My Trip to Svalbard (Polar Bears, Glaciers and Solitude)

There are places on earth that feel so remote, you almost forget the rest of the world exists. Svalbard is one of them. An archipelago in the high arctic, halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, where glaciers meet the sea, polar bears roam the pack ice, and the sun doesn't set for months at a time. For the next 10 days, we will be exploring these islands on an expedition microcruise, with no fixed itinerary, no idea what each day will bring. We came here looking for the wildest corners of Svalbard, and along the way we would encounter some of the most incredible wildlife and landscapes I've ever experienced. This is my journey to the edge of the earth. Thank you for being here. Getting to Svalbard is an adventure in itself. The archipelago sits about 800 miles north of mainland Norway, deep inside the arctic circle. In this far north, the weather dictates almost everything. For the next 10 days, we'd be living aboard the MV Freya, a small expedition ship operated by Secret Atlas, carrying just 12 passengers as we attempt to circumnavigate the islands. Unlike a traditional cruise, our trip has no fixed itinerary. Every day, we'll wake up, look at the weather, and decide where the best chances for an adventure lie. That uncertainty is part of what drew me to this trip. Our hope was to travel as far as the conditions would allow, exploring glaciers, remote beaches, and some of the wildest corners of the arctic along the way. Our first destination was within Hornsund, a fjord system in the southwestern corner of Svalbard, where we boarded the Zodiacs for the first time and headed towards the calving face of Samarin Breeden. The Zodiacs will be our ticket to adventure on this trip, allowing us to more closely explore the landscapes from the water and also land on shore for excursions. We'd spend some time drifting through the ice at the face of the glacier, taking it all in. And then, almost as if to remind us that we weren't alone out here, we spotted our first signs of life. A young bearded seal, resting quietly on a small piece of sea ice, completely unbothered by the strange collection of humans watching from the water. From Hornsund, we continued onwards to Naloden, a massive bird cliff where tens of thousands of kittiwakes gather each summer. This would be our first time actually stepping onto land from our ship, but exploring somewhere this wild comes with a different set of rules. There are no designated trails out here, and polar bears can turn up almost anywhere. So before every landing, our guides would scout the area ahead of us, making sure we could safely explore. Each of our expedition guides would also carry a rifle in case of any surprise encounters, which we are very determined to avoid. It was a strange feeling, knowing that we could wander across this seemingly untouched landscape, but that we were also very much visitors here. As we made our way up the rocky shoreline, we passed an old hunting cabin perched against the mountainside. There's something I've always loved about finding these little traces of human history in places that feel completely removed from civilization. But it was hard to look away from what was happening above us. Thousands of kittiwakes filled the cliffs, constantly lifting off and returning to their nests, their calls echoing across the fjord. For our first landing here in Svalbard, it was a pretty spectacular introduction to just how much life can exist in a place that feels so empty. As we made our way back to Freya, we continued south through Horn Sun and finally had a moment to reflect. It was only the first full day of our expedition, but already it felt like we had been here for weeks. That's one of the strange things about trips like this. Every day is so full that the whole experience starts to blur together, and we were only just getting started. The next morning, we awoke to a gray day in eastern Svalbard. Summertime here in the Arctic isn't necessarily like summer everywhere else in the world. While the sun won't set for our entire voyage, that doesn't necessarily mean we're expecting sunshine and t-shirt weather. Most days would hover around five degrees celsius, and we'd be lucky to see a bluebird day during the expedition. Kapli sits on the southeastern island of Adjoia and is known for having a large walrus haulout. And after landing on the beach, we made a short trek uphill to get a better view of the haulout. There must have been more than 300 walrus piled together along the shoreline, some jousting for sleeping positions while others cooled off in the chilly waters of the Barents Sea. It was another reminder that even on a cold gray day, there is an incredible amount of life thriving in this place. As we continued north, the landscape around us began to change. The pack ice was starting to appear, remnants of the winter freeze stretching out across the Arctic Ocean, slowly breaking apart as summer arrived. For me, this was one of the places I was most hoping to reach. Not only because of the incredible landscapes, but because the sea ice is one of the most important habitats in the Arctic. It's here that Svalbard's most iconic animal spends much of its life, the polar bear. Polar bears rely heavily on the sea ice to hunt, particularly for seals, and as we pushed further north, our chances of seeing one become much better. The pack ice feels like a giant jigsaw puzzle, with the ship slowly bobbing and weaving between massive pieces of ice. All of a sudden, there's movement. A mother and two young cubs were standing on an ice flow with a fresh kill. Everyone on the ship moved silently towards the These cubs are likely only a few months old, and might be having one of