RÚNA MAGNÚSSON

Science & Illustrations & Photography

Another fieldwork season in the craziest and tiniest place on Earth; the Ny-Alesund Research Base.

If the weather is good, the fun begins when you fly up from Longyearbyen. Several times a week, a small aircraft brings people and mail to and from the research base.
We worked on our field projects around the little village. The foxes were curious this year.
A hike on the weekend. First stop was an old reindeer exclosure behind the runway. Inside the exclosure, we see what the tundra would have looked like if reindeer hadn’t been so numerous: much more lichens!
Hiking on, we see amazing striped patterns on Dryas shrubs and stones, formed through a combination of freeze-thaw cycles and slope movement.
We climb up the plateau, towards Stuphallet.
More amazing sorted stones on moving, freezing and thawing slopes.
We walk past the Nilsebu cabin, where we go back later to watch the solar eclipse
Views from the plateau
Driftwood on the beach, back in town
Catching jellyfish with Shelle
Back to Nilsebu
To watch the eclipse
Saturday night, this was our view from the bar’s veranda; the first snow on the mountaintops.
From then onwards, we started waking up to snowy scenes; we’d have to hurry with the fieldwork
Our fieldwork site, progressively less summery
Powder sugar coating on the mountain
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Rúna Magnússon