Textures of Longyearbyen

Over the last month, I've been collecting photos to try and capture some of my textural memories of living in Svalbard.  I have a lot of sweeping landscape photos, some decent wildlife shots and the occasional photo with friends.  But there is something missing in these big photos, which is a thing I actually spend a very large portion of my silent, internal time thinking about.  I like the way things feel and the way that they look like they feel.  The colors and the moods they impart, and the contact of different materials on one another: this is my real daily life, everywhere I go.  The patterns in surfaces that change depending on the lighting, the surprise of a pretty color on an ugly thing like a dumpster.  These are things that enter my dreams, and they have enough power to bother or delight me depending on whether I find their balance satisfying or not.  They are also the things that can bring a place back to my memory most strongly.  I might have a photo of the most beautiful view of the landscape, but it is always much smaller, more specific textural elements that can reintroduce my body to the memory of being there.  I won't know exactly what my memories of Svalbard will be until I leave and have to recall them, but I imagine that they will be things like the way the worn wood floor of our apartment feels through the cushioning layer of my house shoes, or the squeak of the wheels on the rusted old speedracks at work.  The obnoxious sound of snow-scooters.  Crunching snow.  The lichen and moss and reindeer skins.  All those fantastic Norwegian knit sweaters!  On babies in the crowded coffee shop full of wood chairs that knock into each other like sets of bulky building blocks.  I decided to try to collect a few of the specific impressions I could, things that I passed on my way to work or walking through town which I noticed and which made me feel that I like it here.  I want even more things in this collection that are impossible to capture: the creamy-white backs of the beluga whales that I spotted from our window the other day!  But this is a start.  Spring in the arctic, 2014.

Snow on tundra: Bjørndalen.

Rocks, ice and salt: Sjøområdet.

Shadows, mountains, moon.

Water, shadows, winter plumage (black guillemot; teist).

Rocks, ice.

Caitlin this one is for you!

Rocks/coal, plumage (Svalbard rock ptarmigan; svalbardrype), snow.

Flaking paint, rust, cargo straps.

Flaking paint, rust, snow.

Paint and rust (detail).

Paint and rust (detail).

Paint, rust, tire treads (detail).

Wood, antlers: Maryanns Polarrigg

Water, shadows, plumage (king eider; praktærfugl).

Corrugated steel, rust, snow: Gruve 2.

Weathered wood, coal: Gruve 2.

Weathered wood: Gruve 2.

Rocks, lichen, snow: Gruve 2.

Midnight sun through the curtains.

Ice, grit, and plastic netting.

Iron, salt and snow: steel plate

Icicles at sunset.

Icicles at sunset.

Wooden poles, ice, rocks, water, sunset.

Flaking paint, rusty chain, snow.

Corrugated siding, shadows, sunset.

Shipping pallets.

Snowplow blade.

Weathered wood, shadows, sunset: Svalbard Seilforening.

Weathered wood, rusty nails: Sjøområdet.

Half-pipe.

Ski trails.

Skooter tracks.

Skooter highway: aerial view from the footbridge.

Coal dust and dirt on canvas.

Meltwater stippling the snow on our front doorstep (another wooden shipping pallet).

Reindeer skins hanging to dry.

Asphalt siding on a ski-hut.

Antique track vehicle (rear view).

Antique track vehicle (front view).

Flaking paint and door handle: LNS Building.

Painted cement: Bakehuset.

Paint on brick: Bakehuset.

Bread, oats, stainless steel: Bakehuset, kl 6,00.

Bread (underside): Bakehuset, kl 6,00.

Flaking paint, cement, linoleum, grit: kjøleskap, Bakehuset.

Baked-on grease: Bakehuset

Baguette pans: Bakehuset.

Cake plates, shadows: Bakehuset.

Steam and grease on painted particle-board: ceiling, Bakehuset.

Grease, seeds, steel: bread plate, Bakehuset.

Snow on glass: Bakehuset.

Ice on glass: Bakehuset.

