Northern exposure

GO NORWAY: Shrouded in cloud and smouldering volcanoes, not to mention free and fierce wildlife, Jan Mayen island in Norway is the place to go if you want to get away from it all and, conversely, see life in the raw, writes LAURENCE MACKIN

AS ANY EVIL genetic scientist worth his test tube knows, it’s all very well creating a near-mythical creature with which to do your bidding in secret, but where do you keep the thing?

Scotland’s not a bad option, but it’s already crawling with people looking for the Loch Ness monster. There are probably a few remote hill regions in Africa, but the heat is beastly, and even lost tribes can’t hide out in the Amazon any more.

So, ladies and gentlemen of the evil-genius persuasion, might I recommend Jan Mayen? It’s a charming little volcanic island that is part of the kingdom of Norway, though it is about 600km northeast of Iceland. Getting there takes several days’ sailing, and it has the unnerving ability to keep itself almost constantly shrouded in cloud, lending a nice touch of menace as you approach by boat.

Roughly a third of its area is covered in glaciers, which cut sharp white lines through the green scrub growth. But if that sounds too friendly, don’t worry – it sits directly on the convergent boundaries of the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates, which means you get frequent earthquakes (the largest of which tipped 6.1 on the Richter scale in January) and an active volcano, which last erupted in 1985. That is why the land looks like it was moulded five minutes ago, and when you hop off the boat you’ll find the beach is black.

So why would you visit such a godforsaken spot? Well, precisely because of all of the above. This feels like an island that shouldn’t exist. There’s a permanent population of about 18 people (which rises to 30-odd in the summer) who spend six-month stints working at the scientific and weather stations here. (When we visit, the local station commander is days from completing his 12-month tenure. He does his best to contain his excitement.)

The cosy buildings that house the team are full of little touches of humour. Bus stops line the one road, with guillotine and torture equipment marking the last stop; pictures on the walls show the various teams that have worked here – the best has them dressed in faux convict gear, with names, numbers, stripy jumpers and “crimes” listed in detail.

For these scientists, geologists and the odd curious tourist lucky enough to land here, this is a stony heaven of sorts. Huge stratification marks cut through the brown and black rock, and odd shapes jut out: a dry river bed has carved its way through the rock, and the volcanic shale has tumbled down, leaving a large python-head-shaped scar in the landscape. This is just above a flat, black stretch of airstrip that must take pilots with nerves of steel to touch their Hercules aircraft down on it.

As we leave the island to head further north, it has one more trick up its sleeve. While rounding the island’s most northerly edge, the clouds lift to let the midnight sun glitter upon the snowy shoulders of Beerenberg, the island’s volcano and its highest point. It is 11pm and the stark, dusky daylight bounces off the creamy edges, bringing a northerly pinkish hue to the mountain’s twin glaciers. This is almost worth the trip alone; perhaps Jan Mayen has a heart after all.

From there we head for Svalbard – until I got the itinerary for this trip, I wasn’t entirely sure it existed. It seemed to be a place of myths and legends where Scandinavian gods hammered out their differences, whalers chased beasts up from the depths of the sea, and trolls and polar bears patrolled their icy kingdoms.

In the cold light of night, it still feels like a different world. It is extremely difficult to judge scale in this part of the world. Glaciers and mountains appear in the distance, and after several hours’ sailing you don’t seem any closer but they have somehow tripled in height. Everything that is not made of rock or ice seems tiny and frail – and it makes you feel childishly adventurous.

The area is home to Ny-Ålesund, reputedly the most northerly settlement in the world. This was the last hitching post for many attempts to reach the North Pole, most famously Roald Amundsen’s airship flight over the pole in 1926 – the mast that his Zeppelin was tethered to still stands. Formerly a coalmining town, the area is now purely dedicated to research following a mining accident that killed 21 people in 1962, and all its historic buildings have been restored and co- opted by the scientific community. Compared to Jan Mayen, this feels much more like civilisation, and the colourful houses and huts of the various international teams each have a little identity of their own, especially the Chinese station – its door is flanked by two incongruous stone dragons.

