Avril Mair travels to Svalbard, a remote, frozen world that’s full of surprises – from hidden ice caves to silver-screen legends
SVALBARD IS TOURISM’S FINAL FRONTIER, AND a place at the limits of human endurance. A frozen archipelago between Greenland and Russia, it’s the most remote of the Arctic Circle’s wildernesses and an eerie, haunted place, full of ghost towns and abandoned mining settlements. The remains of trapper huts crumble along clifftops, a testament to lost dreams. For those attracted to the far reaches of the earth, it holds an almost mythical allure. To journey here is to follow in the footsteps of legendary explorers, who saw a stark, dangerous beauty in this unforgiving landscape of ice, where polar bears outnumber residents and the sun refuses to rise for almost half of the year.
Today, many of those who visit here –the most northerly inhabited place in the world, a three-hour flight from Oslo and around 600 miles from the North Pole itself – hope to see bears, though the Norwegian government is fiercely protective of these elusive creatures and searching for them is forbidden. In fact, new sustainable-tourism guidelines introduced last year discourage using the polar bears as a focus for any marketing material. Svalbard is one of the best-protected ecosystems on earth, with seven national parks and 23 stunning nature reserves covering most of the islands. Still, it’s a fragile place and rising sea temperatures resulting from climate change mean the ice pack is shrinking, sending bears further north each year as their hunting grounds melt. Everyone is guaranteed at least one sighting, however: the arrivals hall at the tiny airport in Svalbard’s capital Longyearbyen is dominated by a large polar bear, stuffed and forever frozen astride the baggage carousel.
We didn’t see any others when we visited in March. Instead, we found a big beast of a different kind: Tom Cruise. The filming for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two began on Svalbard as we arrived, though not without controversy; Norway’s Environment Agency and the governor of the islands refused permission for any actionscene helicopter flights, citing a potential disturbance to wildlife. Let’s be clear: even a global superstar isn’t allowed to bother these bears. Walking around the bleakly beautiful town of Long yearbyen swathed in a fur-trimmed parka, Cruise was on a local charm offensive, taking selfies with anyone who asked on photogenic streets lined with colourful wooden houses raised on stilts against snowfall. The air is icy and impossibly clear; everything shimmering, crystalline in the pale sunshine – and here’s the most powerful man in Hollywood, cheeks reddening in -30 degree wind chill. Surreal doesn’t begin to describe it.
