Thursday 12 December 2013

One last blog entry this semester. I will be leaving Svalbard on friday for christmas. I will see the sun, birds, trees. All these things that are so normal, just not here.
The last couple of days have - once more - been an amazing time. One would (and I did) believe that the darkness is going to be a tough one and that it will be depressing and extremely sleepy all the time. Of course, we are all looking forward to see the sun again (actually it is mentioned in every single conversation at least once), but the time here has been great, unfailingly! Every single day, something extraordinary was going on. And it might just have been extraordinary because we are in the Arctic and it is dark 24/7.
Today we got a lift back to our barracks and the car got stuck in deep snow so that we spent more than an hour to dig it out and in the end we needed another car to drag it along.



Figure 1: After one hour and a big hole in the ground later: The van is out of the snow

Yesterday, we experienced a power outage. The whole town was out of electricity for about 20 minutes. All the people that are still in Nybyen gathered on the road waiting for the electricity to come back and discussing the worst scenario and horror films (e.g. "30 days of night" started somehow just like that). Great fun! After that we went to the Santa Claus mine which, by now, is illuminated because - as we all know - Santa is really busy this month. We took some mulled wine and cookies with us and were just enjoying the last days. However, we couldn't find Santa.
Our way back was ridiculously fast: We used butt sledges and were at the bottom in less than 10 minutes while our way up took at least an hour. After that we spent the night in the hot tub one last time.
 Figure 2: Hot tubing and northern lights. (credits: Ole Divino Randmæl)
 Figure 3: The last bunch of people in Nybyen before christmas (credits: Luci Marshall)
Figure 4: Santa Claus Mine in december

On sunday, we finally went hiking after weeks of revision. It was my first hike in the total darkness. We went up the plateau on the western side to get the full darkness-moon-stars-and-northern-lights-experience which worked fine: We've had a golden moon shining on us while the northern lights were dancing next to it. AMAZING! The way uphill was hard work though due to snow drifts that let us sink in deeply so that we ended up crawling up on all fours. Luci could take some great pictures from both the hike and the santa claus mine night.
 Figure 5: Crawling uphill
 Figure 6: Night hike with a golden moon shining! (credits: Lucianne Marshall)

 Figure 7: oh yeah, northern lights as well (credits: Luci again :) )



The last couple of days were filled with good byes. That's the only really bad thing about Svalbard: We've met people from literally all over the world. We will see some of them next semester, but we had to say "Goodbye and enjoy the rest of your life" to most of our friends which is making the last couple of days also quite sad. As Allan mentioned in his last blog entry: friendships are developing extremely fast and close up here because we are all sharing the same adventures and problems.
The northern lights have been very active the last week so that we've spent a great amount of time outside. Also, a friend discovered fresh Polar Bear tracks when being out for field work no more than 3.5km from Longyearbyen followed by two more tracks from different polar bears discovered in the next days all pretty close to Longyearbyen. A couple of weeks ago, two fellow students had to be rescued from Sysselmannen after being out for a hike where they sighted two bodies in the distance which were just too big for being reindeers only. So also the frightening feeling of having these animals around when being out for a hike makes it even more exciting.

Figure 8: Huge, fresh polar bear tracks in Endalen (discovered and photographed by: Michael Lawrence)


I am very excited for next semester. New people, new challenges, new modules AND 24 hours daylight. I wonder if that will play with our food and sleeping patterns as much as the darkness.
For now, I can summarise that I love Svalbard for being extreme in all directions: Latitude, daylight/darkness, wildlife, snow and ice, adventures and - most important - the incredible bunch of people up here!

One of my barrack mates made this beautiful time lapse video of the Polar night. All time lapses are taken right from around the barrack I am living in:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETSi7QGz598
See you next semester!

Monday 25 November 2013

Its all fun and games until someone gives you a deadline


"There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and find enjoyment in his toil." Ecclesiastes 2:24

In Svalbard there is a city called Longyearbyen, in Longyearbyen there is a bar which is named Kroa, in that bar there is a menu and on the last page of that menu is the above passage from the bible. I thought on this for some time as it struck me as a very suitable quote; not only for a restaurant but also its associations with the daily lives of the people in Svalbard and the time that I have spent here.

