Hearts In The Ice Blog
News From BamsebuClimate technology and a beautiful day
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” ― Margaret Mead. As we celebrate Community this month- we celebrate the immense power people possess when they band together...
The light is back, but there is still no sea ice
“Borders, I have never seen one. But I hear they exist in the minds of some people” – Thor Heyerdahl - Life here can be thought of as chaos. It is surreal, dark, cold, expansive, harsh, barren, peaceful, magical and ever-changing. It is full of random polar...
OPERATION ETTRA
“The ancestor of every action is a thought” --- Ralph Waldo Emerson It’s a scene in almost every western movie. Cowboys huddled around the crackling fire at night, whiskey in one hand and smokes in another. Laughter, stories, a roast- catch of the day, sounds...
4 Polar Bear visits and a Polar Bear poop
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” - Einstein Pancake Ice Slowly, the pancake ice is starting to form in the fjord. Our shoreline delineated by a thick band of frozen...
Polar bear visits, hurricane, isolation and mental health
“Mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already accomplished and what one still ought to accomplish, the gap between what one is and what one should become. What man needs is not a tensionless state but rather a...
Ettra is coming home!
“Anything more wonderful than the polar night does not exist. It is a dream-like sight. It is a light poem of all the finest and most delicate tones of the soul.” Fridjof Nansen NEW BAMSEBU BLOG Advent and a time of waiting When we were children, this time before...
Two Polar Bears & two Polar Girls
“To seek solitude during the dark part of the year in Svalbard isn’t just about bidding farewell to civilization for several months. It’s first and foremost about daring to meet yourself. Only the bravest among us dare to do that” -- Arne O. Holm Its December and a...
Hello from Bamsebu – we are keeping the light on
“Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books” - John Lubbock The Use of Life One week at Bamsebu and this year could not be more different than...
Hello to all in our Hearts in the Ice community!
“The planet is facing a rapidly accelerating emergency, but it's not too late to act, says Christiana Figueres, architect of the historic 2015 Paris Agreement. "All of us start the transformation in one place — our mindset. This decade is a moment of choice unlike any...
Behind the scenes – the gang of six!
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to...
Beluga whales – the great comeback story!
Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farmworkers can become the president of a great nation. It...
Emotion triggers action – what motivates us to change?
I have no hidden talents, I am merely passionately curious. – Einstein So much has changed in how we engage with each other, the world around us and how we learn. Especially now with everything online as we spent our week in Longyearbyen on numerous hosted zoom calls...
Lost and found – and how Hilde won a trip to Greece
If you want to build a ship, then don’t drum up men to gather wood, give orders, and divide the work. Rather, teach them to yearn for the far and endless sea. – Saint Exupery How do you win a trip to Greece? Our 9km runs to the back side near Cap Fleur deLys and in...
The work we do
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essentials of life and not when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. H.D. Thoreau It’s been said that the greatest creative challenge is the struggle to be the architect of one’s own...
Our world of heartbeats!
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. – Margaret Mead We have been reflecting on the power of the word “community”. Both the community that we have created through Hearts in...
Intellectual flexibility – voices from the silence
I can’t hear what you are saying, what you do speaks so loudly. – Ralph Waldo Emerson Having a link to the “outside world” to communicate has been the cornerstone of Hearts in the Ice. Last July, two days before Sunniva left Canada for Svalbard she received the 2nd...
The other side of fear
Life here has been all about pattern disruption. The way we lived a year ago is worlds apart from the way we have lived here at Bamsebu for the past 9 months. There is no excess here. No excess distraction, no excess consumerism, no excess waste and no excess use of...
Newborn
Saturday May 2nd we rode our Lynx snowmobiles for 6 hours from Bamsebu to the town of Longyearbyen for a quick resupply of food, equipment, several interviews and a few meetings. Ettra running free with her head held high inhaling the fresh air, her bushy tail...
The Little Bear Cub
Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. Rachel Carson, “The Sense of Wonder” In February we shared...
Ordinary miracles – reflections from Bamsebu
“The sky knows when its’ time to snow, Don't need to teach a seed to grow. It's just another ordinary miracle today” - Sarah McLachlan Right now we all seem to be living on our own “little islands”. Communication in the virtual sense being nearly the only way to...
