Here's Where It Gets Interesting - On an Arctic Island with Cecilia Blomdahl

Episode Date: October 8, 2021

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to live in the North Pole? In this episode, Sharon gets the inside scoop on Arctic living from photographer and TikTok sensation Cecilia Blomdahl. Cecilia lives in the northernmost town in the world on the Arctic island of Svalbard. Though not exactly the North Pole, Cecilia sees her fair share of polar bears and reindeer. As well, she spends two months of the winter in complete darkness and two months of the summer in 24-hours of sunlight. From living in a cabin with no running water to whale watching from her front porch, Cecilia’s life is anything but ordinary. Join Sharon and Cecilia as they talk about Cecilia’s grand adventures in Svalbard. For more information on this episode including all resources and links discussed go to https://www.sharonmcmahon.com/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Red One... We're coming at you. ...is the movie event of the holiday season. Santa Claus has been kidnapped? You're gonna help us find him. You can't trust this guy. He's on the list. Is that Naughty Lister? Naughty Lister?

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Taste the many flavors of our cultures. Eat with us. Taste the many flavors of our cultures. Dance with us. Join in. Feel the beat of the drum and celebrate. Come. Walk with us. Indigenous Tourism Alberta. Hey friends, I am so excited for today's episode. I am interviewing my friend Cecilia who lives on

an island near the North Pole called Svalbard. And they have thousands of polar bears and miniature reindeer and walruses and seals and whales. And they live in a cabin without running water. Her work is enchanting. If you have watched her on YouTube or TikTok or Instagram, you already know what I'm talking about. So let's dive in to our conversation about what it is like to live on a polar island. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. Cecilia! Hey! You're here. Thank you for having me. Oh my gosh, we are talking far across the ocean. We are so far away from each other, but I feel like being up here, I'm far away from absolutely everybody. That's true. Where are you that you are so far away?

I am on Svalbard, which is an island close to the North Pole, but it's actually an archipelago if I'm going to be completely correct. So the island that I'm on is Spitsbergen. So it is like a Norwegian island in the Arctic. And I've lived here now for almost six years now in November. It's pretty crazy. It is crazy. We have polar bears here. You have lots of polar bears. We do have lots of polar bears. And you make absolutely enchanting videos about what it's like to live on Svalbard and about your life on Svalbard. You're just delightful to watch. It's so entertaining and educational. And I think that's what I love the most about it is I love to learn while I'm being entertained.

Thank you. I think that's why I also love making these videos because just telling my everyday life kind of gives you an education about what life is in the Arctic. Because I'm just like a normal, regular person living in this crazy world up here. You know, I live in my cabin. We don't have any running water. Me, my boyfriend and my dog live here. And we live like pretty normal lives, except I have to wear a gun when I go on my dog walk,

you know? And I'd say that is pretty, you know, different from any other sort of dog walk. And I just love showing people the life that we have up here because it is so special and it's just so different. It absolutely is. It's truly fascinating. It feels like, dang, that is the last frontier, but it really does seem like a different world. Yeah. I think also what is so different here is that we have this little metropolitan city, you know, because it is so small,

but we can't go anywhere else, you know? So everything is in this village of Longyearbyen. So you will step in and you will feel like it's almost like a resort town. So it's not maybe like in Alaska, where you can go for miles on a road, and you'll never see anything, we can only drive within the village, like we don't have any roads out of here. Yes, step foot in Longyearbyen, you walk straight into this little community with a lot of different people and a lot of amenities. And, you know, we have hotels, bars, restaurant. So it's like a different life and very modern, even though we live in this place where we go to cabins that are completely remote and we carry guns because of the polar bears. It's

just such a mix of everything. It's so fascinating. Okay. So we have talked a number of times on my Instagram, just doing lives because I absolutely love you. And I know that my audience loves following you too. First of all, people like to ask, are you guys related? But we are like lost soul. That is true. We did meet each other. There's just some connection. Yes. We're not related, but it was one of those things where as soon as we met each other, we instantly clicked. So no, this is not like my cousin that lives in the Arctic, but, but when I first encountered your videos, I immediately just like did a huge deep dive into like watching all of your content.

