Spitzsbergen
Spitzsbegen is the largest island in the Svalbard Archipelago located in the Arctic Ocean half way between Norway and the North Pole. I spent a week on an ice breaker May cruising the island. How do you get there? Fly into Oslo, Norway then catch a plane to Longyearbyen to catch the ship.
Although you may think you have never heard of Spitzbergen or Longyearbyen you probably have. Longyearbyen, named for an American that started the archipelago’s first coal mining operation, is the home of the doomsday ‘Seed Bank’ that opened up a couple of years ago. Spitzbergen It is the home of “the Snow Queen” :-)
Main industry for the archipelago is coal mining (and now tourism), In the past it has also popular with seal and other animal hunters. it has also been the jumping off point for a number of arctic expeditions. Look up Rolad Amundsen sometime, first person to reach the south pole, he was also a famous explorer of the arctic, lost in 1922 in a rescue mission for another arctic explorer.
Svalbard is governed by Norway but isn’t officially part of Norway (OK, it is confusing). There is one town, Barentsburg, that is owned and run by the Russians. It is a mining town but does have some other small industries. The reason for those industries? Mining is basically a male job, so they needed other industries that would attract women. We did visit Barentsburg however I had a camera failure (too cold I guess) and lost all those photos.
Speaking of temperature, how cold was it? Well it was summer (May) so the temperature was warm, usually hung around freezing. However, when the ship was moving, the wind chill was definitely such that you had to be properly dressed to be on the windward side!
