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image : getty |
Above : Ice mountains in Svalbard with the Northern Lights shimmering behind |
The Northern Lights have come out to play . The sky pulses in a way that both bewitches and unnerves , shifting and gently swaying in greens from another planet , at the northernmost fringes of this one . As the dogs drive on into the night with muffled pants and the skies explode , it ’ s a moment touched with a magic not quite of this world .
SEEING THE LIGHT
You can hunt for the aurora , but the real beauty is their brilliant unpredictability . In Svalbard , the odds of seeing them from late September to mid March , however , are excellent . And during the polar night , when the sun is around six degrees below the horizon and it ’ s dark most of the time , they are sky high , providing conditions are clear and activity is good . Prime time for the lights is ordinarily 6pm to midnight , but Svalbard , being so far north , makes up its own rules with a unique phenomenon :
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daytime lights with a touch of red as well as green . This is because at midday Svalbard sits right under the aurora oval , which forms a huge ring around the earth ’ s geomagnetic North Pole .
In other ways , too , Svalbard is a world unto itself — one where nature still rules . Just 684 miles of pack ice away from the North Pole , this icy archipelago is home to more polar bears than people . As locals tell me , with a knowing smile , you can ’ t always see the bears , but you know they are there .
At 78 degrees north , Longyearbyen is both the start and end of the road on the island of Spitsbergen . Most of the archipelago ’ s 2,600 or so residents — a motley crew of scientists , researchers , expedition guides and adventurers who speak multiple languages — live in this former coal-mining settlement on the shores of ice-clogged , mountainrimmed Adventfjorden . A shuttle bus trundles from the tiny airport into town , but from there it ’ s dog sled or snowmobile .
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WINTER 2023 • 37 |