We went to the Norwegian Polar Institute today to check equipment, to get the survival suits and to hire the rifles. We had a shooting exercise at the shooting range, supervised by the Norwegian Polar Institute. It’s good to see that all of us were able to handle the guns and get remarkably good results for geologists who are used to hammers and not guns. I just hope we will not have use for it and only meet ”peaceful” polar bears.

Shooting exercise in Longyearbyen. Photo: Henning Lorenz

In the late afternoon M/S Farm returned to Longyearbyen from Danskøya (north-western Svalbard) with another SWEDARCTIC expedition, and we could load a large part of our equipment. Thanks again to the Norwegian Polar Institute’s personnel – your help was really great! We discovered also that there were no fuel cans for the Zodiacs. But the ship’s captain helped out ”No problem, I’ll fix it this evening”.

Group photo in front of M/S Farm.

Now everything is under control, we met a few colleagues over dinner and are now back in the hotel. Tomorrow the taxi will pick us up at 8 in the morning and we will leave for Prins Karls Forland. It can take some time before the next update about the NOA-Svalbard expedition.

Henning Lorenz, Uppsala universitet