Islands way up north

In today’s episode I talk about the northern islands Jan Mayen and Svalbard. These islands are so far removed from most of our lives — and I find them fascinating. Find out why in this nine-minute trip north of the Arctic Circle.

Listen on Podbean:

Listen on YouTube:

Notes:

See today’s weather forecast for Jan Mayen.

Here’s a site about Jan Mayen, with the Lord Dufferin quote.

And here’s another page about Jan Mayen.

Learn about the Global Seed Vault.

Music: Jens East — Daybreak (ft. Henk): www.soundcloud.com/jenseast
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution V4.0

Transcription (remember, this is a direct transcription of what I said and is not actually how I write!):

Welcome to 9 Minutes of Wonder. I’m Betsy Hedberg. I hope this podcast will help you rekindle your sense of wonder for this awe-inspiring world. If you like what you hear in the next few minutes, please subscribe and share.

One of the weird things I like to do in my free time is go into Google Earth and spin the globe and see where I end up. And I sometimes end up in very interesting places.

I’m really drawn to remote places like the little Norwegian island of Jan Mayen in the Arctic Ocean. And Arctic places like this I find very awe-inspiring because they’re so remote, they’re cold and dark, but people live there. Not on every island in the Arctic Ocean, but on many of them.

And of course, animals can survive up there. And it’s just, it seems so far away and so remote. It fills me with wonder.

I’m recording this episode on December 5th. I just checked the sunrise on Jan Mayen, and it will happen at 1:16 PM on January 22nd. And the sun will stay above the horizon for about 56 minutes.

So it’s dark there. And the 18 people who are wintering there may be excited to see the sunrise, except they probably won’t see it because it will almost certainly be cloudy when it actually does come above the horizon. So there’s something about that in and of itself that inspires wonder in me, hopefully in you too.

This is a small volcanic island. It’s about 55 kilometers long and it’s 550 kilometers north of Iceland and 450 kilometers east of Greenland, which are also kind of remote places, especially Greenland, right? For most of us, it’s just way far north. It has a volcano, which looks pretty big.

I mean, it’s not a big island, but the volcano looks like it’s a pretty good size. And it’s the northernmost active volcano in the world. The only people who live there work for either the Norwegian military or the Norwegian Meteorological Institute.

And these 18 people spend their winters there. And it’s also a nature reserve, but it doesn’t have any tourism. So again, it’s like 18 people and then some more people come over the summer, but 18 people, hardy people, are there over the winter.

And the average high in the warmest month, which is August, is 7.9 degrees Celsius or 46.2 degrees Fahrenheit. The average high in the coldest month, which is March, is minus 1.6 Celsius or 29.1 degrees Fahrenheit. So enough for the statistics, but this gives you a sense hopefully of this wonderfully remote and freezing cold and dark island.

Now, why does this place inspire me? Or why do places like this in general inspire me? First of all, I think there’s a good chance that you’ve never heard of this island. I have looked at the map and globe so many times, and I actually hadn’t heard of this island until I spun Google Earth a short time ago. It’s like with all the places that I’m familiar with and all the things I’ve heard about, I can get jaded.

But no, this is a place I had never heard of. So there’s something really cool about that. It’s hard to imagine being there, let alone living there, isn’t it? I find it very awe-inspiring to think about spending a winter in a place like that.

But it’s also so beautiful. You should look up some pictures. And I’m going to read a short quote by a guy named Lord Dufferin, who was a Victorian British public servant and high society man.

He wrote about his approach to the island of Jan Mayen in 1856. Here’s what he wrote:

“A few minutes more, and slowly, silently, in a manner you could take no count of, its high dusky hem first deepened to a violet tinge. Then, gradually lifting, displayed a long line of coast. In reality, but the roots of Berenberg dyed of the darkest purple. While obedient to a common impulse, the clouds that wrapped its summit gently disengaged themselves and left the mountain standing in all the magnificence of his 6,870 feet girdled by a single zone of pearly vapor from underneath, whose floating folds seven enormous glaciers rolled down into the sea.”

So he was awestruck too. Now, a bit farther north is another, much larger, island called Svalbard. It’s actually an archipelago, not a single island.

And you may have heard of this place. It’s actually got some tourism there. And if you want to go see walruses, I’ve heard this is the best place in the world to go.

I would love to do that sometime. So Svalbard is an archipelago that’s also a part of Norway. And it’s 60% covered by glaciers, at least for now.

So take a moment and imagine that. It’s also got mountains and fjords, a lot of seabirds, seven national parks, and 23 nature reserves covering two-thirds of the archipelago. And there’s a, it’s also got a really colorful history that you can read about online if you want to.

If you go and look up Svalbard, be sure to look for photos of the twilight when the sun is not, it’s not above the horizon, but it’s like it’s just set or just about to rise or however you want to put it. It’s, they’re just beautiful.

A couple more awe-inspiring things about Svalbard are, first of all, it’s got this place called the Arctic World Archive. At the Arctic World Archive, they store data from several countries or from several countries’ governments and all of GitHub’s open-source code. And they store this data offline on film. And this is for the long-term future. In case of an apocalypse, even a nuclear apocalypse, this film could survive. It’s in a converted mine shaft, 250 meters or 820 feet below the permafrost. So take a minute and let that sink in.

It’s a good idea to store data in this way, I think. And in a place where, yeah, the climate is changing pretty quickly, but it’s, I guess there’s still a pretty long time until then, hopefully.

Another thing on Svalbard, even more exciting for me, is a converted mine shaft that is now the Global Seed Vault. And I’m going to do another episode where I talk more about this, but seeds are stored from around the world in case they get lost. They’re primarily seeds used for agriculture and of great significance and importance to the world’s food supply and to various countries’ agricultural sector.

So besides all this interesting stuff, all these factoids, the spectacular scenery, the long-term storage, the abundance of wildlife, why should anyone care about places like Jan Mayen and Svalbard? Why should you care?

I love this quote by Albert Einstein, who said, “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and science.”

And these islands are mysterious, aren’t they? At least they’re mysterious to me, and I assume to you as well. If we lived there, we would probably find the natural features and maybe even the weather to be awe-inspiring, although many things would become mundane, of course, and probably annoying over time, maybe over not too much time, especially in the winter.

From a distance, you can imagine these natural features or look at photos and videos, but you can also simply look at Google Earth or a map or globe from a really high level and contemplate how removed these islands are from your everyday life. For me, that instills a sense of mystery, which I like a lot.

And, you know, sometimes for me that’s enough. Sometimes I don’t need all the details. I just like to stay in that zone of mystery, knowing that places like this exist way up north somewhere. And since I’ve explored these islands and will probably never make it up there, or definitely not to Jan Mayen, they can remain a part of my fantasy life for the time being, and there’s something really wonderful about that.

And I think we all need more of that fantasy life to counter the mundane practicalities of our normal lives. So I invite you to take a few moments today and think about all these places way up north, or maybe way down south, or maybe in other parts of the world that you have never even heard of or you never think about. And I certainly find these places so fascinating that I’ll talk more about them in the future.

Okay, that’s all for today. See you next time.

 

 

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