Scrap metal lined up for shipping in Pyramiden I have been thinking about ‘waste’ and its value quite a lot while in Svalbard. Pyramiden one might think is an extreme example. However, though teaming with things that are no longer in use for their original purpose, there is a significant amount that is not in… Read More
Month: June 2014
23rd June – Polar Permaculture
I have just learnt of the sad, sad passing away of an amazing environmental campaigner and perma-culture teacher, advocate and practioner, Paulo Mellet, whom I met and studied with at CAT. It seems more than a happy co-incidence that today I visited the Polar Permaculture project and met an energetic and enthusiastic project leader just… Read More
21st June – Midsummer and the media
Photographing the photographers at midnight. This was a pretty big fire to begin with. This time I was ready! Last year I arrived the day before midsummer. Surprised and happy I was not finding it THAT cold in Svalbard, I headed down to the midsummer bonfire party on the beach in a normal set of… Read More
19th June – New species for a new season
It’s started. The big cruise ships have arrived in Longyearbyen, bringing more visitors than the normal population here in one go, for a few hours. Yesterday there were over 3000 plus hundreds of crew, today over 2000 plus 800 crew. Everyone seems to know when they will arrive and how many people are coming. This… Read More
14-16th June – Photography in Pyramiden
‘Pyramiden has captured a part of my heart – so many secrets, stories, such beauty… Diolch yn fawr!’ Samantha Saville, Aberystwyth, Wales, UK. The guest book at The Tulip Hotel, Pyramiden, in which I attempted to sum up the impossible, has entries from 1987 up to 2000 (I guess some tourists found it… Read More
13th June – 3 seasons in one day
I think Svalbard might be a place where people talk about the weather as much as in the UK, perhaps even more. Up here it really makes a huge difference and changes incredibly fast. Today started off as a lovely sunny spring-feeling morning. By lunch time it was feeling a bit damp and rainy, let’s… Read More
12th June – Into the mountain
We log in via the visitors book, pass the security guy, don hard hats with the Statsbygg logo (the state construction arm of the Norwegian government) and file into the dank corridor (which must be the bit outside the mountain) and through the second metal door that has been unlocked for us. We descend as… Read More
11th June – Messy Methodologies
Messiness is something that most of us are brought up to avoid, and certainly as a quality not particularly revered. At some point I realised that, for the most part, I am a ‘messy’ kind of person: messy room/office/desk; messy thoughts/ideas/approaches; messy hair…. Whilst I enjoy a good clean up of all these things occasionally,… Read More
10th June – Gratulerer med dagen Longyearbyen!
Happy Birthday Longyearbyen, 108 today! Today is Longyearbyen Day, which has been celebrated since it’s centenary in 2006. To mark the day there were a few historical things going on, which I attempted to join in with. Longyearbyen has certainly seen a lot of changes in it’s relatively short lifetime (a quick version from the… Read More
9th June – Ducks that don’t quack
Mondays seem to be email and organise days for me, but on a foray into the fresh air, I thought I would try and get some more interesting noises to share. It always seems to surprise me that different places can sound so different, I’m not sure why it is surprising, but unfamiliar animal noises… Read More
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