Some of the best moments I have had in Svalbard over the last couple of months have been centred around a table surrounded by friends and colleagues, with a nice drink, a plate of good food and all with a good laugh and the hard doings of the day behind us ;whether these hard doings involved you spending a day in a hole in the ground reading the sediment, being out at sea for seven days surrounded by fog or even just walking to school in the morning against the snow and biting wind. Everything here needs that extra bit of effort that extra bit of perseverance, patience, energy. This is even more so for those that maintain the city; the construction workers the labourers. Now the constant darkness adds a new element of maintenance an element of effort.  For the past month I have watched the new student housing be built. Day by day, in all-weather be it snow, snow or snow the workers go on and now it’s beginning to look more and more like an actual building, a building that will one day house students who will spend time out in the field, with the wind the freezing rain and the bears.  
Those that come to Svalbard become close, you’re never really alone. Going out on hikes sharing a kitchen with several others even walking to school your likely to bump into someone. We are similar in the way that everyone enjoys outdoor activities, enjoys what they study but we are similar in another way; the common struggle. Whether its cold hands tired feet or a report deadline (of which I now have many) you can guarantee you’re not alone and what better way to celebrate this camaraderie than to all pitch in and share a meal in the fashion previously described.

With this I would add to the opening passage ... “and that this is shared with his comrades that have shared in the toil.”
- Allan

Saturday 16 November 2013

Hi everyone,

sorry for the lack of a weekly post - its all getting manic now with work - so this will be a short one too.
Ribanna and i have our 1st final exam on Monday (aghhh) so we are studying and cramming like mad. Had a fair few hand in deadlines on top of that, hence why we have been so quiet!

Kitchen to kitchen  (essentially a fancy dress pub crawl but with kitchens) was very successful! my Kitchen was lord of the rings theme and although it takes a hit at my vanity i may a damn good Hobbit, figure 1. We had 3 rooms decorated - a hobbit hole, Rivendel and Mordor!
Figure 1 - The fellow sip of the ring + some baddies (Photo: Caitlin Frankfish)
Ribannas' kitchen was the red light district so i am not going to say Ribanna made a good hooker - but she did look like something out of the pretty woman era! (fig. 2)


Figure 2 - Ribanna pretty woman style! (Pic: H. Bell)

Figure - Hobbit, Hooker and a traveler lost in Africa - Pic: Caitlin

With pit stops at each kitchen from outer space, to harry potter, Africa, childrens birthday parties it was quite a night and the next day I even managed to attempt cross country skiing which consisted of me falling on my butt a lot! But entertaining non the less!!!

Today I am going to squeeze in some time to help a friend make a photograph to support the 'Save the Arctic 30' petition which I will hopefully post the results at some point!
It is now dark all day! I am struggling to go to sleep at night and get up in the morning, it seems my body wants to rise when its lightest 12 noon  but now I am getting in more of a routine which is better!
The amazing news we have all been waiting for is..... WE HAVE ALL GOT A PLACE NEXT SEMESTER!!!!! so I am very very happy about that! I will be doing the two biology modules and it think most of the others are doing the geophysics courses - and we will have an additional blogger,  Rachel Vezza, as she has also got a place and will be joining us in Jan.
So all smiles here - even if the pressure is now on! 
That's all for now, hope your all enjoying the blogs!

Luci


Sunday 3 November 2013

Hello to everyone,

It has been a busy last week for myself & Ribanna with lectures pretty much from 9-5 everyday along with the report and term project work building up!! its also getting harder to get out of bed when its still pitch black at 7:30 in the morning, the light is really closing in and although its around (in a blueish grey dusk colour) at 10 am it is dark again by 1330 now. That being said the light on the mountains in the evenings and the silhouettes of them at true night are incredibly beautiful, fig 1.

Figure 1 - Night time view of Nordenskioldfjellet from Sakofargen

In Marine geology we have been working with some programs which have been really cool tools in plotting cruise tracks on a a map. We spent about three days getting familiar with the program GMT through a Linuxs system, learning the different commands and how to manipulate the settings - all of which was surprisingly good fun as you could get some really nice results, figure 2.

Figure 2 - Map of our marine geo cruise track, core points (the yellow stars)  and CTD points (black spots) created by me :D

We have also been given some term projects for Marine Geology, the class has been split betweens either sediment core analysis and bathymetric projects. I have a bathymetric data set which i need to map and process with Fledermaus (a program good for 3D manipulation of data). We are to reconstruct the past ice flow extent and dynamics using morphological analysis of the submarine landform assemblages. I have been designated Palander & Wahlenberg sytem,  which is a fjord system south east off of Nordauslandet ... you can check it out on this cool online map http://toposvalbard.npolar.no/.
So i should be getting started on that shortly.

