Beauty and danger co-exist in a frozen landscape with a very uncertain future, writes DEBORAH WARNER
I’VE BEEN back for five weeks, but I can’t get Spitsbergen out of my head. It doesn’t much matter if I’m awake or asleep; I’m in thrall to a realm of ice.
In Hans Christian Anderson’s story The Snow Queen, Kay becomes bewitched when a shard of ice lodges in his eye. I’ve returned with a kaleidoscope of ice in mine.
Two weeks ago the Svalbard archipelago was flooded in the impossibly bright light of a late Arctic summer; now it’s covered in 24-hour dark. For the next five months the secrets of the ice will belong to the Arctic fox, the polar bear and the tiny handful of scientists over-wintering in those impossibly harsh conditions.
Once again, the animals will prepare their winter quarters, unaware of the huge fears surrounding just how much ice there will be next year. The Arctic report issued last week by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration states clearly and simply: “Return to previous conditions in the Arctic is unlikely.”
This year, when the Arctic fox changed his dark summer coat for his winter white (as he has done for millennia), he found himself ahead of the snows.
Pathetically exposed against dark, ice-free rock, we saw him hunting in the wrong camouflage.
The terrifying boom, crack and thunderous roar of melting and collapsing glaciers will continue for a few months, witnessed only by those creatures on the front line.
I’m haunted by a memory of light, space and silence, which seems almost surreal in the crowdedness of city life.
Memories of the beauty of a huge theatre of ice – the Monacobreen glacier – where everything is reflection and mirror and facet and glint, combine with a darker memory of an afternoon when the ice showed us its power, overwhelming our boat for a bright and terrifying hour and very nearly making us just another statistic in the history of Arctic exploration.
This was Cape Farewell’s ninth expedition, and its fourth to the high Arctic. Funded by the arts council of Great Britain, Cape Farewell takes artists to the Arctic in the hope they may engage with climate change and find a way to communicate its story. Antony Gormley, Ian McEwan and KT Tunstall are just a few of those in whose steps we trod.
Our plan had been to sail around Svalbard, but an unexpected amount of loose sea ice blocked our way.
Our ship, The Noorerlicht, a 100-year-old schooner with some ice-breaking capabilities, took shelter when she needed to. On the day in question we had sheltered in a bay until the afternoon when we ventured forth into the icy channel.
We’d grown used to pushing, grinding and splicing our way through ice, but this time the strange sea symphony sounded more savage. We could feel that in the icy waters below, the struggle was of a different nature than before.
All about us the sea resembled a giant jigsaw of floating icebergs longing for connection. It should have been a warning.
After an hour of sailing, suddenly, as if on command, the ice closed around us. The sea had turned to land and we were held in an ice fist. With no control of the boat; the ice was carrying us on its journey.
I was in the galley when our captain made the SOS call:
Hello – yes, Captain here
(Silence)
Not so good
(Silence)
We’re stuck in the ice and drifting towards some rocks
(Silence)
Danger – about 0.2 nautical miles
The emergency helicopter was dispatched from Longyearbyen, 1½ hours’ flight away, and we were told to put on as many layers as we could, ready to be airlifted from the deck.
Suddenly the rocks that few of us had noticed to our starboard seemed very near. The ship looked like the Fram. We looked like the Michelin man.
I stood on deck, marvelling at the beauty and deathly nature of it all, and it was then that I noticed, out in the white desert, something moving towards us – a polar bear.
There he was, the most deadly animal on earth, ambling towards us across the ice. Every now and again he would stop to lift his nose to smell the strangeness of us and our world, and his long black tongue would lick out at the sides of his mouth. He walked sideways, utterly confident, the top of the food chain on his way.
We had two guns on board – they had accompanied us on every walk – but we had other problems, we were about to be shipwrecked.
The helicopter was now 45 minutes away and it had been established that the nearest boat was a staggering 22 hours away.
The bear walked around our hull, all cameras and no guns trained on him, yawned extravagantly and lay down in the snow.
He had time to wait.
Suddenly the ice released its grip, the ship found clear water, and very slowly she began to move.
I heard the captain’s last emergency call:
Yes
(Silence)
We’re clear now
(Silence)
Yes, it was a close shave
I should say.
Visiting Dublin a few weeks back, I found myself drawn to the Arctic book displays in the wonderful Chapters bookshop.
Like Kay, I’m not the same creature that went away, and I’m unable to resist my fix. I’ve started to see things differently and, hopefully, more clearly.
We were trespassing in Eden, yes, but we had gone with a purpose. Whatever the rest of the world is to experience in climate change, the Arctic will experience it first. It is a unique, deeply inspiring, fragile and threatened place that is the first to pay the price for us having lived like gods on borrowed time. The lesson of the trip is all too clear: time’s up.