going back to iceland

after staying in slo for the week-end, anna went to Denmark today for a course in Geography and will come back to iceland on the 18th.

i will leave tomorrow morning for Iceland and will spend the next 5 weeks doing field work, whereafter the year following will be spent writing my master thesis... exciting;0)

More pictures on "My pictures"

Moraine cave

Barentsburg the russian settlement

Isfjorden by night

leaving Svalbard...sad but true ;0)

I can see it's really long time since i have written on my blog! shame on me and all of you that follow me!

after the Excursion to Reindalen we went on a two day field work trip with scooters to Kapp Linne and Isfjord radio. the weather was great and so was the trip, even though we had to do quite some work. Field work is great so it doesn't do that much!
when i came back from kapp Linne anna went with our friend Lilja and one of here friends to a cottage at Skansebukta in Billefjorden, stayed one night, saw a polar bear and went to the abbandonned settlement of Pyramiden (russian) and back. in the mean time i was running the Svalbard ski marathon (42 km), it was quite hard but a nice trip...

then the fun with excursions was over and more lectures in school while anna was doing here research interviews all over town!

we had to make a major report over all our field work and present it on monday. this left us with one day for reading to the exam which we had on wednesday, but i think it went ok.

today i sat in a meeting with the logistics people at UNIS and after saying bye to some friends at Kroa over pizza and beer, Anna and me are no ready to jump on the 0440 plane to Oslo and spend the weekend there.

the weather and snow and ice conditions have never been so good ever in my past years here, so it has all been great.

just need to show Anna more of Svalbard.

by the way this was my UNIS course number 10...

Field work and excursion to Reindalen...

On Wednesday we drove out to Adventdalen and Innerhytte Pingo with two tracked vehichles and did some field work. we used a geo-radar to optain a seismic line of the ice within the pingo and some measurements with a termistor. it was sunny and clear weather with -20 and 10-15 m/sek of wind, so it was quite cold.

Friday we went on a scooter excursion to Reindalen to look at the pingos. there are app. 10 of them and in different stages (ages). so it was very good to see it and learn some more. we spent most of the day on the scooter and wasn't back in town untill 1800 hrs. the weather was sunny, -22 and almost no wind. one scooter broke down after 15 min of drive, then one sledge broke down in the inner most part of Reindalen, but we managed to get it back home. a great day in the arctic.

afterwards we had some beer at the friday gathering with the calss and the teachers, afterwards we went to the pub where he had some pizza and some more beer...

easter has ended...

The easter hollidays are over and we had a good Easter. from friday to sunday we spent the time in the student cabin in Bjørndalen. it's app. 14 km to walk there on skis. the backpacks were full of food and things to drink so it took some time to get there...
friday and sunday was great and cold weather while saturday was above freezing with snow and wind.

now it's back to school with lectures and excursions. i love excursions!!!

late afternoon trip to Sarkofagen

at 1730 Anna, Zoe and her newly arrived sister and friend from Italy and Lucas from Poland went up to the mountain Sarkofagen at 490 meters. it was good to have Lucas with us since all of the girls where speaking italian all the time...
we arrived at the top after 1 h 30 min, had a rest and drank some tea and had some tom and jerry biscuits while enjoying the scenery over Longyearbyen and the surrounding mountains.
the trip down took 45 min.
after a warming shower the italian girls made bruchetta and spagetti with pesto and then we had some waffles which Gemma from Holland had made. mmm perfect evening!

new pictures out there...

week 2 and 3...

On the 31st of march anna arrived here in Longyearbyen. she has adapted well to the Arctic cold, though it has been quite cold during her stay. we had temperatures ranging from -10 to -28, so it's cold enough for her and the rest of us!

while i have started with school, anna has been going around interviewing some people here in town, for her master thesis.
on saturday the easter hollidays started. the weather was good until monday when it changed to snow and windy conditions.
monday we rented some snow scooters and went to Tempelfjorden to look at the glacier and the frozen ship in the ice (used as a hotel) and looked for some polar bears, but we only saw the tracks... it was a very cold day, -28 so some of the members of the trip ( 11 of us) were a bit cold, but the weather was so nice and clear!

shopping in svalbard is for the rich people. it's so expensive in the shops that you always pay 500-900 kr and don't come home with anything... 1 litre of milk is 25,9 kr!

no i'm baking a bread and then i'm off to the store before it closes. the walk to town is 3 km and takes app. 30 min.

happy easter

ps put some pictures on the blog