Last night-shift at work here in Iceland and then I will be going "home" again ;0)

On Wednesday I will fly to Svalbard and board the cruise-ship MV Fram, as I have done the last summers. I will be working as a guide and lecturer on our way from Svalbard, down along the coast of NE-Greenland and over to Iceland, where my 15 days journey will end on September 8th, in Reykjavik.

Very little sea-ice on the NE-Greenland coast this year, but it has also been a very warm summer...

The satellite photo is from 21. august 2016

 

 

NE Greenland again

Tomorrow i will once again be working my way to Greenland and Iceland as a guide onboard The Mv Fram.
The Ice is quite heavy no The Greenland coast, so we will see what we can ;)

Station Nord

Tomorrow, Sunday May 3rd I will travel to Station Nord at 81.36 North.
I will stay there together with 13 scientists for the next 3 1/2 weeks. My job is to provide the logistics for the researchers. It will be a welcoming break from my normal work days as a Geologist on Svalbard ;)

Communication to and from the station will be almost zero, due to the remote location.

Station Nord is a Danish military base, manned by 5 men year round. Their work is to keep the 1800 m long runway open and to provide support for the Sirius sledge patrol.

Last summer a new research station was built. Every piece of building material was flown in from Svalbard. The name of the station is the Villum Research Station (VRS).

The first flight to Station Nord was today, with the first batch of scientists and cargo, but due to sudden fog in Greenland, they had to return to Svalbard. There will hopefully be an other go tonight...

Station Nord og Villum Fonden

Wednesday I was very Lucky to "hitch-hike" With a plane from Longyearbyen to Station Nord (81.36 N) in NE-Greenland.
The weather on Svalbard was not so great, but in Greenland it was fantastic as always ;0)
I spent 8-9 hours there and even met good old friends and had a great time. It was good to see the station area. The last time I was here was early March 2005 and late April 2006. At that time it was -40 degrees Celsius and meters of snow everywhere.

At the moment 250 tons of materials have been air-lifted from Longyearbyen to Station Nord. This will then be put together for the NeXT six weeks, forming the Villum Research Station at Station Nord.

Med-evac from Daneborg

This Morning a Twin Otter from Iceland flew to Daneborg, to evacuate a man with broken lims.
The plane will then return to Akureyri.

Flying at this time of the year is can be very difficult due to no day-light and bad weather!


Twin Otter on the way to Daneborg

TWO

A TWO (Twin Otter) from the Icelandic company Flugfelag Islands made it on a Greenlandic stamp :D

The hut in the back-ground is Kap Morris Jesup, the Northern most land in the world, 83 N

Getting ready...

Tomorrow I will start my summer vacation by working as a lecturer and guide on a cruise-ship going to NE-Greenland and Iceland.

http://www.hurtigruten.co.uk/explorer-voyages/Greenland/Voyages/national-park-expedition/


A large Search and rescue exercise is ongoing in the fjords of NE-Greenland these days, but will be finished before we reach the coast of Greenland.. There are a lot of people, planes and ships from several nations involved in the exercise. Unfortunately the weather is quite bad at the moment. Hopefully this will change before I come over there.

Below you will find two links to the exercise, one in Icelandic and one in Danish.
http://www.lhg.is/frettirogutgafa/frettir/
http://sermitsiaq.ag/emne/sarex-2013

Internet connection on my ship will be challenging, so it might be difficult to post on the blog...

Kap Mæchel in Alpefjord

News from Jytte

Yesterday my father called from Dicksonsfjord. Since arriving in Greenland the weather has been extremely good. Only sun shine and temperatures between 18-24 degrees.
They walked up to the mountain Bastionen on Ella Ø, 1367 m in the best weather ever.
Most of the fjord ice has disappeared and they have even seen a polar bear. 10 years ago it was very unusual to meet bears in the summer, but as there is getting less and less sea ice the bears get stranded on land...

Jytte at Ella Ø, taken a few days ago by my Davið, my pilot friend at Norlandair

Departure

Today my father and friends left Nyhavn with Jytte. They will stay in the inner parts of the fjords.
The weather is great and most of the sea-ice has disappeared...

