Svalbard 2023

Having barely disembarked the ship last November after a phenomenal voyage of a lifetime to Antarctica, I was eager to tick off another destination from the bucket list. Since reading His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman as a child, I have been intrigued by the Svalbard archipelago deep inside the Arctic Circle. The most northern part of the islands lie just 1000km from the North Pole. 

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I boarded the stunning MS Nordstjernen (Norwegian for North Star) in Longyearbyen, Svalbard and began a short but epic voyage which took us down a number of huge Fjords, carved out by glaciers, as well as past vast cliff faces full of nesting Guillemots and Kittiwakes. Huge mountains gradually appeared from the mist and low cloud and although not quite on the same scale as South Georgia, were stunning nonetheless. 

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At the end of the first full day at sea, we headed as far North as we could, passing through huge ice fields, remnants of the nearby glacier before heading out into the open ocean where we passed 80 degrees North. Our celebratory drinks were short lived as a Minke Whale promptly appeared right behind us, directly under the beautiful rainbow which appeared over Northern Svalbard.

 

Wildlife was fairly prevalent, with many Fulmars chasing the ship whilst vast numbers of Guillemots and Little Auk headed to and from their feeding grounds out at sea. The occasional Atlantic Puffin also appeared from time to time. Snow Buntings, Barnacle Geese, Eider and King Eider Duck were all around us in the Fjords and most excitingly of all, a Waxwing appeared out of the blue in the isolated research settlement of Ny Alesund. Reindeer and plenty of Walrus were also seen and whilst we did not see any Polar Bears, it was incredibly exciting to see an Arctic Fox in its natural habitat.

 

Overall Svalbard was stunning. An incredibly rugged and beautiful location which earned a place in all our hearts. It felt a lot more mysterious than South Georgia, but equally charming yet the constant danger of Polar Bears kept us all on our toes. I'm returning in 2024 for another voyage on the MS Nordstjernen, this time later in the summer when the landscape will be completely different, and Polar Bears are more frequently sighted.