Norway, here i come

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Life at the Harvard of the Arctic
Students at the University Center in Svalbard, the world’s most northern university, spend a lot of time in desert of snow and ice.

By: Paul Watson Star Columnist, Published on Sat Jun 14 2014

LONGYEARBYEN, NORWAY—Orientation at the world’s most northern university is a guaranteed blast, even without the cavorting of frosh week mixers or sorority rushes.

Students at the University Center in Svalbard (UNIS) spend a lot of time outdoors in a desert of snow and ice where polar bears roam. So, before they crack the books, new arrivals need to show a sharp aim.
When Vincent Carrier, 24, arrived here from Quebec’s Laval University in July 2011, the Canadian marine biology student spent his first hours as all newcomers must: on the rifle range, learning how to shoot a bolt-action Ruger 30-06.

No one can recall anyone killing a polar bear since the university opened in 1993. Just the same, no one’s taking any chances.

At an outdoor shooting range, Carrier had to fire four bullets into a bull’s-eye from 35 metres to get a passing grade. Flunk the rifle test and you can’t sign out a firearm from the university’s gun locker. Which means you have to depend on classmates to have your back during fieldwork.

Carrier’s academic life is spent studying the DNA of marine life too small to be seen under a microscope. But after two years in Longyearbyen, with at least seven rifle training sessions, he talks guns and bears with the nonchalance of a trapper.



“I won’t start competitive shooting,” he deadpans. “Basically, it’s more about . . . aiming and hitting your target. Because a polar bear is really big. You cannot miss it. It’s 800 kilograms coming straight toward you and no matter where you shoot, you will stop it.”

At 78 degrees north latitude and just 1,300 kilometres south of the North Pole, Longyearbyen is the northernmost community in the world. Canada’s most northerly hamlet, Grise Fiord, sits at 76 degrees north latitude, on the southern tip of Ellesmere Island.

There lies the big attraction of UNIS: Unlike most of the world’s universities studying the Arctic, with costly trips north for field work, the wild Arctic surrounds UNIS.

The warm north Longyearbyen is on a fiord warmed by the North Atlantic Drift, an ocean current fed by the Gulf Stream, which helps moderate Arctic temperatures that freeze the sea to thick ice at similar latitudes in Canada’s High Arctic.

The town creeps up a valley toward the base of soaring mountain cliffs on the west coast of Spitsbergen, the largest island in the Svalbard archipelago.

For a community of just under 2,100 people, built on coal mining and permafrost, it’s surprisingly cosmopolitan. That’s in large part because of a quirk of history called the Svalbard Treaty, an accord that followed the First World War.

John Munro Longyear, an American who made his money mining and felling timber in Michigan, co-founded the Arctic Coal Company in 1906 to exploit seams of coal here, born of prehistoric tropical rain forests that covered Spitsbergen millions of years ago.

The archipelago was a no man’s land, or terra nullius, until 1920, when a postwar treaty recognized Norwegian sovereignty over the islands, with conditions attached.

A key clause grants the citizens of any country that signs the treaty equal access to the archipelago, including the freedom to carry out any maritime, industrial, mining and commercial operations.
Today the list of signatories totals 40 nations, including Canada, the U.S., Russia and China, along with middle powers such as Saudi Arabia and South Africa.

A few small countries with no discernible interest in the High Arctic have also signed the treaty, including Afghanistan, Albania and the Dominican Republic. Their citizens can set up shop in Longyearbyen any time the urge moves them.

Little Thailand
The second-largest nationality in the town is Thai. Local legend has it that the first Thai settled here in the 1980s, when a Longyearbyen coal miner vacationing in Thailand found love and returned with a bride.
As tourism grew, more Thais followed for jobs, mainly women who clean hotel rooms.

The Thai community now numbers in the dozens, with a Thai grocery store and a Thai restaurant for a taste of home in a town where you’re more likely to find grilled whale meat on the table than tom yum soup.
Norway’s Immigration Act doesn’t apply to the Svalbard islands so you don’t need a visa to live here. But residents also can’t claim any of Norway’s famously generous social services — not even assistance due to illness.

