North to Ny Alesund.... and Ny London

From Longyearbyen we sailed north to Kongsjforden.

On the way we saw dramatic scenes of mountains and glaciers, light and cloud (above) plus one arctic fox, too far away for even my 70-300 mm lens.

In our circumnavigation we had to anchor at most stops but in Ny Alesund there was actually a proper harbour with quay we could moor alongside:

At 78°55'N it is one of the most northernmost communities, founded by coal miners by the Kings Bay Coal Company back in 1917. Mining continued until 1962 when 21 miners were killed in a single accident.

Since then Ny Alesund has found new purpose, mostly around research, with Auroral Observatory and satellite station for highly accurate modelling of the Earth's shape and movement. Indeed, because of the sensitivity of this satellite station's receivers, all mobile phones had to be set to the airplane mode:

There's also a historical connection with polar exploration. For example, in 1926 it was the site of the departure of Roald Amundsen's airship Norge which successfully reached the North Pole. The airship mooring pole was still visible:

I was interested to note that a series of huts were called London run by the British Antarctic Survey, but there were other connections to my home city as there was another site across the fjord (which we didn't visit) actually called London, or Ny London.

This was the site of the Northern Exploration Company Ltd (NEC) that tried to extract marble but alas turned out to be useless as the marble crumbed due to frost action. So it was abandoned and now is considered part of Svalbard's cultural heritage.

In the evening, as we sailed to our next destination, I helped bake foccacia, which was pretty good, though me and my fellow baker S. agreed it would have been better if it had another 5 minutes.