Unique Places in Arctic

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Vadsø is a small town of about 6000 inhabitants in the very north of Norway and the Hurtigruten-ships stop there on their northbound voyage for about 30 minutes.
Time enough to visit a small museum - in a shed opposite of the ship - about the early days of the airships: In 1926 & 1928 the airships "Norge" and "Italia" made their last stop there on the european continent before exploring the Northpole.
In my main picture: The replica of the gondola of Umberto Nobile's Airship "Italia".
No entrancefee to be paid in that museum, but donations are welcome and the most time of the year the museum will also be open just when the Hurtigruten-ship will be docked there for 30 minutes.
You can step into the gondola as well.

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Vardöhus Festnig in Vardø is the northernmost fortress on earth. This tiny village is one of the ports of the Hurtigruten-ships and when-ever they will get there during the southbound cruise from Kirkens to Bergen someone will wait there at the port and walk with you to that old fortress, so you will not miss it and will be able to make the best out of the short stay of just 60 minutes in Vardoe.
The entrancefee is 30 NOK, that is just about 3 euros and you have to throw the money into a former bomb next to the entrance
There is an interesting museum inside of Vardoehus festnig and it is showing old uniforms, documents and my favorite exhibit there was the winter-cannon, fixed on a sled instead of wheels. There is a small souvenir-shop in that museum as well and most of the exhibits are explained with norwegian, english and german inscriptions !

The walls of Vardoehus festning are not really very high, but they are made of solid rocks and covered by grass. For "freeclimbers" of today it would not be a big problem to get over these walls but for the old knights it still might have been a problem and of course the fortress had guards as well watching out for enemies approaching and they could easily throw stones after invaders trying to climb up the walls.
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Vardöhus Festnig is open for visitors:
1 May – 15 September: 0800 – 2100 hrs.
16 September – 30 April: 1000 – 1800 hrs.

As you travel up the Dempster Highway north of Dawson, in the Ogilvie Mountains, you will encounter this small stream that parallels the highway for a few miles. It's rocks are brightly coloured by iron in the water.

What a peaceful place, somewhere out near Ny Alesund.

On most of the cruises in Spitzbergen / Svalbard we also anchored in a bay and had a picknick on a remote beach with hot punch for our passengers.

Maybe next time.

It looks great of course, when a large part of the ice would all of a sudden fall into the sea, but its also a big danger for small ships, like our tenders.

The big cruise-ship would not be affected so much, except of a short heavy movement of a few seconds

...besides the humming of the cruise-ship there is absolutely NO noise up here at the 'end of the world'

and on every cruise we went into one of the fjords and the captain turned off all engines for a few minutes in order to get a feeling for the " natural noises " of this remote island

We once touched a sandbank with the ship and it took a whole day to get out of it again.
There was a large ship coming from Longyearbyen to tear us out of the sandbank again.
Our Cruiseship had some holes on the bottom, but we were allowed to go on cruising till Hamburg.

It was an adventure of a very special kind.

Visit the oilfields, if in Prudhoe Bay! Mind you, the visit is quite boring... but since you've come so far, and sicne there's nothing else to do, you might as well join one of the Oilfield tours. The Arctic Caribou Inn and Prudhoe Bay Hotel organise tours of different lenghts: 3 hours and 8 hours. For the 8 hours one you really must be an oilfield fanatic, or else a masochist. Generally speaking the views are nasty, but what can be interesting is to learn about how people work - and how hard it can be - in summer and winter