Sometime during the winter of 2007-2008, I was looking at a map of the world when I saw something I had never noticed before. There's an inhabited island north of Norway. North of Norway! And people actually live there!
I was astounded. The map said the island was called Svalbard, and it had a city called Longyearbyen. Eventually I went online to find out more about Svalbard (which is technically an archipelago), and what life there is like.
I created an email alert on Google News so I'd be notified about happenings on the islands. I read every story that was emailed to me, and it turned out to be a lot. I even stumbled across stories about Svalbard in unrelated web surfing. It seemed to be everywhere. Eventually, winter turned to spring and I no longer felt like reading about Arctic life, so I deleted my email alert.
Recently, though, I started reading North to the Night, the memoir of a man who spent a year in the Arctic, alone, 100 miles from the nearest town. That got me looking at Arctic maps, where I once again encountered Svalbard, and that got me thinking about the email alert I had years ago. So I recreated that alert a few weeks ago, and started reading the latest news.
Here are a few things I've learned, both in 2008 and in recent weeks:
Svalbard Global Seed Vault
Many countries have a seed bank where they keep backups of seeds in case of disaster. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is where countries can store backups of their backups. It opened in 2008 and is designed to withstand natural and man-made disasters, including nuclear war. It's often referred to as the "doomsday" vault, but the owners don't like that term. The vault's goal is to preserve biodiversity, and they point out we've already lost much of that: a hundred years ago there were over 7,000 varieties of apples grown in the United States, now there are only 300.
Just recently, a delegation from Peru traveled to Svalbard to deposit potato seeds. They said that due to global warming, their farmers have had to plant crops higher and higher up the mountain. Eventually, they couldn't go any higher, so "there was but one place left to go: Svalbard."
School has hands-on learning
An article on school life says:
Nestled between an Arctic fjord and snowy mountains, the world’s northernmost school teaches students avalanche survival, how to fend off a hungry polar bear and how to skin a reindeer.
...
Siren Lindeth, a bubbly 18-year-old girl, was one of those who skinned and dismembered a reindeer in the wild last year.
“You have to puncture its throat, skin the animal and eviscerate it. Preferably barehanded. It’s so nice to plunge your freezing hands into the still warm intestines,” says Lindeth, a hunting fan who at the age of three was already taking part in hunts with her father, bundled up on a sled.
Astronomy Photograph of the Year
This picture of a total solar eclipse was taken in Svalbard, and it just won the award for 2015 Astronomy Photograph of the year. It won the overall category; there were lots of winners in other categories, which you can see here.
The Arctic Journal
A number of the Svalbard stories I've read were published by The Arctic Journal. It seems to be a really good source of news for the entire Arctic region. And fortunately, all of its stories are published in English!