Svalbard Quotes

Tucked in my bag is another book from the shelf above my desk. Blue and cloth-bound, it's full of stories that I wrote myself. Stories from my childhood on Svalbard. These stories are nonfiction. They're pieces of my heart made of paper and ink.

But there was no version of my life in which I wasn't getting my ass to Svalbard.

Boltzmann Brain Kristine Ong Muslim We hope you are out there, and you are reading this message. We are broadcasting from 78°14′09″N 15°29′29″E, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

I think you're talking shit. You think we don't all feel like that? Like we're crazy, like we're not a real person, like we don't exist? Everyone feels that way sometimes. I can remember talking to you when you lost your bag. So what? You can't remember and that's not a bad thing. It doesn't make me better than you. I'm a stranger to you, but here's what I see: I see a girl who has suffered a terrible damage to her brain. Someone who, it seems, is shut away by her parents to keep her safe. But inside there is a vibrant person, a traveler, and her memory of this boy Drake has propelled her into action. I think, Flora, that you came here not to find Drake but to find yourself. It wasn't Drake--he's an unlikely romantic hero, really--it was you. Didn't you come here, perhaps, because you heard him talking about the place he was going to, and it called to you?" I don't know what to say. I don't say anything. " Our come from Oslo, and Svalbard called me, even though I'm not really the rugged adventurous type. Like you, I had to come. Some of us are meant to be here. We need this place...We need to be small specks in wild nature, by the pole. The midnight sun. The midday darkness. The northern lights. It called to you, Flora, and you answered. You overcame everything, and you came here, alone. You are the bravest person I've ever met.

The terms of this combat are these. If Iofur Raknison kills me, then he will be king forever, safe from challenge or dispute. If I kill Iofur Raknison, I shall be your king. My first order to you all will be to tear down that palace, that perfumed house of mockery and tinsel, and hurl the gold and marble into the sea. Iron is bear-metal. Gold is not. Iofur Raknison has polluted Svalbard. I have come to cleanse it. Iofur Raknison, I challenge you.

I wish I could answer your question. All I can say is that all of us, humans, witches, bears, are engaged in a war already, although not all of us know it. Whether you find danger on Svalbard or whether you fly off unharmed, you are a recruit, under arms, a soldier." "Well, that seems kinda precipitate. Seems to me a man should have a choice whether to take up arms or not." "We have no more choice in that than in whether or not to be born." "Oh, I like choice, though," he said. "I like choosing the jobs I take and the places I go and the food I eat and the companions I sit and yarn with. Don't you wish for a choice once in a while ?" She considered, and then said, "Perhaps we don't mean the same thing by choice, Mr. Scoresby. Witches own nothing, so we're not interested in preserving value or making profits, and as for the choice between one thing and another, when you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will come again. We have different needs. You have to repair your balloon and keep it in good condition, and that takes time and trouble, I see that; but for us to fly, all we have to do is tear off a branch of cloud-pine; any will do, and there are plenty more. We don't feel cold, so we need no warm clothes. We have no means of exchange apart from mutual aid. If a witch needs something, another witch will give it to her. If there is a war to be fought, we don't consider cost one of the factors in deciding whether or not it is right to fight. Nor do we have any notion of honor, as bears do, for instance. An insult to a bear is a deadly thing. To us... inconceivable. How could you insult a witch? What would it matter if you did?" "Well, I'm kinda with you on that. Sticks and stones, I'll break yer bones, but names ain't worth a quarrel. But ma'am, you see my dilemma, I hope. I'm a simple aeronaut, and I'd like to end my days in comfort. Buy a little farm, a few head of cattle, some horses...Nothing grand, you notice. No palace or slaves or heaps of gold. Just the evening wind over the sage, and a ceegar, and a glass of bourbon whiskey. Now the trouble is, that costs money. So I do my flying in exchange for cash, and after every job I send some gold back to the Wells Fargo Bank, and when I've got enough, ma'am, I'm gonna sell this balloon and book me a passage on a steamer to Port Galveston, and I'll never leave the ground again." "There's another difference between us, Mr. Scoresby. A witch would no sooner give up flying than give up breathing. To fly is to be perfectly ourselves." "I see that, ma'am, and I envy you; but I ain't got your sources of satisfaction. Flying is just a job to me, and I'm just a technician. I might as well be adjusting valves in a gas engine or wiring up anbaric circuits. But I chose it, you see. It was my own free choice. Which is why I find this notion of a war I ain't been told nothing about kinda troubling." "lorek Byrnison's quarrel with his king is part of it too," said the witch. "This child is destined to play a part in that." "You speak of destiny," he said, "as if it was fixed. And I ain't sure I like that any more than a war I'm enlisted in without knowing about it. Where's my free will, if you please? And this child seems to me to have more free will than anyone I ever met. Are you telling me that she's just some kind of clockwork toy wound up and set going on a course she can't change?" "We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not, or die of despair. There is a curious prophecy about this child: she is destined to bring about the end of destiny. But she must do so without knowing what she is doing, as if it were her nature and not her destiny to do it. If she's told what she must do, it will all fail; death will sweep through all the worlds; it will be the triumph of despair, forever. The universes will all become nothing more than interlocking machines, blind and empty of thought, feeling, life...

