Soon we noticed an ominous grey wall of mist working its way across the fjord, and began walking back to the boat. Within minutes we were jogging along the beach with the fog hot on our heels and, as we approached Louis’ cabin, the fog overtook us, bringing with it a drop in temperature of several degrees, and reducing visibility to about 2 metres. Elkouba, idly anchored in the harbour, was gobbled up in the mist.
We stoked up Louis’ fire, and discussed the need to make up an emergency pack for expeditions ashore. We needed to carry matches, blankets, a knife, hand-held compass and food. Being stranded ashore, under these circumstances, could kill us.
A couple of hours later the fog lifted, as rapidly as it had fallen, and we inspected Louis’s bins full of eider down, collected from the nest of the eider duck. One can harvest the down six times before the duck gives up making it, so Louis kept a record of how many times he had harvested each nest. The down was sent south, to make jackets and duvets.
We spent a couple of days anchored in Fridtjofhamna, fending off bergy bits — automobile-sized lumps of ice that calved off the glaciers — and keeping our eyes peeled for beluga whales which were reputed to frequent the area. It was our first real experience with ice, outside a cocktail glass anyway, and we began to feel like real Arctic heroes.
VI SVALBARD’S CITY
Giving Kapp Martin, the low point at the northern entrance to Bellsund, a healthy offing as recommended by the Admiralty’s Arctic Pilot, we sailed north, propelled by a light south-easterly wind, towards Isfjorden and Longyearbyen. By the time we reached Isfjorden the sky was low and grey, drifts of sleet and snow obscured the mountains and bursts of ice-cold water splashed across Elkouba’s deck from the choppy waves of the fjord.
Hunched over the tiller and squinting into the weather, I imagined the men and ships who had been here before me, the legendary explorers who had travelled these same waters just as we were doing now; Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen in the famous ship Fram, then HW Tilman in his cutter Baroque. Other men answering the challenge of the ice — and now, finally, I was there doing it, too.
Suddenly, among the waves behind us there was a flash of bright orange, and then another, and soon an inflatable boat, containing two men in survival suits, ranged alongside Elkouba. ‘New Zealand?’ one of them asked, pointing to our ensign. He gave the thumbs-up sign. ‘I was in Auckland two months ago.’ They turned down our offer of a cup of coffee and a dry, warm ride into Longyearbyen. ‘Our boat leaks water in and air out. We cannot stop,’ they explained, and splashed away into the murk ahead.
Feeling much less heroic, I steered Elkouba towards Longyearbyen and big-city living, Svalbard style. Today’s man of the Arctic, I reflected, is more likely to suffer from jet lag than frostbite.
Longyearbyen suffers from a very bad press. Tilman wrote, after his visit there in 1975, ‘On a wet day even the Garden of Eden may have looked sad, and Longyearbyen, whose very name suggests length and dreariness, is no garden.’ It can’t have looked too bad by comparison, however, to one of his crew members, who spent his brief stay there attempting to jump ship. The same magazine article that waxed lyrical on the subject of Louis’ isolation wasted no words on Longyearbyen. ‘A dreadful mining town,’ it said, ‘full of coal dust and dirty rock.’
A mining town is a mining town, regardless of its location in the world. The extraction of the precious lode, on which this society relies, entails a certain amount of inescapable grime and seediness. Longyearbyen is further handicapped by being nestled among some of the most startling scenic grandeur found anywhere, and thus seems even more of a sore thumb than an equivalent village in, say, Wales, the north of England or the West Coast of New Zealand. Longyearbyen, named after the American prospector who discovered coal there, and not by someone who spent 12 months in the settlement, is a scattering of buildings built to service the coal mines bored into the surrounding hillsides. Workers’ accommodation and recreation blocks clamp to the sides of a steep valley which wanders inland to end in the ice wall of the almost inevitable glacier. A raggle-taggle collection of corrugated iron warehouses and workshops cluster at the head of the single wharf, with dead and dismembered snow scooters strewn around like victims of a mad Snow King’s rampage. The muddy waters of Adventfjorden, which it faces, complete the dismal picture. About 1300 people overwinter in the settlement, working the two remaining productive mines which are owned by Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani. During summer, up to 1000 people arrive to work in the area, while the miners take their holidays. Most of the visitors are ‘-ologists’ of one variety or another; glaciologists, biologists, archaeologists, geologists, ornithologists. Everyone in town at this time of year is an Arctic enthusiast, and most have a vast knowledge of Spitsbergen wildlife, geology and general Arctic lore that they are quite willing to impart to any interested listener. The atmosphere is vibrant and intellectual and piles of expedition equipment await sorting at the pier head.