 Ribanna and i also had a wee field excursion looking into snow physics in snow pack which was a pretty cool afternoon. We had to take the band wagons out across the now frozen river system in Adventdarlen to a Pingo located there which usually has a fair amount of snow around it. The band wagons, figure 3, are pretty awesome machines, although in the back it can be fairly bumpy due to the terrain - all great fun though!

Figure 3 - The Band Wagon! 


The air temperature whilst we were working out there was around -15-16 degrees so we had to wrap up well wearing UNIS scooter suits, boots and mittens along with some woolens. first we had to make a snow face, figure 4, that exposed the layers within the snow for analysis. We had to measure the length of the core and then divide it into sections based on the visible layers (it could have been divided into many layers but for our learning purposes it was divided into 5 or 6).
Figure 4 - Snow physics wall
The analysis then conducted on the sections was temperature, density of snow pack, hardness of snow deposit, snow grain size and shape - similar to the analyse that would be made on a sedimentary core.




The hardness was measured in a fairly rudimentary way - could you push your fist into it? four fingers? one finger? a pencil? or a sharp knife? this corrisponded to the Swiss Rammsonde measurements. you can see my fist attempts in fig4. needles to say after that my hand was freezing and my mitts went straight back on and a bit of a run around the area to warm up again was also needed. Various people in the group did each measurements and then we compiled them into a basic log of the snow pack core, figure 5.
Our professor, Carl also demonstrated the layers that are found in snow pack
using a back light to highlight them,figure 6.


Figure 5 - Field log of snow pack.
Figure 6 - Carl Edge Boggild - snow layers

Figure 7 - Arctic hydrology and climate class wrapped up warm for our snow physics excursion (Photo courtesy of J. Skaar, 2013)
Friday gathering was last night and we had a cool snow board film - the art of flight - also a few beers which my big luxury English breakfast helped cure this morning!Today Allan (who you all know) and Greg from our geology class have organised a Lord of the Rings marathon projected at UNIS for everyone which has been epic.... obviously all the extended versions.... long but great fun day!!!! Also will inspire us for our kitchen to kitchen party as our floors theme is going to be Lord of the Rings too!!

Applications for next year are in to stay here and it is now a really painful waiting game! I originally applied for Arctic geology - The tectonic and sedimentation history of Svalbard along with Arctic biology - populations and ecology however these don't really fit in the time table well and there have been around 73 applicants for the geology courses. Thus i was advised to withdraw my AG application and go for both biology courses instead - I just hope I get in as I am having such an amazing time up here (as much as I do miss everyone at SAMS) now I am just keeping my fingers crossed.

That's all for now from me - I hope everyone at SAMS is well :D
enjoy,
Lucianne.








Sunday 27 October 2013

Hi all

it's Ribanna writing this week's blog.

Since Luci's last blog mentioning the snow that has arrived I have to add: There is even more snow by now! It is incredibly white outside and awesomely beautiful.

But early October, the beautiful whiteness was temporarily destroyed by - guess what - a SANDSTORM! It all looked like a huge desert because after some strong winds from the East, all the sediments from down Adventdalen (the valley) were blown up and covered everything in dust. The same day, I was out in the field helping to prepare a seismic experiment. We've been out about 2.5 hours, wearing face masks and goggles, but still, we were entirely covered in dust so that we had to get some shelter every now and then and rinse our mouths with water. My camera was destroyed during this storm due to dust getting deep into it, even in between the lenses. It was an experience!

                                         Figure 1: Out in the sandstorm doing field work




Two weeks ago, a bunch of us went to the ice caves in the Longyearbreen (the glacier right behind our barracks) because it was cold enough for quite a while now to enter them safely. Before we got there, we hiked through a beautiful meltwater channel. It took us a while to find the entrance because last year's entrance has collapsed and there were several smaller ones. Eventually we crawled through some tunnel to get into a large cave that was spreading out quite a bit below the glacier. Tiny icicles started forming from the ceiling and we got in a fair distance. In the end, we tried to get even deeper by crawling along a really narrow and tight tunnel, but my butt (hehe, butt) wouldn't fit through the last bit (and no one else's butt, so it's not only mine!). After a while I started ignoring the ceiling because it was studded with cracks that you don't want to notice when you are below 10's of meters of pure ice and rocks. Quite happily, we didn't hear a single crack sound which would probably have freaked me out so it was a really enjoyable tour.
                                                   Figure 2: The entrance of the ice cave
                                        Figure 3: It's getting tight!

