“Look at that white building over there”, says the First Mate, pointing to the right of the bridge that spans the sound. “It’s very impressive. I wonder what it is?”
We are sailing up Tromsøsundet and are approaching Tromsø.
“It’s got to be the Arctic Cathedral”, I say. “The Lonely Planet book mentioned it.”
It is impressive. Built from eleven great white concrete panels stacked next to each other, it is visible for miles, contrasting starkly with the dark green hills rising up behind it. The eleven white panels are supposed to represent the eleven apostles who remained true to Jesus. Obviously not Judas.
Shortly we are docking in Tromsø marina, ably helped by a group of enthusiastic teenagers who are disembarking from a colourfully-painted wooden sailing boat.
“We’ve been sailing up to Svalbard”, they tell us, as they attach us to the pontoon cleats. “We’ve just got back. We are all pretty exhausted. But we had a great time. Now another group is going. They’ll be here soon.”
Svalbard is a large island that lies five days’ sail across open sea north of Norway. It belongs to Norway, but is subject to the Svalbard Treaty, which guarantees rights to 40 other countries who are signatories to the Treaty. Part of the Treaty says that it must not be used for military purposes.
“Let’s have a cup of tea”, says the First Mate. “Then we can go and have a look at the Cathedral. It’s just a short walk over the bridge there.”
The bridge is closed to motor traffic for repairs, but open to pedestrians and cyclists. There’s a great view from the top of its hump out over the sound and the city. It doesn’t take long to reach the Cathedral.
“The Cathedral was built in 1965”, the woman behind the counter tells us. “It is famous not only for its unique exterior design, but also for the stunning stained glass window within it. It depicts the Return of Christ showing God, Jesus, and a man and a woman. We also have concerts here during the summer. The acoustics are amazing.”
On the way back, we stop off at the Polar Museum on the harbour front. There are exhibitions on hunting and trapping in Svalbard, polar aircraft, and the famous Norwegian polar explorers, Nansen and Amundsen.
“Although there were overwinter trapping expeditions as early as 1795, it started in earnest in the 1890s”, the guide leaflet tells us. “Hunting then was mainly for walrus, and to a lesser extent, seals, reindeer, and Arctic foxes. Later, polar bears, musk oxen, and bow whales were hunted. Reindeer, in particular, almost became extinct. At first, most hunting and trapping was done in the summer season from April to September. Eventually, however, a number of trappers decided to overwinter.”
“It must have been a tough life”, says the First Mate. “It says here that a lot of the early trappers died of scurvy because of the low levels of vitamin C in their diets. I wonder what made them want to go and do it? It seems that no-one became rich through hunting and trapping.”
“I guess that it just appeals to a certain type of person”, I say. “One who is happy with isolation and solitude, and battling against and surviving adverse conditions.”
One such trapper was Henri Rudi, the ‘King of the Polar Bear’, who became internationally famous. It was his boyhood dream to go to Svalbard, which he did when he was 19 and eventually spent 27 winters there. In total, he shot and trapped more than 700 polar bears before retiring back to Tromsø and receiving the King’s Medal of Merit. He also became famous around Tromsø for his lectures and story-telling of his experiences on Svalbard.
Interesting that we are worried now about climate change melting the ice and destroying polar bears’ habitat, and yet someone who shot 700 of the animals was honoured, I think to myself. How times change.
Even some women were drawn to the lifestyle. Wanny Woldstad left her job in Tromsø as a taxi-driver, went to Svalbard in 1932 to learn how to hunt and trap, and liked it so much that she returned the following year with her two sons. She stayed several more winters there, during one of which she is supposed to have baked 900 loaves of bread. She became famous for thriving in what had been previously a male-dominated environment, and in 1956 published a book, “The First Woman Trapper in Svalbard”, in which she describes her life in Svalbard’s wild and beautiful landscape.
“I wouldn’t want to do that”, says the First Mate. “Too cold and too tough a life for me. I like my creature comforts.”
We move through to the rooms on Nansen and Amundsen. We had already seen the ship that both of these explorers used, the Fran, in the museum of the same name in Oslo last year, so we knew something about them. But there is more detail here about their adventures.
I concentrate on Nansen. He had noticed that wreckage of a ship that had sunk in the New Siberian Islands had eventually ended up in Greenland some years later, and had surmised that the polar ice cap was not static, but was slowly moving. He organised an expedition to test this theory in which the Fran would be locked in the ice and they would see where it got to, hoping that it would pass over the North Pole. They started near the Siberian Islands in 1893, but after a year or so, it became clear that it wouldn’t reach the pole. So, in 1895, Nansen and one of his crew decided to leave the ship and ski there instead. Unfortunately, it took longer than they had thought, and they had to turn back because their supplies were running out. But even returning took longer than they had thought, and they were forced to overwinter alone in the Arctic. They lived off polar bear and walrus meat until the next spring, then set off again, and eventually in August of 1896 met another polar explorer who took them back to Norway in his ship.
“What happened to the Fran?”, asks the First Mate.
“It seemed that it broke free from the ice near Svalbard”, I say, “And arrived back in Norway just a little bit after Nansen got there.”
“So what was the point of it all?”, she asks. “It all sounds a bit like a Boys’ Own adventure to me.”
