The silence remains

By Flavia Tomaello, https://flaviatomaello.blog/, Instagram @flavia.tomaello

In the Arctic there is a way of walking that barely supports learning. The first impulse is to look for great landscapes, monumental mountains, glaciers capable of dominating the horizon. Just a few minutes later another dimension appears, much more subtle. The gaze begins to descend until it stops on a tiny moss, a flower that resists impossible temperatures or the recent footprints of a reindeer printed on a ground that is barely awakening from the ice. Then the territory stops being a postcard and begins to reveal its true nature.

Barentsøya, one of the eastern islands of the Svalbard archipelago, belongs to that geography that still retains the privilege of remaining practically intact. With nearly 1,300 square kilometers of surface and a non-existent human presence, it is part of the Southeast Svalbard Nature Reserve, created by Norway in 1973 to protect some of the most sensitive polar ecosystems on the planet. Each landing requires favorable weather conditions, a constant evaluation of the presence of polar bears and absolute respect for an environment where humans remain a circumstantial visitor.

The day begins at Sundneset, an inconspicuous headland on the southwestern tip of the island. Unlike other settings in the archipelago dominated by rock walls or monumental glaciers, here the landscape seems built with moderation. Gentle hills, small lagoons, a vast tundra plain and a coastline barely interrupted by rocky outcrops. That apparent simplicity is precisely its greatest wealth.

About twelve thousand years ago, during the end of the last ice age, this region remained covered by a thickness of ice that far exceeded any imaginable reference. The slow retreat of the glaciers allowed the tundra to colonize the terrain with a patience that still continues. Mosses, lichens, saxifrage and the delicate Svalbard poppy find here one of the few times of the year when permanent light encourages accelerated growth before the return of winter.

The silence acquires a density that is difficult to describe. Barely the wind disturbs a stillness where each sound seems amplified. A group of Svalbard reindeer slowly advances over low vegetation. They are immediately different from any other European reindeer. Smaller, more compact, with short legs and thick fur that functions as an extraordinary thermal insulator, they evolved over thousands of years to survive in one of the most extreme environments on the planet.

Freshwater lakes concentrate a good part of the summer biological activity. Red-throated loons, royal eiders, long-tailed ducks and white-faced barnacles nest there, arriving every spring from much more temperate latitudes to take advantage of an explosion of life that is as brief as it is intense. In just a few weeks they will have to raise their chicks before starting a migration of thousands of kilometers again.

For centuries these coasts remained practically ignored by European exploration. Willem Barentsz, the Dutch navigator whose surname would end up naming the island, never visited this specific corner when he discovered Svalbard in 1596. Much later, walrus hunters, whalers and scientific expeditions would begin to map a territory where nature always imposed its own rules.

The geography of time

Hours later, the landscape changes its language. Diskobukta offers a completely different experience. The bay appears surrounded by dark mountains whose sedimentary layers reveal millions of years of geological history. Each stratum functions as an open page on a past where these lands occupied very different positions within the supercontinent Pangea, long before beginning the slow tectonic journey that would lead them towards high latitudes.

Nearby glaciers permanently feed the bay. Small blocks of ice float on the water with that characteristic blue tone that only compressed ice acquires over centuries. Each fragment represents a tiny part of a much larger frozen mass that continues to slowly descend from the island’s interior.

The relationship between ice and the sea determines all life in this ecosystem. Ringed seals use the icy platforms to rest and raise their young. Bearded seals occasionally appear on isolated icebergs. Walruses find food in the shallow bottoms while they stir up sediments in search of mollusks. Above them revolves, often invisible, the great predator of the Arctic.

The polar bear is never a guarantee for the visitor, although it is a permanent presence in the logic of the landscape. Barentsøya is one of the sectors where females find appropriate areas to move between the sea ice and the coasts during different times of the year. Each human movement is organized considering that biological priority. Here the visitor adapts his behavior to the territory, never the other way around.

Seabirds complete a dynamic setting. Boreal fulmars take advantage of the upward currents generated by the cliffs. Brünnich’s guillemots cross the bay in rapid flights while kittiwakes patrol the surface in search of fish that rise alongside the waters enriched by melting ice.

It is tempting to describe these landscapes as white deserts. The expression, repeated ad nauseam, ends up hiding a much more fascinating reality. The High Arctic constitutes one of the most complex natural systems on the planet, where each organism depends on extremely delicate balances between temperature, sea ice, ocean productivity and light duration. It is enough to stop for a few minutes to discover that the apparent immobility hides a constant activity.

Perhaps that is the most profound teaching that Sundneset and Diskobukta offer. Neither place seeks to impress through grandiloquent gestures. Its beauty demands another speed, another disposition of the gaze. There, time acquires a geological scale, life prospers thanks to extraordinary adaptations and the human being recovers a condition that he rarely experiences in the rest of the world, that of feeling like just a passing episode within an immensely previous and, with luck, still future nature.

When leaving these shores, a sensation remains that is difficult to translate. The most persistent memory may be the least spectacular. Not a monumental glacier, not an exceptional animal, not even the permanent glow of the northern summer. What remains is the certainty of having traveled through a territory where silence still retains the power to tell the story of the Earth with a clarity that very few places are capable of offering.

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