First
cruise day! And we woke up surrounded by beautiful blue bits and pieces of
glacier ice from the Kongsvegen and Kongsglacier.
All the others visited this morning Ny Ålesund, one of the
world`s northernmost year-round communities, with about 150 mostly scientists,
living there during the summer months (in the winter there are about 30 people).
Since 1964, so 50 years already, Ny Ålesund is now a science “town”, but it`s
full of mining history as well, as this was the start of the place, when Kings
Bay Coal Company initiated mining in 1917.
Several mining accidents with a
severe happening November 5, 1962 when 21 miners got killed lead to the closing
of the place as a mining community. A white painting of a coffin on a harbor hall
still marks that tragedy.. We were heading further into “town” and discovered
the old school, the Nordpolhotel, the Svedrup Station and also the house of the
famous polar expeditioner Roald Amundsen! He came there in 1925 to make an
attempt to reach the Northpole by seaplane, but did not succeed, as they had to
do an emergency landing about 136 nautical miles apart from the Pole.
Nevertheless, Amundsen started a second attempt with the airship “Norge” and
this time they succeeded! But as tragedy is tragedy, he died on the way to
rescue his earlier fellow Nobile, who went to the Pole with the Airship
“Italia” in 1928. How much history in this tiny town somewhere high up in the
Arctic!
In
the afternoon we dropped our anker in front of the majestic mountains in
Magdalenefjorden, one of the most beautiful spots on Spitsbergen. Beside a just
magnificent landscape with high mountains and tall glaciers, this place also
tells a lot a bit of a story: one of the largest burial grounds for whalers on
Spitsbergen can be found here, with at least 130 graves. But on Trinity harbor
something really “alive” happened: Some of us went for a polar plunge! In 2°C
“warm?” water the brave hearts went for a dive, neither afraid of the cold, nor
the “Greenland Shark”! ;). 
A bit further away, we had a nice view on a bay on
the westside of Gullybreen, where we`ve seen walruses lying on the shoreline,
digesting and resting. Back on board we went for dinner and did as the walruses,
while watching the beautiful scenery passing by as we went through Sørgattet. 
