I am in Longyearbyen because I haven’t been here. And because I will never be here again. I am here because it is Midsommar, the summer solstice (although the solstice doesn’t really matter when the sun won’t set again for a couple months). I am here because I want to see real midnight sun (none of that soft twilight they offer in Anchorage. I want the real thing!) I am here because it is as far north as commercial planes land. Alaska wishes it was this far north. I am here because I want to ride a polar bear. There is a stuffed polar bear at baggage claim, and in my hotel, and the Radisson hotel, and the museum. But you’re not supposed to ride them. And I hear the real ones are too mean.
I am drinking an Arctic beer, which I chilled outside the window of my hotel (which was once the barracks for local workers like coal miners) in the 41 degree air. I am looking out the window at the steep mountains which cradle the city. (Or is it a village?) The snow is nearly melted by town, but in the distance they are nearly all white. I am mesmerized. I want to explain it better. The ground is all gravel and dirt. In the distance, I can see swampy fields with some scrubby grass. There are reindeer out there, I am certain, noshing on the summer bounty.
But someone seems to have stolen all the trees.
The road into town on a cloudy day.
There is nothing remarkable about the town, except that it can exist at 78-degrees north latitude, on an island desolate and remote. Nobody even discovered Svalbard until 1596, except for maybe some Vikings. Even they thought it was too cold. There is no evidence of that statement, but we both know it is true. The areas north of here still showed as unexplored blank spaces on maps until well into the 1900s.
Just like in Venice, the tourists (including me) can’t resist taking photos of everything. In Venice, every crumbling Renaissance façade begs to be photographed. Here, every bright house on every gravelly street, in front of a mountainous grayscape screams “photograph me!” On a +41 degree June day it is cute. On a -20 degree day, with hurricane winds whipping through the town it is almost impossible to imagine. There are snowmobiles everywhere on blocks for the summer. There is a snowmobile dealer, snowmobile parking lots, and snowmobiles with tops (“Daddy! I want the convertible!”).
Snowmobiles Chilling
When I look at the photos I took, they all appear gray because you can’t feel what it is like here in just two dimensions, with just one sense. You need more.
As desolate as a gray landscape can look, the city is alive. Kids biking through town, playing on the skate ramp. People driving around. (Really? Where are you going?). I saw a cruise ship in the distance, and the busses ferrying them in by the dozens.
Stopping to take the photo you see above
Many houses have balconies, but I don’t know why. I guess they look cute. But there are no chairs on the deck, not even on a balmy day like today.
It is 9 o’clock pm now and I watched the cruise ship sail away a few hours ago. The sun is peeking through after a cloudy pair of days. I need to take another beer outside to cool down. And wait for midnight for a stroll into town.