them, and was consequently on heat again, thus being followed by the randy murdering male. Our resident expert, Nikita, is a Russian, who has devoted his life to polar bears, and is a renowned expert in the field. The downside is that he is so obsessed at not disturbing the animals in their natural environment, that we suspect that if it was up to him, we wouldn’t go anywhere near the bears. However, he has to bow to commercial pressure and obey the expedition leader, Adam, a really good guy, and take us as close as possible.

After we left the polar bears in peace, we motored across to a small island, which used to be used as a Dutch whaling processing site, used for flensing whales, beginning in the 1600s. There are still remnants there of where the fires and vats were set up to remove the valuable whale oil, which was used in the rapidly expanding European cities for street lighting.

This particular area has a rich history, including the episode of Engineer Andrée, and his ill fated attempt to fly a hydrogen balloon from there to the North Pole. This was a very rich individual, who spent an absolute fortune, commissioning a silk, double skinned, balloon to be made, as well as a protective hangar to be built, disassembled, transported, and reassembled here. It turned out that the balloon leaked excessively, as predicted by one of his partners, who subsequently quit, and when it was launched it was never heard of again, until 30 years later, when it was found not far from where it was launched. The occupants had taken with them all the essential items that they would need, post crash, such as tuxedos, silver cutlery etc., but, sadly didn’t make it back, perishing on the way.

On the whale flensing island we also came across a group of Walrus laying next to, and on top of each other, as well as a lonely old, enormous, tuskless, male, who looked less than 100%, and was apparently on the way out, as, apparently, this is what they do when they are vulnerable, and close to death, they go off on their own and just lay quietly until their time comes.

We then sailed to another fjord, which I won’t attempt to pronounce or spell, approaching the end of a glacier through a lot of small ice, which had broken off the glacier. We then headed out in the zodiacs, motoring through and around the ice, to approach the face of the glacier. As we sat there quietly in front of the glacier, we could hear loud banging noises, as the ice in the glacier cracked under the continuing pressure. At one stage the glacier calved, meaning a large chunk of the front of the glacier, collapsed into the sea, a most inspiring sight.

This was a really good day, and we were on the extreme north west corner of Spitsbergen. From here we head north east towards the area where we can expect sea ice to become a consideration, crossing 80 degrees north and hopefully will come across more polar bears, seals and walrus.

We ploughed north east during the night, but when we woke in the morning there was no pack ice as we had hoped. The pack ice is very variable year on year – last year was a very poor year – and this year we had to continue on for a couple of hours to reach the ice front. The Quest moved in slowly towards the ice, and we stood outside on the deck as the ship gently pushed the ice aside, and in some cases, split the ice flows in two. The Quest is not an ice breaker, but it is ice strengthened, so it can make progress through ice that is not too thick.

We stopped and lowered the zodiacs, then went out to weave our way around the ice, sometimes pushing the ice out of our way, and others, finding leads and channels through the ice. Our guide, Elke, was really enjoying doing her mini-icebreaker trick in the zodiac. So much so that she started singing, making up the lyrics as she went along – “Stuck in the ice, isn’t it nice. Stuck in the ice, don’t fuss – Quest will rescue us.” Little did we realise how prophetic this would turn out to be. The weather was being kind, with conditions perfect, clear sky, no wind, and calm sea – it was absolute perfection. We had some quiet time with the outboard stopped and nobody talking, and we also landed on an ice flow and had a walk around. All the time we were looking for polar bears or seals, but all we saw were Guillemots, which are black and white birds, quite bold and inquisitive, sometimes swimming, sometimes flying, and sometimes standing on ice flows, looking very much like penguins of the Arctic.

We lowered the anchor adjacent to Nelson Island, where, many years ago, Horatio Nelson, as a 16 year old Midshipman, spotted a polar bear, and decided he would shoot it, and send the skin to his father to impress him. It turns out that Horatio wasn’t such a good shot, and actually missed the bear. The bear took exception to being shot at, and went on the attack, and was showing every sign of winning this battle, and changing the course of history. However, someone on the ship saw that Midshipman Nelson was in danger, and organised for a cannon to be fired to frighten the bear away, thus saving Nelsons life and allowing history to take the course it did. Apparently he received a severe reprimand for stupidity.

