Highlights
See Svalbard still wearing its winter coat on a compact adventure into Europe’s last great wilderness. The wildlife is waking up and the sun has reintroduced itself following the long winter. The light it casts as it rises and sets is deliciously soft and beguilingly coloured, adding an otherworldly glow to the snow-wrapped land and frozen seascape.
Emerging from the depths of winter, the archipelago presents its wilder side in the early season. Nature has turned the page on the year before. A fresh page of white snow lies before us. We are the pioneers, the first readers of nature’s new bestseller.
This intrepid adventure is shorter than usual, but we maximise the time we have, showing off the best of the season as our agile expedition ship charts a path through the ice. Smothered in an unbroken blanket of snow, hemmed in by splintering sea ice, and awakened by wonderfully soft light, Svalbard in the spring is all about new beginnings and sublime scenery.
Spotting wildlife in the early season requires patience, but there’s nothing like witnessing Arctic animals – reindeer, walruses, Arctic foxes, polar bears – against the springtime backdrop.
