Warriorbern on the Move

Another night of sunlight ... I think I am over it now! I need darkness to sleep properly and felt like a bit of a zombie when I got up. Today we went looking for polar bears again as well as foxes but had no luck with either. It was a beautiful day again with just a light breeze blowing and full sunshine. We saw quite a lot of reindeer and went to the museum. The museum was really interesting. It had a section on the early explorers with some of their equipment and clothing. It is amazing how those men survived (some not) with such inadequate gear. After the museum we watched the coast guard ship come through the broken ice and then went for coffee and cake before returning home.   The Longyearbyen church   The flying ambulance   Reindeer eating   More reindeer eating   Sleeping reindeer   Ice water and mountains   The global seed bank   Probably the only polar bear I will see - the stuffed one at the museum   The entrance to the university ...

Yesterday we flew from Trondheim to Svalbard via Oslo. There was an eight hour stopover in Oslo so we were able to do a bit of sight-seeing of the capital city of Norway. I really wanted to see the Viking ship museum so that was our first stop.   The Viking Ship Museum   Viking shoes   Carving on the ship's prow The first hall This museum has 2 complete ships and 1 partial ship. All had been discovered buried and were thought to have been used as burial ships of high status ladies and of chieftains. It was amazing to see how big the ships were and also how basic they were. There were no seats in the ship and oarsmen were expected to sit on their sea chests. They also had no shelter on the ship and were exposed to the elements around them. From the Viking ship museum, we walked to the Kon-Tiki Museum which houses a papyrus raft and a balsa wood raft. These two vessels were used to prove that the more "primitive" people of the world were able to travel much further than ...