And then I reached out to you and we've talked many times about the fascinating aspects of your life, but how did you even get to live on an Island in the Arctic? The great adventure. The weird thing is like, there's not even this massive story behind it. Cause I'm kind of one of those people. I will join people on their adventures in a heartbeat. So my boyfriend at the time, he got a job up here and I had never even heard about Svalbard six years ago. I'd never heard the name. I didn't know this Island existed when he was like, yeah, I've got a job opportunity

on Svalbard. I'm like, you have to go. This sounds amazing. Had no idea what it entailed. He's like, I think they have polar bears. I'm like, you have to go. This sounds amazing. Had no idea what it entailed. He's like, I think they have polar bears. I'm like, sounds exciting. Go. I was thinking if he just goes and he likes it, I'll join straight away because I had a job and, you know, had to figure everything out. And then I just joined him because he said it was a cool place. So I thought, you know,

I'm going to be here and work for a few months we're planning to stay maybe for three months or so and I just step off the plane in the middle of the polar night in November so you see nothing it's 24 hours of darkness every day and I'm like this is so magical I fell in love straight away the first night with a moonshine like where you can actually see stuff. I saw the mountains and the ocean. It took me like two weeks before I could see where I was, you know, just fell in love with the place. I fell out of love with my boyfriend. So after a while and Longyearbyen took my heart instead. So after that, I just stayed, you know, and just something about this place. It keeps you here. It's like a love letter, you know, you cannot leave. It's too beautiful. And people also want to know where did you live

before you moved to Svalbard? So before this, I moved from Gothenburg, but I kind of grew up living in Ireland for a few years. So you'll hear a hint of Irish. I actually usually had like a super thick Irish accent, but it faded over the years. So sad. I moved around and I've lived in Australia and England. I was in Ireland again, and I just kind of moved around, but I was in Sweden at that time. And I just felt like this is not where I want to live. So a new adventure was exactly what I wanted. So I was like, yes, let's go to Svalbard to the polar polar bears we go. Yes. You already mentioned that you have polar night for months at a time. I know it's autumn on Svalbard right now. When will the sun set for the last time?

It will set at the end of October. And then we will have, you know, civil twilight before it goes completely black. Because it will go like six degrees below the horizon. So you will have, you know, civil twilight before it goes completely black because it will go like six degrees below the horizon. So you will have this faint light. And then at the beginning of November, you will have no light whatsoever. So it's going to be the darkest of night skies out 24 seven all day for two and a half months. Favorite time of year. Isn't that crazy? I know you've mentioned that you love it and you love it more than the 24 hours of daylight that you have in the summertime.

The midnight sun is torture. And I think, I'm not even kidding. I feel like I'm going insane. Even now I'm like, it's so bright all the time. For four months, you have endless sunshine and daylight. It just does something to you where your body just at the end, it kind of goes crazy because all you want is something to shut off the light and you can't. So the polar night for me is just the most amazing time of year. You know, being in this cabin, you can step outside to go on a dog walk and there's the Northern Lights just all over the sky. And it's so peaceful.

It's so quiet. And I kind of feel like it's the time of year when I can just rejuvenate. Do you know what I mean? Like I charge all my batteries and relax in a completely different way than I've done any other season. It makes sense, though, that your body's circadian rhythm is in large part guided by the amount of available light. You start pumping out hormones to like make you feel sleepy when it gets dark outside. And if you never have those cues, your body is never like,

oh, it's time to wind down. Then you're resorting to these artificial methods of trying to trick your body into getting sleepy, having a normal rest cycle. So I can see how after a few months of that, you might feel like I need a nap. I'm like exhausted because your body is ready to go at all times of the day. But during the powder night, it's more kind of like you work on getting energized. And that is for me so much easier. You know, I go to the gym, I make sure I eat a lot of vegetables, I enjoy my days in a complete different way. While during the like midnight sun season, I can get over exhausted by the sunlight that never leaves. So you're like, you're trying to

