Travelling, arriving and settling in...

Hello, this is Matt writing our first blog post of 2016 from the Arctic Circle!

My flight here was incredible. From Oslo Airport we burst almost immediately through the clouds into clear skies and a stunning cloudscape. At first the tops of hills formed islands above the clouds and then the clouds faded to reveal snow-covered hills, lakes and then the fjordic coastline. The mountains got bigger and bigger as we headed north and the sun began to set even though it was still morning! It was a beautiful way to say goodbye to the sun.

In the Arctic, the sun sets in early winter and doesn’t rise above the horizon until early spring. That means it’s dark 24 hours a day until mid-February. It’s also cold. At the moment it’s about minus 10°C and with a bit of a breeze, but the weather’s going to get colder and colder and we can expect high winds and temperatures below minus 20°C in the coming weeks.

Term starts tomorrow with the Safety Course where we will learn how to stay alive here in these Polar conditions. This includes clothing and equipment, boat safety and rifle training to protect ourselves if a polar bear attacks us. Until we’ve done the course, we can’t leave Longyearbyen – the town where we’ll be living and studying at UNIS for the next 5 months. We’ve been watching videos of snowboarding, skiing and scuba diving on Svalbard and we can’t wait to go exploring. We'll tell you all about the Safety Course in the next post.

                                                       

Even walking to the supermarket is an adventure here. It’s 3 km down the hill from the Barracks where we live and it’s freezing cold when you step outside. I already had hiking gear and my old snowboarding gear and after reading forums by Canadian ice fishermen, American winter hunters and Extreme Cold Weather armed forces servicemen I bought lots of second hand stuff on Ebay and some Army Surplus gear. Here’s a photo of my Mum pimping up a fashion hat made for the UK climate. She’s sewing in Velcro patches so I could attach a fur liner we custom-made. I built my own winter boots too. Follow this blog for a gear-review later this semester. For now I’m just crossing my fingers!

There’s an extra module running later this semester on the Northern Lights, so we’ll do a post on them when we know what we’re talking about, but for a taste of what’s to come here are a few photos we took last night just outside the Barracks…