In 1981, I visited Spitzbergen on Svalbard together with three friends, experiencing around the clock the bright lights of the Artic summer (View 1 above). It was actually sunnier in the night than in the day, the sun staying high up in the sky even at midnight (View 2 above)! When we landed in Spitsbergen at the end of June it was still winter with snow everywhere (View 3). After having camped a few days in Longyearbyen, we took a trip by a ‘Hurtigrutten’ ship to the permanent ice north of Svalbard (View 4-5), and back to the Ny-Ålesund area (View 6), where we mainly trekked most of this summer. But due to the 24-7 sunny spring weather, the snow melted away quickly, turning the winter into summer within a week (Views 7-8). Camping now became easier among the glaciers (View 9, 10), and the Svalbard reindeer could feed on the summer tundra vegetation (View 11). More and more flowers grew rapidly out of the ground during the following month of July, making this only summer month increasingly colourful (View 12 plus the separate page Artic Flowers). Still, winter could be experienced by trekking on glaciers (Views 13-15). When we left at the beginning of August, the weather started to deteriorate with the approaching autumn. Finally, a trip by boat was taken from Ny-Ålesund to Longyearbyen, where the Templetfjord and some other bays were visited (View 16). The photos of the Artic birds were taken during this whole trip (see separate page)
As found out later, this was the last summer with original pure clear skies, since air pollutants started to appear this far north in 1982 and onwards.
Globalwings Photo 