get out of it, instead of trying in the polar night to get energized. Yes. So you're like, you're trying to get out of it instead of trying in the polar night to get energized. So I just absolutely loved the polar night. It's beautiful. And it also feels like I'm part of a secret. That's really weird. I thought about it the other day because it's something like nobody really experiences. So it's like, you're in this special part of the world with your weird darkness and you're like, yeah, I'm just going to enjoy it, you know, because nobody else can. That's right. That's right. A lot of other places. What do you do when it is dark for two and a half months? Do you have a really regimented schedule where you're like, my alarm goes off every morning at six and you keep that schedule

in order to keep yourself on a normal sleep cycle, or how does it work for you? I definitely have to have my wake up light. So it will wake you with a sunrise in your room. And that helps a lot. Your body will wake up like normally, you know, to the sunlight, even though there is no sunlight, you're going to walk out to darkness. But I, I mean, I've never gotten up at 6am like on my own ever in my life. I, I'll tell you a secret. I am terrible at getting up in the morning. Like the worst.

I will sleep till three. You will? Like a teenager. Yes. Like if nobody wakes me, I won't wake. So I put like 14 alarms. I snooze. I hide it in the kitchen. So I have to get out of bed, but yeah, definitely during the polar night, I will be strict about it because

there is no waking up when there's no light, nothing will tell me. That's right. You're just sleeping beauty. It will be a week and I'll be like, what, what is happening? Did I even wake up to go to the bathroom? Did I get up in November? I don't know. Speaking of bathrooms, you don't have any running water at your cabin. Okay. So just in case people have not listened to our Instagram lives, there is a village on Svalbard, Longyearbyen. Is that right? Yeah. And then you live in a cabin that you just finished running an addition onto. You live in a cabin a little ways outside of town. Yeah. And at your cabin, there is electricity. Yes. But there is not indoor plumbing because there's no running water. indoor plumbing because there's no running water. Exactly. In the American mind, we think that there would be an outhouse, which there is not. There is not an outhouse. That would be absolutely freezing.

And there's polar bears. What are you going to take a gun to the outhouse? When we're in cabins, when we're in remote cabins, that's exactly what we do. You go, you sit down with your rifle in front of you, but not at home. You know, we're not briefed. Not in our house. That's too much. That's too much. Visa and OpenTable are dishing up something new.

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even know the difference well i mean okay you would know the difference you have to put like a tea bag in it you know it's like a sheet of paper and it burns your business. It's very clean, very easy. And it runs on electricity or on gas as in what's propane. Propane, exactly. And then it just burns your business. And it's just a little bit expensive. We've calculated that it's 50 cents per business. I mean, that could be a lot if you pee as often as I do.

So we have a pee toilet and that we before had to empty ourselves. So we would pee into a sort of bucket thing, right? And then you'd walk out with it and you would filter it through a Creek that then, you know, disappears. There's a lot of beautiful flowers and stuff blooming there this year. From the buckets? Yes. from this fertilizer from my body and so now that you've remodeled your cabin are you still using the same system yeah yeah okay people think that like oh my gosh you're polluting the water what explain why it's not polluting the water it's not polluting the water because first of all it's heavily diluted with water. And then pee is just, I mean, a general fertilizer. And then if you then put it into this creek, it filters through the sand and through the mud and everything. And I mean, we're not

throwing human waste in there. The business that burns, it becomes a super small amount. And then you just throw that away. Like you would throw away trash and that's like every three months or you can throw it into the nature as well because it literally is just ashes that is not a problem but yeah so we just make sure that when we throw our pee out there's nothing in it I would never put chemicals in and also that would kill everything around our house and our house has never had this much grass ever so it's kind of crazy to see that we're creating like a park. We're creating our own pea park, our own little pea park. So we have a lot of grass around our cabin, but yeah, we just make sure it's heavily diluted with water because I've read up on it. And that could be the only thing if you would put just a lot of pee, it could be burning or,

you know what I mean? So it's completely fine fine and it's not like massive amounts you know we're two people living here right also where do you think all of the animals go to the bathroom yes out in the nature outside of the nature yes and also uh rock and cetera, is an extremely effective filter. The cleanest water on earth is filtered through volcanic rocks, et cetera. You know, like rock is actually good at that. Yes. Yes. And we, I mean, we'd never throw anything straight into the ocean.

