Spitsbergen 2019
The waters around Spitsbergen are where British Arctic Whaling began. I first visited Spitsbergen (one of the islands in the Svalbard Archipelago north of Norway in 2012 and despite a busy summer schedule I managed to visit again in the summer of 2019. I sailed from Dover, up the North Sea with a couple of stops in Norway on the way up (Andalsnes and Honningsvag) and on the way down (Tromso and Stavanger) The last three of these stops also gave me a chance to reacquaint myself with maritime/polar collections in the local excellent museums.
The first stop in Spitsbergen was at the main town of Longyearbyen with the wonderful Svalbard Museum. This has some outstanding early whaling displays.
Then on to the Russian ex Mining settlement of Pyramiden, a bizarre, mostly deserted town with decaying wooden buildings and an adjacent breath-taking glacier.
Although there were few stops on this two week voyage, the ship was relatively small and so we were able to do a great deal of coastal cruising, around all of the breath-taking scenery of the south half of Ice Fjord and along the south west coast of Spitsbergen. I saw my first blue whale and some of the early whaling sites at Green Harbour. I was also able to see the coastline around Horn Sound that Scoresby drew, and engraving of which can be found in his 1820 book ‘An Account of the Arctic Regions’.
At a time when I am focussed on Arctic Whaling it was a great opportunity to sail those seas, experience the constant daylight, sent a lot of time on deck looking for (and seeing) whales.