Walking across a glacier doesn’t sound like a great idea on paper, but oh, how it is. On a postcard-perfect day in Magdalenefjord, north-west Spitsbergen, we immerse ourselves in the soft soundtrack of snow crunching underfoot and the call of little auks to distract us from the -7°C chill.
Suddenly, a crack rings out, followed by a scream and then a splash; one of our group members has broken through the ice and is knee-deep in the water. Moments later, another falls through, then another. We laugh nervously; nobody is wet beyond their knees, but our guide is concerned enough to ask us to walk quickly across the ice to the safety of the sand buried under the snow. “It should be frozen,” he says in a quiet voice as we stand, moments later, surveying the holes. “It’s usually frozen solid at this time of year.”
I had arrived in Longyearbyen, the world’s northernmost settlement and the unofficial capital of Svalbard, a few days prior to a bizarre combination of blinding midnight
