It has been a bit calm on this page recent­ly, but the­re are reasons for that. A good part of life still hap­pens in the off­line world 🙂.

Spits­ber­gen is curr­ent­ly stun­nin­gly beau­tiful. It is icy cold, just as you would expect in the Arc­tic during the win­ter. Last night it was -30°C in Advent­da­len. Near sea level, that is.

View over the fro­zen Sas­senfjord.

It has been cold for a while now, and the­re is more ice in the fjords than the­re was in the recent past. Sas­senfjord is fro­zen, as you can see in the­se pic­tures, and that had not been the case in a while. The ice edge is curr­ent­ly stret­ching from Dia­ba­sod­den to Gåsøya­ne.

The shore at Elve­ne­set, view to the west (Dick­son Land in the back­ground to the right).

It is a pri­vi­le­ge to spend a moment stan­ding at the shore of Sas­senfjord, enjoy­ing the view of the ice and the sur­roun­ding sce­n­ery. It is an expe­ri­ence that makes it easy to lea­ve the world with all its trou­bles behind for a pre­cious moment, some­thing that feels real­ly good.

In this sen­se I wish ever­y­bo­dy who made it to this web­site – and ever­y­bo­dy else, too – hap­py, peaceful Eas­ter holi­days!

And becau­se it is so beau­tiful: once again the view of Sas­senfjord, seen from Elve­ne­set.

The shore at Elve­ne­set, view to the east, with Tem­pel­fjord in the distance.

Jan May­en 2015 … it’s been a while! Well, the­re are expe­ri­en­ces that you just can’t repeat (espe­ci­al­ly when the island in ques­ti­on has mean­while lar­ge­ly been clo­sed by the respon­si­ble govern­ment, but that is ano­ther sto­ry).

Then, we rea­ched the top of Bee­ren­berg and more. You will, as usu­al, find my own impres­si­ons in my tra­vel blog (June 2015). But Pas­cal Prinz cap­tu­red some cool moving images and now he has com­pi­led them to pro­du­ce a gre­at litt­le video:

Thank you, Pas­cal! 😀👏👍