Blue Water

by Lindsay Wright

  One winter a few years ago, Harald fell and wrenched his back. He crawled painfully to his bed but couldn’t rise from it for four days. That experience made him decide to become a ham (amateur) radio buff. ‘I realized just how alone I was out here,’ he said, ‘so next winter I bought a ham radio.’ He was a bit abashed about the sudden invasion of 20th-century technology at Kapp Wijk. With the radio came batteries, and then a wind generator to charge them, and, if you have batteries, why not a few electric lights? And then, of course, a bigger antenna, so that he could talk to other radio enthusiasts as far away as New Zealand and Australia. ‘That technology,’ he grinned ruefully, ‘it just sort of creeps up on you.’

  Fox pelts sell for up to $500 each, and a good season might yield 20 to 30 pelts. Harald shoots seals to feed his dogs but cannot sell the skins. ‘There is no market for them any more,’ he lamented, ‘what a shame, what a waste.’

  A polar bear skin will fetch up to $1500, but although they are free game in the western Arctic countries, shooting a polar bear in Svalbard these days is a serious crime. In the event that you are attacked and have to shoot a bear, Harald explained, then you must report it to the administration straight away. ‘And heaven help you if the bullet hole is in the bear’s back.’ The Sysselmannen’s staff remove the pelts, for auction in Norway.

  A bear, in its initial rush, can cover up to 30 metres at 60 kph, but they soon overheat and must plunge into cold water to cool off. The Svalbard polar bear (isbjørn) is slightly smaller than its west Arctic cousins, but a mature male might weight in at 800 kilograms. ‘The two-year-olds are the most dangerous,’ Harald warned. ‘They are big enough to eat you, and too young to know that humans are dangerous.’ He had survived several close encounters, and said, ‘You are just another fat seal to them. They will stalk you and eat you whole.’

  In winter the bears hide beside seals’ breathing holes in the ice and, when an unwary seal pokes its nose up to breathe, the bear can pluck it through the ice with one sweep of its mighty paw, crushing every bone in the seal’s body en route.

  An English woman biologist, who stayed in Longyearbyen one summer, painted huge eyes on an umbrella which she planned, if attacked, to pop open in the bear’s face and startle it into flight. Fortunately for her, or perhaps for the bears, she never met one. Russian and Polish personnel, who are not allowed to carry firearms, reportedly use flares to scare the bears away; and there is a story about a cook who, when a bear stuck its head through the kulkompani café window, bludgeoned it with a frying pan until it shambled off. The last human being to be eaten by a bear in Spitsbergen was a French mountaineer, whose wife managed to scare the bear off with a propane camping stove before it ate her.

  One of our favourite stories of the modern Arctic was about two ham radio operators at Jan Mayen Island who were trapped by a bear in their radio shack, some distance from the main base. The men had no weapons, and no way of contacting their workmates in the main base, about 300 metres away, as the hungry bear began to smash down the frail walls of their shack. They finally contacted a radio operator in the Canary Islands, and explained their predicament. The message was relayed to a ham operator in Algiers, who spoke to one in Paris, who contacted another operator in Copenhagen. The Copenhagen operator reached someone in Tromsø who phoned the main base at Jan Mayen, and one of the men there walked out with a rifle and shot the bear.

  Bear hunting was a popular sport until it was banned by international treaty in 1973, but the trappers’ opinion of this is illustrated by the poster, outlining the penalties for killing a bear, on the back of Harald’s hut door. The bear on the poster has a bullet-sized hole right through its head.

  The bears’ real environment is on the sea ice, where they hunt seals, but in an especially warm year, when there has been little or no ice, the beaches of north Svalbard have been thick with polar bears dead and dying from starvation. A crewman on a research ship told us about the bowhead whale carcass his ship came upon one spring, frozen into the pack ice north of Spitsbergen. It was surrounded by 26 bears, lying about the ice like Romans at an orgy, and feasting on the whale meat as the ice slowly thawed.

  According to the administration, polar bear numbers have recovered from early depredations by hunters, and there are now about 500 adult bears in Svalbard. Bears are rarely seen on the west coast of Spitsbergen in summer, unless they are sick or unable to hunt. They follow the ice pack north as it recedes in the summer, and return again in winter.

