A small two-masted yacht lying in loose ice below the blue face of a glacier, dark mountains and a second glacier behind her, under a clear summer sky

78° north

Svalbard

Up here the year has one night and one day. You sail in the day.

A yacht below a glacier front, Svalbard

A summer voyage, May to August. Twelve guests or fewer.

A yacht below a glacier front, Svalbard

Season: May to August
Length: Around ten days
Party: Twelve guests or fewer, or the ship to yourselves
Held in the arrangement: The ship and her crew, a guide who keeps the bear watch ashore, every meal aboard, and the flights to Longyearbyen and back

The place

Halfway from Norway to the Pole, and the light does as it likes.

Svalbard is a scatter of islands at seventy-eight degrees north: bare rock, glacier and frozen sea, one small town, a few thousand people. More than half the land lies under ice.

What changes here is the light. For months the sun does not rise. Then for months it does not set. Everything else follows from that: when the sea opens, when the birds come, and when a small ship can go north.

The sun at noon, through the year. Where the line runs under the horizon, there is no sunrise at all.

The year, by its light

You sail in summer, in the long day. The dark, the blue and the return come first here because they are why the place looks as it does.

A broad green arc of aurora across a sky full of stars, above dark hills near Longyearbyen

The darkNovember to January For three months the sun stays away. Noon is as dark as midnight, and the sky does the lighting. Stand in the polar night Aurora over Longyearbyen

The blueFebruary

Then noon turns blue, and stays blue for hours.

By February the sun is close under the horizon. At midday the snow, the sea ice and the sky all take the same colour, and a band of rose stands in the south. It is the quietest light of the year.

Rounded plates of snow-covered ice on dark water in deep blue light, white mountains across the fjord and a pale glow low in the sky — Pancake ice in the blue hour, Svalbard

A deep blue fjord and a snow mountain in half light, the first stars still out, and one seam of orange along the horizon on the left — The first orange in four months.The sun returning after the polar night, near Longyearbyen

The returnMarch and April

In early March the sun comes back.

First a seam of orange over the fjord at noon. A week later it clears the mountains, and the town stops to watch. After that each day is longer than the last by twenty minutes and more, and the white valleys belong to the dog teams.

Seen from a sled: a team of dogs running down a wide snow valley in blue dusk light — Out with the dogs.From the sled, Svalbard

By late April the sun has stopped setting. It will not set again until the end of August.

Broken ice scattered across flat calm water below a wide glacier front in Kongsfjord, bare brown rock on the left and cloud lying on the far mountains

The long dayMay to August Now the ice lets go, and a small ship can go north. This is the season of the journey: one unbroken day, four months long. Turn the clock through a night that never comes Below the glacier, Kongsfjord

North, until the sea turns white.

You sail from Longyearbyen up the west coast. Glacier fronts that crack like rifle shots. Cliffs loud with kittiwakes. Walrus hauled out on a shingle spit, entirely unbothered by you.

Each day the water carries more ice, until one morning there is nothing ahead but white, all the way to the Pole. That is the edge. The ship stops, and everyone comes on deck without being asked.

Seen from directly above: white floes of broken ice, blue-green at their edges, on black water — Ice from above

A polar bear rolling on its back on a stony shore below dark scree, seen from a distance — Seen from the water, and left alone.A polar bear on the shore at Hornsund

And the bear, if it chooses.

Somewhere out there, there may be one. Your guide will find it through the glasses long before you do, and the ship will keep her distance. Some voyages see several. Some see none.

Go north to the edge of the ice

Around ten days, north and back. The route is drawn with you, then redrawn by the ice, which has the last word up here.

Plan your journey Turn the year

The ship

A polar bear asleep in a hollow of ice, small in a wide white frame — A polar bear asleep among the ice

No hotel goes where you are going. A small ship does.

She is chosen with you: a small ship that knows these waters, a dozen berths at most, a warm saloon, and a deck you will be called out to at odd hours.

Small is the point. She can stop the engine and lie off a glacier front, put a boat ashore on a beach no larger ship would trouble with, and wait a whole afternoon because something white is moving on the ice.

Looked after, where the bear has right of way.

Nobody walks alone on Svalbard. A guide goes ashore first, every time, and keeps watch while you look at everything else. Back aboard there is coffee before your boots are off, and dinner at whatever hour the light has made you forget.

One small ochre cabin on a snow slope at dusk, sled tracks leading away across a wide white valley — Shelter ashore is this size.A cabin on the snow at dusk, Svalbard

Field notesThe figures, for those who like them.

Daylight there today
Daylight in the middle of June
The sun does not set: about 20 April to 23 August
The sun first seen from the town: 8 March
Longyearbyen: 78°13′N 015°38′E
From there to the Pole: about 1,300 km

Bring the sun back yourself Go to the edge of the ice

Three Svalbard reindeer crossing a pale snow slope in low light

Your invitation

Which light?

May and June for ice still in the fjords and a sun that never sets. July and August for open water, and as far north as the ice allows.

Plan your journey

Eight short questions, about two minutes. Then a letter in your own words.

Svalbard reindeer on the snow