“Well, according to the exhibition, it did confirm his theory that the ice cap is moving”, I say. “As well as providing a lot of other valuable scientific information on the oceanography of the Arctic Ocean, and on the flora and fauna of the Siberian coast and Franz Joseph Land. So not only adventure.”
We head back to the boat. Dinner time approaches.
“I think we can have tacos tonight”, says the First Mate. “We can heat up the shells in the toaster.”
I put the shells in the toaster, press down the lever, and go back to chopping the onions.
“Hey, there’s smoke coming out”, shouts the First Mate half a minute later. “And now flames.”
The smoke alarms in the boat go off with loud shrieks. Concerned people on the pontoon stop to look at the clouds of smoke now billowing out of the companionway. We open all the hatches to let more smoke out, and try and smother the toaster to stop the flames. It doesn’t work very well.
“Quick, put it under the tap”, I say, unplugging it.
We douse the toaster in water. Eventually the flames die down and the smoke stops. But not much is left of the toaster. Several of the plastic bits have melted, and the metal bits are warped and twisted.
“It must have been the oil on the taco shells”, I say. “As soon as it got to a certain temperature, it caught alight. I didn’t realise that a toaster could get so hot so quickly. When I am waiting for my toast in the morning, it seems to take forever and even then hardly browns the toast.
“At least it shows the smoke alarms work”, says the First Mate. “But we’ll have to buy a new toaster. That’s three appliances that have gone now.”
A few weeks earlier, she had put the base of the electric kettle onto the hot hotplate and melted it beyond repair. Not long after, our little fan heater had stopped working for reasons unknown.
“We’ll just have to buy some new ones tomorrow morning”, I say. “When the shops open.”
—-
After the shopping expedition the next day, we take the No. 40 bus to the Arctic University Museum of Norway, and spend a leisurely couple of hours absorbing information on the geology and natural history of the region, the northern lights, and Sami life, culture and politics.
We are astounded to learn that there are actually ten different Sámi languages, not just one. All are what are called Finno-Ugric languages, similar to Finnish and Hungarian, with a comparable structure and vocabulary, but are largely mutually unintelligible in the same way that Spanish and French are. North Sámi is the most widely spoken, but there are also South Sámi, Ume Sámi, Pite Sámi, Lule Sámi, Inari Sámi, Skolt Sámi, Kildin Sámi, Ter Sámi, and Akkala Sámi.
“Phew, it’s a lot of languages considering that there are only around 100,000 Sámi people”, says the First Mate. “It says that many of the languages only have 500 speakers or less. Ter Sámi only has two speakers.”
“At least there are efforts to try and revitalise some of the languages”, I say. “”After the disastrous policy of Norwegianization from the 1850s – 1960s where they tried to force the Sámi to become Norwegian. But it does make you think where to draw the line between actively trying to preserve a language and all the cost that that involves, and letting it take its natural course.”
“It’s easy to say that being a native English speaker”, she retorts. “But languages are part of people’s culture and identity, and reflect their different take on the way the world works. You would lose all that richness if we all spoke one language. And once you lose a language, it can’t be easily recreated. And besides, I read an article today that said that you slow your brain from ageing by learning more than one language.”
“I am not saying that we should all speak only one language”, I say. “I am all for learning a new language. I was just musing at what point you can’t do anything more to save a dying language. When the two Ter Sámi speakers die, for example, what are you going to do then?”
“I suppose the best way is to encourage people to be bilingual”, she says. “One global language like English, so that they can communicate wherever they go, and at least one local language to maintain the culture they come from. It’s largely what is happening already, particularly in Europe.”
We catch the bus back into the city centre and decide to have a coffee at the Backstube bakery.
“I found the bit about the young mammoth quite interesting”, says the First Mate, taking a slice of cheesecake.
She is referring to ‘Yuka’, a young male woolly mammoth who died 40,000 years ago and was discovered frozen in the ice in Siberia in 2012 by local hunters. The Museum has been involved in research extracting RNA from the remains, and has been able to deduce that he was under extreme stress at the time he died. This corresponds with scratch marks on his skin, suggesting he may have died from an encounter with cave lions.
“Yes, some of these new techniques are pretty amazing”, I say. “DNA shows what an organism is, but RNA can show what bodily processes were happening at the time it died.”
—-
We have been planning to hire a car and spend a week exploring Sápmi, the home of the Sámi people.
“You had better tell your readers that Sápmi is the traditional name for Lapland”, says the First Mate. “The name was changed because the people found the words Lapps and Lapland derogatory, as they had been imposed by outsiders and were sometimes used pejoratively.”
My phone pings. It’s a message from the car rental company saying that the car is ready and that we can collect it tonight, even though the rental period starts tomorrow.
“I’ll take the bus and go and collect it now”, I say. “That way we can set off earlier in the morning. We have quite a long journey in front of us.”
There is a bus leaving in five minutes which I manage to catch just in time. On the way, the bus stops. A herd of reindeer is crossing the road. One in particular is in no hurry, and cars are backed up behind it.
“There’s a law here in Norway that says that reindeer must not be unnecessarily disturbed or frightened”, a woman sitting opposite explains. “In practice that means that if you encounter a reindeer on the road that you should stop and allow it to cross at its own pace. They can be a bit unpredictable if they are hassled.”
Like some people, I think to myself.
Ruby Tuesday 