  Meanwhile, Kapp Wijk was getting crowded. Besides Sarah, Harald and myself, Louis and a radio operator called Geir had arrived to help build the new hut. An English girl, who sprained her knee and was invalided out of a university expedition working nearby, joined in the effort, and we soon had the walls, floor and roof in place. They were lovely long days: sleeping until midday, working until midnight, then talking and drinking into the wee hours while the gentle light of the midnight sun glowed in the hills around us. Progress was, however, well ahead of schedule for Harald, and the north called, so with most of the major work done, we decided to move on.

  We sailed reluctantly towards Isfjorden to head first towards the west coast and then north to the pack ice. It was harder to leave Kapp Wijk than it had been to leave Tromsø only a couple of weeks earlier. Kapp Wijk’s sheltered anchorage, a haven for yacht and crew alike, would live with us forever in our memories.

  Harald’s cluster of buildings was visible for miles down the fjord; no longer the strange collection of drab little boxes that we saw when we first arrived, but warm and friendly indications of a human presence in that huge and hostile environment.

  VIII NORTHING ON

  Radio Svalbard’s large complex, with its thickets of bristling antennae at the western approach to Adventfjorden, is the closest thing to a forest in Spitsbergen. As we gently sailed down the north side of Isfjorden, I called on the VHF radio, stating Elkouba’s name but not our nationality. After a short pause the station called back: ‘New Zealand yacht, New Zealand yacht…’ That is one of the benefits of cruising in waters less frequented by other yachts. It was the first time I had spoken to the radio station, but obviously the word about us was out among the islands.

  In the tropics you become just another bum in a boat, and shore people are frequently wary of making your acquaintance; but in the north, yachts are unique and people would ask us home for a meal and to hear about our adventures. In Iceland, Scotland and the Shetlands we left the kettle on the boil and invited people aboard for a cup of tea and a yarn. This practice, though tough on our bladders, was wonderful for getting to know people.

  Cruising up the north edge of Isfjorden we passed Bohemanneset, the low-lying sandspit that until recently was the site of a Norwegian sealing station. Several winters ago (time in the Arctic is counted in winters and summers more often than in the months and years used by people who live in less drastic climates), the caretaker at the station developed scurvy.

  This infamous disease, brought on by a lack of fresh food and vitamin C, claimed many seamen’s lives until the 1700s, when Captain James Cook and other ships’ masters discovered that regular rations of lime juice and fresh food prevented it. Lime juice was dispensed on many British ships which prompted American sailors to nickname their crews ‘limeys’.

  The scurvied caretaker built a huge bonfire to alert people across the ice at Longyearbyen, but ice conditions that year were so bad that nobody could cross the fjord to come to his assistance, and he died. A few years later he would have been rescued by helicopter in minutes. Ironically, though, more people in the Arctic are killed these days by air crashes than by any other cause.

  Elkouba sailed on past the famous bird mountain, Alkhornet, and had to cleave her way through acres of raucously protesting little auks. These tiny birds generally live in the icy seas of the far north, but have been seen as far south as the Shetlands. They hurtle along at 30 to 60 centimetres above the surface, barely dodging breaking waves. We wondered how they did i
t, often in very rough seas, without taking in water and drowning. Little auks have long been a source of navigational assistance for mariners approaching Spitsbergen in fog or foul weather — just follow the little auks home, and you will find the island. They are the world’s most populous bird species, and Alkhornet (‘alk’ meaning auk and ‘hornet’ meaning mountain) hums like a huge beehive in the summer nesting season as the birds tend their young in nests stuck in crevices in the mountainsides.

  We motored into Trygghamna (‘safe harbour’) and anchored near Kjerulfbreen, the glacier at the head of the harbour. Birds teemed all about us, seemingly oblivious to our presence. Ice calved from the glacier with sharp cracking noises, and bobbed, glinting, in the water. By now, Sarah’s misgivings about sailing to Spitsbergen had long evaporated and her eyes, sparkling at the vista around Elkouba, matched the ice.