There is still work mining coal here, largely to fire the town’s power plant, whose furnaces also pump hot water to homes. But tourism and science are a big part of the local economy.

In summer, passengers pouring off a single cruise ship can double the population. And scientists flock to Svalbard from around the world for the unique research opportunities.

So Longyearbyen is a worldly frontier town — kids at the local public school speak dozens of languages — but anyone who decides to stay for the cold charm has to be a survivor, with a fat wallet.

At the Svalbardbutikken co-op store, a loaf of bread costs $6.50, a litre of milk more than $5.30. Beer is cheaper because alcohol is tax free, which helps when the sun doesn’t set for about four months a year.

Tourism magnet
In the short summer, it’s easy to walk from one end of Longyearbyen to the other, with eyes peeled for any wayward polar bears.

Come winter, the place is abuzz with snowmobiles, which locals call snow scooters. Tax free, they’re so cheap the town has some 4,000 snowmobiles, roughly two per person. There are as many trucks, tractor and cars, including a white stretch limo.

Dog sledding is a popular tourist attraction and hundreds of huskies are housed in outdoor kennels on the edge of town, where their penchant for nighttime howling won’t keep anyone awake.

A steady stream of the world’s leading Arctic experts flows in and out of Longyearbyen because it’s easier to reach than most places this far north and it has superb facilities, including the Svalbard Satellite Station, or Svalsat.

With more than 31 antenna systems, it is the world’s largest commercial ground station, and the only one that can communicate with satellites through 14 orbits each day, 365 days a year.

Fibre-optic cables give Longyearbyen and its high-tech equipment a high-speed Internet connection to the world, which is how Carrier stumbled upon the university, which is becoming a kind of Harvard of the Arctic.
He was an undergraduate at Laval with a wanderlust fed by a stint in the Antarctic in 2009. He Googled for courses on Earth’s southernmost continent at Australian universities, which were too expensive. A typo, or perhaps the fateful hand of autocorrect, solved that problem: “I wrote ‘Antarctic university.’ But it turned out the word ‘Arctic’ showed up. That’s how I found UNIS.”

Tuition is free at UNIS. There is an application fee, but that is only a little more than $100. So Carrier quickly applied and was invited to study Arctic biology.

He’s still here, studying for a master’s degree and taking part in cutting-edge research crucial to understanding the impact of climate change. He’s also counting reindeer for the Norwegian Polar Institute.
As a marine biologist, Carrier does a lot of work on boats, so he had to learn how to survive going overboard in the Arctic. His training included jumping into an icy fiord in a wet suit and in a leakier snowmobile suit. He also learned how to treat frostbite or give first aid to injured comrades.

About 450 students from around the world are enrolled at UNIS each year, studying biology, geology, geophysics and technology. Roughly half come from outside Norway.

Although students don’t have to pay tuition, Carrier has to pay about $45 for each day of fieldwork for food and accommodation. As an undergraduate, that cost him a total of about $800, he estimates.

Trips on icebreakers and other big-ticket expenses are covered by the university and its financial backers, which include Norway’s government and several large oil companies.

Students who can’t count on research grants or other support can expect big bills for living expenses. Student housing and food cost about $1,715 a month, the university estimates.

Working with Laval professor Connie Lovejoy, Carrier is studying tiny sea life. He uses DNA analysis to identify species of phytoplankton, the first link in the food chain, and other organisms. He’s trying to figure out how they got here, whether they simply rode ocean currents or migrated with a purpose because of the ocean conditions.

The secrets he’s uncovering may help answer critical questions about how climate change will affect all of us because the Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth. Oceans play a major role in mitigating climate change because they absorb heat and the carbon that international scientists say is rapidly warming the planet. The marine micro-organisms Carrier is studying consume carbon dioxide and produce oxygen through photosynthesis. Deep under the sea, their world is being turned upside down.

“The ocean in the Arctic is really changing a lot,” Carrier says. “I’m just trying to answer one small question in a big issue.”


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