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| Akademic Vavilov in sea ice near Svalbard |
Around Svalbard lots of places claim to be “The
Northernmost”, and the main town Longyearbyen on the island of Spitzbergen does
indeed claim to have the northern-most hotel, university campus and to be the northern-most
permanently inhabited town.
Longyearbyen can also claim to have the northern-most airport with scheduled flights so travel is relative easy from mainland Norway.
Longyearbyen can also claim to have the northern-most airport with scheduled flights so travel is relative easy from mainland Norway.
Both SAS and Norwegian fly into Longyearbyen regularly from
Oslo, usually with a brief stopover in Tromso en route, making it very easy to
connect with flights worldwide.
Visitors to Svalbard mostly fall into one of two
groups. Either they arrive by and get
around on the large cruise ships that include Svalbard as part of broader Norwegian
cruise itineraries, or they fly into Svalbard to join one of the several small
expedition cruise ships that spend the summer operating around Svalbard. Recent changes to the operating rules mean
that the big cruise ships are going to have to drop Svalbard from their
itineraries, so from 2015 it likely that there will be fewer ships operating in
Svalbard waters. The rule changes are
starting to bring arctic maritime rules into line with Antarctic ones. A few years ago the heavy fuel oil used in big
cruise liners was outlawed in the Antarctic, now the Norwegian authorities have
done the same around Svalbard.
The smaller expedition cruise ships are already using
lighter fuel oils, so will be able to continue to operate around Svalbard. On these boats, which mostly operate with
about 100 passengers are either converted research ships or purpose expedition ships. In all cases
the ships come equipped with a significant number of inflatable boats which
allow passengers to get either get closer to the wildlife or landscapes, or to
go ashore where there are suitable landing beaches.
If you don’t want to spend time on the water around
Svalbard, your travel options are pretty limited. Outside Longyearbyen there are no roads so
although in winter you can get around by snowmobile in the summer you are
pretty much stuck on foot. The other
caveat, at any time of year, is that its not safe to go outside town without
being armed. Polar bears are a real threat
here.
The typical trip to Svalbard, for most summer visitors, will
involve flying into Longyearbyen before joining an expedition boat. The boat
will then travel around the islands calling in at a number of key landing
sites, the itinerary varying according to both the weather and ice conditions,
and to reports of wildlife activity.
In most cases the ships will have specialist expedition crew
(in addition to the standard maritime crew) who will attempt to organise one
or two excursion each day. Svalbard is
relatively small so it’s would be common for a morning excursion to be followed
by a short transition in the middle of the day to allow a second excursion at a
different site in the afternoon. The ship will then move to another set of
sites for the following day. On some
ships, if the wildlife sightings merit it, there are sometimes excursion late in
the day too. In the summer, the sun
doesn’t set, so the wildlife stays active.
The limiting factor just might be passenger (or crew) exhaustion.
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| Mother and Cub at lunchtime |
It is possible to visit Svalbard in the winter too. At this
time the wildlife options are limited, but there are still a number of winter
sport attractions (such as snow mobiles), and there is always the possibility
of seeing the Northern Lights.
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