Under Power In The Frozen North

A one-month circumnavigation of the Svalbard archipelago.

- Steve D’Antonio

Migration’s stainless steel-clad stem came to rest gently against the polar ice pack, a mere 520 miles from the North Pole. To memorialize the moment, I photographed the GPS display’s latitude readout: 81° 27.7’ N. The crew shared a round of congratulations and posed for a photo on the bow, it being that much closer to the pole. While there were leads that would allow us to venture further north, the vessel’s master and crew agreed that we would go no further; we were confident we had set a record for the highest northern latitude achieved by a fiberglass power vessel, and would ask no more. With a fiberglass hull, regardless of its heft, we were tempting fate amid this much ice. Shortly after turning about and pointing our bow southward, however, our jubilation turned to dread as it became obvious that our plan was flawed: The path we took through the ice was no longer there. The leads, as they are wont to do, had closed.

The Svalbard archipelago is a land of extremes — extreme cold, extreme light and extreme darkness. During our month-long passage, the sun never set, while in mid winter it never rises. The archipelago carries a host of “the northernmost” superlatives: continuously inhabited civilian settlement, post office, railroad, chain hotel (a Radisson with excellent Wi-Fi, thanks to an undersea fiber optic cable used to relay satellite data to the mainland; Svalbard boasts outstanding Internet connectivity), supermarket, phone booth, coal mine, etc.