                                   

   Figure 4 and 5: Crawling through the tight and narrow tunnels in the ice cave. (Credits for fig 5: Nina Bakke)
                                                                  Figure 6: Beautiful meltwater channel (credits. Luci!)

Actually so enjoyable that I went back with Luci one week later after an attempt to build a snowman family (and she got stuck in the same tunnel). We had to realise doon that it is too cold for building anything out of this snow. It is powdery and wonderful, but we had to leave it where it was because it wouldn't stick at all. Next time, we will be armed with loads of water and decorations to get our snowman family.

In the same week, Luci and me along with two of my kitchen mates (Jøran and Michael) went on a night hike because the Aurora forecast was pretty good. We hiked up Sakrofagen at around 10 pm to realise that the moon was way too bright for good northern lights. So we sat down and just enjoyed the view (it was really bright). No one was expecting any visible activity anymore and the moment we decided to turn around because it got pretty cold, we were surprised by the most spectacular lightshow I have ever experienced: The Northern Lights were so intense that the brightness of the moon couldn't stop them from dancing green and red all over the sky, even right above the moon. Jøran could take some incredible pictures, see some of them right here:


                                         Figure 7: Enjoying the moonlight and the view. Not expecting Northern lights at all!  
                                                  (Credits: Jøran Solnes Skaar)
                                         Figure 8: Amazement! Right behind us! (Credits: Jøran Solnes Skaar)

Now some academic update: We are keeping on analysing the cores we have taken from the Marine Geology cruise I have written about in September. The last 2-3 weeks we spent a lot of time in front of microscopes counting Ice-Rafted Debris and analyzing foraminifera to reconstruct the paleoenvironment of our cores. It is pretty amazing to find these tiny, beautiful creatures in the sediments and to be able to tell the environmental circumstances from that (or even from their absence like in my sample where I couldn't find any). We have had a presentation on our results on friday including all the analyses we have done so far including magnetic susceptibility, shear strength, lithological records, grain size analysis, IRD and foraminifera. Next week, we are going to date our cores which allows us to tell what happened when. The next week we are also going to be really busy writing up two reports for both our modules. But as it is my birthday in a couple of days, we are planning on spending a night out on a glacier, having BBQ, mulled cider and northern lights.















 Figure 9: Foraminifera under the microscope


It also was UNIS' 20th anniversary three weeks ago. We had a big friday gathering with all drinks and even food (reindeer soup) for free. The FG group (Luci and I are members) prepared a UNIS related pub quiz which was a real success and made especially the UNIS staff amibitous to win a big bowl of chocolate.





                                                              Figure 10 and 11: UNIS 20 anniversary Friday Gathering

The week after that, the legendary "Icebreaker" party took place. Theme: Beach! First you think, that's kind of boring. But then you realise the potential in that theme. It's not only baywatch! It is starfish, sharks, birds, sand, rocks, water, boats, sunshine, cocktails, hawker's trays, cast aways and much more! I ended up as a starfish! And with a mouth full of marhmallows in one of the games we played. I was able to fit 16 marshmallows into my mouth, but I heard about 28 or even more.
                                                    Figure 12: Luci the shark, me the starfish


Yesterday, it was the last real day. Sunrise at 12.17h, sunset at 13.04h. Can you see the length of the day? Yes, it is 46 minutes! I joined a small group on a hike to one of the higher peaks (Trollsteinen) to see the sun for one last time, but unfortunately, it was really cloudy. At least, the clouds turned slightly pinkish in the end. The way down Trollsteinen was good fun because - as mentioned earlier - loads of very powdery snow plus bad vision (it's just all white) plus slippery ground made us slide down and bump into small piles of snow/rocks all the way. At least the snow cushioned the falls a bit. It is still not dark outside, more like a constant dawn (or is it dusk). But soon, we'll be able to count our moon hours instead of sun hours which is kind of the same, isn't it?!

Wednesday 23 October 2013

Winter is truly here.


It started snowing a few weeks ago and has been going pretty solidly since. Everything is white and it has changed the character of the place. It's a black and white world now :)

Trollsteinen
At UNIS everything is getting busier. There is not a lot of continuous assessment throughout the semester, for each module we have (had) to do an ungraded group report and presentation and a term project consisting of practical work, a report and a presentation.Of course the practical work is only now starting to come to an end so all the writing has to happen at the same time!
 