Almost everyone lives in the kulkompani accommodation, eats at the kulkompani café and buys their provisions at the kulkompani store. Perhaps this all sounds a bit claustrophobic, but we found that, by breakfasting early at the café, and lingering on over several cups of excellent Norwegian coffee, we could meet almost the entire population of the village in the course of a morning. The handful of yachts-people who have ventured to Spitsbergen have all reported on the indifference and even rudeness of the inhabitants, but Sarah and I found just the opposite. Perhaps a little of their experience has stemmed from arriving in yachts with larger crews who tend to carry their own comfortable clique around with them and do not attempt to mingle with the local people as much. And it is easier for locals to invite a crew of two, than a crew of six or seven, to dinner. From our own experience, we are pleased to report that hospitality is alive and well in Longyearbyen.
Alcohol is available one day a week — party night — to kulkompani and government employees using a redeemable coupon, but there is also a bar where liquor prices are slightly less exorbitant than in Norway.
Elkouba’s engine continued to be fractious. It bent push rods, leaked oil and water, and showed a definite reluctance to start. I took the three cylinder heads to the kulkompani workshop, where the chief mechanic planed and machined them personally. He refused payment, saying ‘We like to help people who help themselves,’ hence countering several other reports we had heard about Longyearbyen.
There are two Soviet mining communities in Isfjorden; Pyramiden at the head of the fjord, and Barentsburg, in Greenfjord near the western entrance to Isfjorden. The total number of Russians in Spitsbergen is about 2000, and because we had heard they did not welcome visitors, we did not stop at either settlement. Apparently the Russians do, in fact, welcome yachts-people — if not officially — and do a roaring trade swapping vodka and fur hats for Western goods and memorabilia.
Coal mines in Spitsbergen are relatively easy to work. The seams of ore lie high up on the sides of the hills, and can be reached by shafts driven in at the same level, instead of the long access tunnels needed by mines in other locations. Owing to the permafrost, or permanently frozen soil, there is no need for props to shore up the mine shafts, and there is a plentiful supply of water to lubricate drilling equipment. The mines are also close to the sea, which makes shipping the coal out easier and cheaper. In the case of Longyearbyen, this is done by means of a two-and-a-half-mile overhead railway, which bisects the town’s skyline. Despite these advantages, the kulkompani operation at Spitsbergen requires hefty subsidies from the Norwegian government to operate, and runs at a steady loss.
Soon we met Morton Flugler, a modern man of the Arctic. Morton spends his winters studying diamond-cutting at a school in California, but every summer for the last three years he had travelled north to drive Spitsbergen’s sole taxi around the community’s few kilometres of gravel road. Travel in the Mercedes Benz taxi is very expensive, but whenever he saw us walking, Morton would stop and give us a lift. We heard afterwards that th
is led many people to believe we were wealthy yachtsmen, travelling in style. A year later Morton flew to visit us in the West Indies, where, after a week of solid sunbathing, he was hospitalized with sun poisoning. ‘But I don’t understand it,’ he said. ‘In Svalbard I am out in the sun 24 hours a day, and have no problem.’ Different sun.
Average summer temperature in the archipelago is around 10 degrees Celsius, with a record high temperature of 21 degrees. Below-zero temperatures are quite common. If one complains about the cold, the Norwegians invariably shake their heads and say, ‘No, it is not cold — you are just not wearing the right clothes.’ Bright-orange survival suits are de rigueur for most outdoor work, and thick boots, trousers and jerseys are generally worn the rest of the time.
Hardship allowances, and the lack of taxation, draw many people to work in Longyearbyen, but the ones who stay are enthusiasts. Early in the nine sunless months of winter there is generally a planeload of ‘first timers’ who crack up and have to be evacuated to the mainland. According to Bjørn Fjukstadt, a heavily bearded former merchant seaman in his 30s who has mined coal at Sveagruva for the last 11 years, ‘Not everybody likes it here, but the people who stay love it, and could live nowhere else.’
