The tourist boat

- Then I had a week on board Polar Star, with these Swedish guys, hehe. And we were around Danskeøya and Kvitøya, saw it all. The boat was full of history. There were sailors from Hareid and those areas there who were on board. The captain was Johan Holstad, and his son was on board, and they were fantastic people. My first trip, very special, it can't be explained.

It was the then company Svalbard Polar Travel that had the Polar StarThe ship sailed its first season with tourists in 1990 and in a way paved the way for the new tourism industry. While the smaller boats that had been carrying visitors had mostly stayed in the vicinity of Longyearbyen, tourists could now go around the entire archipelago. The phantom ship, they said about Polar Star.

Anna Lena Ekeblad returned home after her intense summer fling with one goal, and one goal alone: ​​To get a job in Svalbard. The following summer she scraped together what money she had to get another trip with Polar Star. This time Audun Gården was skippered and accompanied by Swedish ornithologists. So then she spent a week in the Krossfjord with them and watched birds before they were picked up Polar Star and took the same tour around as the year before.

– At that time I had no relation to it, so everything was normal. Now I understand what enormous distances we went. Up to the northwest corner, and down Hinlopen and over to Kvitøya, and from Kvitøya to Karl 12-øya. All those islands are closed today. Then we went down into Storfjorden, what is called the Freemannsøerna, we took both Barentsøy and Edgeøya and around Sørkapp. And I was weighed early one morning at a place called Sanmarinvågen, that is precisely below Hornsundstind, one of the narrowest, small fjords in Hornsund. Fantastic! I who came from Skåne, had hardly seen a mountain over 50 meters. Then I was weighed by one of the crew. Now you have to get up! he said, in this Sunnmøre dialect. Otherwise you will regret it for the rest of your life! So I had to go out on deck and look. And it was so fantastically beautiful. Glaciers and high mountains. I saw all that in the first week, I was completely exhausted.

But work up north was difficult. Anna Lena moved to Kiruna and trained as an Arctic guide, had a stopover on a killer whale safari in Narvik, got a guide assignment on a smaller boat in Longyearbyen in 1995, before she landed her dream job as a guide on Polar Star The last season the ship sailed with tourists was in 1997.

– There were such hardhouses for crew. It was all places you went to where there might not have been that many people before. Today they have slightly larger boats,
a little tougher engines. But then we crawled ashore on rocks, on the east side, and didn't really know where we were, and of course trusted the crew and the captain. It was fantastically exciting. You almost crawled ashore with the ship, with a plumb line in front to find out where you could be. So it was aground at some point.

– And cramped cabins?

– Yes, terrible. I saw before me that I would have to change, I bought below deck and thought I would fix it, and then we came on board and saw – no, there was nothing above deck. Terrible. And they had to go into the cabin and open the hatches when we were going to anchor.

But that was the charm for her. The lack of salt and strong ship food, the smell of oil and stench. And being able to go ashore anywhere.

– I know many people who didn't think it was anything at all, eating dry crispbread and just fish, and the smell of cod liver oil, it probably smelled a bit strange. But I just think it was absolutely fantastic.

When they also encountered both polar bears and walruses, she could hardly have wished for more. Later, she says, she realized how skilled the crew was in finding these bears. That the animals weren't just lying there waiting for them.

She had no problem with the rough male culture.

– As a young and blonde you were a little extra lifted, got a little extra fun, could sit on the bridge without any problems, could absorb knowledge, stories. That was the main advantage really. We all had a shower to share. But it was kind of nothing. We were three ladies sharing a cabin. There were only Swedes.

Anna Lena Ekeblad stayed in Svalbard, as a guide and museum worker. She has thought a lot about Polar Star – and a person she has never met, but admires so much: Else Karlsen.

– She became like a queen before me. I have never met her, have had contact, but never met her. But she is like a queen figure, a role model. A woman who owns an Arctic ship! So big! And everyone who has ever talked about her, met her, has such respect for her, almost reverence. When Else's name was mentioned, people automatically straightened their backs. In reverence and respect.

Anna Lena misses Polar StarIn her boxes, she has saved all the flyers and brochures from that time.

– There will come a day when Polar Star I'll be back. I love that boat.

"While MS Polar Star always striving forward, the three strived sometimes in vain. A kilometer forward on the ice could be five kilometers backwards in reality due to the ocean currents.