The afternoon was interesting; there was a zodiac trip across to Nelson Island, with the option of landing in quite difficult conditions, with the swell making it awkward to disembark onto the rocks, or just settling for a cruise around the island. Andrew and I chose to sit this one out, but Bronia and John elected to do the cruise whist Elly and Bev chose the landing option. Andrew and I relaxed back in the observation lounge while the others did their thing. Towards the end it became apparent that their was something going on in Elly’s and Bev’s zodiac.

When they initially arrived at Nelson Island, there was almost no pack ice in the area, so they landed on the island and started to climb up the slope. After spending some time there, they started to descend back to the zodiac, when one of the guides came up and told them they had to get a move on, as the pack ice was moving in. By the time they got to the zodiac and boarded, the ice had moved in and surrounded them. This meant that they couldn’t manoeuvre the zodiac away from the island.

Fortunately, they had three guides with the zodiac who could contribute some manpower to the job of freeing them from the island. This necessitated some of the guides getting out of the zodiac and pushing and pulling using paddles to push against the rocks. We in the ship were watching this through binoculars, and Andrew was photographing for posterity. It was a potentially serious situation, because the Quest couldn’t get close enough to help, and the other zodiacs couldn’t get close because they would get surrounded as well.

Gradually they worked their way along the coast of the island towards the edge of the ice and into free water. When they finally worked their way free, Andrew and I went to the bar and ordered a gin and tonic for Elly and Bev, as we were sure they would be stressed and ready for a drink.

We went out onto the side deck to look down on the arriving zodiac , carrying the gin and tonics for the girls. It didn’t arrive! It turns out that they had decided to do a bit of a cruise around the island. Far from being stressed out, they were intent on finishing their trip.

With this in mind, Andrew and I had no choice but to drink the gin and tonics!

This was our northern most point in the voyage, at 80 deg. 35.9 min north, and we had open water and some heavy motion of the ship as we headed back in a south westerly direction towards Hinlopen Strait and more sheltered water. A few people felt a little squeamish but most enjoyed it.

Next morning we awoke to quite a gloomy scene with cloudy skies and mist and fog on the water. This was Bronia’s birthday, the 22nd June, and also it was the day the Swedes celebrate Midsummer, the longest day. The weather started to clear up as we set out in the zodiacs, and came across two enormous walrus lying together on a small ice flow. We snuck up to them quietly, this is not to say they weren’t aware of us, but they humoured us because we were very quiet. Elly took some great photos of them with her super lens, and we eventually quietly cruised away.

We then did a landing on a nearby island, and saw how barren it was. This area, even though it still has some snow on it, is classified as desert, and the only growth there are small patches of tiny “bushes” which grow to about 5 mm. in height. This is the extent of the Arctic forest.

In the afternoon we took the zodiacs to nearby bird cliffs. These were spectacular towering cliffs with literally thousands of birds, mostly Guillemots, continuously either, taking off from, landing on, or perching on the small outcrops of rock on the cliffs. It was amazing to watch, as when they take off, their wings are barely adequate, so they have to descend towards the water to gain airspeed. Sometimes they don’t make it, and they hit the water before they have flying speed – very untidy. Their landing attempts on the cliff are equally unreliable, as, quite often they encounter resistance from the birds already perched on that bit of cliff, and they can’t hover there, so they turn around and descend again to gain flying speed, before they have another go.

There are some predatory Gulls which glide around the cliff, and occasionally grab a Guillemot egg which has been left unguarded, or even a chick. There is no real protection from them. However, the high rent district on the cliff is popular because it provides protection from the Arctic Fox, which finds the cliff pretty much inaccessible. The fox has to concentrate his efforts on the lower rent, less crowded areas for his dinner. We spotted a fox adjacent to the cliff face, and it was incredible how agile and flexible it was, climbing near vertical cliffs and negotiating steep, snow and ice covered slopes. It’s efforts while we were watching were in vain, but as we left it was still actively trying to get to where the food was. This fox was a mix of brown and white, and looked a little like a raccoon. This is the summer colour (almost), as in winter it is pure white.

