Fram Strait cruise – departure Oct 14 2026

12 October

The weather in Tromsø is clear, the mountains are white, and the reindeer are flying.

At least, it looks like this, while I’m sitting at Gate F18 of Tromsø Lufthavn, waiting for my flight to Longyearbyen, Svalbard. Some of my colleagues from the Norwegian Polar Institute are here as well. We are all going on board the research icebreaker Kronprins Haakon (KPH) for a cruise in the Fram Strait between Svalbard and northern Greenland for almost three weeks the next day.

On arrival in Svalbard, we get a lift to our respective hotels, where we stay overnight.

13 October

Three of us were staying in Coal Miner’s Cabin, which is south of the centre. We share a taxi to Bykaia, part of the Port of Longyearbyen, where KPH is berthed. It has got warmer and it’s raining.

And here it is – the ship on which the 18 of us will spend the next three weeks together with the crew.

Just kidding! The RV Kronprins Haakon is actually lying in the other direction.

During the night, the weather gets a bit ugly. It’s +5 °C, it’s raining and the wind speed is around 20 m/s. The sea state gets rougher and the waves grow higher.

In the morning the sea has calmed down and at a quarter past nine I feel the first small bump as a small ice floe collides with our ship. We have entered a band of pancake ice.

Now we are in open water again and the conditions are calm. Anyway, if Windy is right, we will get pretty rough weather tomorrow with a wind speed of around 18 m/s and an air temperature of -17 °C – a drop of almost 20 degrees. That would result in a windchill of -33 °C and I am very glad that I took my Canada Goose parka and trousers with me.