I’ve dreamt of seeing polar bears in the wild ever since eating my first Fox’s glacier mint. And if marvelling at the ice-white glories of the frozen North on Sky Nature’s Arctic from Above has had the same effect on you, good news: the Arctic is accessible by cruise ship, which means no one need swap their sweeties for iron rations in order to experience it.
Your cruise line will organise flights to Longyearbyen, the largest settlement in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago and launchpoint for explorations of the Arctic by ship. It’s a town with a frozen, frontier feel, just 650 miles from the North Pole, so I
’m relieved to embark on my ship. Aboard, conditions are a little more cramped than on, say, a luxury Caribbean liner. Food is functional rather than fancy, and there are some piercingly early wake-up calls – but the view from my porthole is worth a whole Queen Elizabeth of luxuries. A universe-sized sky stretches out across a correspondingly infinite expanse of water that looks neon-blue in the sunshine, wraith-grey under cloud and the blueblack of the heart of a candle flame in the long, long evenings.
Meanwhile, the land rears up as if it’s what God knocked out while still an angst-ridden teenager: gothic-dark cliffs, sheer crags, thundering mountains. And then there’s the ice.
There are icebergs as big as cathedrals, but it’s the less dramatic ’bergs that somehow capture the imagination most: as hypnotically everchanging as clouds, these pond-sized scurfs of white drift silently by, laid out like stepping stones to the horizon. Which is exactly what they are if you’re a polar bear. The largest predator on land, these notalways-cuddly 80-stone giants patrol the perimeter of the Arctic’s ice shelf, hunting seals. Melting sea ice, caused by climate change, is making it harder for them to find food, rest and therefore survive. Spotting an all-white creature in an all-white landscape is tricky, and initially most of our excited yelps turn out to be sightings of the more common Rock Bear (similar in size and shape to its glamorous cousin, but in reality a snow-dusted stone).
Meanwhile, we watch birds. The skies here are as busy as Heathrow’s: pairs of kleptoparasitic skuas harry and divebomb smaller birds until the victims vomit up their last meal for the skuas to eat; barnacle geese glide purposefully past, perhaps already preparing for their annual migration to western Scotland (only a creature of the High Arctic could consider Glasgow a nice balmy bit of winter sun). And when we leave the ship in its fleet of Zodiacs (like motorised dinghies, but sturdier), we cruise beneath vast seabird cities perched a hundred metres high on improbable basalt cliffs and columns – half a million kittiwakes, guillemots and puffins scrapping for shelf space.Their guano fertilises the land below, so there are welcome splashes of green among the greys and whites that make up Svalbard’s colour palette – and pockets of liveable land for reindeer and arctic foxes. (We spot a crèche of tiny furry foxes leaping like lambs, and I still smile every time I think of it.)
Back on board, the ship’s tannoy crackles into life to tell us polar bears have been spotted. It’s a mother and cub, eyes sad and soulful, cuddling up closely together. They’re truly beautiful creatures, combining the raw predatory power of a top carnivore (the mother’s knife-sized teeth and claws are unmistakably crimsoned with fresh sealblood) with an irrefutable awwww factor (they play, they embrace, they lick each other’s faces).
These two turn out to be just the first of a dozen or so polar bears we see over the next few days – one so close it actually stands on its hind legs to touch the ship’s hull, another sledging 200m down a hillside on its tummy, and a third nearly bringing one of our landings to an abrupt end when it appeared on the same islet as our party. In fact, the walks are exciting enough without this added adrenaline, particularly when they involve a walrus “haulout” – 30-odd sets of tusks and flippers and belching and grunting piled on top of each other, like a collapsed rugby scrum.
On a more – or, arguably, less – edifying note, it’s also on the landings that you get to wander among the skulls and skeletons of slaughtered seals, whales, walrus, reindeer and the rest. They’re piled horrifyingly high in places, and will remain so: anything from before 1945 is officially designated “cultural remains” and must be left as is. (“Does that apply to us?’ ask the octogenarian couple next to me in the Zodiac.)
But the best thing about those walks is when the banter and bonhomie of the boat drop away. Although we are divided into three groups – “chargers” for those who want a good brisk hike, “moderates” for those who don’t, and (my favourite euphemism ever) “more contemplative” for those who can’t manage it – here is an opportunity to get away from people altogether for a few moments, to relish the emptiness, the silence, the pure brutal beauty of the Arctic. I pop a mint in my mouth and breathe deep.
