Svalbard, Norway On A Budget

by Alex Robertson Textor on

It’s impossible to travel to Svalbard on a budget according to an orthodox definition of budget travel. The standard shoestring repertoire (student train passes, cheap fast food or street food, sleeping in train stations or parks) is next to impossible to carry out in this arctic Norwegian territory.

You could come to Svalbard with your own gear and attempt to camp in the wilderness, but the supplies you’d need to survive would exceed your garden-variety tent and basic provisioning by a mile. You’d need to shell out a lot of money in advance to obtain the appropriate gear, and you’d also need to rent a rifle on the island as protection against a possible polar bear attack.

In short, Svalbard is simply too expensive to be a budget destination. It’s a territory, after all, of Norway, a rich country with high taxes. In addition, Svalbard is very remote, and consumer goods have to be shipped in at great cost. That relatively cheap supermarket yogurt on the mainland? Not quite so cheap on Svalbard.

While there is no question that the territory is not a budget destination, it can be finessed at a fraction of the average daily tourist spend. Here are five tips for keeping costs reasonable.1. First of all, don’t discount the truly exotic, exciting things that are absolutely free to observe: the landscape; wandering reindeer, wary but clearly not terrified of humans; the cultural center Kulturhuset; the gallery and art and handicrafts center in Nybyen; and the remains of earlier mining activities strewn about Longyearbyen.

2. Stay at Gjestehuset 102 in Nybyen, just up the hill from Longyearbyen. Double rooms begin at 750 NOK ($125) October-February and 890 NOK ($149) the rest of the year; dorm rooms begin at 300 NOK ($50) per bed in low season and 320 NOK ($54) in high season. The guesthouse is a lively place, with an interesting smattering of guests – extreme skiers, wildlife photographers, scientists, friends and family of residents and average tourists. The nightly rate includes breakfast. Another inexpensive option is Mary Ann’s Polarigg, with rates comparable to 102’s rates. There’s also a campsite, Longyearbyen Camping, open March through September. It charges between 100 NOK ($17) and 150 NOK ($25) per night per person.

3. Shop at the supermarket for food. Barring that, eat dinner early. Huset, the territory’s top restaurant, operates a casual cafe that offers an early-bird special. It costs just 96 NOK ($16), a mind-bogglingly inexpensive amount in these parts. It’s an all-you-can-eat situation to boot, which makes it an even better deal.

4. Book a relatively inexpensive tour. An informative city tour by taxi takes in most of Longyearbyen’s highlights. Booked through 102’s tour arm Svalbard Wildlife Expeditions, it costs 275 NOK ($46). Before winter and well into the spring there’s the thrilling option of an ice cave tour for 730 NOK ($122), also booked through Svalbard Wildlife Expeditions. The tour involves climbing a glacier in snowshoes and rappelling into a narrow ice cave.

5. Drink beer. This won’t actually save you money, but it’s surprising and noteworthy how cheap alcoholic drinks are on Svalbard. Norway’s sky-high alcohol taxes don’t apply here. As a result a single beer in Longyearbyen is about half the price of a single beer in Oslo.

The Viking Ship Museum In Oslo, Norway

by Sean McLachlan on


Norway is famous for its breathtaking fjords and Viking heritage. A hundred years ago at the Oseberg fjord, archaeologists discovered a Viking ship burial containing the bodies of two women. The ship was so well preserved that it could be entirely reconstructed. Now it’s the centerpiece of Oslo’s Viking Ship Museum and one of the country’s most popular attractions.

The Oseberg ship is 21.58 meters (70.8 feet) long and 5.1 meters (16.73 feet) wide. It had a single square sail and fifteen pairs of oars for when the wind wasn’t favorable. Researchers estimate it could achieve a speed of up to 10 knots and was built in the first decades of the ninth century A.D. Its prow and stern are elaborately carved and have graced the covers of many books on the Vikings. Check out the photo gallery for some close-up shots.

The identities of the two women found with the ship are a mystery. One was 60-70 years old when she died, the other about 25-30. Some researchers believe the old woman was a Viking queen or other noblewoman, and the young woman was her slave, sacrificed to accompany her into the afterlife. Others say they were female shamans. One outfit included silk imported all the way from China. Buried with them were household items, a cart and agricultural tools.

%Gallery-157476%The Viking Ship Museum has two other ships. The Gokstad ship is 23.24 meters (76.2 feet) long and 5.20 meters (17.1 feet) wide. It had 16 pairs of oars and a single square sail. Archaeologists estimate up to seventy people could sail in it. Like the Oseberg ship, it was a burial and contained the remains of an elderly man. It’s almost as well preserved as the Oseberg ship and only a little younger, having been made around 890 A.D. Some adventurous Norwegians made a replica of the Gokstad ship and sailed it across the Atlantic to visit the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893.

The Tune Viking ship, dating to about 900 A.D., is also housed at the museum. Although only about half of it survives, it’s still impressive to see.

Besides the ships, the museum houses many of the artifacts found with them, including weapons, clothing, gold and silver, and furniture.

Now curators are worried because they have found the preservative used by the archaeologists who first worked on the Oseberg ship is slowly deteriorating the wood fibers. The race is on to save this precious survival from the early Middle Ages.

[Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons]

Svalbard: The World’s Northernmost Inhabited Place*

by Alex Robertson Textor on

For bragging rights, few places can match the Norwegian Arctic territory of Svalbard. It’s far north. Really, really far north. How far, you ask? The northernmost piece of Alaska is at a latitude of 71 degrees north; Longyearbyen, the capital of Svalbard, can be found at 78 degrees north.

