A gaggle of black and white barnacle geese and their downy goslings waddle across the road, bringing our bus to a grinding halt. They\u2019re everyday traffic in a summertime Svalbard<\/a>, where their burgeoning population outnumbers human inhabitants 10 to one. Today, though, it\u2019s hardly the wildlife that\u2019s proving to be the driver\u2019s biggest foe. That would be the tourists. <\/p>\n They\u2019re everywhere \u2013 walking along, across and on the roads as freely as the geese and reindeer. It\u2019s the busiest I\u2019ve seen Longyearbyen<\/a>. Just a month earlier, the Svalbard Archipelago\u2019s capital felt every bit as remote as it truly is, with just a few hundred tourists roaming at any given time. Today, it\u2019s 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: \u201cToday is the busiest day of the year in Longyearbyen so far.\u201d <\/p>\n We leave the town behind and head for the port, where the busyness we\u2019ve 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. <\/p>\n Laws introduced in January of 2025 dictate that ships of this size can only get as far as Svalbard\u2019s capital, barring anything of more than 200-person capacity from sailing into the Norwegian archipelago\u2019s national park territory. Swan Hellenic<\/a>\u2019s luxury expedition vessel, SH Vega, comes in under the 200-person mark, allowing unrestricted access to the polar region. I\u2019m boarding, along with 109 other passengers, for a seven-day circumnavigation of the islands. <\/p>\n It\u2019s a breezeless day. The sun is warm and the mercury is hovering around 7\u00b0C in glacial Lillieh\u00f6\u00f6kbreenfjorden, a fjord cut into the western side of Spitsbergen. \u201cGood news,\u201d our expedition leader, Ekaterina Uryupova, chirps over the loudspeaker. \u201cAnyone who has a letter invite on their door can now come down to base camp.\u201d When I woke this morning, kayaking through brash <\/a>(small, free-floating pieces of ice) in the Arctic wasn\u2019t 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\u2019s an optional excursion, but because so many people want to do it, getting to take part is a sort of lottery \u2013 and I\u2019m one of the winners. <\/p>\n The low, loud rumble of a jet engine at take-off momentarily drowns out the crackle and pop of the brash around us. It\u2019s a sound so out of place in a location so remote, I\u2019m momentarily perplexed. \u201cThat\u2019s actually the sound of the glacier <\/a>carving,\u201d 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\u2019 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. <\/p>\n 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 \u2013 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<\/a> \u201chaulouts\u201d 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\u2019ve seen before. <\/p>\n But it\u2019s a sighting of the Arctic\u2019s apex predator that makes the top spot on the cruise\u2019s highlights reel. On day three, on the rocky shoreline of Amsterdam\u00f8ya island, the crew on the bridge spot a lone polar bear. It\u2019s 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\u2019t get any closer, and the bear is nothing but a tiny spot in the distance, discernible only with the supplied binoculars or a phone\u2019s 20x zoom. But, it\u2019s there all the same, and it\u2019s a sighting we\u2019re all proud to claim. <\/p>\n Given there are only around 300 polar bears roaming the Svalbard archipelago,<\/a> it\u2019s sheer luck that we manage to see one at all; guests on the previous week\u2019s cruise weren\u2019t so fortunate Due largely to climate change, their population is dwlindling \u2013 and only the smallest of cruise ships that can make it out to see them.<\/p>\n How to do it <\/p>\n The writer was a guest of Swan Hellenic, which offers a seven-night Exploring Svalbard Cruise from \u00a35,725pp, including charter flights from Copenhagen to Svalbard, plus transfers. swanhellenic.com<\/a><\/p>\n Getting there<\/p>\n SAS, British Airways, Norwegian, and easyJet all fly direct from London to Copenhagen daily.<\/p>\n More information <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/SEI_263282100.jpg\")
Walrus on an iceberg near Kapp Lee (Photo: Paul Souders\/Getty)<\/p>\n![\"SH](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/SEI_263274313.jpg\")
SH Vega\u2018s dining room views (Photo: Swan Hellenic)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/SEI_263281957.jpg\")
Longyearbyen town on Spitsbergen Island (Photo: Arctic-Images\/Getty)<\/p>\n