their first big meals out here on the ice. Between their ravenous state of eating, they playfully wandered around the ice flow, unbothered by our presence. It's impossible to describe the magic of moments like this. Hardly anyone spoke a word as we tried to soak in this once-in-a-lifetime encounter, and I think that's one of the things I love most about being somewhere like this. You can spend days searching for something, never knowing if you're actually going to find it. Completely out of nowhere, the Arctic delivers a moment you'll remember for the rest of your life. We continued sailing north through the pack ice toward Nordostlanden, home to Asfana, one of the largest ice caps in the world. This was the part of the trip I had been most looking forward to. After spending the morning watching a mother polar bear and her cubs out on the pack ice, I honestly wasn't sure how the day could possibly get any better. But as we finally exited the pack ice, the landscape changed completely. Ahead of us was the massive ice wall of Asfana, stretching more than a hundred kilometers across the horizon, with hundreds of waterfalls cascading from the edge of the ice and into the sea. If there's a more magical place in this world, I honestly haven't experienced it. This was easily one of the most overwhelming days I've ever had with a camera, and somehow we were only halfway through our circumnavigation of Svalbard. After a day like yesterday, I was more than ready for a slow morning. It felt almost impossible to process everything we had seen. The pack ice, the polar bears, and then this enormous wall of ice stretching as far as the eye could see. One of the things that challenges me with these expeditions is that you rarely get much time to sit with what you've experienced. But this morning, I finally had a brief moment to slow down and take it all in. Although it wouldn't last for long. It wasn't long before the zodiacs were back in the This time, we were heading towards one of the most remarkable bird colonies in Svalbard, Alcafielet. Alcafielet rises almost vertically from the sea. These towering basalt cliffs are home to hundreds of thousands of Brunig's gilly moths. This explosion of life is undeniably one of the most profound scenes I've ever experienced. And just when I thought the day couldn't get any better, the sun finally broke through above the horizon, illuminating another spectacular glacier at the northern end of the cliffs. Svalbard just kept finding ways to surprise us. As beautiful as this expedition has been, there's also a greater purpose to our time here. And we're joined by someone who has dedicated much of his life to protecting this place. Because even in one of the most remote corners of this world, the traces of human impact are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. My name is Kervin Gabrielsen and I'm a professor emeritus from Norwegian Polar Institute, also at University Courses of Svalbard. I'm also a teacher at that place. I am now retired, but I'm still at Svalbard. I have been working in Svalbard since 1979, first time. And in Kongsjordan, I have been working every year since 1981. I'm a zoo physiologist. I've worked on toxicology and ecology of Arctic animals, and mainly birds. Birds have been the main study object for what I have been doing. I have been working with ocean plastic since 2012-13. We started to work on the Fulmars because we saw that there was an increase in the plastic pollution in this area due to the fact that there was less sea ice into the fjords. But we saw that it was a lot of plastic on the beaches to be found on the western part of Svalbard. My studies have been in a way to describe this development of plastic in Fulmars, but also to look into the effects of plastic. Fulmars can tell us a lot about what's happening in the Arctic Ocean. And today at Depitoden, about as far north as you can go on land before reaching the North Pole, we were going to look at the problem from both ends. On the beach, we'd collect the plastic we can see and bring it back to the ship to be disposed of properly back at port. But also, Gjer would be collecting samples to look for something much harder to see. Microplastics suspended in the seawater. And this is cuts made by the fishermen. When they are fixing the net, they cut it and they throw it to the sea. So you always find a lot of this. And then you have this type of plastic. So it's a different type of plastic, you know, when they produce it, they put together different, all this polymer, as we call it. So these polymers are the thing breaking up, you know, very easily. You see that? So as I take this one, that will be broken, especially when it's in stony places, it starts to grind up, you know, in a way. And caps, that is so much of that to be found on beaches. Good, keep that. See these cuts from the fishermen? I'm so mad at this. There are moments on a trip like this where you're reminded just how small you are. And then there are moments that remind you how big our impact can be. I expected to find some plastic on this beach, but I wasn't prepared for the amount of it. Here we were in a place that feels like one of the last truly wild corners of the planet, picking up pieces of our everyday lives from the shoreline. It was honestly pretty heartbreaking to realize that even here, there's no escaping the footprint we leave behind. So what we do now is we put it under the water and let it suck water, you know, from, we are probably very close to the shore and so on, take it up and then screw it again. So I will mark it when I get into the boat. Okay. I can see already small particles here. Yeah, a microplastic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But look here. What we find here and what is