In search of Silence

I was about to start my fourth trip to Svalbard. I really wanted to traverse its southern regions and, in particular, the huge Spitzbergen South National Park. The wild south provides a much more unstable climate, more broken glaciers and more polar bears than the island’s northern lands.

In addition, skidoos are forbidden – even for residents, except for extraordinary cases and under a special permission. This journey was not about speed, not about distance. It was about endurance, about merging into the adventure and living the Arctic experience to its full. Loneliness was guaranteed.

The safest way to travel across the south is skiing on sea ice following the Eastern coast. The sea remains frozen up for a few months year, creating a beautiful madness of ice blocks, chaos and pressure ridges.