Ice pick, uniform: Bakehuset.

Stainless steel countertop: Bakehuset.

Chipped paint and grease stains: fryer, Bakehuset.

Green crate and shadows: Bakehuset.

Kurbadetbrød packaging, Bakehuset.

Button on the suede break couch: Bakehuset.

Granite and neon lighting: breakroom, Bakehuset.

Inside the office, outside the office: dirt, wood, and linoleum, Bakehuset.

Apron, pants: Bakehuset.

Meltwater flowing under a thin layer of ice.

Worn wood ceiling: Sjøområdet.

Cotton thread and polyester ripstop fabric: winter wardrobe.

Mars lys

Welcome back, daylight!  The sunrise/sunset cycle.  I love you.  I have to love you so hard before the sun just takes over the show completely for a while, very very soon.  Tyler reported auroras after a late night walk yesterday, but I think that might be the last of them...

That bright dot high in the sky is Jupiter, who has kept us company all winter long!

Our friend Nuno taught us a bunch of new functions on our dinky little handheld camera recently.  The above photos I took using the underwater function.  I wanted to get the nighttime colors right, and this seemed to cut through the dark, dark blueness to about the right degree.  The first and third are still a bit more washed out than they were in real life, and blurry or crooked because I had to balance them on things for the longer exposure, but I'm happy with the other two.  And we are so pleased to have all these surprising new settings to play with. Tyler kept exclaiming "It's like we have a whole new camera!"  Tusen takk, Nuno!

Here's me playing with the "toy camera" setting…

PS: The birds are back!  A few, the early birds… no worms to be had around here, though.

Oh, springtime.  Every year it hits me in the same way, with a buzz of energy and excitement that threatens to knock my little heart into overdrive, and then after about three days of thrill and anticipation I want to run back into a mini-dose of hibernation.  It can feel distressing when I hit the tipping point and want to do nothing but close the curtains on a rare and lovely day, but it seems to be part of my pattern: I just need a little break. And personally, I find the seasonal change near the poles actually more rapid and astonishing than seasonal change in my supposedly temperate home-climate of New England.  Yes, we still have snow and cold and see no end to that in sight though March is well underway, but the light!  No, the arctic is now awake: insistently, brightly awake.  Snow scooters roaring all day long and the sunset lingering on into the night.  I've been preparing my 5:30 am breakfast by natural daylight for a week now.  Tyler sleeps right through it, no annoying morning flashbulbs as the neon light below our counter pops alive.

So I take a little break from the day-time time and go on a later walk in the dusky light and feel calmed.  The days are so busy for everyone: work, tourists descending, certain foods suddenly scarce at the butikken, my norskklassekamerater can't find any time to finish their oppgave for the week.  Du er voksne, du bestemmer, my teacher says: you are adults, you decide.  We decide to be out of doors, not inside studying verbs…

We go to Barentsburg, where we eat soup with pork in it, and then take a tour of town during which a young Russian woman points out the barnyard: "Here is where we raise our pigs.  Is just normal life, nothing special, but is nice for us because we always have fresh meat."

We go around the other side of the bay and look at the old mining relics over there…

We go to the camp site out by the airport and wish for more birds to come soon…

We go to Templefjorden on an impossibly lovely day that was meant to be windy and cloudy, and eat peanut butter and jellies in the sunshine and feel like kings even though our toes are frozen.

Side story: our friend and guide for the day shared the history of this little shack, which was the home base of a Norwegian trapper for 10 years back in the early 1900's.  His first wife came up to spend the winter with him, and gave birth to her first child alone in there while he was three weeks away by dogsled in Barentsburg… give me a break, what a lot in life!

And we stop at a frozen waterfall on the way home.

Yesterday disappeared into an oblivion of chocolate peanut butter cake, in honor of Tyler's birthday…

…but today we were right back out there, admiring the frostrøyk* over the fjord.

*Frostrøyk literally translates to "frost smoke," and means the fog that steams up from
very cold water when the sun hits the surface.