Tuesday morning we left Iceland and headed for Svalbard with an overnight stay at the Oslo airport. The flight from Reykjavik to Oslo was thoroughly uneventful and we stayed at an airport hotel, which was also perfectly uninteresting but very convenient.

Wednesday morning we boarded our SAS flight to Longyearbyen with a stop in Tromsø, which is where the fun began. When we landed in Tromsø, the flight attendant told us that we needed to collect our bags and recheck them, go through immigration and then reboard our plane. This is because while Svalbard is part of Norway, it is outside the Schengen zone. We (and three other Americans) dutifully went to baggage claim and waited and waited and waited. Finally, when no more bags came off the belt one of the other people asked at information and was told, that no, we did not need to collect our bags, but yes, we needed to go through immigration. We ran to get back through security, but couldn’t enter because our boarding passes were from Oslo. We ran back to SAS customer service, who got us to security (by the way tick tock, the plane was supposed to be leaving!), we ran to immigration, where, of course, we met the only chatty immigration office EVER, (or at least Steven did; the EU immigration guy seemed to get that I was in a hurry) then ran to the plane. Whew—we all made it! The remainder of the flight was uneventful. BTW…since Svalbard is outside the Schengen zone, I can stay three more days in Athens if we want.

Longyearbyen is not what you would call a major metropolitan hub. The total population is about 2,900, with the bulk of them living in Longyearbyen. It has two streets, a university that studies everything arctic, a bunch of stores (mostly outdoor outfitters and tourist stuff) a few dozen hotels, half a dozen restaurants and the northern most brewery in the world. Oh yes, it also has signs posted that the edge of town saying that beyond that point you are not safe from polar bears. Inside the town, they patrol for polar bears, outside the town, you are on your own.

We arrived around midday and spent the afternoon wandering in town and visiting the Svalbard museum. It is a small, but quite good museum that talked about the history of the archipelago and the people who settled there. It was an hour well spent. We had dinner around 8 and watched as the sun did not go down. It is so weird to look outside and have the faulty perception of the time based on how light it is outside.

In the morning we signed up for a boat trip to the Nordenskiöldbreen glacier in a catamaran. It took about 6 hours to get to the glacier and back to Longyearbyen. We were hoping to see some walruses, but they were not around, so we made due with stunning scenery, a few reindeer and very short glimpse of a minke whale. The glacier was very cool, but it has receded badly in the last few years. Svalbard’s average temperature has risen about 5 degrees in the last 50 years.

For our last day, we signed up for what we thought was a 7 km hike over a glacier, and what turned out to be an 11 km hike (our first death march in a while) over the glacier, up a mountain, down the mountain and across the tundra. Along with us on the hike were two women from Slovakia, and two men, one from Switzerland and one from Germany. All were in their 30s and in much better condition than we were. We used a great company called Green Dog which does hiking, dog sledding and other trips in Svalbard. It was a very hard hike and I was less than pleased with my ability to keep up. Steven neglects to mention that I was the one who fell several times, luckily mostly on the snow. The terrain transitioned from tundra to moraine, to large rocks, to glacier, to snow and then back again. The scenery was gorgeous and view from the top of the mountain was amazing. While walking in the valley after coming down, we saw lots of reindeer were able to get very close to them. It was one of the top five hardest hikes we have done, and it reminded me of how important staying in shape is.

Once we completed the hike, we did the only thing that would make sense; we walked about 2 km down to the Svalbard brewery, the northern most brewery in the world. We sat down at a shared table and struck up a conversation with two guys from Stockholm, Andreas and Pasi. They gave us some recommendations for places to visit in both Helsinki and Stockholm. Apparently there is a 17-hour overnight party ferry between the cities and the thing to do is board Friday night, stay up all night partying, spend the weekend in Stockholm and then collapse back on the ferry on Sunday for the return trip. This doesn’t seem like our sort of weekend, but they make it sound like it was fun. After a couple of drinks we headed back to the center of town to get some food. Sue and I had reservations for dinner at our hotel. They walked about halfway with us when they decided that it was a requirement for all visitors to go for a swim in the ocean (temperature 1.2˚ C). We politely declined but promised to meet them after our dinner to make sure that they had not frozen to death. Sue and I had a very nice meal in our hotel’s restaurant (Steven did not try reindeer, whale or seal) and then met them for another drink in the restaurant next door. They did indeed go for a swim and showed us a photo as proof!

The next morning we packed our bags and headed for the airport for our flights to Helsinki. Our flight from Svalbard to Oslo was on SAS, but our flight from Oslo to Helsinki was on Finnair two hours later. When we arrived in Oslo we cleared immigration and customs and then rechecked in for our Finnair flight. Sue’s Polish passport came in very useful as she was able to clear immigration through the EU line which was non-existent and even managed to collect all the bags before I cleared through the line for all other passports.