Thursday, 17 September 2009

Å – a village in the Lofoten islands close to the Maëlstrom



At the end of the line of European route E10, like a finis terra of the North, Å is a red jewel in a landscape of blue sea and rocky mountains.

Å i Lofoten is one of Norway's most authentic traditional fishing villages; there are 33 listed buildings at the resort.



Å is pronounced [oː] , from the Norwegian å (a small river); the village was for many years specialised in stockfish, as shown in the Lofoten Stockfish Museum.

The main building at left is a former fish saltery, we can still see some cod drying.

Old one-man’s fishing boat


Most of its red houses (rorbu) are now tourist cabins; unlike most of Lofoten towns, here the fishing activity ended and tourism is the main economic source.


In the background of Å , you can reach Lake Ågvatnet sourrounded by impressive peaks. This glacially carved lake is very close to being a fjord.

The Maëlstrom (Moskenstraumen)
When the E10 road ends, you come face to face with the infamous "Maelstrom“, one of the world’s strongest tidal currents creating whirlpools, resulting from the tides stuck by the Lofoten barrier .

First described by Pytheas the Greek over 2000 years ago, it has since then been marked on innumerable sea charts together with terrifying illustrations and warnings.

Fantasy descriptions appeared in European geographic literature in the 17th and 18th century. Edgar Allan Poe has written a short story called ´A Descent into the Maelstrom´ about it, and Jules Verne mentions it in the book ´20,000 Leagues Under the Seas´.
The “swirling, hissing, spinning waters” of the Moskenstraumen.

The strait is about 4-5 kilometres across and 40-60 metres deep, and is considerably shallower than the surrounding sea. The tide fills up the Vestfjord twice a day, and the difference in height between high and low tides can be up to 4 metres. Midway between high and low tide, the current changes direction, and this is when the whirlpools begin to appear, with speeds of up to 6 knots.

Sunday, 13 September 2009

Fog over my town

Fog

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Carl Sandburg



Fog often falls over my town, in the morning. It gets misterious and acquires a distinctive beauty. I have learned to like a foggy dawn.

Monday, 7 September 2009

Upernavik - the Springtime Place



Upernavik  (means "Springtime Place" in Greenlandic) is a small town on the far Northwest coast of Greenland. At 72º latitude, this is the northernmost port of call on coastal ferries from Ilulissat.


The town was founded in 1772 as a Danish colonial station. The old trading buildings is now an open air museum.

The old church is part of the Museum complex

Upernavik is an important sealing and whaling base.
Approximately 1150 live here.



Houses are painted in bright rainbow colours that are lacking in the surrounding landscape - red, yellow and green.


In 1824, a Viking runestone was found outside Upernavik. It bears runic characters left by Vikings, probably from the late 13th century. This is the furthest north that any Viking artifacts have been found.

The rune stone

First day in class for the new pupils in first grade.

The main activity is fishing for halibut, which in winter is caught by means of long lines through the ice. As the sea is frozen from December to June, the fishing grounds can be accessed by dogsled or snowmobile.


The midnight sun and the polar night alternate in an annual cycle, with the midnight sun appearing from 12th May until 1st August.




Young girl in the midnight sun

The shift from light to dark and vice versa does not occur suddenly; the days become markedly lighter or darker day by day. The polar night extends from 4th November, when the sun peeps out for the last time until it appears again on 5th February.

Christmas in Upernavik

Upernavik is a mixture of ancient hunter culture and high-tech fishing industry, with traditional dogsleds and modern snow scooters working side by side.

Hotel in Upernavik

"Upernavik is not less the limit of safe navigation than the remotest bound of civilized existence"


http://www.upernavik.org/
http://www.greenland.com/content/english/tourist/towns_regions/north_greenland/upernavik

Thursday, 3 September 2009

The Northeast Passage – a Russian arctic odissey (II)

1934: The icebreaker Chelyuskin versus the Northeast Passage

- The discovery of the Northern Sea Route is one of the most outstanding pages of Russian history -

In the 1930s, the Soviet power was impatient with the delays that had kept the Northeast Passage from developing into the valuable cargo and passenger route it had promised to be. The geophysicist and Arctic veteran Otto Schmidt was appointed as the head of the project of the Northern Maritime Route from Murmansk to Vladivostok, and by 1932, he had readied the icebreaker Sibiriakov, with Vladimir Voronin as captain, for a voyage through the passage.

Although the ship broke down a number of times, the voyage was successful: in 65 days, the Sibiriakov had traveled from Arkhangelsk to the Pacific Ocean, the first vessel ever to accomplish a passage of the northern sea route within one navigation season, without wintering along the way.


The Chelyuskin, launched in 1933

Flushed with the success of this first attempt, Schmidt prepared a second vessel, the Chelyuskin, built in Denmark in 1933, adapted with a powerful 2 500 - horsepower engine, special frame, reinforcements, and extra steel plates on the bow and forward bulkhead. Its construction would allow it to function as a semi-icebreaker. Confident that the ship would be able to plow through the ice of the Arctic Ocean, Schmidt loaded it up in August 2, 1933; with 100 passengers and heavy cargo, the ship left Murmansk and managed to get through the bulk of the Northern Route before it was caught in the ice fields in September.