This, though, is a serious place for serious scientific research, and on a mountain behind the town lies a former coal mine, now a Norwegian scientific station, which is one of the three most important weather stations in the world (the other two are at the South Pole and in Hawaii).

The atmosphere is so pure here that the ship’s presence will spike the CO2 count in the air to the extent that most of the data for these days will be discounted. On the edges of the town, terns swoop and dive at people who walk unknowingly close to a hidden nest, and signs warn tourists not to venture further for fear of polar bears – anyone going outside the town limits must be armed and trained.

After Ny-Ålesund, we sail into the Magdalena fjord, and the last thing you expect to see on a beach, here in the northern reaches of Svalbard, is a man in uniform. But there he is, armed and looking grim, when our small Rib boat takes us ashore from our ship, the Fram.His job is to keep an eye on tourist activity in the area from his hut, high in the hills. On the far side of the water is a lonely- looking clump of tents, and a slender yacht is threading its way up the waters ahead of us. This might sound idyllic, but it is nature red in tooth and arctic claw. Several thousand polar bears roam these hills and just after we are here, an English schoolboy is killed by a polar bear on the Von Postbreen glacier.

We see a pair of bears, a mother and cub, barely discernable against the stony shore. At one of the daily lectures, we get a much better view, thanks to the photographs of Bernard Lefauconnier, a French glaciologist who looks a little like the polar bears he is so passionate about. When a career in economics failed to ignite his fire, he switched to studying glaciers in his 40s. He has a gloriously unreconstructed French accent that no amount of speaking in English will ever mollify.

Back on the beach are the remnants of the once- lucrative whaling industry. Lookouts would stand sentry on the cliffs and signal to men in boats if they saw a sluggish humpback or bowhead. The whalers would chase the mammals into shallower waters and harpoon or spear them, before dragging the huge carcasses up on to the beach to render the blubber over enormous fires. The remains are still there, a few rocks and leftover bones, testament to a vicious industry that once kept Europe’s lamps burning and its ladies in sculpted corsets.

From here, there is one last push north, up to Moffen Island, a rather grandiose name for what seems like little more than a sandbar. It is thick with walruses and marks a spot just above 80 degrees north, which is almost as far north as Amundsen reached in his original wooden Fram. Another 10 degrees and we would be at the North Pole, but this ship and its passengers are hardly built for such endeavours. So we toast the island and its stout population with aquavit, while the midnight sun remains high in the sky.

Longyearbyen is our final stop, its waters riven by thick slabs of splintered ice the size of small town squares, which grind against the hull. At one point the whole ship shudders, rattling the glasses in the bar as we inch our way into the fjord with just a few knots of power. It’s a painstaking process that gives plenty of opportunity to enjoy the last of the midnight sun, reflected hard off seas that shift like thick piles of silver.

This is a land of contradictions. Cold temperatures, crisp air and a sun that refuses to set. Volcanoes with fire in their bellies, and shawls of glaciers on their shoulders. Acres of emptiness on the shore are interrupted by clutches of brightly painted houses. Old mines remain drilled into the mountains, and fences snake pointlessly up savage hillsides, though exploitation has now largely given way to research and science. Clear water in the fjords fills with the shattered debris of glaciers, in which ships jostle for breathing space amid the shifting hulks. This is the living heart of the Arctic circle.

Go there

Laurence Mackin travelled as a guest of Hurtigruten aboard the MV Framon its Climate Voyage. The eight-day voyage, from Iceland to Spitsbergen, costs from €2,575 each. Flights from Dublin to Reykjavik and returning from Longyearbyen are extra and can be added by Hurtigruten, as can a pre-tour stay in Iceland.

Tel: 00-44-844-4487601, or see hurtigruten.co.uk