Spitsbergen is the main island of the Svalbard archipelago. The name originated from Dutch explorer Willem Barentsz from spits for pointed and bergen for mountains. In English it is sometimes spelled Spitzbergen but this is inaccurate as the etymology is Dutch rather than German.

The evening we arrived at the north western portion of Spitsbergen was beautifully calm with a dramatic sky and gave a good opportunity to photograph the mountains and glaciers terminating into a calm sea.

Being set up with long lenses for wildlife photography allows opportunities for some landscape details as well and I really enjoying looking amongst the ice texture for compositions while trying to include something for scale. This next photo took a little time to coincide a gull under the arch.

Without a reference point it is hard to comprehend the size of these skyscraper sized chunks of ice. This is something I remember from Antartica where scale of the landscape is overwhelming when seen in context to a relatable human object. I wrote about this in A Sense of Scale and A Sense of Scale Revisited.

This next image is slightly lower and included the ice arch and ice floes at the base with a Bearded Seal. A bit hard to tell on the web but there are also 3 perched and 6 flying gulls (one in the arch) as well as 3 Black guillemots.

Unfortunately there was no opportunity to include a zodiac with humans which provides a more rapidly relatable scale.

Photos with Nikon Z8 with Nikkor Z 24-200mm and Nikon Z9 with Nikkor Z 800mm