Tundra
A summer carpet On terraces of ice; Domesticated It could furnish a dream-room In a house of rock – Saxifrage forests Tower half an inch Into the mists; Parabolic arrays Of Arctic dandelions Rise and set Once a year; Terracotta[…..]
Different perspective
After four days of battling sea ice around the Mossel Halvoya peninsular we decided to turn back down the south west coast of Svalbard. We waited patiently for the ice to clear checking the sea ice charts daily. Unfortunately, when[…..]
Suspended in time and ice
We spent the last five days trying, and failing, to descend southward through the Hindlopen Strait between Spitsbergen and Gustav Adolf Island. Following Saturday’s harrowing escape from becoming one with the bears or the ice in Murehenson fjord – we[…..]
Weather and Ice
Yesterday (Wednesday) Noorderlicht pulled into the Liefdefjord to the North West corner of Svalbard having abandoned the battle to push through between the two main islands. The first couple of days at the weekend we were hampered by ice. It[…..]
Liefdefjord [silence]
A Quaker upbringing with Sunday morning meetings for worship from the age of five has left me no stranger to silence, and as a theatre and opera director I’m keenly aware of its power. Samuel Beckett’s “Happy Days” has over[…..]
Monacobreen
We sailed across a very cold, still sea in sunlight – a meld of chrome and the quicksilver at the back of a mirror, leaving behind a wake of slowed-down time. We approached the glacier at the end of the[…..]
Arctic Notes 7: Circles within Circles
“The regions around the North Pole – well, yes, the North Pole itself – had attracted me from childhood, and here I was at the South Pole. Can anything more topsy-turvy be imagined?” Roald Amundsen, The South Pole (1912) The[…..]
Going Ashore
The rocking cradle of the ships hull moves you, constantly. You feel the water below, and it is not just the water. You feel the wind-sculpted waves, the ice that has cooled the currents. You feel a piece of this[…..]
Fail again, fail better
Yesterday we abandoned our third attempt to travel down the Hinlopen Fjord along the east coast of Spitsbergen. Each time we’ve sailed around the headland in calm seas to be met by near gale-force winds being funnelled up through the[…..]
