Finally Internet!

Hello everyone!

Sorry for the delay in posting, but as you might expect the access to internet facilities is rather limited here in Svalbard. In fact once we get on the boat (later today), I don’t think I will be able to post for several days. I know you are all agonizing around this blog, refreshing the page every couple of minutes, but for now you are going to have to be patient.

It is now a sunny Wednesday afternoon in Svalbard and we have just finished a very informative (and profitable!) hike out into the surrounding countryside. But before I get to describing today, let me give you a brief recap of my journey up until this point:

The six hour flight across the Altantic brought me to Amsterdam at 7:00 in the morning. With absolutely no sleep during the flight, I happened to stumble upon a fellow traveler, Keith Stewart, sleeping in the airport. There we waiting together and caught the flight to Oslo together with the two American Ambassadors. We arrived in Oslo with our spirits high:

And being among the first people to have arrived, (around 11:00 in the morning, with no sleep overnight remember), along with the English, we set off together to explore Oslo. After a ten dollar bus ride to and from the hotel and getting a 30$ train ticket (Norway is expensive!), we set off to Oslo. We arrived and were given a quick tour by one of the Voyage organizers.

Following the tour (and ice cream – in Norway the “traditional” foods are hotdogs and ice cream, and they are often sold together), we returned to the hotel to meet up with the other participants. After introductions we enjoyed a nice meal together before watching a little football and heading to bed. Suffice to say our all nighter had hit us at that point and I am sure the North Americans and the Japanese enjoyed their sleep that night. The next morning we gathered in the hotel lobby to embark on the final leg of our journey due north. After about 12 hours flying time, the Svalbard archipelago come into view.  These were quite the sight and I would put up some more photos, but things are getting rather rushed around here (the boat comes in 30 minutes) and everyone is taking up the bandwidth. Still I can provide textual descriptions, which I am sure will be just as good. The Svalbard islands are a very mountaineous and its southern reaches are almost entirely covered in glaciers. As we proceeded northward to the center of the islands, sea ice became apparent along some of the shoreline and sharper mountains began to jut out from the horizon. Little roads criss cross between the mountains like small arteries, connecting the sparse human habitations.

Upon arrival we were able to enjoy a lecture from the vice president of the council of the Saami people, the indigenous peoples of North Western Europe. These people, much like the Inuit in North America, are having their traditional way of life, reindeer herding, threatened by the effects of climate change. Former pastoral lands are being lost to an encroaching treeline or to vicious freeze thaw cycles and river crossings that have been used for generations are no longer saver for a Saami family and their herd. It is clear that on this frontier, as on many others, that it is the individuals on the fringe that are going to suffer most from the effects of climate change. This is of particular interest to myself as one of the Canadian representatives, as in the opinion of this lecturer that the Inuit are in fact more threatened than his people. We Canadians are now confronted with an opportunity to make up for our less than stellar past in treating North American aboriginals. We can now prove that we have learned from our previous mistakes and can be more responsible in our treatment of Canadian native peoples. The threat of climate change, along with the encroachement of resource extraction, will prove to be huge obstacles to the continued existence of the Inuit peoples.

Back to Svalbard: Longyearbysen itself is a small little town situated within a valley, protected from the worst of the Arctic winds. It is on the shore of a fjord, and in every direction (even across the water) we are surrounded by mountaintops. You get the feeling of being in an enormous bowl, with the clouds slowly descending upon you increasing the feeling of isolation. But this is a good feeling. The natural beaty of the location is stunning, and on our hike today we were often awed by the shear scale of the natural geography and the omnipresence of wildlife, either alive or fossilized (We are always on the look out for polar bears, it is necessary for our guide to carry a gun, and we managed to find several fossils). I would say more but people are literally heading out the door.

Take care everyone, I will post some pictures next chance I get. Its back to the cold for me!