Dad's Visit

Mid-August, my dad arrived walked off the plane and into Svalbard. It was a brilliantly sunny day and the fjord was crazy blue and windy.

Walking to UNIS in the morning:
The view from my window in the summer. These mountains have now been completely covered in snow during several storms.
Walking around town, with the summer cottongrass in bloom:
Dad made me once again stop and smile at the strange sights of Longyearbyen that now are becoming normal: girls in pink jackets on bikes with rifles, and homes with a set of skiis and a set of snow mobiles for each person:

After a week of long days of fieldwork and labwork and boatrips, I figured Dad's time wouldn't be complete without a weekend visit to the to the Bjoerndalen student cabin. A bid crowd assembled; humans and dogs and reindeer. Jonathon waits for the slow pokes to cross the river:

We finally make it... Dad with wet pants and still smiling.


The calm fjord...



Nicole, Tine, and Sanna test out the guitar outside the cabin:


Pierre and his Ukranian camera:
Mikko and the ever-taunting guitar.
The whole crew headed home: Cecilia, Oleg, Dad, a resolutely-enthusiastic Jonathon, Tine, James, Pierra, and Johanna.


We visited Barentsburg, a completley Russian mining town which is about 2 hours away by ship. The whole place seems a world away from Longyearbyen (ah, the psychological effects of architecture!) and a little piece of Russia (but crumbling and partially retaken by the birds).


On the way, the characteristic lush green slopes below a cliff where thousands of birds breed (and shit).
And finally, just so Dad left Svalbard totally exhausted, we walked up above town to the Longyear glacier on his last night, where in the moraines you can find relatively easily amazing fossils. Huge leaves and shells and pine trees... all from a time when Svalbard was closer to the equator and the climate was warm and wet enough to create the coal that now powers Longyearbyen and thus this computer.

Midnight fossil hunting, a Svalbard specialty:

Thanks, Dad!