Just 10 km from the city center start our small adventure. We spend three days outside. Enjoying sun, eating a lot of cookies, jumping to keep warm bodies, sleeping with hot bottled inside our sleeping bag, and trying to understand how amazing, strength and raw is this landscape.
About 60% of Svalbard’s land area are glaciated, with an decreasing tendency because of climate change. Many chapters of earth history as well as a wide range of different rocks are represented in a relatively small area. This includes some fossil-rich sediments as well as minerals of economic interest, mostly coal. Near the west coast of Spitsbergen, the landscape is very alpine with pointed mountains, which gave Spitsbergen its name. Central, northern and eastern parts of Svalbard tend to be more wide and open, with plateau-shaped mountains.