We eat well on our boat. Schnitzel brown sauce, vegetables, Coca-Cola, beer or meal drink, jello and custard, the same day that the three of them ate raw bear kidney with salt a hundred years ago.

'Smakar förträffligt', wrote Andreé who decided that they should eat the bear meat raw as a change. Perhaps in itself a death sentence since the three may have died from trichinosis in the polar bear meat.”

The Swedish journalist mentioned Polar Star a bit original like the "self-fishing boat". The passengers should have no illusions about the standard on board, even if they had paid 20,000 Norwegian kroner for the trip: "The journey was called kryssning och participants hade nog läggät sig a higher standard. If you live on a boat of that kind, the hostel standard applies. Our wooden cabin was cramped and required me to have gymnastic skills when I had to lie down. But the crew was very nice and the food very good, as if you were at sea."

Wiik had immediately noticed the strong ties that existed between the ship and its crew on the one hand and the people of Longyearbyen and Ny-Ålesund on the other. There was no doubt how much the permanent residents valued that Polar Star was back: Coming aboard the ship to have a chat and have a cup of coffee is popular with both crew and permanent residents, wrote Wiik.

The main advantage of the ship, he said, was that there was room for few passengers. This created a good relationship between them and the crew:

"On some trips it can feel like a big family. A trip to the wheelhouse to talk to the skipper or a trip to the galley to inspect the day's lunch (and warm up a bit) is a natural part of everyday life on board. Passengers also feel extra safe when they hear that skipper Johan Holstad has been in Svalbard waters for about 25 years…

As on all other boats, food is an important part of the well-being on board. Hot dishes for all meals and a varied breakfast and lunch table are therefore a break and a gathering that many look forward to when you have been on deck for many hours, or come from land and are full of impressions and experiences. It is also fun as a steward to feel that the food is really appreciated, and that passengers after meals and the end of the trip take you and the rest of the crew by the hand and thank you for the good food. This comes in handy when you work intensively, often more than 12 hours a day…

... Polar Star is an old ship, but despite modernization has retained its old charm. The white-painted hull with the 'old lines', which slowly glides forward on a sunny summer night, gives a feeling of being on a ship that is an integral part of nature here far to the north. You also get to experience the forces that are needed to cross three to four meters thick ice on the way to the realm of the polar bear. Here you won't get far with a ship that is not built for polar regions.”

One of those who made it on a tour boat Polar Star was Ivar Ytreland. The ship also occasionally took passengers to East Greenland, and Ytreland – former county mayor of Sør-Trøndelag and an experienced trapper in Greenland in his early years – wrote a report after one such trip in 1996. He enthusiastically recounted many highlights: Muskox safaris and mountain climbing, and an adventurous fishing trip for sea trout in the lake at Strindbergland: “I was really impressed – I am probably the one who has fished the most sea trout in NØG (Northeast Greenland) – there were thousands, but I never caught or saw such big sea trout as the biggest ones they caught at Strindberg, my record was 5,6 kg.”

The trip took two and a half weeks, and politician Ytreland had advice for the tour operator about this:

"What will probably be a problem for tourist expeditions to NØG with relatively small vessels is that the crossings take too long, and can quickly become uncomfortable if bad weather sets in. On the other hand, a boat trip can be exciting and eventful on the way in and out when passing through the drift ice belt with its varying wildlife of polar bears, seals, fur seals, walruses and seabirds. Unfortunately, we got to see little of this as the ice belt was small and nothing. It was the tenth time I had crossed this area, and on those occasions the ice belt was from 120 to 240 nautical miles wide, one summer it almost went to Jan Mayen."

Future expeditions to NØG should focus on flying participants in and out, either directly to their destination or to an airport/landing strip from where they can take boat transport further in the area. This method is now well-established in Svalbard. Air transport would reduce the travel time from Norway or Europe to NØG to 1 day entry and 1 day exit, by boat it would take a total of 8-10 days of travel time from and to Norway.”

Ivar Ytreland also had a small paragraph related to one of the mysteries from the Norwegian hunting history in East Greenland:

"As some of you probably remember, we made a wholehearted attempt to find the grave of trapper Knut O. Brandal who died at Hoelsbu in 1934. We based our efforts on Peter Schmidt Mikkelsen's book, where Brandal's trapper companion tells us that 'the grave was built of stone in a riverbed about 1 km west of Hoelsbu'. We searched there for several hours until it got completely dark and found nothing."