Under the midnight sun: a surreal trip to Svalbard

In the land of the midnight sun, Kia finds a place of raw nature, rare wildlife and one of her most memorable moments of travel

It is said that you can’t die in Svalbard, the remote archipelago that lies midway between Norway and the North Pole. The permafrost here not only preserves corpses, it sometimes pushes them to the surface. The truth is that authorities would prefer you didn’t die on Svalbard. Coffin burials are not allowed due to the permafrost, so critically-ill patients are usually flown to mainland Norway. 

And just as there are rules in death, there are also rules in life. Heavily pregnant women are flown to the mainland as giving birth in Svalbard is also off limits. 

In many ways, this is a place occupied by life and death. The capital, Longyearbyen, is home to the Global Seed Vault, a secure facility that stores over 1.1m seed samples in case a global cataclysm causes all crops to fail; a renewal of life after wholesale death so to speak. 

Elsewhere in Longyearbyen, signs warn you of mortal danger. This is polar bear country and visitors are warned not to leave the confines of the capital without a trained guide. 

It is this sense of foreboding, of being on the edge of things, that could be said to define Svalbard. This is a place of vast tundra, of epic polar feats and a wild, elemental beauty. In fact, Svalbard is the last stop before the North Pole and acts as a harbinger of its untamed spirit. 

I should admit, however, that Peter and I saw Svalbard in comparative luxury. There was no trudging through reams of snow or eating meagre meals. Instead, we joined the Ocean Atlantic for an 8-day Svalbard – Last stop before the North Pole expedition with Albatros Expeditions. 

We boarded the ship in Longyearbyen and could feel a palpable excitement among our fellow passengers who had all come to see polar bears. Peter and I had the same hopes but were also painfully aware that wildlife can’t be controlled. After lukewarm sightings of leopards at Manyeleti Game Reserve in South Africa and Yala National Park in Sri Lanka, we vowed to enjoy the scenery if that is all we got. After all, we were in the land of the midnight sun amid some of the cleanest air in the world, about to sail among gargantuan glaciers and pack ice. How could we possibly deem ourselves anything but…