Other long-time residents were two Polish brothers who came to Norway as political refugees. ‘We were given a list of cities in Norway, and told to pick where we wanted to live,’ they said. ‘We had never heard of this Longyearbyen place, so we thought we would give it a try.’ It came as a bit of a shock to find that they had landed themselves in Svalbard. ‘At first we thought we would be better off back in Poland…’ But that was two decades ago, and now they are both confirmed ‘Northmen’.
Cruise ships have regularly operated on the west coast of Spitsbergen (despite attempts by the government and kulkompani bureaucracy to ignore their presence), since the Orient Co.’s Lusitania made her first trip there in 1894. In the light of the huge subsidies needed to keep the kulkompani going, however, officialdom is reluctantly beginning to acknowledge that tourism might benefit the economy, and there are moves afoot to build a shopping centre and hotel at Longyearbyen. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well amongst the civilian population, and a shed on the foreshore advertises windsurfers and drysuits for rent. When the commercial flights from Tomsø arrived, however, they were met by an official from the Sysselmannen’s office who turned back all tourists without tents or survival clothing and equipment.
A chief attraction in Longyearbyen is K8, or Rudolf, the pot-bellied reindeer, who panhandles for titbits outside the canteen door. New anti-rabies regulations have made feeding him illegal, but, despite the regulations, he is not losing any weight. Rabies is widespread in Svalbard, introduced, it is thought, by foxes that walk across the ice from Russia in the winter.
There are plans for a ‘small vessel’ dock to be built to accommodate the handful of yachts that visit Longyearbyen, but meanwhile yachts berth at the commercial wharf, used by an occasional freighter and the two or three charter boats which ferry private and scientific expeditions around the archipelago.
On our first day ashore we left Elkouba tied to the northern side of the wharf, and ambled up the hill to explore. When we returned a few hours later, her keel was firmly planted on hard ground and she was heeling over to about 40 degrees, with her mast pointing crazily in the direction of the North Pole. After our initial panic it became obvious that there was not much we could do to remedy this situation immediately, so we ran a halyard out and fastened it to the dock so Elkouba couldn’t lean any further, and settled in with the crew from a nearby freighter to wait for the tide to rise and refloat her. In terms of public relations this debacle was probably the best thing we could have done. Word was soon around town about the yachting disaster down at the dock, so Sarah and I spent the afternoon meeting and entertaining sightseers who came down to inspect our ‘calamity’.
When the water had risen, and Elkouba was on an even keel, we moved her around the dock to deeper water and I set off to buy coal — all the while eyeing the mammoth stockpiles of it on the coal dock, and remembering the Bristol dock residents’ technique for replenishing coal stocks. ‘I would like to buy some coal please,’ I politely asked the stunning blonde receptionist at the kulkompani office. ‘Ya,’ she replied, ‘and how many tonnes would you like?’ ‘Well, about 50 kilo or so,’ I said. She leaned forward and smiled condescendingly. ‘Here we sell coal by the thousand tonne,’ she said. ‘For 50 kilo is too much paperwork.’ I took my wounded ego and left, but word of our plight soon got around, and that night a kulkompani executive’s car, one of the few in Longyearbyen, picked us up from the dock. About 10 p.m., in broad daylight, we drove to the coal docks and pilfered — officially sanctioned thievery — to our heart’s content.
There is one resident yacht at Longyearbyen which belongs to a helicopter pilot, Jon Karsten Johannes, and the next day we watched him lay his 1320-pound (600-kilogram) mooring in the harbour by helicopter, from 20 metres in the air. The mooring landed with a satisfying smack on the water, and sent small tidal waves racing around the bay.
After a few days in port we developed a routine of leisurely breakfasts, cup after cup of coffee and good conversation in the café, from where we could see the site of Charles Longyear’s original mine shaft. Early this century, gas exploded in the mine and fired a horse and cart out of the shaft and right across the valley. The miners inside were all incinerated, and a fire raged in the mine for two years until special fire-fighting equipment was brought in from the United States to put it out.
We had warmed to Longyearbyen. People waved to us in the street, we rode around like grandees in the only taxi, and helped an Oslo Museum maritime archaeology team catalogue samples and specimens for intellectual interest.
