Hornsund, Svalbard
We spent the day in Hornsund, the southernmost fjord on the island of Spitsbergen. The fjord is home to several magnificent glaciers which we visited by ship, by Zodiac and on foot. These glaciers are all quite active and the stillness of the fjord was punctuated during our walks ashore by the sounds of calving ice. During our morning Zodiac cruise along the front on one particularly active glacier we witnessed a huge calving ice mass which created a large wave in the fjord, sank, and then shot up from under the water causing another great crash of ice and spray. Kittiwakes, which had been sitting on icebergs in the fjord, immediately flocked to the site where the zooplankton on which they feed was stirred to the surface by the commotion.
The glaciers cut their valleys through the very old rocks of the Hecla Hoek series mentioned in yesterday’s report. These rocks, which date from 1 billion to about 400 million years ago were highly folded and metamorphosed during the Caledonian orogeny, which also created the highlands of Scotland. This was a time when an earlier Atlantic Ocean closed, compressing the seafloor sediments into the beautiful mountains we see today. The spectacular peaks of today’s mountains were carved by the glacial ice plucking the rock material away to create the pointed spines and horns which give Spitsbergen its name. The name, Dutch for “pointed mountains,” was given to the island by Willem Barents in 1596 when he first discovered (or re-discovered) the archipelago. This evening we leave the main part of Svalbard and sail south to Bear Island.
We spent the day in Hornsund, the southernmost fjord on the island of Spitsbergen. The fjord is home to several magnificent glaciers which we visited by ship, by Zodiac and on foot. These glaciers are all quite active and the stillness of the fjord was punctuated during our walks ashore by the sounds of calving ice. During our morning Zodiac cruise along the front on one particularly active glacier we witnessed a huge calving ice mass which created a large wave in the fjord, sank, and then shot up from under the water causing another great crash of ice and spray. Kittiwakes, which had been sitting on icebergs in the fjord, immediately flocked to the site where the zooplankton on which they feed was stirred to the surface by the commotion.
The glaciers cut their valleys through the very old rocks of the Hecla Hoek series mentioned in yesterday’s report. These rocks, which date from 1 billion to about 400 million years ago were highly folded and metamorphosed during the Caledonian orogeny, which also created the highlands of Scotland. This was a time when an earlier Atlantic Ocean closed, compressing the seafloor sediments into the beautiful mountains we see today. The spectacular peaks of today’s mountains were carved by the glacial ice plucking the rock material away to create the pointed spines and horns which give Spitsbergen its name. The name, Dutch for “pointed mountains,” was given to the island by Willem Barents in 1596 when he first discovered (or re-discovered) the archipelago. This evening we leave the main part of Svalbard and sail south to Bear Island.