And also if we do our dishes or whatever, we've made sure to use those, what's it called? The brands that are fine. Fine degradable. Exactly. what's it called the brands that are fine degradable exactly because otherwise of course it would be horrible to put just like you know chlorine straight into the ocean or whatever right but we've chosen the right kind of materials and the right uh so bio stuff yeah yeah how do you deal with gray water which is what you're referring to like water from showering or water from dishes how do you yeah we don't have a shower. So we shower

in the village. So we don't shower at home. We also don't have like a washing machine or anything. And now we have a dishwasher, which we didn't have before, but we just do the same. We made sure to buy these machine tablets that you can let out because other than that, it's just water. And it also filters through a creek. Okay. so the most important part is the filtering yes we also have this actually it's called a sand filter so you dig kind of like a hole you put a lot of sand in it so it filters through that as well so there's a couple of things we have to do and you also have to get approved by suselmannen to be able to live out here and you know for any water to leave your cabin but it's miniscule

amounts like the island can handle it yeah and I think the most important thing is that we think about it it would be bad if we just like mindlessly threw stuff into the ocean of course yeah we would never do that right and so to shower and wash your clothes you go to the gym yeah and the laundromat at the gym no laundromat here. So I just, you know, call up a friend and I'm like, hello, would you like a visit? Yeah. We have one friend that we usually go to. So we try to go like once a week or once every other week and we just do laundry. It's very easy. I think it might sound complicated, but when you just work up your life and a little bit of a schedule, it just kind of flows.

Nothing is far here. We're talking like from the gym to go to this friend's house to do laundry. It's about 30 seconds. And it's like on the other side of town. Yes. The other side of town is 30 seconds away. 30 seconds. So everything is very easy up here because you have no distances and people

are extremely relaxed. So for me, it's never been a problem to shower in town and not have a shower at home. I just work around it. The view here is worth it. How many people live on Svalbard? Around 2,400 people in Longyearbyen, which is the Norwegian village. Then we have two Russian villages as well. So one is called Barnesburg, which is 60 kilometers west of Longyearbyen, where about 550 people live. And then you have the ghost town of Pyramiden, which is also Russian. It was abandoned in 1998. But now about 10 people live there. You would love this place. Have you deep dived into this? Yes. And I love to comment on one of your videos because I was like, you have not adequately informed me about the plane crash. It's crazy. There's so many crazy

stories here. So there's this Russian coal mining village. Yes. So what is the connection between the plane crash and the abandonment of the village. Yeah, so Pyramiden is a coal mining village where like 1500 people lived. And Russia made this place to be one of the most amazing places on earth. You know, they built beautiful houses and they had schools and there were kids there and they really put their soul

into making this a great village. So they had a plane crash though. 141 people who were on board of this plane were all going to Pyramiden because they were workers there and it crashed into the mountain just close to Longyearbyen so you can still see the remains of this crash up on the mountain so there's still pieces there I think that and some other factors like the prices of coal were receding and stuff like that set off the fact that they decided to abandon Pyramidum. And what's crazy is they kind of left it just as it is. So like you can walk into the houses and there will be like newspaper clippings on the walls.

There will be skis waiting in the corridor, you know, shoes by the bed. So it is crazy to walk through there. It's just people just left their stuff yeah it was like i have to leave it didn't go overnight but they were like yeah well i guess we're going so we're just going to leave everything here i mean i mean it's far away as well and then like 98 they don't have a proper airport so i guess they were shuttling people out of there. No way to really move your stuff. I was going to bring my chest of drawers. That's right. That's right. I cannot get this on the airplane. My skis. And so the other, the other Russian village that has about 500 people that live there,

is that on the same Island that you live on or a different one? Yes, it's the same one. So I think everything is on Spitsbergen, which is where we are. So Barnesburg is also here. And yeah, when you go there, your phone even welcomes you to Russia. Really? It's crazy. Yeah. So and they have like their own monetary system and it's completely their own, you know. But we always visit.