  Next morning we rounded Daudmannsodden and beat north up Forlandsundet, between Prins Karls Forland and mainland Spitsbergen. The foreland, about 50 miles long, stretches between the openings to Isfjorden and Kongsfjorden and provides a relatively sheltered passage for small vessels heading north. The passage is bisected, however, by a sand bar at the northern end with a maximum depth of about 3.8 metres over it, so large ships are forced to travel outside the foreland. The long, thin foreland is back-boned by a ridge of spiky mountains which reach to about 360 metres and wear white caps of snow all summer. According to the Admiralty’s Arctic Pilot it was named, by Fotherby in 1616, Prince Charles Island, after the son of King James the First of England. At the same time it was known to Dutch whalers who frequented Forlandsundet as Kijn Island, after the supercargo from a whaling ship who broke his neck and died climbing on the island. Whether Mr Kijn was motivated by a healthy desire to climb mountains or was merely in search of a lofty vantage point to spot whales from, we will never know.

  The day started out bright, clear and windy but steadily deteriorated, so at about the time that would have brought nightfall to the lower latitudes, we took one last tack into Eidembukta, a small bay on the Spitsbergen shore, and dropped anchor behind the white, breaking water over a small reef in the corner of the bay. All night the wind blew, wailing through the rigging, interspersed by the muted, prickling sound of snow collecting on deck.

  We arose next morning to a virgin white landscape: snow was 30 centimetres deep on Elkouba’s deck and thick layers coated the beach and surrounding mountains. We felt somehow out of place — on a yacht surrounded by high snowy peaks — and crept around whispering to each other. As we got under way the anchor chain echoed, rattling rudely from the landscape, and the exhaust noise rebounded from the hills like a fart in the front pew at church.

  St Jonsfjorden, further north up the Spitsbergen coast, offered some shelter and a deep anchorage, but taking advantage of the calm conditions, we motored on north through Forlandsundet. The air was bitter, as cold as it had been in Spitsbergen, but we dressed in woollen socks and underwear, heavy shirts and jumpers and wet-weather gear, and it did not really bother us. We had begun getting acclimatized, I suppose, during our winter in Bristol, and then our bodies had had time to adapt gradually to the steadily dropping temperature as we slowly worked our way northwards. Our feet were always a problem. They would sweat in our rubber seaboots, and then the sweat froze. Sarah said later that her feet didn’t feel warm the entire summer in Svalbard.

  Soon we came to Forlandsrevet, the sand shoal stretching across Forlandsundet. The 110-metre-wide channel through the sand bar is marked by two buoys, but we saw neither of them as we cautiously sounded our way through.

  There are two kinds of navigational aids maintained by the Norsk Polarinstitutt in Spitsbergen: bokes (pronounced bowkays) and vardes. The former are wooden beacons, placed on land, which arouse the territorial possessiveness of the polar bear population, who regularly dismantle them. Vardes are much more substantial and reliable cairns made of rock.

  Safely beyond Forlandsrevet we shaped a course up the 16-km-wide entrance to Kongsfjorden, past the aptly named Mitre Mountain, 400 metres high. This peak is split down the middle so that it resembles a bishop’s mitre. William Scoresby, who spent 25 years voyaging in Arctic waters as a whaling captain, explorer and scientist, climbed the mitre and then its neighbouring peak by straddling the loose shingly ridge between them. He wrote: ‘The prospect was most extensive and grand, mountain rising above mountain until by distance they dwindled into insignificance; the whole contrasted by a canopy of deepest azure, and enlightened by the rays of a blazing sun, and the effect marked by a feeling of danger, seated as we were on a pinnacle of rock almost surrounded by tremendous precipices, all united to constitute a picture singularly sublime.’

