Svalbard - Part 1

30 Jun 2019 . category: Travel . Comments
#Svalbard

Arrival, First Impressions, and the Midnight Sun

We landed at 12:40AM Longyearbyen time (11:40PM London time), flying over some beautiful snow-covered mountains on the descent. They were of course totally visible because it was light outside. We had known that this would be the case, but it was still pretty wild to see it bright out around midnight. From waking up Friday morning in London to sunset there on Tuesday, I went over 100 hours without seeing darkness on this trip.

We took the bus from the airport to our accommodations, Mary-Ann’s Polarrig. The place has a lot of character, as some of the buildings are old miners’ cabins. This means that lots of them are pretty basic though. Michal, Daniel, and I ended up in a “luxury” family room (luxury = en suite bathrooms). The downside being that I slept on a bunk bed for four nights (the chwazi gods really hate me!). I don’t think any of us really minded the accomodations, but if you’re planning a trip in the summer and are a little pickier, definitely book as early as you can. I did so almost two months in advance, at which point all the “nice” hotels in the city were totally full. There was a large cruise ship in town at least one of the evenings we were there which may have had something to do with it. The largest of these ships brings thousands of people into town which, as you might imagine, is pretty overwhelming given that Longyearbyen has ~2000 residents. Also, note that you will be paying quite a bit for that nicer hotel room. Even our rather basic accomodations were over $100 / person / night. We could’ve done it for cheaper by staying at the aptly named Coal Miners’ Cabins, but they were far enough outside of town that it didn’t seem worth it.

In my opinion, the biggest downside of Mary-Ann’s was the lack of high quality blackout curtains. These become rather important when there’s 24 hours of daylight. And our room had what could generously be described as only an meager attempt, made from translucent black paper. We’d all brought eye-masks, but still, sleep was a bit tricky while there.

Pyramiden on the M/S Polargirl

I had intentionally scheduled a rather relaxed first day aboard the M/S Polargirl. It included a trip to the abandoned Russian mining town of Pyramiden as well as cruising along a glacier (see here for the tour company’s description). Unfortunately, this relaxing day required us to be picked up at 8:30AM, and the room the prior evening was so unbearably hot that I got at most three hours of sleep. Strangely, the radiator in the room wasn’t on, so I’m still not sure where the heat was coming from. But at least we rectified this the following evenings by just keeping a window open. This is all to say, our group wasn’t the most high energy.

Aboard the Ship

We saw a fair amount of wildlife that day from the ship, including lots of belugas, a humpback, a blue whale, and best of all, a polar bear! In general, I don’t get super excited about animal-sightings, but it felt appropriate to have seen a polar bear from Svalbard, especially from a safe distance. Do bring binoculars if you want to maximize this part of the trip though - we briefly borrowed some from a nice Polish gentleman and it unsurprisingly made seeing the polar bear much better. Here’s a chalkboard on the ship recording their wildlife sightings (I assume it’s May 17th so the board is for the season):

The guides and other passengers were very helpful in alerting us of wildlife sightings, so we didn’t have to spend the whole time outside which was nice. The lack of physical activity combined with the wind made being outside on the ship the coldest part of this whole trip. I brought my winter ski jacket which I mostly didn’t use, but I was very glad to have it for this day (this generally matches other accounts I found online). We did sense some frustration with our group though, as the guides would swing by telling everyone there were belugas outside and we’d either be napping or just continue playing contact. It was just hard to get excited about the nth beluga sighting!

Pyramiden

Pyramiden was a Soviet coal-mining town that’s been abandoned since the late 1990s. It was revived in the late 2000s as a tourist attraction, so now the town has a couple of residents for that purpose. Seeing this video about it is actually one of the things that got me excited about visiting Svalbard in the first place. It includes a taste of what it was like to live there back when it was a functioning mining town. As our guide said, it was “a Soviet Arctic Paradise.” My understanding is that the name is less sarcastic than it seems: such outposts in the USSR were well-provided for, and the workers in the mine and their families apparently had access to unlimited free food from the canteen which was a rarity in Soviet Russia. I think the guide featured in the film was actually still there, but he unfortunately guided the other half of our group. This was okay though, as our guide had a lot of snarky personality which I loved. I particularly remember snide comments about people taking too many photos and how important Instagram must be in our lives.

Here’s the city’s sign, over some of the last coal mined in Pyramiden:

And here I am with the world’s northenmost statue of Lenin:

which was of course at one end of “60th Anniversary of the October Revolution Street.”

The tour also included walking through a bunch of abandoned buildings which were somewhat interesting. Though I think if you’re particularly looking for an abandoned Soviet town, you’re much better off going to e.g. Chernobyl. One of the buildings did include what was probably the world’s northernmost piano, on stage with Soviet movies airing in the background. Here’s an action shot of me “playing” it:

I put playing in quotes because I think this may be the worst piano I’ve ever encountered. Unsurprisingly, it was out of tune, but actually not horridly so. It was the action that was totally ruined. I guess nearly 20 years of no climate regulation and general neglect wreaked havoc on its many moving parts. They clearly need to invest in a Piano Life Safer System!

We ended the tour at the town’s hotel, where all the residents (including our guide) live. It’s apparently the only building in the city that has any sort of heat, hot water, etc. There’s a small gift shop, a restaurant and bar, and a post office from which one can send a post card. It’s actually possible to stay overnight at this hotel (here’s an account from someone who did so) and I’d looked into it. But unfortunately I just couldn’t make it work out with transportation to/from Pyramiden and the rest of our itinerary.

Overall Thoughts

This activity was probably the least fun of the three we did while in Svalbard, but I still found it pretty interesting to see Pyramiden, wildlife, and the glacier. Given that we had four days, I don’t think I would’ve substituted e.g. more hiking in for this. But, it would’ve also been fine to have had one fewer day in Svalbard and omitted this trip.

Food in Svalbard, Reindeer for Dinner

After our return, we did the short walk to “downtown” and checked out some of the restaurants for dinner. This was also our first real chance to see Longyearbyen. There are a bunch of random above-ground pipes running all over the place that we had to walk over/under. And in general lots of sort of sketchy-looking infrastructure. Michal remarked that it reminded him of the sci-fi mining-base aesthetic, which seems appropriate.

Food in Svalbard is pretty expensive if you want to eat at any sort of restaurant; it strongly reminded me of Iceland in that respect, but maybe even worse? Thankfully, I’m no longer on a college-student budget, so I could afford to actually eat at restaurants instead of subsisting on PB&J sandwiches and prepackaged grocery-store meals, though I do have good memories of doing that sophomore year.

We ended up at the Vintergarden (“Winter Garden”) attached to our hotel where we had a lovely dinner of reindeer. Coincidentally, a pair appeared outside the window while we were eating their brethren…

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