Blogging at 22:00 on Thursday 8th August from intended overnighting spot N 69.18749°, E 19.70560° / http://maps.google.com/maps?q=loc:69.18749%2C19.70560
Our last morning / early afternoon in Svalbard was a pretty chilled affair. First up, Emma ran and then did some lady-maintenance whilst I took our hire car out to do some nature watching.
We regrouped at about 10.00am, checked out of the (very agreeable) Vault Hotel and then had a drive about on the roads and tracks in and around Longyearbyen. Driving a car is a good way to see things totally independently. You're essentially deemed protected, so are allowed to travel beyond the various polar-bear-limit signs without a guide or firearms. It was a fun and liberating thing to do, and we most certainly got to see some of the more isolated dwellings and research facilities that exist outside of Longyearbyen. Particularly imposing was the EISCAT radar station perched on high ground at what is literally the end of the road to the east of town.
After that, we had a general bumble about to the various other extremities of what is, in fact, the most northerly road network in the world, stopping as the fancy took us to look around with bins and savour the warm morning sun.
By early afternoon it was back to the treadmill of returning the car to Arctic Autorent's airport-based office, and then being processed to fly back to Tromsø. It was good to be able to get back to the airport in a self-contained fashion and in our own time. Hiring the car really did allow us to maximise time available.
Back on continental Europe at Tromsø we found the truck just as we'd left it and it instantly burst obligingly into life. We recommissioned the electrical and LPG systems etc, unpacked and stowed stuff, and within half an hour were good to go.
Svalbard, then. It really is utterly unique in so many ways. The original arrival in Longyearbyen was - as reported - a bit disorientating as the place is just so different.
First impressions were of an insular and slightly daunting frontier town that had been dropped incongruously into a staggeringly beautiful Arctic tundra. Fuelling the initial difficulty in getting a reliable handle on things were: ancient and rickety structures associated with long-abandoned coal mines, more snowmobiles than people, wooden buildings on stilts, barnacle geese wandering the streets, unkempt industrial estates, dozens of track-laying vehicles littered around, mobile living trailers on skids, a posh university, an extremely well stocked Co-op, baying husky teams, huge ships, Arctic tern attacks, a no-shoes-in-buildings convention, a massive and filthy ongoing coal mining operation: and all this (and more) compressed into a relatively small settlement. Given the conflicting sensory references, it's perhaps no surprise to see how the first couple of hours following being dropped into the place took quite a bit of processing.
There are some really fascinating idiosyncrasies associated with Svalbard, for example: anyone (without criminal convictions) can live and work there indefinitely and without visas, you can't bury people because well preserved corpses are sometimes heaved back out of the ground by the permafrost, you can't own a cat, and you're supposedly not technically allowed to be born or die there.
It's worth a look at some of the sensationalised weird in this link. Anyway, what a place.
Of course, the natural history interest is what really drew us in the first instance, and is the reason that we would most definitely return. We're already working out ways to get to the truly remote parts and are fascinated by the prospect of true winter darkness, where just one night lasts from around November to February.
OK, back to the current trip. We're currently at the location shown where we're intending to come down a bit and kip. Come tomorrow, we're now heading to Finland.
Finland wasn't the original plan but the prospect of heading back south on the E6 conveyor belt led to thought processes that rapidly snowballed, which in turn has led to some pretty serious on-the-hoof re-jiggling of destinations and ferry crossings. All will eventually be revealed, and hopefully come to pass...
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