Madsenblog

…I’m coming for a short visit!” (For those of you unfamiliar with the Norway/Denmark relationship…Danes lovingly call Norwegians “mountain apes”, while Norwegians refer to Danes “lowland monkeys”)

Anyway…I’m going to Norway…actually…I’m going to visit a group of islands called Svalbard located in the Arctic Ocean midway between Norway and The North Pole.

Between the 22nd and 27th of August I’m going to attend a course in “Climate change in the Arctic region” sponsored by the Norwegian Space Agency (yeah…I laughed too…but they do have a space agency!) in the city of Longyearbyen,- one of the northern-most cities in the world…It’s located only 800 km (500 miles) from The North Pole.

It’s really going to be a fantastic experience I think…and maybe a bit dangerous one too. You’re not allowed to leave Longyearbyen without being armed with a shot gun and a bear maze. Svalbard lies right in the path of the polar bears migration route between the northern part of Greenland and Frans Josef Land, and the bears use Svalbard as a stop-over.

Short vid about Svalbard here…