Travel is not always glamour and joy. Don’t believe everything you see on the gram. Travel, like life, comes with its ups and downs and bumps in the road. And so it was on our brief visit to Svalbard last week. During our brief four day visit, I spent three days in bed. Here is that story, Our Visit to Svalbard Not as Expected.

Things Started Out Okay

We arrived after a long travel day from Copenhagen via Oslo, very happy to have made the tight connection. We found a beautifully barren landscape of treeless mountains, colorful buildings and polar bear warning signs everywhere. Even the luggage carousel was home to a large polar bear. A sign in the airport greets us – Welcome to the World’s Most Northern Airport.

A really well-designed system of buses serves the small town of Longyearbyen from the airport, dropping visitors directly at hotels and the “center of town”. It is against the law to walk from the airport, nor is it smart. The area within the town of Longyearbyen is considered generally safe but anything outside of the safe zone requires flares and a rifle for safety from polar bears.

Longyearbyen

Our hotel in Longyearbyen was the lovely Hotell Polfareren and we ate a light supper in the restaurant that first night. There are many hotel options available and we were happy with the location of ours – close to dining and shops.

Longyearbyen is special because it is the world’s northernmost town with more than 2500 residents, located on the remote Arctic islands of Svalbard. Longyearbyen is a small coal-mining town on Spitsbergen Island, in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago. This Arctic town is known for its views of the Northern Lights. The first permanent coal mine was founded in 1906 by American industrialist John Munro Longyear. The archipelago does not have a native population, and those who live here are mostly Norwegian but there are people from all over the world.

Fun Facts

• Midnight Sun: From late April to late August, the sun never sets, giving the town 24 hours of bright daylight.
• Polar Night: From November to January, the sun stays below the horizon, plunging the town into months of total darkness.
• Fast Warming: It is one of the fastest-warming places on Earth due to changing global climates. 
• North Pole: Longyearbyen sits at 12 degrees below the North Pole. Definitely the farthest North I have ever been.

• Polar Bear Protection: Wild polar bears roam the area. People must carry a rifle when they leave the safety of the town.
• No Cats Allowed: Cats are banned across the entire archipelago to protect local bird populations.
• No Graveyards: Bodies do not decompose in the frozen permafrost. People cannot be buried here.
• Shoe Removal: Tradition requires visitors to take off their shoes before entering hotels and restaurants to keep out coal dust

• Seed Vault: The famous Global Seed Vault is built into a mountain here. It stores backup seeds from crops all over the world to protect plant diversity.
• Open Access: Citizens from many nations can live and work here without a special visa under the historic Svalbard Treaty. 

Not As Expected

I had been training for months to be prepared to do a mountain hike outside of Longyearbyen but woke up feeling very ill the morning after arrival. I had been feeling a little tickle in my throat and had a dry occasional cough for a few days, but the morning of the hike I knew I was in trouble. Luckily I had some cold and flu meds in my kit, so I pumped myself full of those and we headed out for the long anticipated hike.

The Climb

We booked this guided hike with Svalbard Wildlife Expeditions. The terrain is unlike anything I have ever hiked before. It reminded a little bit of Third Burroughs in Mount Rainier if you are familiar with that – but much harder. Uneven, loose rocks that we needed to maneuver around carefully as we steadily rose in elevation high above the city. The weather was surprisingly warm, about 40 degrees Fahrenheit but the wind could be bitter. I peeled off clothes as we hiked and put clothes back on throughout the day.

The Longyearbyen Glacier and other Glaciers near Longyearbyen and across Svalbard have shrunk dramatically, losing roughly half their area and up to 77% to 91% of their volume since the Little Ice Age around 1900.

Recent Extremes: Record-breaking warmth, such as during the summer of 2024, caused Svalbard’s glaciers to shed over 60 billion tonnes of ice in a single season

As the water from the glacier was rushing down the mountain in a pretty good flow, our guide Nicholas forded the stream and placed as many rocks as possible to provide us access across. It was pretty effective and we stayed mostly dry. The only other person hiking with us was a lovely young man from Palestine. It was his first time to see snow and we enjoyed his enthusiasm.

Our guide Nicholas was very knowledgeable about the geologic history and we enjoyed learning from him. Standing on the glacier it is easy to see the layers corresponding with millions of years of changes on this mountain. Nicholas pointed out so many fossils, and once we started looking we realized they were everywhere. Beautiful leaves, fir, horsetail….fascinating since none of those plants grow here now.

We had a hot hikers lunch in a bag – but unfortunately I couldn’t eat, as I was really feeling more sick as the day went on. Coming back down the mountain I realized my knee was not bothering me at all. I was relying on my hiking poles, but I had almost no pain…all those months of training paying off. If only I hadn’t felt sick.

Influenza

Back at our hotel we showered and went to get some dinner, but I just couldn’t eat and headed back to the hotel and to bed…where I would spend the next 60 hours. Not as expected. This flu made me the sickest I have been in years. Arne was back and forth to the pharmacist – who was amazingly helpful – providing me remedies. I didn’t eat. All I did was sleep.

While She Was Sleeping

I insisted that Arne go on the kayak trip we had booked for the day after the hike with Svalbard Wildlife Expeditions. He did and enjoyed it, and the weather was dry but very windy so they had to stay close to shore. His kayak mate was a French woman from an ocean research sailing ship in port. A beautiful ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl

Arne also did a walk around the town, and went to the local Svalbard Brewery. But unfortunately my illness kept us from visiting any of the museums in town, or the handful of cute shops.

Our Visit to Svalbard Not As Expected

As we were trying to get organized for our return flight to Copenhagen, Arne admitted to not feeling well with a scratchy throat and stuffy head. So we knew we were in for a long travel day.

Flying while sick is so hard, but Arne mostly slept and shivered, his cough coming later. We flew from Longyearbyen to Oslo to Copenhagen where we collapsed in bed at a hotel near the airport. Got up at 4am and flew from Copenhagen to Helsinki to Rovaniemi, Lapland where I am writing this post today.

Travel, like life, comes with its ups and downs and bumps in the road. You gotta have a thick skin, but even then it can be exhausting. Knowing when to slow down, take some time off is so important. We are sorry our memory of Svalbard will carry with it this negative experience – but what to do? Carry on.

Thank you for reading my post Our Visit to Svalbard Not as Expected. See last week’s post Greenland Go Now.

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