In 2015 I went to Svalbard because it was cheaper and logistically easier to go to the High Arctic than northern mainland Norway. Obviously.
It was November. Svalbard in November has twenty-four hour darkness and it’s cold. Very cold. This is a huge frozen archipelago where the polar bear reigns supreme. On my first full day I went dog sledding in the polar night. I’d always wanted to and what could be more perfect and serene than dogs driving you across the snow while the Northern Lights danced overhead?
Just about anything, that’s the answer.
I was already wearing at least five layers of Arctic clothing. I’d invested in my first ever set of merino thermals. I already had relatively limited mobility. By the time I’d put a padded snowsuit over it all, it was all I could do to waddle over to the sleds and bending over to put on my padded boots gave me actual heartburn.
There were three of us that afternoon, me, Gaia and Sarah and it soon became evident that I was “the brave one”. Jakob, our musher and expert, asked if we’d like to stand in the snow and wait or if we’d like to help harness the dogs and I was the only one who volunteered. I’m great at hanging onto them and getting the harnesses on – provided Jakob folds the harnesses first because I never got the hang of figuring out which way up they should go.
Because we were beginners and all nervous, he picked the twelve calmest dogs to pull the two sleds. None of them were calm exactly, except possibly Nuna, the third dog I harnessed, who already knew when it was time to lift her paws to put them through the straps and who quietly and patiently put up with a chain-mate who kept jumping over her back in his excitement.
Gaia had decided right back at the booking stage that she wanted to ride with the guide so that left me and Sarah with the other sled, which meant one of us had to drive. Which meant me.
Driving is terrifying! The dogs have no concept of slow, calm or gentle. The snow wasn’t thick enough so the first five minutes, leaving the yard, was mostly over rock. The sled rattled and shook and I was certain I wasn’t going to be able to hold on – right up until we ran aground on the rock. Sarah jumped off to try to free us and the dogs took off without her.
With a lightened sled, we absolutely hurtled. I had no control, the brake did nothing and I knew I was going to die so I clung on for my very life and screamed like no one has ever screamed before. Fortunately in only a few minutes we caught up with Jakob and Gaia and because their dogs had stopped, mine did too. Sarah plodded up out of the darkness, boarded her sled and we set off again.
I never got really comfortable driving. As the snow deepened it became less terrifying but it never got comfortable and I never had any real control. I couldn’t even stand up properly. I wrapped my arms around the crossbar and tried not to fall off. In that position, I was looking straight down at the top of Sarah’s head and even if I’d been able to look up, my hat and headtorch slipped down over my eyes, leaving me driving blind.
We stopped because Gaia didn’t like it. Gaia, sitting comfortably on a sled being driven by a professional! But Sarah and I didn’t object. We’d been shouting to each other for some time about “can we go back now?” “This is really scary!” “How far do you think we’ve come?” etc. You think we didn’t need to shout, out in the middle of the frozen wilderness on a dog-powered sled? It’s noisy. The wind, the feet, the panting, the runners on snow. It’s far from silent.
By the time we swapped places and turned back, I was sweaty and exhausted and running on that sickening but somehow sustaining adrenaline high and Sarah had had several days by now to realise driving back was going to be scary. I’d been spared that – it had been less than thirty seconds between “I have to drive?” and setting off. But Sarah at least had deep smooth snow at the start of her drive, which would give her time to figure it out before she hit the rocky bit at the end and she also had the sense to take off her hat and headtorch and drop them in my lap when they started to slip.
Did we see the Northern Lights? No. Were they out? No idea. Probably not. It was cloudy a lot of the time I was in Svalbard but they could have put on the best display in history and we wouldn’t have noticed. Trying to hold on and not die takes too much mental energy. We saw nothing except the back half of the last pair of dogs. It’s just too dark and pocket headtorches don’t penetrate the Polar Night at all.
Speaking of the back half of the last pair of dogs, here’s an unbeautiful secret about dogsledding. No toilet breaks so the dogs just go on the run. It stinks. Luckily we were out of range of being hit sitting at the back of the sled or standing on the runners but I think I wouldn’t like be crammed onto the sled with other people and end up at the front. It’s not pleasant.
Most of the dogs have very thick fur. They need it, living where they do, but it means they overheat very easily when they start running and we had one on our sled who tried to roll in the snow every time we so much as paused, which worried me until I figured out what was going on. I’d have liked to roll in the snow myself. Driving is hot work.
We got back safely and the three of us had to hold onto the sleds while Jakob put the dogs away. We used this time to take photos because photos while driving just wasn’t possible. I was also allowed to play with a particularly big and fluffy dog called Fenris, who was too excitable to pull our sled and “a bit bitey”. No, he was soft and daft and beautiful. But it’s fitting that he can be bitey, given that he’s named after Norse mythology’s Fenris-wolf, who bit off Tyr’s hand.
We calmed down after all that with coffee and biscuits and storytime in the Russian cabin at the top kennels, where the puppies live and start their training. I met a litter of white puppies who I genuinely believed, just for a minute, might be polar bear cubs.
When we are done, we went back down the mountain to the bottom kennels, fed the dogs and took off the extra-warm layers before getting in the minibus to drive back to Longyearbyen.
You bet I slept well that night.