THE SVARTISEN REGION began with rain – with the kind of straight-through-your-waterproofs downpour I’d expected from Norway all along. The deluge wasn’t remotely pleasant, but it didn’t dampen my spirits. If anything, it raised them. What could be better for epic northern mountains than epic northern weather?
And Svartisen is epic. Located on the western side of the Saltfjellet – Svartisen National Park, Svartisen is the collective name for the two massive ice caps that hold 142 square miles of Norway firmly locked within the ice age. Svartisen means ‘Black Ice’, an odd name for a glacier perhaps, but it suited the entire range. The mountains rise straight from the sea and storms are frequent. When they barrel inland the valleys become dark tunnels beneath dark fjells, and at those times the name feels entirely appropriate.
One especially important detail sums up Svartisen: a certain latitudinal line – approximately 66°33’ North – bisects the range. At this line the sun shines for twenty-four hours on midsummer’s day each year and disappears for twenty-four hours in midwinter, and north of it is a fabled land that imaginative suburban schoolchildren dream of one day exploring. The line of latitude is the Arctic Circle, and it makes Svartisen an Arctic range.