Mestersvig area 23. July

A link to tide water has been added to the right

Status of the Malmbjerget deposit

Malmbjerget report

Kolossen and the camp at Sorte Hjørne, photo from KGHM webpage

My father is in Mestersvig

Today my father and four friends flew from Akureyri to Mestersvig via Constable Point, in a Twin Otter (TWO) from Norlandair.

Mestersvig today, 18th of July

They will be staying there until the 25th of August and sail around in the fjord and enjoy life, far away from the stressful normal day-life at home.
Here there will be no mobile phones, no internet, no tv, no shops and only a handful of other people. This is paradise, at least for the next five weeks.
They will be sailing around with our boat Jytte. The boat has not been in use for 6 years, so it is about time. There will be some work to get it into ship-shape and put her into the water, but that is all fun work :D

Our boat Jytte

75 mill til ny forskningsstation på Station Nord

75 mill til ny forskningsstation på Station Nord

Nye forskningsstationer i NØG

Nye forskningsstationer i NØG

This could be a good idea to do on MVG, DNB, DMH and Nord

Mini drones for mapping

PR video of the Sirius Sled patrol

PR video of the Sirius Sled patrol

A video about the incident in Wulff Land

SH4 i Wulff Land

Unfortunately only in Danish

A sad day...RIP

Friday was a sad day for patrol nr. 4 from the Sirius patrol. They got caught in an avalanche and lost 8 of their 12 dogs and some of their equipment. They got evacuated by a TWO from Iceland. It took the plane 28 hours to reach them, as the distance was around 2000 km...

links below in Danish and Icelandic
http://www2.forsvaret.dk/nyheder/nationale_opgaver/Pages/Fupperevakueret.aspx

http://www.n4.is/news/islendingar-bjarga-donskum-hermonnum-i-haska-a-graenlandi/

It is VERY GOOD to have Icelandic friends flying in one of the most harshest parts of the world, always willing to come to your aid :D

SH4 after being recued by Raggi and Eggi at Station Nord

SH4 caught in the avalanche

Day 14, Reykjavík

A bit delayed I have now managed to post the last day of my trip ;0)
We arrived in the early morning on September 19th at the pier in Reykjavík. The weather was still GREAT, sunny, no wind and around 7 degrees. Most of our passengers went a shore here, but one passenger decided to continue on the next trip to Bergen in Western Norway.
My girlfriend, Anna came on board and had breakfast with us. We brought a dog sledge with us from Greenland which my father had built in 1964 when he was at SIRIUS and later on the sledge was modified and used to transport us children after a snow scooter when we lived in Mestersvig, 1975-78. The sledge was taken apart and stuffed into our small Golf (long sledge!!!) and we drove it to our garage at our apartment in Seltjarnarnes. Here it will be stored until we one day return to Iceland. It will then be refurbished and painted and brought into the living-room where it will serve as a nostalgic icon of my familys´ time in Greenland and as a couch.

We will now stay in Iceland, having vacation until the 28th and then it´s more or less back to work.

The blogg will be updated with photographs as soon as I get the pictures sorted and then the blog will be more or less dead until I go to Greenland again (most likely next year ;0))

Thank you for following my blogg :D

my other blogg, www.bjarki-iceland.bloggspot.com   will off course be updated

Northern lights over Reykjavík

Day 13, Grundafjörður

Early in the morning we sailed into the harbour of the small fishing village of Grundafjörður on the Snæfellsnes peninsula. The sun was shining and only a few clouds covered the strato-volcano, Snæfellsjökull.
During the day different groups on the ship departed on boat tour from the picturesque fishing village of Stykkishólmur and different bus excursions around the peninsula. The weather was GREAT all day long with no wind and beautiful warm sun. What a fantastic end to a magnificent journey from Svalbard along the coast of NE Greenland ending in Iceland.

To night we sail southwards to Reykjavík, the capital of Iceland where our guests and some of our guides will disembark and a new journey will begin...