Recalibrating our compass
“March Madness” happens every year in North America as the best college NCAA basketball teams in the league battle it out. The spring equinox month in 2020 has given brand new meaning to the words “March Madness”. It is unfathomable to grasp what is really happening...
Expedition Behaviour – Wilderness is the great teacher!
The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers - Erich Fromm Wilderness is the great teacher. Our Arctic overwintering at Bamsebu has illuminated the depths of who we are; our strengths,...
Crisis = danger + opportunity
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom – Viktor Frankl From our tiny trappers cabin “Bamsebu” a storm is whipping around us with violent winds and snowdrifts...
Tribute to Helfrid Nøis
She’s a Lady, whoa, whoa, whoa, she’s a lady…. Talking about her…she’s a lady! Sung by the legendary Tom Jones How to turn a 1930 trappers’ cabin built for beluga hunting into a female friendly place? Simply put, it isn’t easy. The trappers' cabin “Bamsebu” was built...
What lies beneath
I am just going outside and I may be some time Captain Lawrence "Titus" Oates Oates was a member of the ill-fated Scott Expedition on the return journey from the South Pole who walked out of his tent… and into the white out! Remember what it was like to be a little...
Time to Light things up!
What is it that is so special about Svalbard? This is a question no doubt many people have asked, including the host for “Minutt for Minutt” Kari Toft. That show was slow TV showcasing all of Svalbard where they filmed us here at Bamsebu on Feb 8th. Really what is it...
Will you be our Valentine…?
”Slow down you move too fast, you’ve got to make the morning last…. “ Simon and Garfunkel Finally, a day without a lot of wind. Time stands in complete peaceful, stillness at Bamsebu. It’s almost an eerie stillness when the hut is not shaking. It makes us pause long...
What in the world are we “feeding” ourselves?
In the 5 months since we have here we have seized every opportunity to celebrate. Celebration is at the core of who we both are - we love to engage with the milestones and to find some small ways to wrap our arms around anything special; our first polar bear sighting,...
Leadership
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes - Marcel Proulx One of our main goals here at Bamsebu is to “live the experience.” To be in it, fully immersed and live to tell about it. We can proclaim with 100% certainty -...
Stand by me – in the polar night
When the night has come, and the land is dark and the moon is the only light we’ll see. No, I won’t be afraid, oh I won’t be afraid, Just as long, as you stand, by me… Ben.E.King The last time we closed our eyes and tried to walk in total darkness was in Sept 2018 on...
All we need is love
A hurricane storm is raging with wildness outside, winds gusting over 30 m/s which is close to 60 mph-120km/hr. Force 11 on the Beaufort scale. So powerful it keeps us inside and behind the 90-year old wooden walls as it thunders and shakes inside Bamsebu. The cold...
Where can we find silence and quiet?
Where do we actually find peace of mind? Open spaces in the Arctic and specifically right here at Bamsebu (77.55 latitude/15.06 longitude) are a geography of possibility. With the advent of technology and accelerated speeds at which we can literally “connect” with...
What’s under your bed? Insights to life on 20 sqm
It’s a very real and true fact for us here at Bamsebu that we can find almost anything and everything we need right under our beds. For those that have lived in a van, any sort of tiny living or had their most coveted items nearby and underneath - you can relate to...
Tribute to the curiosity of the early pioneers!
In the north are quivering arches of faint aurora, trembling now like awakening longings, but presently, as if at the touch of a magic wand, to storm as streams of light through the dark blue of heaven-never at peace, restless as the very soul of man - Fridtjof Nansen...
Time
50 plus years of preparation? Maybe we can say it like that. Seems like everything we have done in our lives, up until now, has prepared us in one way or another for this life at the “edge”. All of our skills developed and experiences gained over time that is...
Dark Friday – and the only thing we need is fresh air
Its dark here at Bamsebu - our 20sq mtr trappers cabin. The little bit of light we do have we run outside to capture with our camera, our beings and our senses. Black Friday means something entirely different here as we are in the long polar night. A night where...
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