Dodging Cruise Ships in Svalbard

When you think of Svalbard you probably think about wilderness. The far north, the high arctic, glaciers and mountains: surely here you are on your own surrounded by raw nature.

But no, what you will almost certainly see is this:

You will discover that most of the time you are not alone, but sharing remote fjords with a big cruise ship and one or two smaller (and more photogenic) vessels:

For Norway is a sensible, organised country and it has worked out a way to manage the flow of boats into what it has classified as a nature reserve.

The Governor of Svalbard (for there is such a thing, and is currently Kjerstin Askholt) requires visitors "to notify the Governor of Svalbard about your projected trip. Get in touch well in advance.When filling in the form, please state the names of other members of your party, as well as the type of gear you are taking with you and a description of your route".

Larger vessels will be managed so that (as I understand it) there will only be one such cruise ship in each fjord at each time - partly for safety but also to help give that pristine natural look.

There are advantages and disadvantages of this. It is a shame that we only rarely got that "we're alone in nature" feel but then it was reassuring to know that notification is also associated with mandatory insurance for search and rescue (SAR) support.

Quite a few times on Channel 16 we'd hear talk of the rescue chopper being sent out - for example when there was a polar bear attack on a crew member from the cruise ship Bremen in which "a 42-year old man from Germany, was wounded in the head". As someone who wasn't feeling that great, the knowledge that a helicopter could be there (anywhere) within 2 hours was sort of reassuring.

In the end we had to work around it. So (for example) when going to visit the Texas Bar (more on this later) the skipper had to call up the cruise ship in the second photo above and ask when they were planning on going, and then make sure we didn't overlap with them as they had 100 people on board and would overwhelm that little hut.

And the name of that cruise ship? It was the Bremen, just before that incident with the polar bear described above.

It was also just before another incident, in which a yacht ended up drifting onto the rocks, not a hundred metres from were we were anchored!

The Governor of Svalbard was to be busy those couple of days.