We try to support their community as well because they don't get as many visitors as Lone Urbina does. It's a really good friendship between the villages, you know? Is the only way to get there on snow machines? Yeah, so snowmobile in the winter and then boat in the summer. Like I said, we don't have any roads leading out of Longyearbyen. So like the only way you can get out in the winter is by snowmobile and then summer by boat. Because in the summer when there's no snow, you're not allowed to do anything but walk on the tundra. We have a lot of nature rules, which is good because we want to keep like the fauna and the flora beautiful and pristine, you know.

So you can't bicycle anywhere. You can just walk. So the only way to really explore is by boat in the summer or by snowmobile. And I saw that you guys got a boat this year. We did. That is so exciting. And what did you mostly want this boat for? Christopher had a boat before, but it was like, he called it the cod killer because he only really went fishing with it. But I really want in the summer to be able to explore and you can't leave really for four months you don't have a boat and we felt

like okay we can definitely like afford this so let's buy a boat this year that's a lot bigger that can take us and grim safely around because the weather is absolutely crazy up here there's nowhere else in the world where nature kind of tests you like up here so yeah it's good to have a boat that you trust. And that's also quite big that can, you know, take you around safely. It would be bad some days. And so where did you guys go on your boat? Just like around the island? Yeah. Yeah. So this weekend we left on Friday and we were gone till Monday. So we just kind of, you know, set sail to, okay, we look at the weather, first of all,

like, where is it going to be okay? Because like I told you, it can be absolutely brutal. So we wanted to head to the Tuna Glacier. So that's what we did. So we headed to a place called Bjoenahamna. I will post a video about this soon. And I think I got the most beautiful drone footage I've ever gotten because it was absolutely no wind and sunshine and just so beautiful but so what we do

is we just go to a safe place where we can anchor and then we hike and we read books and you know we go see the glacier sometimes I swim you know we just kind of enjoy the scenery I think that really is what life is about up here as well if you're a city person this probably won't be your kind of place but if you like nature there's so much nature to enjoy and that's what i really like and unique nature because you also have your own type of tiny reindeer they look like regular reindeer except shorter legs yes and kind of chunky yes they are so cute and they are fearless they'll walk right past you they don't care at all and like every time i meet them with grim they will stop and they will walk to you they're're like, hi, how are you? How are you doing? Is that one of my kind? You know, great. Is he one of ours? Is he captive? Oh my goodness. They're so cute. Yeah. I love them.

Being on an Island, they have developed into their own type of reindeer that are found nowhere else. How many Svalbard reindeer do people estimate live there? Oh gosh, I have no idea. I think there's a lot though, but I really, I have no idea how many even. I just know that they like think that there's around 3000 polar bears here or something. That's the only estimate that I know. But when it comes to reindeer, it must be like 20,000 or something or more. I have no idea. They are everywhere. And also like hunting on Svalbard is very limited. So if you are a hunter, you can apply to shoot one reindeer a year per person. And I kind of like that because it's also a very special type of hunting here because you will have to walk out to your animal. you'll have to

do everything out in the nature also you take pieces for research and I love this I think this is such an amazing way to kind of incorporate everything into education so anything you hunt here a specific part of the animal has to go to research so you go and leave it at the university so they can study it but yeah yeah isn't it cool so like if it's a certain type of bird I know it's one certain part of their wing so you have to bring and I just like that everything up here is kind of you know you think about the whole picture not just okay we need some meat but okay but then we can bring something for research so sure I really like that it's it's very small to me drop off the piece of the reindeer at the university

and so imagine you have to walk the whole reindeer yeah okay it's a different story you and you're not allowed to bring a sled no so you have to bring a couple of friends and backpacks that you can spare and then you just do everything out in the fields and then you have parts for the other animals which is also nice so you have the food for the foxes, everything that's left, you know? Yeah. Like the entrails, like the intestines and things you're not going to eat. Exactly. And anything you can't carry really. So. That is so interesting. Is reindeer a popular food there? Definitely. I mean, we have barely anything local. So anything local that we can get,