  Many people, I am sure, have waxed lyrical about the splendour of Svalbard’s scenery, but few as eloquently as Scoresby. He first whaled there as a boy of 14 in his father’s ship, Resolution, and his Account of Arctic Regions, which was published in 1820, covers the west coast of Spitsbergen in one volume, and in the other gives a very thorough account of whaling activities in the region. This remarkable man ended his days as a Church of England parson. He wasn’t, however, as eloquent about the descent of Mitre Mountain: ‘We found it really a very hazardous and, in some instances, a painful undertaking. The way now seemed precipitous, every movement was a work of deliberation. We were careful to advance abreast of each other for any individual below us would have been in danger of being overwhelmed by the stones which we unintentionally dislodged in showers.’ Here he concurs with Frederick Martens, who wrote the book A Voyage to Spitsbergen about a trip to the island in 1671. Martens advised mountaineers in Spitsbergen to mark every step of their ascent with chalk, so that they could find and retrace their footsteps on the descent. Despite their imposing height and their magnificence, the mountains of Spitsbergen are generally unsatisfactory for climbing. They are often formed from soft rock and shingle which does not afford many foot-or hand-holds, and are what Tilman called ‘fatiguing and not repaying’.

  True to form, as we passed the Mitre a strong easterly wind came whistling down from Kongsfjorden. After one long tack up the northern side of the fjord, we went about and sailed directly to Ny Ålesund on the other side.

  Our first intimation of the welcome extended to tourists in Ny Ålesund came almost as soon as we stepped off Elkouba on to the dock and began to walk towards the township. The track to town leads through a nesting colony of Arctic terns, who use kamikaze aerial bombardment, like the skuas further south, for evicting trespassers. The birds swoop at interlopers with a piercing shriek, generally just missing their heads. They can draw blood, though, and we heard about people who’d been laid out on the ground by terns which had misjudged their trajectory. We found we could walk through the area unmolested by holding a stick above our heads.

  We thought that the Arctic terns were slightly paranoid in protection of their nests, until one day we saw a skua pluck a tern from the air, land and gulp it down, feathers and all, in less than a minute. That sort of behaviour justifies a pretty aggressive defence. The terns had no defence, though, against the earthmoving machinery that the Norsk Polarinstitutt was using to build a road across their nesting grounds. It was, we thought, a pretty inconsiderate project for a generally thoughtful outfit like the Polarinstitutt.

  Ny Ålesund, which bills itself as the world’s northernmost township, was originally settled to mine the rich coal seams there. The coal miners’ quarters were converted into a tourist hotel in 1937, but reverted to coal-mining usage a few years later when this ill-conceived venture collapsed. Ny Ålesund coal is a much better-burning variety than its Longyearbyen counterpart, which perhaps explains the rash of explosions which ended in the deaths of 21 men in a mine shaft in 1962. The resultant scandal almost deposed the Norwegian government of the time, and now all that is left of the mining operation is a few tumbledown buildings and a coal-washing tower with a large white cross painted on its seaward side. The cross was painted as a protest by miners just b
efore the Norwegian Royal Family was due to visit the town.

  Nowadays the settlement is a year-round base and research establishment, and a very serious-minded settlement at that, for the venerable Norsk Polarinstitutt. The North Pole Hotel still exists for visiting VIPs and scientists and, by walking in as if you own the place, it is possible to filch a long, glorious hot shower there.

  In May 1928 the airship Italia, designed and commanded by General Nobile, set out from Ny Ålesund in an attempt to reach the North Pole. The airship reached the pole, but on the return trip bad weather forced it to crash-land on Nordaustland, the north-eastern island in the Svalbard archipelago. Nobile broke a leg during the landing but the cabin, with 10 occupants, landed intact. The gondola and the six men in it were blown away, never to be seen again. The cabin party had a radio transmitter and broadcast a distress call, which was picked up in Russia, and from there a rescue attempt was quickly mounted.

  The Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen, who in 1925 had flown over the pole to Nome, Alaska in the airship Norge, was one of the first people to attempt the rescue, but he and his two French pilots disappeared en route. A Swedish pilot finally found the cabin and its occupants, but his plane was overturned by a gust of wind on the ground nearby. He, and the survivors of the airship crash, were finally rescued by a Russian icebreaker.

  A rather shabby memorial to Amundsen, who was also the first man to the South Pole, stands forlornly on the ground behind Ny Ålesund on a makeshift pedestal. I reflected that it was as well that such men are measured by their achievements and not by their monuments.