Most of the bears had never seen mountains, apart from the cliffs on their own island of Svalbard, and fell silent as they looked up at the giant ramparts, still so far off. “What will we hunt there, Iorek Byrnison?” said one. “Are there seals in the mountains? How shall we live?” “There is snow and ice,” was the king’s reply. “We shall be comfortable. And there are wild creatures there in plenty. Our lives will be different for a while. But we shall survive, and when things return to what they should be, and the Arctic freezes once more, we shall still be alive to go back and claim it. If we had stayed there, we would have starved. Be prepared for strangeness and for new ways, my bears.

There it was, the land under 80 degrees, a land of stern magnificence, where icebergs rear up almost to the very mountaintops, and mountain rises above mountain; there it was, inviolate, alive to the raucous voice of millions of birds, the continuous staccato bark of foxes, the castanet click as the hoofs of great herds of deer fell in a swinging trot; there it was, surrounded by waters whose surface was slashed and sprayed by schools of walrus and whales that had swum there before ever man was born.

Many Fujiyamas lie in a row along our coast to the south. As the distance increases, their sombre blackness seems to be lit up by a deep red light. They take on every shade from red to lilac, and all the colours have a glowing depth that is neved found in the landscape at home, or at most only in some exquisite flowers. In the holy stillness, everything is lit by a supernatural brightness. Two gulls fly low and silent close by the hut toward the fiord. They are lit up by the red rays of the bright sun. Their magnificent broad wings are a deep pink in the turquoise sky.

Mr. Scoresby,” said the witch, “I wish I could answer your question. All I can say is that all of us, humans, witches, bears, are engaged in a war already, although not all of us know it. Whether you find danger on Svalbard or whether you fly off unharmed, you are a recruit, under arms, a soldier.” “Well, that seems kinda precipitate. Seems to me a man should have a choice whether to take up arms or not.” “We have no more choice in that than in whether or not to be born.” “Oh, I like choice, though,” he said. “I like choosing the jobs I take and the places I go and the food I eat and the companions I sit and yarn with. Don’t you wish for a choice once in a while?” Serafina Pekkala considered, and then said, “Perhaps we don’t mean the same thing by choice, Mr. Scoresby. Witches own nothing, so we’re not interested in preserving value or making profits, and as for the choice between one thing and another, when you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will come again. We have different needs. You have to repair your balloon and keep it in good condition, and that takes time and trouble, I see that; but for us to fly, all we have to do is tear off a branch of cloud-pine; any will do, and there are plenty more. We don’t feel cold, so we need no warm clothes. We have no means of exchange apart from mutual aid. If a witch needs something, another witch will give it to her. If there is a war to be fought, we don’t consider cost one of the factors in deciding whether or not it is right to fight. Nor do we have any notion of honor, as bears do, for instance. An insult to a bear is a deadly thing. To us... inconceivable. How could you insult a witch? What would it matter if you did?” “Well, I’m kinda with you on that. Sticks and stones, I’ll break yer bones, but names ain’t worth a quarrel.

The birds?’ 
‘Yes. Brent geese from Svalbard and bar-tailed godwits from the Arctic tundra. Thousands of them, loads of different species. They’ve flown from Scandinavia to spend the winter here. At night, I can hear them honking. Pink-footed geese from Iceland, barnacle geese from Norway. When I lie in bed at night, I imagine I can hear the beat of their wings. Yesterday I walked along the beach. It was clear, for once, and the sun was starting to set. I saw a murmuration of plovers. Hundreds of them, making these strange, unearthly shapes across the sky; the light caught their wings, and the whole flock shone like gold. Every day I think about filling my pockets with stones and walking into the sea. I will aim for Iceland. I will never stop. But then I see a flock of golden plovers wheeling in the sunlight and, for a few brief moments, I forget who I am and why I’m here and what I’ve lost.

Young people today...it ought not to be allowed... You can't get rich there," he cries at last, quite desperate. "No, we can't get rich there," I agree. "Yes, you will get rich," says the young Norwegian, but there is no suggestions of material gain in his gentle smile.

Let’s get one thing straight at the beginning. A lunar eclipse simply will not do. You may have seen a partial solar eclipse, but neither will that do. The sun is such a monster that until a few minutes before totality the light from the sun blasts right around the disk of the moon and the Earth is little changed. Annie Dillard wrote that the difference between a partial eclipse and a total one is the difference between kissing a man and marrying him. Just so. So people search out totality, no matter how remote the spot. And so we have come to Svalbard. - from Out in the Cold

Svalbard has no restrictions on foreigners who want to move here, except that they must have a job. Under a 1920 international treaty that granted Norway sovereignty, the territory is open to all nationals of the more than 40 nations that have now signed the pact. A population that used to be homogeneously white now includes Thais, Chinese and other foreigners. Nearly a third of all residents are foreigners, including hundreds of Ukrainians working in a mining concession owned by Russia.