we really try to treasure so people who are hunters usually do take their one animal because it's going to give you food for the winter pretty much everything else we buy at the store and that's going to be shipped so far like me and Christopher we go and we fish arctic cod the entire summer that's what we usually did and that will fill our freezer for you know till the till the next season. And just to be able to eat something local every week is very valuable when you live so far away from anything else. But we also have like mushrooms and birds. So ptarmigan and goose, people hunt as well. But reindeer is definitely something that is like a treat, you know, if you get to have one and eat. Do they serve a reindeer in

the restaurants there? Some of them do. Yeah. Cause we still have trappers, you know, like the whole history of Svalbard is trapping. Like that's how it all kind of started in the beginning. So I, I did a video on this. So I know like the Pomors, which is a type of people, they came from the white sea in Russia and they went up here to hunt. And that's kind of how Svalbard started with all of the different cabins out. And then after that, now we have, I think, two trappers still up here. So they would live in these small huts and they had like extra stations around the island and they would get like 25 reindeer per season or something. And that would be sold to the restaurants because

otherwise what would they be serving if it's not Svalbard reindeer you know so it's all very regulated up here how long has Svalbard been inhabited I think that they start like the village in the 1901 or something because it was an American that started Longyearbyen that's why it's called Longyearbyen his name was John Monroe Longyear and Longyearbyen means Longyear village because I always thought at the beginning that it is you know it's because it's a long year no he had a very fitting name yeah yeah so for like I think 1905 or something I can't really remember but that he started the whole village as a coal mining village. Because we don't have an indigenous population. That's right.

Because a lot of people are like, oh, why are you there? Whose land is it? But really, it isn't anybody's land. There is a Svalbard Treaty. So like 40 different countries signed it. So they can be here and do business. And then Norway right now has sovereignty over Svalbard. So they are governing it. But that's why Russia can be here and also have villages. And we have different

research stations from all around the world here as well. We have Kesa, which is the world's largest satellite park. You know, there's a lot of stuff on Svalbard that I think affects the rest of the world in a good way, like NASA doing research here, even so people don't really know about us that much. Why are satellites important there? I'm guessing it is because of the very undisturbed location. And we also have during two and a half months, we have a perfect look at the night sky, you know, because they do a lot of aurora research here as well how how many nights a year do you see auroras in the winter time in the winter time I mean anytime the there's a clear day you know because it all depends on the solar storm so that is what the aurora is I always do like to explain this I go like northern lights for children what is it yes but it is a solar storm that comes into our

atmosphere and that's what creates the light but I would say that we have it's really difficult but all the time I want to say you know it could be in the morning and then none in the evening it kind of depends on what the weather is like so anytime you would have cloudy skies you won't see anything of course but any day there's clear skies the chance is pretty big because now there's still auroras just that we can't see it because there's daylights right so it's just about having the night sky it's still happening you know but I mean it can be for an entire week it can be every day and then it can be nothing for a week and it's also good to know that it's depending on the location as well I think a lot of people might think that it happens all over the night sky, but it doesn't, it's situational. So like it will be in a location,

you know, it can be above my cabin. So only we can see it and not the village. And it can be the other way around. It's almost like a rainbow where you don't see the rainbow everywhere. You see the rainbow in that little part of the sky. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yes. And the auroras move around. Yes. Very, yeah. And they dance across the sky, you know, and it can also be a show that's for two seconds or it can be for, you know, two hours. It really is so magical. We have auroras here in Minnesota, but not as, uh, not as often as you do where you're farther North than we are. And the, so the atmospheric conditions have to be, um, more perfect. Yeah. More perfect for us to see them. But Chris and I saw the

Northern lights on our first date. No way. Yes. And we were like, it's too perfect. It's too, it's too good. Like it's a movie moment. It is a movie moment. I would take that straight away. It's like, yes, it's a, they're telling you like, go for it. We did. Is the flight from Norway bumpy? To Svalbard. Okay.