VII HUT HAULING
One morning I met Louis, the Hiawatha of Fridtjofhamna, pacing the dock and looking anxiously out at the fjord where a fresh north-westerly wind knocked white caps from the tops of the waves. He had promised to ferry building supplies out to another fox trapper, he said, and was going to help him build a new hut, but the trip would be wet and dangerous in his workboat. The other trapper, Harald Solheim, was expecting him, and the kulkompani wanted the materials out of their warehouse. ‘No problem,’ I said, ‘we will take it all in Elkouba.’ The next day a work party of trappers, scientists and off-duty coal miners arrived at the wharf with a truck full of lumber, rolls of tar paper, bundles of insulation and boxes of nails.
By afternoon, Elkouba was well down in the water, her interior stuffed with bales of insulation and boxes of nails, and the deck stacked high with lumber. Working around our deck cargo, Sarah and I hoisted sail for the 40-mile beat out of Adventfjorden, across Isfjorden, and up Nordfjorden to Harald’s site at Kapp Wijk.
Several of the loading party settled back in the cockpit with a case of beer as we nosed out into the fjord. The cold spray felt like handfuls of needles flung at our faces as Elkouba, with all the unaccustomed weight aboard, punched her way to windward. A Russian collier deviated to pass close under our stern and I could see people scrutinizing us closely from the bridge with binoculars. We must have looked an odd apparition: a bright-red timber stack flying a New Zealand ensign bashing its way up a fjord in Svalbard with a crew of Norwegians cheering from the cockpit.
Eight hours later, we dropped anchor off Harald’s hut. His little collection of buildings seemed like a small city against the surrounding hills in their summer-time coats of khaki-coloured tundra, flecked with small, hardy flower species. As we approached, his dog team let out an eerie concerted howl that tailed away to sporadic yips and yaps as Harald launched his boat and headed towards us. Harald is the doyen of the Svalbard trapping community. Tall, thin and bushily bearded, he is a dignified, quietly-spoken man, completely at ease with his lifestyle and his environment.
‘Welcome to Kapp Wijk,’ he said, as he climbed over the rail and extended a work-hardened hand. By now it was 2 a.m., but in about an
hour, shuttling back and forth with his fibreglass workboat, we had all Harald’s supplies ashore. ‘Drink?’ he winked from under bushy eyebrows.
In this manner we started a small tradition: sitting with Harald in his hut, learning the lore of the Arctic, while he quietly imparted his encyclopaedic know-how and gently quizzed us about our own homes and lifestyles. Slowly sipping whatever liquor he had to hand, we talked until 6 a.m., then rowed sleepily home. Harald had been a tutor at Tromsø University before he came to Spitsbergen and fell in love. ‘I will be buried in that flat spot on the hill,’ he said. Kapp Wijk is Svalbard’s oldest trapping station, formerly worked by a husband-and-wife team who retired to mainland Norway.
Summer is a time of relaxation and socializing for Harald, and of preparation for the next dark months of winter. That is when he works, travelling his 24-kilometre trap line, hunting the elusive fox. The fox traps are built with rocks and designed to crush the foxes without damaging their thick white pelts. Like Louis, Harald also used dog sleds. ‘A snow scooter will not tell you when you are being stalked by a bear’, he said, ‘and you cannot eat a snow scooter if you are stuck somewhere and your food runs out.’ Harald’s dogs all come from Greenland stock, and are renowned as the best around.
On Christmas Day, weather allowing, the Sysselmannen flies in by helicopter to deliver the Christmas mail; otherwise, Harald is on his own all winter. Russian miners sometimes walk the nine miles from Pyramiden, and they had left a cache of good vodka, somewhat depleted during our stay at Kapp Wijk. The Sysselmannen had left various sections of helicopter spread across the foreshore.
There is an uneasy truce between the conservation-conscious administration at Longyearbyen and the fox trappers, and one Christmas, as the Sysselmannen arrived from the perpetual night of winter with the mail, his helicopter crashed on the beach. Harald heard the crash, and as he ran up to the wreckage in the dark, a hand thrust a pot plant out of the crushed cabin. ‘Quick,’ someone inside said. ‘Get it indoors — they can’t stand the cold.’ The official reaction to the crash came later, in an administration memo suggesting that fox trapping be banned, because if there weren’t any trappers there would not be any helicopter crashes. ‘Bureaucratic logic — huh!’ Harald shrugged.
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