Christmas holiday!

Had my final exam for this semester last thursday and now it is Christmas for real! This means that I finally have time for "awesomeness" and... more time to update my blog!

Barrack 11, Nybyen (Photo: Alexander Hovland)

Nybyen (Photo: Alexander Hovland)

Nye Gruve 2B, where Santa lives. Note the avalanche to the right (Photo: Alexander Hovland)

So, for those who don't already know. I'm going to celebrate this Christmas here on Svalbard. My first Christmas away from home! The plan is to go to Bjørndalen and stay at Smutthullet during Christmas with two other students at UNIS; Niklas (Swedish) and Cara(American). And as I'm writing this, there are suddenly two more. We now even have a real christmas tree (although Danish).

Longyearbyen (Photo: Alexander Hovland)

On the way to Huset (Photo: Alexander Hovland)

Everyone who is not staying for Christmas has left now, and there's a calm over Nybyen.  No people, no lights, just an occasional snow-scooter driving past. I have been passing the days taking care of two dogs; Pernille and Tritina (?) who lives at the dogyard just up on the moraine in front of Longyearbreen. Besides feeding them, we go skiing. Took some scratches, bruises and some blood before I caught the hang of it, but now they are just eating kilometers.

Feeding time (Photo: Mike Cope)

Pernille (Photo: Mike Cope)

Tritina (Photo: Alexander Hovland)

Polarnight

It has been almost two weeks since my last blogpost. My first excuse for this is that I've been just to busy, which might sound a bit strange since my second excuse is that not much have happened up here lately.

Well... Maybe some things happened. The sun went down below the horizon for the last time this year on the 26th of October. This marks a period from between 26th of october until 8th of march where the sun will not rise above the horizon.

For now it is still bright a couple of hours during the day as we experience what is called polar twillight where it is still daylight due to sunlight being reflected back in the upper athmosphere. Gradually it will get darker however, and between the 11th of November until the 8th of March there will only be a faint glow during the day during what is called civil polar night. Nautical polar and the even darker astronomical polar night is not experienced here.

The darkness opens up for some beautiful pictures of northerns light which have been quite frequent up here lately. For the most part however they occur during night when people like me are sleeping. The more eager people at our barrack however have set up the facebook-group "The Barrack 11 Northern Lights Observatory". There's also a northern light forecast available from Kjell Henriksens Observatory for those who are interested.

Chloé made us all a proper meal with Italian lasagna and tiramitsu for dessert as her sister Léa was visiting. Of course we also went out last friday. Sufficient to say; I was a bit reduced last saturday. Sunday we went up to the ice-cave in the moraine in front of Longyearbreen. However, we decided to drop it as we heard quite a lot of meltwater flowing due to the high temperatures lately. Instead I guided a group up to Platåfjellet. As we came up, they went down and I walked around for a couple of hours and tracked a polar fox for a while.

Last week was spent for the most time doing some inefficient work on my term project for AG210 which now is almost finished.

In other news:
- First proper drug-raid on Svalbard. First 9 local people were caught with narcotics and now the total number is 11. They now risk being sent away from Svalbard.
- Two youths were caught driving under the influence of alcohol on snowscooters
- Another fox with rabies was caught.
- China was accused of hacking the Svalsat radars.

En omkom då isbjørn gikk til angrep

2 dager før min egen avreise blir en teltleir med ungdommer fra British Schools Exploring Society (BSES) angrepet av isbjørn. En ungdom (17) er omkommet og 4 er skadet. Angrepet skal ha skjedd om morningen i en teltleir ved Hampusfjellet(451 moh.) på Von Postbreen. Hampusfjellet ligger som en nunatak omgitt av Von Postbreen i Vest Spitsbergen ca. 50km øst for Longyearbyen. Det er et populært turistmål og er lett tilgjengelig via båt i Tempelfjorden.

BSES er en britisk non-profit organisasjon for ungdom som organiserer ekspedisjonsturer for ungdom. Den ble grunnlagt i 1932 av George Murray Levick en britisk polarforsker. I tillegg til BSES var han også medlem av British Antarctic Expedition 1910 ledet av Robert Scott.

VG Nett melder at de skal ha satt opp snublebluss rundt leiren uten av dette har avverget angrepet. Et viktig spørsmål nå i etterkant er jo om snubleblusset har vært utløst (Channel4 - "Questions raised over polar bear trip wire protection"). Har fra andre, hørt rykter om at snubleblusset ikke alltid er til å stole på. Dette var også tilfellet da to padlere i fjor ble angrepet av isbjørn på Nordaustlandet. Da var det to av fire bluss som ikke hadde gått av (Svalbardposten - "2 av blussene gikk ikke av"). Noe av problemet skal være at man nå ikke har tilgang på den militære varianten, men en mindre driftsikker sivil variant.

I følge Norsk Polarinstitutt sitt faktaark om isbjørn er det rundt 25 000 isbjørn i verden. Av disse er det et sted mellom 1900-3600 isbjørn som inngår i Barentshavsbestanden. Den er freden igjennom Isbjørnavtalen som ble undertegnet av Norge i 1973.

I løpet av 30 år er det nå 5 stykk som er blitt drept av isbjørn på Svalbard (Friluftsliv - "Isbjørnen beriker Svalbard"):

• 1971: En meteorolog blir drept under feltarbeid på Bjørnøya (Øy sør for Vest-spitsbergen)
• 1977: En Østerriker blir drept i nærheten av Magdalenafjorden (Nord på Vest-Spitsbergen)
• 1995: Ung jente drept Platåfjellet like ved Longyearbyen 
• 1995: Norsk islos drept på Kiepertøya. 
• 2011: Ungdom blir drept ved Hampusfjellet

Linker

• Svalbardposten - "Ungdommer angrepet"
• VGNett - "Isbjørn angrep ungdomsleir"
• British Schools Exploring Society
• BSES Blogg (Slettet)
• Sysselmannen på Svalbard