The journey from ice to ice begins with the flight to Tromsø, where we, my son Daniel and friend Kim, board the ship.
Svalbard is an island archipelago belonging to Norway in the North Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean. In Norwegian parlance, the archipelago is called Svalbard (German for “cool coast”). In German usage this name is not common, the archipelago is commonly called Spitzbergen, which is also the name of the main island of the archipelago.
Svalbard was settled from around 1900, primarily because of the exploitation of its rich coal deposits. Recently, Svalbard is considered to be the "largest laboratory in the world" for Arctic research and the world's largest depository of plant seeds.
The over 400 islands and skerries are north of the Arctic Circle between 74 and 81 degrees north latitude and between 10 and 35 degrees east longitude. After a day at sea we came to Bear Island (Bjørnøya).