happening with regard to plastic and so on, this is the footprint of our generation, the plastic. After we arrived back to Freya, Gjer sorted through the plastic to document the variety of sizes and polymer makeups. In less than an hour, we collected enough plastic to take up the majority of the deck space below the bridge. Since the main polluter in Svalbard area is the fishery industry or the people doing fishing in this area, we need to meet with them and talk with them about a lot of things which they are throwing into the sea. And that has been very positive. We had a good dialogue with the fishery in order to reduce the plastic amount in the sea. And this has, I think it has proven that we see less plastic and so on, but we have still a way to go. But I'm optimistic in a way that having meeting with these people who are involved and who is the source for this problem is important in order to reduce the plastic waste to the sea. Remember earlier in this video when I said we wouldn't see much of the sun on this expedition? Well, today I was very happy to be proven wrong. We had made our way back to Spitsbergen and this morning we were headed out to explore Hamilton Bukta by Zodiac. Massive tidewater glaciers spilled down the mountains into the bay while thousands of seabirds crowded the cliffs above us. And then, just as we were rounding the edge of one of the glaciers, we spotted an arctic fox making its way across the ice. It was just an incredible scene. But honestly, I was still carrying yesterday with me. After spending the day picking plastic off a beach in one of the most remote places I've ever been, it was hard not to look at this landscape a little differently. I kept thinking about how lucky I was to be seeing it like this and how much I hope it stays this way. As we made our way back to Freya, we turned towards the western side of Spitsbergen beneath the first blue skies of our voyage. After days of gray, it felt like the entire landscape had suddenly changed. And for our next landing, we were going to have a little bit of company. Our next stop was Sarstangen, a long sandy headland stretching more than three kilometers into the foreland Sunde straight on the western side of Spitsbergen. And I'm not really sure how to say this, but I genuinely have no idea how walrus have survived for as long as they have. These animals are such goobers. They'd shuffle around the beach, awkwardly roll over each other, and then barrel roll into the water like they had somewhere important to be. It was hard not to laugh watching them. But as ridiculous as the walrus were, the setting was anything but. This huge collection of walrus stretched along the shoreline with the mountains of Spitsbergen rising behind them and the open arctic ocean disappearing into the distance. It was another one of those scenes where the wildlife almost felt secondary to the landscape around it. By this point in the expedition, I think I was starting to realize that some of my favorite moments weren't necessarily the ones where we saw something incredible. Sometimes it was just having a quiet moment to myself. At Salihamna, we had the chance to slow down and really breathe in the solitude of this landscape. After days of chasing glaciers, wildlife, and whatever else the arctic decided to give us, it felt really nice to simply stop and take it all in. There's something really special about being somewhere so remote that you can just sit on the beach, look out across the water, and not see another person for miles and miles. As we continued south, I started to feel like we were entering the final stretch of our And just when I thought we were settling into the routine of our final days, we spotted something along the shoreline. A pod of beluga whales. There must have been nearly 20 of them, swimming tightly together through the dark blue water. They almost glowed against the surface. After everything we had already seen on this trip, I didn't think there were many surprises left, but somehow we just kept finding them. Before long, we reached what might have been the most beautiful place we'd seen in Svalbard. Dahlbrin, towering mountains surrounded us on every side, with the glacier stretching out across the valley below. It was the kind of landscape that made everything else feel incredibly small. And standing there on deck, I found myself thinking back to everything we'd seen over the past 10 days. The endless days at sea, the massive glaciers, the pack ice, the unexpected wildlife encounters. Those moments when the weather was perfect, and the moments when it wasn't. We'd come all this way looking for something that felt wild and untouched, and somehow Svalbard had given us far more than I could have imagined. And after everything we've seen, this felt like the perfect place to just look around and realize just how lucky we are to be here. As we made our final voyage through St. Jansfjorden, I couldn't help but feel a little sad that our time in the Arctic was coming to an end. There's something incredibly special about being able to visit places like this. Places that still feel wild, remote, and far removed from the world we're used to. And to have the opportunity to experience them, let alone document them as they are today, feels like a real privilege. Over the past five years, I've fallen in love with the far edges of the earth, and somehow I've been lucky enough to keep returning to them, each time finding something new that reminds me just how small I am in this world. So thank you so much for coming along with me on this journey, and thank you so much to Secret Atlas for making this expedition micro-cruise possible, and for giving me the opportunity to experience Valbard in a way that I'll never forget. Until next time.