The sound kind of creeps up on you. Pretty much like climate change. You think it’s all quiet walking along stranded icebergs on Svalbard. But then you hear it in the Arctic silence: the discreet crackling of old air, millions of years old, that is freed from the melting ice and released into a new world.
But more of the melting ice later. Every story has a beginning, and our story starts in Tromsø, Norway.
We were just a tiny white speck in all the blue. Behind us, mainland Norway slowly sank into the sea. Ahead of us lay adventure and the Barents Sea. We were heading for Svalbard on Isbjørn, a Swan 48 from 1972, and the usual three layers of wool were down below. We were sweating away in t-shirts and shorts. I know that weather is not the same as climate, but when you have to put on shorts and massive amounts of sunscreen above 69° north in May, the chances are that something’s wrong. The climate is changing fast, and even faster in the Arctic.
THE SEA MONSTER
Some 110 miles south of Bear Island a monster appears on the horizon. In the middle of flocks of kittiwakes, fulmars, whales, and other life-giving creatures, a giant structure and ships stand out. It is an oil platform named after a politician that stood on the side of the not-so-fortunate. Johan Castberg (1862-1926) was a very influential Norwegian politician for the
