In our second day
of this trip we visited Ny Alesund
a small and perhaps the northernmost settlement in the world only about 1231 km
from the North Pole. Started as a mining
settlement and now it is a small research community. The land and infrastructure is owned by Kings
Bay Company a former mining Company that manages the area. The first bits of coal were found in 1610 by
Jonas Poole an English whaler and the coal activity was from about 1916 until
the 1960´s. Ny Alesund gain notoriety
and fame in the 1920´s through the dramatic flight attempts to the North Pole
with Admusen and Nobile as a center piece.
Our afternoon visit was Magdalenafjord a place with
beautiful scenery, the fiord cut in for about 10 km into the coast and about 3
km wide a glacier named Waggonwaybreen, can be found at the end and large peaks
around the highest peak is about 1000 m. We landed in Graveneset on Trinity Harbor a
place that in the 1500´s was a whaling station and a seaman cemetery. On Gravneset there is a wery nice, white sand beach, and the toughest passengers went for a swim in the ice cold waters!