The route of the Chelyuskin 1933-34


By the time the ship reached Cape Chelyuskin, Captain Voronin realized that his vessel was not performing up to expectations and that conditions were worsening rapidly. By mid-September, the Chelyuskin was picking its way through narrow leads of water, twisting and turning to avoid the big floes, heading ever eastward.

Then, in the East Siberian Sea, 200 miles from the Bering Strait, the ship could move no more. Back and forth the ship drifted, frozen solidly in the pack ice, its powerful engine unable to free it.

By radio, the captain heard that 12 miles ahead was open water. After weeks of drifting to the north and northwest, Schmidt realized the ship was in the main polar pack. The ship would never be free. With five crew members, he began in secret to prepare to abandon ship.

The end came on February 13, 1934, when a mountain of ice gashed a 40- foot-long hole in the side of the ship, flooding the engine and boiler rooms with Arctic water. Suddenly the ship rised, stood for a moment almost vertically. A big smoke cloud came out of the funnel. And then, there was nothing left than dark water.

The ship’s helmsman described what followed in The Voyage of the Chelyuskin: “Then the Chelyuskin’s bow began to go down rapidly and the last command rang out—‘All on the ice! Leave the ship!’ The gangway twisted and fell.” The last men aboard jumped onto the ice and within minutes the ship sank beneath the sea.

The sinking of the Chelyuskin with the crew on the ice.

The crew and passengers now settled down to make what they named “camp Schmidt” on the ice floes. These pioneers did not have radios to send messages nor airplanes to come immediately to the rescue, nevertheless, by April 13, 92 men, 10 women, and two chihdren were airlifted to safety—not a single life lost.

The stay of Chelyuskin team in a camp and rescue by pilots is known in the world as heroical deed of Soviet explorers of the Arctic. The polar pilots made 24 flights to rescue the expedition, and were awarded the Heroes of the Soviet Union titles. Rescuing the Chelyuskin expedition became a remarkable moment in Russian history.

Ski equipped Polykarpov P-5s had a key role in the rescue of of the Chelyuskin's crew.


The Northern Sea Route was officially opened, and commercial exploitation began in 1935.

The wreck of the ship was finally discovered in September, 2006 at the depth of about 50 metres in the Chukchi Sea.

Nowadays the Northern Sea Route is an integral part of the economy. It is vital for the regions of the Extreme North and the Far East. It ensures supply of remote areas with fuel, foodstuffs and essential goods and supply of the continent with natural resources.

Dissolution of the Soviet Union followed by social and economic crisis of the post-Soviet space in the early 1990’s had a negative influence upon the condition of the Northern Sea Route. At present practical steps are made in Russia to overcome the crisis and to continue development of the Route.

Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Chelyuskin
http://goto.glocalnet.net/sm5iq/raemeng.html http://warandgame.wordpress.com/2008/05/
http://modelshipworld.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?printertopic=1&t=7273&postdays=0&postorder=asc&&start=170 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Erik_Nordenski%C3%B6ld Again, thanks to Lastochka!
http://lastochka-fromrussiawithlove.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, 1 September 2009

The Northeast Passage – a Russian arctic odissey (I)

The Northeast Passage is the water route along the northern coast of Europe and Asia, mainly North Russia’s coast, between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The distance from Saint-Petersburg to Vladivostok via Northern Sea Route is 14 280 km, via the Suez Canal — 23 200 km, around Cape of Good Hope - 29 400 km.



Beginning in the XV century, efforts were made to find a new all-water route to India and China. Most of these attempts were directed at seeking a Northwest Passage. However, English, Dutch, and Russian navigators did try to seek a Northeast route by sailing along the northern coast of Russia and far into the arctic seas.

In the 1550s, English ships made the first attempt to find the passage. Willem Barentz, the Dutch navigator, made several failed attempts in the 1590s. The decline of Dutch shipping in the 1700s left the exploration mainly to the Russians; in 1648 Russian pioneer Semen Dezhnev made a voyage on a small boat proving existence of a strait between Asia and America; he made first detailed description of Chukotka, and founded Anadyr burg.

Dezhnev’s voyage and discovery of a strait between Asia and America was compared with the feat of Christopher Columbus. Vitus Bering also explored the eastern part of the passage and discovered many islands.


Steam vessels Vega and Lena near the Cape of Cheluskin

The Northeast Passage was not, however, traversed by anyone until Nils Nordenskjöld of Sweden accomplished the feat on the steam vessel Vega in 1878. Starting from Karlskrona on June 22, the Vega doubled Cape Chelyuskin in the following August, and after being frozen in at the end of September near the Bering Strait, completed the voyage successfully in the following summer. The steam-engine power was 60 horsepower. The vessel was equipped with sails; its velocity was 6-7 knots.

The route of steam vessel Vega

In the early 1900s, icebreakers sailed through the passage, and in the 1930s the Northern Sea Route, a shipping lane, was established by the USSR. Since World War II, the Soviet Union, now Russia, has maintained a regular highway for shipping along this passage through the development of new ports and the exploitation of resources in the interior. A fleet of Russian icebreakers, aided by aerial reconnaissance and by radio weather stations, keeps the route navigable from June to October.

Nils Nordenskjöld and the Vega

Thanks to Lastochka!

Commemorative Coin


To be continued