Ny Ålesund and Kongsfjord. May 2000. Part V

[Read the first part of this post here.]

So we had to be more careful with weather and ice conditions, meaning we spent more time in Ny Ålesund. It's an extreme place, as the 24 hour daylight in early May demonstrated. Geography is constantly reinforced by reference to the World's Northernmost things there. The World's Northernmost Post Office. The World's Northernmost Pub. The World's Northernmost Webcam. The World's Northernmost Historical Train, a relic of coal mining. In the World's Northernmost Gym, the World's Northernmost Climbing Wall. Ultima Thule as tourist kitsch.

But the truly weird thing about Ny Ålesund is how it feels like just another Norwegian village. Maybe a little friendlier, sprightlier, but in many ways, life there is disconcertingly normal. There's a shop where you can buy alcohol and souvenirs. A sauna, where Sofie and Kit would disappear for what seemed like hours on end. Norwegian-hotel-standard meals three times daily at the canteen. Remarkably fresh salads.
Doing fieldwork in 24 hour daylight meant that the main way we kept track of time was in order to make mealtimes.


Most scientists stayed in barracks. As we were a couple, Sofie and I got a room in the North Pole Hotel, established from a converted barracks just prior to World War II (Arctic tourism isn't new). A constant in Scandinavian life is that everyone takes off their footwear on entering a building. Trudging around in heavy, snowy boots, the rationale for this immediately obvious.

When we first entered our room at the hotel, Sofie stepped into the bathroom.

“Ooh, you've got to come in here. Try this, try this”, she said.

She squirmed out of the way to let me through (it was not a large bathroom).

“Yeah, what?”

“Your feet – feel?”

I wiggled my feet, looked down, looked back at her.

“Heated floor”, Sofie said.

“Ahh”. Realization dawned.


I'd been told of this most civilized of Scandinavian luxuries, bathrooms with underfloor heating. Maybe we were closer to the North Pole than we were ever likely to be again, but we certainly weren't roughing it.

Civilization at Ny Ålesund revealed itself in other ways, too.

There was occasional socializing with other scientists. Sofie and I had one evening's dinner party at the joint French-German research station - the beautiful little Blue House - with the only other scientists out on the water, a German team diving from their Zodiac inflatables. Dinner included the home videos - their underwater footage included a bearded seal mugging their camera, investigating them, to a background soundtrack of trills. Another evening was at KitnChristian's cabin, experiencing Kit's ability to whip up culinary masterpieces from nothing, marvelling at Christan's ability to absorb vast quantities of alcohol with no apparent effect.



We also had to stay around town every third day, working on Sofie's second project.

[Read the next part of this post here.]