Polar bears, melting glaciers – and a blues festival: my wild week on Svalbard

17.01.2024 - 12:07 / theguardian.com

Don’t worry,” says our guide Charlotta, flashing her rifle. “I’m really quick if I need to be.” My 12-year-old daughter glances around the Arctic wilderness anxiously. As much as she loved Philip Pullman’s armoured bears, one of the reasons she longed to visit, our proximity to the real thing is starting to dawn on her.

There are road signs all over town warning us about the risk of polar bears. They number around 3,000 here, compared to 2,500 or so human inhabitants – which is why the Svalbard authorities insist you walk beyond the main settlement only with an armed guide.

As a result, attacks are extremely rare – around five since the 1970s – the aim being for humans and bears to interact as little as possible: they’re protected by law and it’s a crime to hunt, feed or disturb them.

Charlotta isn’t taking any risks this morning. She loads four bullets into the gun’s barrel, clicks it shut and slings it across her shoulder. “Right, let’s go,” she says and we follow her across the frozen tundra as she tells us about the life of the trappers more than 100 years ago, hunting foxes and polar bears, often alone and several days from civilisation.

We stand silently soaking up the scale of this unforgiving landscape. A profound sense of isolation and solitude hangs over us in a land where historically only the toughest survive: hardy adventurers, hunters and explorers. Yet it’s this harshness that makes it so appealing, and beautiful, too. It’s a place of extremes with temperatures that can plunge to -20C in winter and in the long polar winters there is no noticeable difference between night and day. It’s also the time you’re most likely to see the northern lights.

We land during the last remaining hours of sunlight and our first sight of Svalbard is a bleak range of black spiky mountains swathed in cloud, a peach sun hanging below the horizon.

The Norwegian archipelago is about midway between Norway and the North Pole, and it’s one of the world’s northernmost inhabited areas. There are three main islands and Spitsbergen is the largest. Longyearbyen, where we’re staying, is its main settlement, populated largely by tour guides, tourists, academics and researchers.

There is only one road: Main Street, a short, snowy avenue that puts my local high street to shame. Their local store (Coop Svalbard) has an impressive range of fresh produce as well as a drinks aisle stacked with champagne, gin and beer – they have their own brewery nearby (“The world’s northernmost craft brewery”). We stop for a tasty smoked salmon sandwich at Café Fruene across the road. Opposite is Nordover, their arts cinema (“The northernmost arts centre in the world”). There’s also the Karlsberger Pub, known as KB to the locals, open until