Longyearbyen at night from Longyearbreen
The days are getting shorter too but this doesn't mean you can't go outside, especially on clear nights when the moon is full it is still really nice up on the glaciers.

Thursday 10 October 2013

Luci - just adding some pictures from this eve that have got me a tad excited!!!





NORTHERN LIGHTS!!!!
 

Hi Everyone,

Luci typing here.

A few things to report since our cruise....

We have been busy in the lab analysing our cores, from our Arctic Marine Geology Module, for different things.... initially we have taken 15 samples from various points on each core (roughly each person then had three samples of their core) these were then weighed,wet and then dried over 24 hours and re-weighed to get the water content and also total mass weight.

The sediment was then re-hydrated, figure 1, to be sieved through 3 different sieve sizes for grains larger than 1mm, 125µm - 1mm, 63 -125µm and less than 63 could be calculated.
Figure 1 - Core HH13-18-GC being re-hydrated for grain size sorting.

Once sieved they were all re-weighed and then the percentage of grain size calculated - so for example: I was working on the bottom of my core; one of my three samples was taken from the 'bag' (which is any sediment that has fallen from the bottom of the gravity core in the cutter). This was mainly diamict and the grain sizes were:
>1mm 20%
125µm-1mm 17%
63 -125µm 13%
<63µm 50%

This analysis was done throughout the core in areas of interest or areas where transitions occurred into different sediment compositions.

Another lab we have done on our same samples is to look at each of the grain divisions and count the ice rafted debris (IRD) found, figure 2, - in the larger grain size divisions we also noted the type of sediments - e.g. metamorphic, sedimentary or igneous (although it was quite challenging from single crystals to tell if it was metamorphic or igneous!)
Figure 2 - Counting sediments!

We will also continue our analysis of these cores and go into looking at the Forams that are present.

Figure 3 - sediment load from Longyearelva 


We (Ribanna and I) have also done a couple of labs for Arctic Technology - Hydrology and Climate change module. One was looking at the amount of suspended sediment in the river systems around Longyearbyen. It consisted of filtering collected samples from various rivers at differing points - I picked the worse sample as it took over an hour to filter and was the last one there waiting even though i was one of the first to start!!! These were then oven dried over night and weighed the next day (filter weight known) and then the amount of grams of sediment could be calculated per liter of water (g/l) as we knew the sample volume of liquid. Mine obviously was the highest in the class - as the filter was so clogged and I had to use 2 in the end, figure 3 - at 4.8066 g/l from the Longyearelva close to UNIS.
We then had to work out the organic content within the sediment so ignited them at 480 degrees in a special oven for approx 20 mins, then put them in a desiccator for 15 mins so they wouldn't absorb humidity from the air on removal from the oven. Of the 4.8066g/l, 0.242 of my sample was organic matter - 5.03%

All interesting but quite alot of waiting for drying sediments!!

So that's the sciencey stuff right there!!!

Other fun things that have been happening is the SNOW has arrived and it has been beautiful, fig 4-8,







Figures 4-8 - mountains behind UNIS in the sunset!!

yet quite icy to walk on (entertainingly slippery, but the adrenaline shots in the morning sure wake you up) It hasn't snowed much since the first day but the temperatures have stayed pretty low and the sun doesn't get high in the horizon anymore so it looks like it could stick around now (YAY)!

Ribanna also lead the environmental group here, which i am part of too, and we got to organise the Flea market this year - which consisted of sorting through a ridiculous amount of clothing, baby stuff, toys, books and crap and making it in a display to sell for charity!! - it was incredible how much a small town could produce with the help from a bit of extra muscle to haul in the loads - thank you Allan, Greg, Michael, Tyler and the rest of the team .
Needless to say to make it more fun every 30 minutes or so we found a new outfit to try on, fig 9-10 or a cold beer to wash down the dust bunnies!!!

Figure 9 - Flea Market team

Figure 10 -sorting through everything!!
In the end it was very successful as we raised around 38,000 which is like £3,800!! Just from donated things/cake and coffee - not bad in 3 days work!! After the Fridays set up we continued to celebrate our hard work by a late night hot tub session under a clear night of stars! - It is not a bad life!

