During the night the weather changed from a few snow flurries to just downright snow. We awoke to the ship entering Bellsund. This two armed fjord is quite large in extent and pierces to the interior of Spitsbergen Island. The wind that came with the storm made anchoring quite difficult, so the bridge team got together and came up with another plan. Once a new anchorage was found that opened to the south, as the wind was from the north, the ship held and morning activities could begin. The low flat shingle beach didn’t look as though it held much promise, but once we arrived so did the reindeer. The wind had pushed them to the lee side of this peninsula as well. They were mostly young animals that were curious about us and came to investigate the strange colored bipedal mammals that had suddenly landed on their “turf.”
The Svalbard reindeer migrated away from Europe thousands of years ago, and once the ice retreated from northern Norway permanently they were stuck in Svalbard. Due to this isolation they have become the shortest (both in height and length) of all the reindeer populations. They have short noses and necks and thicker winter fur. They have adapted to the shorter floral growing season and long winters. They also don’t move in herds but small groups as the sparse vegetation will not support large numbers.
After warming up from our morning walks with a nice lunch the ship left the anchorage and toured the fjords to their ends and views of the glaciers were enjoyed before we moved out of Bellsund and on towards Longyearbyen.