I’ve dreamt of seeing polar bears in the wild ever since eating my first Fox’s glacier mint. And if marvelling at the ice-white glories of the frozen North on Sky Nature’s Arctic from Above has had the same effect on you, good news: the Arctic is accessible by cruise ship, which means no one need swap their sweeties for iron rations in order to experience it.
Your cruise line will organise flights to Longyearbyen, the largest settlement in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago and launchpoint for explorations of the Arctic by ship. It’s a town with a frozen, frontier feel, just 650 miles from the North Pole, so I
’m relieved to embark on my ship. Aboard, conditions are a little more cramped than on, say, a luxury Caribbean liner. Food is functional rather than fancy, and there are some piercingly early wake-up calls – but the view from my porthole is worth a whole Queen Elizabeth of luxuries. A universe-sized sky stretches out across a correspondingly infinite expanse of water that looks neon-blue in the sunshine, wraith-grey under cloud and the blueblack of the heart of a candle flame in the long, long evenings.
Meanwhile, the land rears up as if it’s what God knocked out while still an angst-ridden teenager: gothic-dark cliffs, sheer crags, thundering mountains. And then there’s the ice.
There are icebergs as big as cathedrals, but it’s the less dramatic ’bergs that somehow capture the imagination most: as hypnotically everchanging as clouds, these pond-sized scurfs of white drift silently by, laid out like stepping stones to the horizon. Which is exactly what they are if you’re a polar bear. The largest predator on land, these notalways-cuddly 80-stone giants patrol the perimeter of the Arctic’s ice shelf, hunting seals. Melting sea ice, caused by climate change, is making it harder for them to find food, rest and therefore survive. Spotting an all-white creature in an all-white landscape is tricky, and initially most of our excited yelps turn out to be sightings of the more common Rock Bear (similar in size and shape to its glamorous cousin, but in reality a snow-dusted stone).
Meanwhile, we watch birds. The skies here are as busy as Heathrow’s: pairs of kleptoparasitic skuas harry and divebomb smaller birds until the victims vomit up their last meal for the skuas to eat; barnacle geese glide purposefully past, perhaps already preparing for their annual migration to western Scotland (only a creature of the High Arctic could consider Glasgow a nice balmy bit of winter sun). And when we leave the ship in its fleet of Zodiacs (like motorised dinghies, but sturdier), we cruise beneath vast seabird cities perched a hundred metres high on improbable basalt cliffs and columns – half a million kittiwakes, guillemots and puffins scrapping for shelf space.Their guano fertilises the land below, so there are welcome splashes of green among the greys and whites that make up Svalbard’s colour palette – and pockets of liveable land for reindeer and arctic foxes. (We spot a crèche of tiny furry foxes leaping like lambs, and I still smile every time I think of it.)
Back on board, the ship’s tannoy crackles into life to tell us polar bears have been spotted. It’s a mother and cub, eyes sad and soulful, cuddling up closely together. They’re truly beautiful creatures, combining the raw predatory power of a top carnivore (the mother’s knife-sized teeth and claws are unmistakably crimsoned with fresh sealblood) with an irrefutable awwww factor (they play, they embrace, they lick each other’s faces).
These two turn out to be just the first of a dozen or so polar bears we see over the next few days – one so close it actually stands on its hind legs to touch the ship’s hull, another sledging 200m down a hillside on its tummy, and a third nearly bringing one of our landings to an abrupt end when it appeared on the same islet as our party. In fact, the walks are exciting enough without this added adrenaline, particularly when they involve a walrus “haulout” – 30-odd sets of tusks and flippers and belching and grunting piled on top of each other, like a collapsed rugby scrum.
On a more – or, arguably, less – edifying note, it’s also on the landings that you get to wander among the skulls and skeletons of slaughtered seals, whales, walrus, reindeer and the rest. They’re piled horrifyingly high in places, and will remain so: anything from before 1945 is officially designated “cultural remains” and must be left as is. (“Does that apply to us?’ ask the octogenarian couple next to me in the Zodiac.)
But the best thing about those walks is when the banter and bonhomie of the boat drop away. Although we are divided into three groups – “chargers” for those who want a good brisk hike, “moderates” for those who don’t, and (my favourite euphemism ever) “more contemplative” for those who can’t manage it – here is an opportunity to get away from people altogether for a few moments, to relish the emptiness, the silence, the pure brutal beauty of the Arctic. I pop a mint in my mouth and breathe deep.
ED GRENBY