And the merriment will continue this week with the 20th anniversary of UNIS - which is very exciting! there is a lot of people coming and going with important titles! Being part of the Friday gathering group too (so many groups so little time) we have also been asked to prepare a Quiz for the big Friday gathering this week - where there will be around 300 people,speeches,reindeer soup, and free beverages!!!!

Also on the 18th we have the big student party to look forward too - Icebreaker - it is beach themed so I'm already getting my outfit together (pictures to follow) with the help from all the bargains found at the Flea market!!

I think that is all from me for now - hope your all enjoying following our time here as much as we are having it :)

Luci!!

Monday 30 September 2013

So here we are, last day of September which means we are about to enter the month of no sunlight! That sounds scary, but still, we have 26 days remaining, the sunshine reducing about 20 minutes per day until - on the 26th of October - the sun will not come back over the horizon for ~3.5 months! Now...that IS kind of scary! The sun is already pretty low, it doesn't come up very high anymore and - because Longyearbyen is pretty much surrounded by mountains - we are in shadow most of the day except for the afternoon when the sun is right above on of the two glaciers behind our barracks.

What happened in the last couple of days: There was a charity relay run in which Luci and I among a couple of other (British) students (thanks Heather, Penny and Nick) participated in fancy dresses. We decided on entering as mummies and also to act as mummies. It was quite a hard job to attach all the toilet paper to ourselves and we lost a good amount of it in the streets of Longyearbyen. But apparently we did such a good job that they spontaneously made up a fourth price to win which was just called "special price" for our team being special and is a day of personal training in the local gym (not sure whether we should take that personal or not).



                                         Fig. 1-3: The Charity Relay Run and us as mummies

This was just two days prior to our Arctic Marine Geology cruise which took us around the Southern edge of Svalbard into some fjords. We started in beautiful weather, calm sea and sunshine and already on the first day, we could spot quite a lot of whale blows. Unfortunately, they've all been too far away to make out what kind of whale it was. From the second day on, we were covered in fog. It was as if there was just this one, really dense fog cloud following our vessel - the Helmer Hanssen - wherever we were going. On the one hand, it was a bit sad, because we didn't get to see a lot of the stunning landscape and I don't even want to think about how many polar bears and whales could have been really close to us. On the other hand, this gave us plenty of time to analyse the samples we have taken with a gravity corer.

                                         Figure 4: First day in sunshine and the gravity corer about to be lowered

This is a massive, 6 meter long pipe which is lowered just above the seafloor and then, a weight is triggered to push the corer as deep as possible into the sediments. All the cores we have taken were chosen carefully based on multibeam data we collected during the same cruise and were based on some glacial features. The work on board cosisted of splitting the core for further analysis both onboard and back at UNIS in the labs. On board, we conducted lithological logging, measurements for magnetic susceptibility, shear strength, and foraminifera analysis. Especially for the forams, Bill Austin joined our cruise. He is a lecturer in St Andrews and from the 1st of September, he is also teaching at SAMS.
                                         Figure 5: Our core! And look there: A dropstone in the left hand corner
                                                     Figure 6: Allan all excited about forams!
                                         Figure 7: Bill and his SAMS students :)

All of these analyses give a first hint about the geological history of that core, e.g. we could find ice-rafted debris, different layers of sand, clay etc. and - especially in the upper layers - different foraminifera species that give us hints about former conditions of the ocean. Basically all, John Howe has tought us in theory, we got to see in real. We are still working on these cores back in the labs and they will be focus of our term projects, so you might here more about it from either one of us.

The food onboard was amazing and consisted of three hot meals daily and cake inbetween. Really bad for students that are used to live on peanut butter - jelly sandwiches! Really good to have some proper food though. We even tasted whale! And I have to admit, it actually didn't taste too bad.

On the 2nd or 3rd day (I lost track of time pretty quickly...) we entered Hambergerbukta, a fjord in which you have a 270° view of an amazing glacier front. It was so amazing that I forgot to take my outdoor boots and jacket outside and just ran out in a sweater and slippers that were soaked after 3 minutes, but it was worth freezing for! We were able to see a couple of calving event and I have been able to catch one on my camera, see this:




On our way back, the sun came back out again and we could enjoy the sunshine outside, again spotted some whales in the far distance.

                                         Figure 8: Whales in the far distance


Still, I have to say: Svalbard is amazing and I am looking forward to spending the next weeks here. Even if quite a bit will be without the sun!