Big ships are banned from venturing further than the archipelago’s capital, but this sailing allows for kayaking in glacial fjords and spying hundreds of loafing walruses
Kayaking glacial fjords and watching hundreds of walruses loafing about on a beach is just the tip of the iceberg while cruising the Arctic.
A gaggle of black and white barnacle geese and their downy goslings waddle across the road, bringing our bus to a grinding halt. They’re everyday traffic in a summertime Svalbard, where their burgeoning population outnumbers human inhabitants 10 to one. Today, though, it’s hardly the wildlife that’s proving to be the driver’s biggest foe. That would be the tourists.
They’re everywhere – walking along, across and on the roads as freely as the geese and reindeer. It’s the busiest I’ve seen Longyearbyen. Just a month earlier, the Svalbard Archipelago’s capital felt every bit as remote as it truly is, with just a few hundred tourists roaming at any given time. Today, it’s swarming. Breathing space is a commodity in the souvenir stores, and cafes are straining under the sheer volume of coffee orders. I mention the crowds to a local guide, and her response is simple: “Today is the busiest day of the year in Longyearbyen so far.”
We leave the town behind and head for the port, where the busyness we’ve just witnessed suddenly makes sense. A gargantuan 3,500-capacity cruise ship is docked, having dropped into Longyearbyen for a day-long visit, bringing more guests than the entire population of Svalbard with it.
Walrus on an iceberg near Kapp Lee (Photo: Paul Souders/Getty)
Laws introduced in January of 2025 dictate that ships of this size can only get as far as Svalbard’s capital, barring anything of more than 200-person capacity from sailing into the Norwegian archipelago’s national park territory. Swan Hellenic’s luxury expedition vessel, SH Vega, comes in under the 200-person mark, allowing unrestricted access to the polar region. I’m boarding, along with 109 other passengers, for a seven-day circumnavigation of the islands.
It’s a breezeless day. The sun is warm and the mercury is hovering around 7°C in glacial Lilliehöökbreenfjorden, a fjord cut into the western side of Spitsbergen. “Good news,” our expedition leader, Ekaterina Uryupova, chirps over the loudspeaker. “Anyone who has a letter invite on their door can now come down to base camp.” When I woke this morning, kayaking through brash (small, free-floating pieces of ice) in the Arctic wasn’t on my bingo card. Yet here I am, invitation in hand, ready to join seven other guests on a paddling mission out towards a towering wall of ice. It’s an optional excursion, but because so many people want to do it, getting to take part is a sort of lottery – and I’m one of the winners.
SH Vega‘s dining room views (Photo: Swan Hellenic)
The low, loud rumble of a jet engine at take-off momentarily drowns out the crackle and pop of the brash around us. It’s a sound so out of place in a location so remote, I’m momentarily perplexed. “That’s actually the sound of the glacier carving,” says our kayak guide, Alison French. We hear it again and again, the low, loud rumble, as chunks of ice detach from the glacier face, tumbling into the Barents Sea below. Smaller pieces bob and roll in our kayaks’ wake, and larger chunks play host to resting kittiwakes and ringed seals, the only other signs of life in this stark yet impossibly beautiful landscape.
Walruses are among the most exciting wildlife sightings of the following days, their one-tonne blubbery bodies laid out on the shores of Gullybukta Bay and Kapp Lee headlands. At the latter location, as dictated by law, only 36 of us can land at any one time, ferried from ship to shore by Zodiac. We can smell the walruses before we see them – a mineral, sunbaked-shell scent carrying on the breeze. From the top of a small knoll, we sit and watch as more than 100 of the long-tooth pinnipeds lie flipper-to-flipper, loafing and lounging after their long undersea journeys. As far as Arctic walrus “haulouts” go, this one is considered relatively small, with some of them comprising tens of thousands of bodies. Still, this is a spectacle unlike any other I’ve seen before.
Longyearbyen town on Spitsbergen Island (Photo: Arctic-Images/Getty)
But it’s a sighting of the Arctic’s apex predator that makes the top spot on the cruise’s highlights reel. On day three, on the rocky shoreline of Amsterdamøya island, the crew on the bridge spot a lone polar bear. It’s around 500m from the bow of the ship, keeping sentry as it lumbers along the waterline. A notice over the loudspeaker triggers a flurry of jackets and beanies as guests rush out into the wind and drizzle to catch a glimpse. Unfortunately, we can’t get any closer, and the bear is nothing but a tiny spot in the distance, discernible only with the supplied binoculars or a phone’s 20x zoom. But, it’s there all the same, and it’s a sighting we’re all proud to claim.
Given there are only around 300 polar bears roaming the Svalbard archipelago, it’s sheer luck that we manage to see one at all; guests on the previous week’s cruise weren’t so fortunate Due largely to climate change, their population is dwlindling – and only the smallest of cruise ships that can make it out to see them.
How to do it
The writer was a guest of Swan Hellenic, which offers a seven-night Exploring Svalbard Cruise from £5,725pp, including charter flights from Copenhagen to Svalbard, plus transfers. swanhellenic.com
Getting there
SAS, British Airways, Norwegian, and easyJet all fly direct from London to Copenhagen daily.
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