Yesterday, in the early evening, the polar bear came back. Three of us were enjoying a nap while I thought that there was something around the house which is more than the wind. Shortly after there was a more than decent knocking at the front door.

Majek stated, while jumping up from the bed, that he can see a polar bear ass through the window, so the head must be at the front door. Fortunately, this bear isn’t well accustomed with humans and it went off as soon as it heard our noise. Chasing it off with a couple of flash-bangs from the signal guns we could this time watch it while it continued it’s walk southwards, away from Hyttevika. Two sunny hours in the evening I used for photography, otherwise this comparatively nice day was wasted with waiting while nothing happened.

The rain started in the night and will, according to the weather forecast, continue until tomorrow noon. But we couldn’t stand another day in the cottage and went for a walk around Gulliksenfjellet, to see the Eimfjellet Group rocks and get some ”unplanned” samples from, probably, meta-rhyolites for zircon dating. We return after five hours in the rain – pretty wet but less bored than during the last days…

The weather and sea tomorrow will decide how we will get to the Polish station – presently, it does not look to good for boating.

Henning Lorenz, Uppsala University