This morning we entered Hornsund, the southernmost of the fjords on the west coast of Spitsbergen. It extends 20 miles inland, and branches off in several smaller fjords, all of them ending at impressive glacier fronts. Having cruised the main fjord and put the ship's nose onto the magnificent, crevassed glacier, we made a landing at Gn†lodden, a small coastal area under the towering bird cliff terminating the mountain ridge of Sofiakammen. Hornsund has been a major hunting area since the early whaler's days, from the beginning of the 17th century. Here British whalers would appear in the seasonal hunt for the Greenland bowhead whale. They were followed by the wave of Russian Pomor hunters, who had a couple of small stations throughout the 18th century. They in turn were replaced by Norwegian hunters in the mid-19th century. This presence, which gradually declined during the 20th century, saw the exodus of the last representative of this very special tribe of loners leave in 1972. His name was I.O. Ruud. We landed in shallow bay, mist swirling around the sheer bird cliff. A singing mountain indeed, where a high Arctic symphony is performed 24 hours a day. In a kind of harmony, the shrill calls of the kittiwakes ride on the grinding waves of background calls produced by the tuxedoed murres. Together they have taken on the responsibility of fertilizing the primitive soil, fanning out at the foot of the cliff, thus helping in making it an astoundingly rich site. Several species of the tiny Alpine flowers dot the green carpet of mosses and grass. Under some erratic boulders an Arctic fox has its home, right under its cupboard, the bird cliff itself. An old, tiny hut, wrapped in tarpaper to stop the winds from penetrating in between the simple plank walls, reigns the west side of the beach. A smart system of doors would likewise keep the freezing cold out, - and hopefully also help to stop intruding polar bears. These animals were the main prey for the Norwegian trappers, and Hornsund has long been a migration route for these magnificent animals as in the spring they leave the milder west side of Spitsbergen for the much colder east side.
Our first landing in Svalbard offered a wonderfully inviting picture of not only some of its flora and fauna: we also found ourselves face to face with quite a few aspects of the archipelago's human history.
