I found that maps centered on the North Pole gave me the best appreciation of how far north we were on our trip to the Svalbard Archipelago. You can see from this map that we were up at the latitude of northern Greenland, a three-hour plane trip from Oslo, and further north than Siberia. Our highest latitude was 80ยบ 20' around 600 miles from the North Pole.
The only permanent settlement on Svalbard is Longearbyen, a coal-mining town as well as a tourist destination, which is called out on the map. We toured this small town, population around 2000, on the first and last days of the trip. For a week the National Geographic Explorer was our home, as we made our way to a number of landing points and sightseeing points in search of wildlife and beautiful Northern views. The sun never set during this entire voyage.
Here are links to documentation about our wonderful trip:
- For Len's wildlife photos on Flickr, CLICK HERE.
- For all my posts about our Norway trip on this blog, including this one, CLICK HERE.
- For my food blog posts about Norway, CLICK HERE.
- For the Lindblad Expeditions daily trip reports, CLICK HERE. (You will see the first post and can continue to go through them.)
On the National Geographic Explorer: June 18-24, 2015:
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| The bow of the Explorer. |
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| The bridge of the Explorer seen from the bow. |
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| A fogbow, sometimes called a white rainbow. |
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| Near-midnight sun seen from the bridge. |
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| The Explorer in port at Longyearbyen before our expedition began. |