Founded in 1917 by Peter Brandal, it was named Ny-Ålesund or New Ålesund. The Svalbard Treaty of 1920 recognized Norwegian sovereignty and established Svalbard as a free economic zone and a demilitarized zone. It is only 769 miles from the North Pole on the island of Spitsbergen. Ny-Ålesund located at is on the largest and only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago and holds the distinction of being the northernmost permanent settlement in the world. Owned by the Norwegian Ministry of Trade and Industry and is not incorporated, however it does have a port which accommodates cruise ships, an airport, a post office, the Svalbard church and the Norwegian Seamen's church. Ny-Ålesund has an all-year permanent population of 30 to 35 which expands to about 120 people in the summer. For accommodations there is the Nordpolhotell, opened on 3 September 1939, and considered the oldest and perhaps the most expensive place to stay in Ny Ålesund. In the 17th and 18th centuries the island was first used as a whaling base in the 17th and 18th centuries. Coal mining was started at the end of the 19th century. Now there are fifteen permanent research stations run by agencies from ten countries. Perhaps the best known is the Global Seed Vault. Deep inside a mountain, it was built to stand the test of time and is considered a fail-safe seed storage facility strong enough to face most natural or man-made disasters. It is also the center for international arctic scientific research.

Man antar gärna, för poesins skull, att brännmaneter är elektriska. Att det är små, smärtsamma stötar man får när man rör vid bränntrådarna. Att om man sänkte ner tillräckligt många brännmaneter i Norra ishavet skulle hela Svalbard kortslutas. I själva verket är det ett gift som bränner, det är nässelceller och munarmar och djävulskap sånt som bara evolution eller berusning kan kläcka.

L’arcipelago subpolare delle Svalbard è un luogo mistico. Molto remoto eppure sorprendentemente accessibile, è l’angolo più suggestivo del Polo Nord europeo, nonché una delle ultime grandi aree incontaminate del continente.

This was the largest city on Svalbard, and the only one with skyscrapers. It was an old city, built over several hundreds of years. Aida had heard about the legendary skyscrapers on Svalbard ever since she was little. People talked about them with awe. The skyscrapers were just as tall as the ones in the ancient cities of New York, Toronto, and even the stunning ones in Dubai. Skilled engineers and architects had built the towering buildings to withstand the harsh winds of the Arctic Sea.

This was the largest city on Svalbard, and the only one with skyscrapers. It was an old city, built over several hundreds of years. Aida had heard about the legendary skyscrapers on Svalbard ever since she was little. People talked about them with awe. The skyscrapers were just as tall as the ones in the ancient cities of New York, Toronto, and even the stunning ones in Dubai. Skilled engineers and architects had built the towering buildings to withstand the harsh winds of the Arctic Sea.

After Per died, I couldn't stand to be in Oslo any more. All those people that weren't him, you know? There was this coffee shop we used in g oto, at the university. We'd just sit together, together but silen. Happy silent. Reading newspapers, drinking coffee. It was hard to avoid places like that. We used to walk around everywhere. His troublesome soul lingered on every street .. I kept telling his memory to piss the fuck off but it wouldn't. Grief is a bastard. If I'd have stayed any longer, I'd have hated humanity. So, when a research position came up in Svalbard I was like, yes, this has come to save me ... I wanted to be somewhere he had never been. I wanted somewhere where I didn't have to feel his ghost. But the truth is, it only half works, you know? Places are places and memories are memories and life is fucking life?

Nora came to understand something. Something Hugo had never fully explained to her in that kitchen in Svalbard. You didn’t have to enjoy every aspect of each life to keep having the option of experiencing them. You just had to never give up on the idea that there would be a life somewhere that could be enjoyed. Equally, enjoying a life didn’t mean you stayed in that life. You only stayed in a life for ever if you couldn’t imagine a better one, and yet, paradoxically, the more lives you tried the easier it became to think of something better, as the imagination broadened a bit more with every new life she sampled.

the North Pole. It is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, or Doomsday Vault, as some have taken to calling it. Finished in February 2008 at a cost of nearly $10 million,

This biggest and most profound shift happened not be becoming richer or more successful or more famous or by being amid the glaciers and polar bears of Svalbard. It happened by waking up in the exact same bed, in the same grotty damp apartment with its dilapidated sofa bed and yucca plant and tiny potted cacti and bookshelves and untried yoga manuals.

She remembered being enthralled by an article about Svalbard, the Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. She’d never seen a place that looked so far away. She’d read about scientists doing research among glaciers and frozen fjords and puffins. Then, prompted by Mrs Elm, she’d decided she wanted to be a glaciologist.

It is quite a revelation to discover that the place you wanted to escape to is the exact same place you escaped from. That the prison wasn’t the place, but the perspective. And the most peculiar discovery Nora made was that, of all the extremely divergent variations of herself she had experienced, the most radical sense of change happened within the exact same life. The one she began and ended with. This biggest and most profound shift happened not by becoming richer or more successful or more famous or by being amid the glaciers and polar bears of Svalbard. It happened by waking up in the exact same bed, in the same grotty damp apartment with its dilapidated sofa and yucca plant and tiny potted cacti and bookshelves and untried yoga manuals.