Arctic 2018 – Julie Stephenson

Dec 04

by Julie in Arctic, Arctic 2018 0 comments

The Ice….and the blue!!!

The Ice…. How beautiful the ice was along the west coast of Svalbard where I sailed aboard the tall ship Antigua. The glaciers calve and purge forward huge chunks of ice, cracking and splashing into the sea.. meandering in the wind and waves until they melt and become part of that in which they float. The crevassed face of the glaciers are extraordinary, with the blue and turquoise colour of the ice just so incredible. This blue ice is caused when snow falls on a glacier and is compressed and the air bubbles are squeezed out. The dense ice of the glacier absorbs every other colour of the spectrum except blue – so blue is what we see! The crystalline structure of the ice also scatters this blue light making it the most exquisite turquoise I’ve ever seen. The world around me was blue. Every minute the tone of blue changed. The water was blue. The sky was a blue I’ve never experienced before. And the ice. Ice was blue… and black! As the glacier surges forwards, the gravel, silt and rock embeds in the glacial ice and becomes suspended in the frozen mass. The black […]

Sep 22

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Abandoned Soviet town – Pyramiden

Lenin still maintains a protective and proud gaze over abandoned buildings alongside the Nordenskiöld Glacier at a place which once held such hopes for prosperity and prestige. Pyramiden has a very interesting history, hinged on the history of the Svalbard region. Beginning around the 17th century these surrounding Arctic Islands were used as a base for whaling and walrus trapping…. btw… The Longyearbyen museum gives a fantastic account of the timeline for the history of this region. By the beginning of the 20th century, the need for energy for industry was a high priority and coal was found here and became a valuable resource – for a period. Up until then, this archipelago belonged to no one nation and was freely used by many countries with no main governance. That changed in 1920 and the Svalbard Treaty was established by Norway, the United States and Britain; granting Norway the sovereignty over the region. The Soviets were preoccupied with their own civil war and were disgruntled at not being included in the process… but due to the way the Treaty was drafted, it left room for other countries – 40 in fact; to establish commercial interests in the region. In the 1930’s, […]

Sep 21

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78 deg North – Longyearbyen ..Northernmost town in our world…

Shadows stretch in the middle of the day. My fingers are snug in 2 pairs of gloves as I peer out from a goretex hood and a cowl I knitted on the flight to this northernmost town in the world; north of the Arctic circle at roughly 78 Degrees North. My nose and cheeks were not accustomed to the freezing cold accompanying such a blue sky, as we wandered through the empty street on a Sunday afternoon to get our northern bearings set. We soon realised that Sundays were quiet days…. as was before 10am every morning; where the only movement in the street was the occasional flurry of gravel being blown by the howling wind…. and us… wandering inquisitively through the streets. The mountains dusted with a recent snowfall stood guardian to this small township which has months of both continued daylight and continual darkness. I still can’t get my head around it being dark for 4 months of the year. The locals say they have two winters…. the dark and the light winter. The dark winter, or polar night, when the sun doesn’t rise at all for two months, is followed by a period of twilight in February and early March. My […]

Sep 19

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Oslo…. and our attempt at the Top 10 things to do there…

It was heaven to not see signs in an alternate ‘English’ version. It felt like we were once again in a foreign country. This time it wasn’t the poorer nations; but rather what seemed to be a very wealthy country, with a language I had absolutely no skills in deciphering. On some past journeys to France, Spain, Chile, Portugal, Switzerland… I’ve been able to meander through the words and deconstruct them using my rudimentary Latin, French and Spanish… but Norwegian was a whole new ballgame! It was kinda fun being clueless .. and quite lovely to spend the week in the city where English wasn’t catered to just for tourists. It felt like I was actually in another country. It was interesting to note however that despite the lack of visible English; English was spoken as a fluent second language. It was however helpful to read the English version in the Museum and Art galleries… but those were places where international visitors were expected to visit… so the use of English was appropriate. So…now our attempts to tackle the Top 10 things to do in Oslo. Awake before the sun was – body clocks not quite adjusted; […]

Sep 17

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Above Iraq, Turkey, Slovenia on way to Arctic!… on the move again!

High above Iraq and Turkey it struck me how different all our lives are… and how different each of them are when viewed from different perspectives. I was captivated by the rugged landscape below and was thinking how wonderful it would be to live and journey across that incredible land… until it dawned upon me that I was looking down on Iraq and Turkey. I then had a sad wave of recognition of the history of the peoples who have inhabited this rugged landscape, and had a sobering realisation of how different things are from different view points. I felt a deep sense of gratitude for my life. I am privileged to have been selected and invited to participate in artist residency aboard the tall ship Antigua, sailing around Svalbard for a couple of weeks. Max and I have started our journey together toward Oslo. Our trajectory over 36 hours took us through Adelaide then to Dubai which was during the night… but the flight from Dubai to Oslo was spectacular. We passed over Kuwait, Iraq, Turkey, Black sea, corner of Bulgaria… then the clouds started to cover Rumania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Sweden, Norway. It […]