LONGYEARBYEN, Norway, 2 September 2003 — Suddenly a polar bear shows through the fog bank. It is looking for a walrus or a seal or even a wandering human. Polar bears are between two and three meters tall and weigh half a ton. They can also galumph at 70 kilometers an hour.
So what do you do when one comes along? Take refuge in the icy seas? These white giants are, it is true, slow swimmers, but they have stamina and can swim for up to 100 kilometers.
The only means of defense is a weapon. Matthias Zielke, a biologist and at the moment resident of Spitsbergen, in the northern Norwegian island group of Svalbard, says: “The danger should not be underestimated.”
He is a typical Spitsbergener. Few people in Spitsbergen, which is just 1,300 kilometers from the North Pole, were born here. The locals are only local for a time. They consist of climate researchers examining air bubbles in glaciers and how quickly the world is suffocating on their emissions, workers earning high wages in mines, trappers hunting for the furs of polar foxes.
They stay for a year or two before drifting off. Some of the population of 3,500 remain for as long as a decade. But few want to hang around any longer on an island where nature leaves its mark so clearly and where the winter is one long night.
Svalbard means roughly “cold coast”. This arctic region is better known under the name of Spitsbergen, even if that name, strictly speaking, refers only to one part of the group. For a long time, Svalbard was considered a sort of no-man’s-land. It was only in 1920 that Norway’s sovereignty over it was confirmed.
The Soviet Union was interested in coal from the island. Even today, there are Russian-speaking enclaves here.
Back to the polar bears. One trapper reported having seen no bears for two days near his hut in Mushamna. He thought it was a good time to go there, even if visibility was down to less than 10 meters. Armed guides came with binoculars and Matthias Zielke was shouldering his 60-year-old gun.
A polar bear, we were given to understand, could be killed with any weapon. It was a matter of firing at the right angle and hitting the right spot.
Stations such as Mushamna are occupied most of the year by constantly changing hunters and Trappers. They need to be a little bit mad to be able to hold out for a year in this loneliness. The trapper we visited did not talk with us. He wanted to be left alone.
Barentsburg is 30 kilometers from the capital of Longyearbyen at Isfjord. This is home to 900 Russian and Ukrainian miners as well as a few dozen women. About 300,000 tons of coal a year are mined here. Reserves are enough for only another seven or eight years.
Exploring Svalbard can be done from the sea. Some visitors travel on the veteran Norwegian postal vessel, the Nordstjernen, which keeps research and trapper stations supplied. Whales and seals can been seen from on board. Base camps of former expeditions to the North Pole are visited. The trip is like a time warp in the late 19th century, in the days when competition to get to the poles was intense and adventurers believed their expeditions would bring them scientific immortality.
But the island can also be walked. A weapon is needed because the danger from the bears. All details of the route and of equipment including evidence of insurance must be handed in. This is the law since 1992. Up until them, there had been some gruesome incidents.
Tales are told about hungry bears venturing into Longyearbyen itself, and about researchers whose bodies have never been found.