And a little more more

OK, as it seems that I can´t really stop blogging: here are some photo´s from our hike a couple of weeks back.

William and I brought a camera that failed us immediately, so these are taken by our hiking companions, Rico and Evelyn. Thank you to them!

Day 1

Going down the Caroline-valley...


and along the beach towards Deltaneset.


Where we stayed the night. In this cabin.


Day 2.

Looking for fossils.



There were heaps of lovely fossils in the hillside (Janusfjellet) right next to the cabin, and we had a great time searching for the nicest ones. We couldn´t carry much with us, but we took a few.

This is the area where they found the pliosaurus a few years back. However, as the area was huge and the fog was thick, we didn´t discover the exact spot where they found it.


Lunch-break and then onwards...


...to the next cabin at Diabas, only a couple of hours away.



Day 3

Heading back,


crossing some dramatic ravines made by the melting ice earlier in the summer.


Some of the numerous reindeers we saw along the way.


This reindeer-foal was very curious about us.


And finally, after six hours, we´re walking down the Louise-valley towards Adventfjorden. You can see the airport on the other side of the fjord. Nearly home!


A great trip although not so great weather. We´re already thinking about when to do it next:-)

And then a little more from the arctic

It seems the polarbears love to cuddle too... At least the bears in Manitoba, Canada.


More from the wild and hostile north here.

Can´t help myself - got to write a little more

I´m returning to Svalbard this weekend to do two things - go hiking and open a small exhibition in one of the local café´s (Fruene kaffe & vinbar). I´m exhibitng photos this time - you can see one of them underneath and more of them here.


And that´s all - I´m not starting blogging again, I´m not. Not now, anyway.

That´s it - we´re back

This is my final blog entry, and it feels weird.

Coming home feels strangely strange – even though it´s so familiar. The fact that it gets dark at night is boringly ordinary - I miss the midnightsun. Also I miss many other things, but I won´t make a list (but the dry climate would have been on top of it if I´d made one – the weather´s been on and off with rain since we came – typical Bergen summer- and I know there´s gonna be plenty more rain in the months to come...).

Getting back to our house was nice. I´d forgotten how much I like it. Also I like the area that we live in.



Our house is in the red circle (I bet you´d figured out that already!).

Meeting my family was nice too, and the cat. Tobias the cat behaved as we´d hardly been away, isn´t that amazing? I thought cats had no memory to speak of, but it seems they do. He´s a very special cat who apparently has forgiven us for going away.


I should say something about the trip from Bodø to here. It was pleasantly uneventful – we did nothing but travel for two days. Norway´s a long country, and south of Trondheim there are lots of wonderful scenery too. So we enjoyed it, but relentlessly drove on. We arrived here two days ago, but have been busy with the unpacking and other stuff, so that´s why this blog entry is delayed.


Now there´s not much more to say. I´ll probably visit Svalbard again in the future, maybe even move back at some point too - but the blog ends here. As the headline says: one year in Longyearbyen.

And just as I suspected, it didn´t feel long at all.

Our ship has come in

And hopefully we´ll be off within the hour. 

Next stop somewhere in Nord-Trøndelag, we reckon.

From lovely Lofoten to idleness in Bodø

We´ve arrived in Limbo , sorry, Bodø - waiting for the car, which is still in open sea. The shipping company has given us a vague promise that we´ll get it tomorrow - sometime not too long after lunch...

Luckily the weather is gorgeous, like it has been for the last five days (a little windy sometimes, but blue skies all through Lofoten).


OK, a quick report from our trip through Lofoten:

The Lofoten peninsula is a beautiful area - with ragged mountaintops and long, pristine beaches. Something else that I couldn´t stop looking at were the fields of wild flowers, but that might just be me, after a year of arctic tundra.




After Svolvær we headed straight for Hov on the Gimsøy island, where we stayed for two nights.


At Hov we met these two,


and their foul-smelling grandfather, Herkules (OK, only the kid´s, I suppose (no, not my kids)).


We hiked, barbecued, bathed and fished. A spectacular place, and lovely summerdays (we snicker a little when we see these areas being promoted as "arctic").



The sunny days continued in Nusfjord, where we went next and stayed on for another two nights.


Here´s the cabin (rorbu) we stayed in.


Rather primitive, but comfortable.


More hiking,


and fishing.


Very successful fishing, actually.


We reckoned the biggest coalfish (sei) to be around 6 kilos and the smaller 4. Both of them were handed over to the local restaurant, and they were very pleased.


Nusfjord is extremely beautiful, and we can definitely recommend it. The only drawback must be all the other tourists, but it´s kind of silly to complain about them, I suppose. That goes for all of Lofoten, it´s full of tourists - and surprisingly many young ones. We got the impression that Lofoten is the "cool" place to go. For Norwegians and foreigners alike.

Yesterday we spent on the ferry from Moskenes to here - and here we´ll be staying for another day, it seems. In limbo...

Tromsø - Svolvær

First impression of Tromsø:


Other impressions from Tromsø:


Now, where did we see him before?


A very short stopover with friends in Harstad (no photos from there), and then we boarded the hurtigrute Kong Harald which took us to southward.

The ship is one of the rather ugly, bulky new ones, so I didn´t bother to take a photo of the whole vessel. But this is the tip of it.


But the coastline through Vesterålen to Lofoten is amazing. Here´s going into narrow Trollfjorden.



Thomas next to an old one.

I´m afraid we didn´t enjoy the trip very much, despite the landscape. It was full of loud, arrogant German pensioners...

So, we were happy to leave the ship here in Svolvær - a lovely, sunny place:)


And now we´ll spend some days exploring lovely Lofoten, hopefully in as beautiful weather as it is right now.

The Big Departure

Car crammed with stuff, almost bursting, actually. Ready to be shipped to Bodø.


The kids at Longyearbyen airport.


It was strange and quite sad to take off - I certainly don´t feel done with Svalbard. We´d barely got used to being there, and already we´re leaving??

But Tromsø, where we´ve stayed the night, is nice too - and warm. And extremely green. We´ll be heading for Harstad next, and then onwards to Lofoten. See you later!

Some images of June

Saxifraga oppositifolia (Rødsildre/Purple Saxifrage) -


Saxifraga cespitosa (Tuesildre/Tufted Saxifrage) -

Draba oxycarpa (Bleikrublom/Pale Withlowgrass) -


Papaver dahlianum (Svalbardvalmue/Svalbard Poppy), popping through the asphalt -



... and a molting Lagopus muta (Rype/Ptarmigan)


More flowers here.

Reminiscing and summarizing II

A rough map of where I´ve been since I came last August (not counting the last cruise - and not necessarily where the rest of the family´s been - only I (and these are literally the only places I´ve been since last August - I haven´t been off this island since then, remember?)).


It´s not very impressive when you look at the bigger map - lots and lots and LOTS more places to see!