After years, possibly decades of looking at Svalbard on maps, pricing flights, and perusing websites, I finally visited the territory in late April. I felt as if I was shooting into the unknown, despite my advance research and my knowledge of the territory’s tourist infrastructure. I felt a bolt of uncertainty as the plane landed, in a snowstorm no less, and then a sense of wonder as I spied enormous mountains. It was more beautiful than I’d imagined, and far quieter. The silence was a constant presence. Even the abrasive sound of a snowmobile didn’t really disturb it, not for more than a few seconds.

Administered by Norway since 1925, Svalbard has around 2,500 residents. Most live in Longyearbyen, a little valley town with a cultural and retail infrastructure typical of far larger towns: a mall, a well-stocked supermarket, an Arctic Museum, a cultural center, hotels, restaurants and bars. During my visit in late April, all were pretty lively, tourists more rare than residents.

Though a Norwegian territory, Svalbard does not belong to Norway proper. Before boarding flights from Oslo or Tromsø–and after disembarking on return to the mainland–passengers have to go through passport control. The territory is governed under the terms of the Svalbard Treaty, which allows citizens of all signatory nations to commercially exploit the land and waters around and take employment in the territory. This explains the existence of Russian mining towns in Svalbard – Pyramiden (closed in 1998) and Barentsburg, which had 380 inhabitants at last count.

As befits a place commercially open to the world, Svalbard is a rather diverse place. While most residents are Norwegian, the territory is impressively international, with tourists adding to the linguistic melee. During a short midday stroll in the center of town, I heard Norwegian, Swedish, Tagalog, Swiss German, German, English, Thai, Portuguese, French, Flemish and Polish.

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During my visit, I used the world’s northernmost ATM and had a coffee at Fruene Kaffe & Vinbar, a café that bills itself as the world’s northernmost coffeehouse. I saw a handbill advertising a forthcoming Thai restaurant, which will surely be the northernmost restaurant of its kind in the world. I bought a magazine and a hot dog at the world’s northernmost convenience store. And then I sort of lost count of northernmost claims or projections. Almost everything in the territory, with the exception of snowmobiles, scientists, polar bears, and the odd research camp, is the most northerly example of its kind on earth.

What is there to do in Svalbard? The adventurous have many choices. There are all sorts of extreme skiing and mountaineering tours on offer for those interested in heading off into the wilderness with an expedition leader, gear, rifles (as protection against polar bears) and other necessities.

Many tourists overnight in Longyearbyen and take exploratory day trips. The most popular winter day tours include dogsledding, snowmobile journeys to Barentsburg (eight hours) or the east coast of Spitsbergen (ten hours), glacier hiking, and ice caving. During the summer, there are glacier hiking tours, fossil hunting trips, dogsledding (on wheels) and journeys by boat along the coast.

For the less adventurous, there is an informative two-hour taxi tour, and there is the Arctic Museum, a truly fantastic resource, devoted to Svalbard and the wider Arctic region. The museum addresses climate change, the flora and fauna of the region, the impact of human activity on the territory, and various implications of technology. Its library is wide-ranging and multilingual, with books on a huge number of Arctic topics.

*There are in fact a few inhabited places farther north than Ny-Ålesund, the northernmost settlement on Svalbard, though none of these are towns. These are Russian meteorological stations on Sredny Island and in Franz Josef Land; a Danish military base in northeastern Greenland; Alert, a Canadian military and science station; and Barneo, a seasonal Russian ice camp housed on the Arctic Ocean ice sheet.

[Images: Alex Robertson Textor]

Video Of The Day: Midnight Sun Shines In Iceland

by Libby Zay on

The “midnight sun” is a natural phenomenon occurring north of the Arctic Circle and south of the Antarctic Circle when the sun never fully sets and remains visible 24 hours a day. Since there are no permanent human settlements south of the Antarctic Circle, countries and territories that experience the midnight sun are limited to those crossed by the Arctic Circle, including Canada, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Russia and Iceland, plus Alaska in the United States.

Filmmaker and photographer Joe Capra sought out capturing the midnight sun in Iceland. To make the above film, he traveled solo around the country for 17 days, shooting both day and night. He slept in his car, hiked in the middle of the night and ate whenever he had a moment of free time. When he returned to Los Angeles, he brought with him 38,000 images in total from the trip.

In an interview about the film, Capra told photographer Michael Levy he chose to travel to Iceland in June because the month is a little early for the tourist season, giving him a chance to film when some popular locations are less crowded. More importantly, at this time of year the midnight sun allowed him six or so hours of fantastic “golden light.”

“I am the type of person who does not want to go on vacation and just walk around cities or just lay on the beach all day long,” Capra said. “I like to get out and see and experience the countries I visit. Going alone also allowed me to go where I wanted, when I wanted, and stay at locations as long as I wanted without having to worry about the needs of another person with me,” he continued.

On his Vimeo page, Capra encourages everyone – photographer or not – to visit Iceland. Although Capra is not sure where he’ll go on his next trip, he relayed that he’s researching Patagonia.

Video Of The Day: Night Skies Over Norway

by Elizabeth Seward on

I stumbled across this beautiful time-lapse video on Vimeo entitled, “Night Skies Over Norway.” The work features the night skies and general nighttime happenings over Southern Norway. I found this video to be immediately captivating. The moving images of the dark sky and the subtle hints of life that make appearances throughout the night in this video are completed by simple and tasteful music by the filmmaker, Svenn Dvergastein. These shots were taken during January 2012. If you visit, keep this fun fact in mind: you’re allowed to camp anywhere you want in Norway, public or private property, so long as you’re not in view of a home. Challenge yourself to a camping/backpacking trip in Norway and see this gorgeous night sky for yourself.