This evening we had a deck barbeque, for which, once again, we had great luck with the weather. It was a beautiful evening and we were surrounded by magnificent scenery. Free drinks, including Schnapps, were provided, as well as a birthday cake for Bronia. John got into the swing of things immediately, downing several schnapps and entertaining everyone by doing a pole dance ( fully clothed thankfully) on the deck. Someone stuffed a dollar note into his shirt, and he was most offended, because it was a male who did it! Lots of music and partying, particularly by the Swedes, who do this sort of thing every year for the longest day. Most of the staff joined in, and even the Captain turned up in a Viking hat. We all staggered off to bed, except Elly, of course, who partied on with the Swedish stayers, at around midnight, with the sun still bright in the sky.

Next morning, all a bit slow, we embarked on the zodiacs for a landing in the Liefdefjorden, surrounded by magnificent mountains and a couple of glaciers. We climbed up to the top of a moraine to survey the view, and found a polar bear walking along below us. She was downwind of us, and obviously detected us, showing her disdain by simply walking away, but we managed to get quite a good view and some photos.

We were with Nikita, our Russian guide who just loves polar bears, and as I mentioned before, would rather leave them alone than follow them. He refuses to carry a gun, as the other guides do, but instead carries a solid stick. He has been documented as being able to handle the bears by bluffing them with the stick. We spoke to one of the staff who was with him under these circumstances, when he had a group with him, and he calmly let the inquisitive bear approach. When he deemed the bear to be close enough, he simply walked towards it with his stick, and the bear just walked away.

This bear, it transpired carried a large tag around it’s neck, and Nikita announced that it had been ” a victim of scientists”. He is not a fan of the chasing and tagging of polar bears, and prefers instead the patient observation method. He is the only person currently doing this. One problem with tagging, he says, is that they only tag females, because the male keeps growing, and the collar can eventually choke the bear, also it’s neck is often larger than the head, so the tag can simply come off. For this reason, ( tagging only females), he says the data is inaccurate and incomplete. It was sad to see the collar on a polar bear in the wild, and it really looked as though it should have been in a zoo.

An afternoon zodiac trip yielded magnificent scenery, but no significant wildlife. Mid dinner the announcement came over the P.A. that a Blue Whale had been sighted. This was a rare sighting in the area, and all the keen photographers – Elly included, leapt up from dinner and bolted for the cameras, and the door.

More about Nikita, our Russian guide; We saw a documentary produced for the BBC, which featured footage made by Nikita himself, of his activities on Wrangle Island, north of Siberia. He positioned himself in a small shack on this wild and freezing place, and monitored the polar bears virtually from within their domain. He had some amazing scenes of bears attacking walrus, mother with cubs, and the general activity going on on this island which was strewn with years and years of bones from whatever the polar bears had been eating, primarily walrus and seals. We also saw the way he maintained control in any confrontation by displaying aggression by the use of his stick; the bears always backed off. Only on one occasion, when he broke his own rules, and continued filming, crouched in a low, prey like profile, instead of standing tall and threatening, did a bear attempt to attack him and he had to resort to pepper spray as his emergency backup. He doesn’t carry a gun.

He is an incredible individual, and everyone is in awe of his knowledge and courage, and devotion to the welfare of the Polar Bear.

Our last zodiac excursion took place on the last full day on the ship. Just a couple of hours walking on the tundra, getting close to some Svalbard Reindeer, who seemed a bit interested in us, and trotted over towards us to do a bit of grazing in our vicinity.

One really interesting bit of nature we observed as we walked on the tundra. We obviously walked too close to the nest of a small bird, a Purple Sandpiper, which was very well disguised, so much so that we didn’t see it until we noticed the bird, fluttering in such a way as to appear injured, and flapping it’s way along the ground, away from the direction of the nest ( this is a nest directly on the ground, as there are no trees). The idea is to lure any attacker away from the nest and eggs, so that the predator believes the bird is injured, and will follow it. Presumably the bird will then fly away as the predator gets close. This happened on two separate occasions during the walk, and it was fascinating to see how the genetic programming makes these birds behave in the same way when threatened.

Next day we leave the Quest and head for Oslo.

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