Spitsbergen & Lapland

Breathtaking scenery is everywhere on Spitsbergen and starts as your flight descends through a glacier-hung valley to Longyearbyen’s airport. Glaciers and ice-caps are rent by dark ‘Spits’ or steep-sided mountains that give the island its name. It is almost as far north as you can get (comfortably!) and still be on land. With an area approximately that of the Netherlands and Belgium together and a population that would not fill a large British village Spitsbergen can rightly claim to be Europe’s largest wilderness!

A glacier snout is visible just two kilometres up the valley from our little hotel! The diminutive Svalbard race of Reindeer graze contentedly between buildings and you’ll likely soon catch sight of an Arctic Fox scurrying past the hotel. At the furthest extent of the Gulf Stream’s influence Spitsbergen has a surprising 180 species of flowering plant and virtually all can be found around Longyearbyen. Abundant Mountain Avens looks superb amidst the barren landscape. Another popular ‘townie’ is the beautiful endemic Svalbard Poppy Papaver dahlianum whose creamy-yellow flowers decorate lichen and sedge dotted turf throughout. Another beauty is the White Arctic Bell Heather Cassiope tetragona and this flowers prolifically by the hotel. Indeed Spitsbergen has two endemic poppies – we’ll also see scree-loving Papaver cornwallisense. Mounds of creamy Saxifraga cespitosa mixes with Saxifraga cernua and pretty Pedicularis hirsuta. In fact saxifrages are the most diverse genus here with fourteen species and we’ll encounter yellow hirculus and aizoides, tall hieracifolia, and tiny hyperborea. The endemic Saxifraga svalbardensis flowers with Dwarf Golden Saxifrage and Pygmy and Tundra Buttercups. In sheltered spots Boreal Jacob’s Ladder puts forth its exquisite blue blooms.

The braided channels and marshes that descend Adventdalen are home to some fabulous plants. Saxifraga platysepala has pretty yellow flowers hardly noticed because of the brilliant red runners that loop out from the leaf rosettes. The gorgeous white woolly red-flowered Pedicularis dasyantha blooms with Lapland, Snow and Sulphur-coloured Buttercups as well as the sweetly-scented creamy Svalbard Buttercup. Beautiful Red (we call them Grey, but here they really are red) Phalaropes feed along streams and we’ll encounter Arctic and possibly Long-tailed Skuas. Purple Braya flowers on dry flats with Saxifraga oppositifolia – the latter is quite possibly the commonest flowering plant on Spitsbergen and colours whole areas purple!

It is Little Auks that give Fuglefjella its name – tens of thousands of them fly back and forth to a breeding colony amid a huge boulder field. A dozen species of Draba occur on Spitsbergen and here we’ll encounter many of them – white daurica, subcapitata, nivalis and lactea and yellow alpina, micropetala, corymbosa and oxycarpa. There’s also the delightful little campion Silene uralensis with its pink-veined inflated calyx.

We’ll move south into mainland Scandinavia, but we’ll still be well north of the Arctic Circle. As the midnight sun dips to the horizon, Tornetråsk’s lake mirrors the blue tundra cloaking the high mountains of Abisko National Park. Famed as a stunning example of Arctic Landscapes, Abisko also gets the vote from botanists as one of the very best natural sites in the Arctic.

It seems that the entire northern Swedish flora is jostling for space on Njulla Mountain which rises in front of our hotel. It looks a long way to the top so it’s a fine thing to have a chairlift whisk us to 900m above sea level. White carpets of Windflower and pink domes of Moss Campion greet us with a spectacular show. Ptarmigan and Snow Bunting feed amongst Harrimanella hypnoides and rarer Cassiope tetragona. The beautiful lilac-pink Mountain Heath flowers prolifically amongst Alpine Catchfly and mats of lovely Diapensia lapponica on dry tundra, the nesting habitat for elegant Long-tailed Skuas and overflown by Merlin and Rough-legged Buzzard. Mountain Fritillary and Moorland Clouded Yellow fly as soon as the sun emerges. By snow we can find the beautiful Ranunculus nivalis and on rocks both Saxifraga cespitosa and purple Saxifraga oppositifolia. There’s moss-loving Pinguicula villosa, tiny Snow Gentian, fine yellow Astragalus frigidus, and two rare orchids, the strange Leucorchis straminea and the tiny green Platanthera oligantha. Red-necked Phalaropes spin on boggy pools home to Ruby Whiteface, Azure Hawker and the shimmering Alpine Emerald. Reindeer should be seen as we explore the magnificent glaciated Trollsjön Valley where Pale Arctic Clouded Yellows and Cranberry Blues fly amongst Dwarf Cornel and a fine show of Wild Azalea. Here are wonderful meadows full of Globeflowers whilst up by the scenic tarn there’s lots of delicate Cardamine bellidifolia and the diminutive Chamorchis alpina. Bluethroats are a common sight in the dwarfed birch forests at lake level and in Scot’s Pine forest near Kiruna we’ll see Siberian Tit and Siberian Jay and hopefully Bohemian Waxwings and Pine Grosbeak too. Slavonian Grebes and both Red-throated and Black-throated Divers frequent the many water bodies whilst overhead we might see a White-tailed Eagle or two.

If you enjoy Arctic landscapes and flora, and prefer to spend as little time as possible travelling, then this tour is for you. It is barely an hour to Abisko from the airport at Kiruna and you’ll spend the entire week thereafter less than an hour’s drive from the hotel.