Any other time of year than polar night, it's completely fine. So it's not bumpy at all. If you travel like during the polar night, it's absolute mayhem. I have not been on a normal flight once because the weather is usually so bad. Like our landing strip is extremely short. It's just the one and it's by the ocean. If you go off, you're going into the ocean. And I've had times where we've been on the flight and we're like, can we land?

And she's like, I don't know. I don't think so. We're going to see. And we're like literally like 10 minutes from landing. You can hear the captain saying, we're going for it. And they just go, boom, and then just like straight. And I love it. I find it very thrilling.

Pilots flying here are incredible. To land here, you have to go within mountains. And you go like sometimes over long-ear bins, crazy stuff. So see, in my mind, it would be the worst pilots because who else wants to fly this route? I think it's exciting, but I think that it makes me feel better to know that it's the best pilot. Yes, I will say it's the best of the best. How far of the flight from Norway is it? So if you go from Oslo, it's going to be a direct flight, which is three hours. And then it also sometimes lands in Tromsø, Northern Norway.

And it might not even tell you, but that flight from Tromsø, Northern Norway is just one hour. But from Oslo, it's three. Three hours is fine. Yeah. I mean, I don't, yeah. We're far away. So yeah. Yeah.

I do love a good winter storm though, as long as I away, so yeah. Yeah. I do love a good winter storm though, as long as I'm not flying in it, but I do love listening to the wind outside and I love this like, well, can't go anywhere. But I also find it exciting. I find weather quite exciting, but I like this weather more than if I lived in like tornado country, I've never experienced a tornado that terrifies me, but winter storms, there's something just cozy and calming about it. I feel like I know what to expect. Does that make sense? Yeah, I do. I love a good winter storm. Also a winter storm, even though they can be dangerous when you drive in them, et cetera,

in your situation, where are you driving? Nowhere. Yeah. And you just stay home. And to me, you have a very excellent chance of living through the winter storm versus a tornado where it truly could destroy everything that you own. It's a different type of feeling. Yeah, that's terrifying. I need to come visit. It just needs to happen. I do. What time of year would you come?

Would you come winter? Oh, you do love winter, though. I do love winter. I feel like November is a month for you because I feel like you should experience polar nights because everything else you have, if you have winter in Minnesota, which you do, then you have sunny winter. And that would be the same here, except we can snowmobile. I think for you, November would be the most like, wow. It's like Christmas wonderland here, but like real life. I would enjoy that. I would be into that. The only thing though,

is I would want to see the mountains and I would want to see the polar bears and I would want to see the whales. Maybe I need two trips. Maybe I need to come two times. Definitely. I've been stood on our porch, looking out at whales, like, you know, 50 meters away. It's been crazy the entire summer. It's amazing. I need that. Yes. Why are you, why are you amazing I need that yes why are you I need whales I only have this stupid freshwater lake totally whale free so I would assume the whales they're they're migratory and they're there to feed in the summertime and they migrate to warmer weather in the winter the thing is like we don't like you couldn't see the whales in the winter. The thing is like, we don't like- You couldn't see the whales in the winter. There you go, that's exactly what I was gonna say.

I wouldn't know if they're here in the winter. That's right. But I think, yes, they are migratory. Like in the summer, we have so many animals visiting us. Like all of the birds, they of course leave. This time of year, there's an overload of everything. And everybody's having babies, all the animals. So that's also so cute to see. I've been watching all these reindeer babies pop up everywhere and they're cuter than you could

imagine they look like little lambs but chunky and with their like chunky legs oh I love it summer is a beautiful time just because of all of the new baby animals and the whales and it is now just the midnight sun is okay we'll we'll put it okay what kind of whales do you get there a lot of beluga whales and then we have had a lot of fin whales and humpbacks and blue whales we don't get that many orcas apparently this is a little bit too far north they don't generally hang out here they do show up i think a pod showed up this summer. But like they usually go to not further than like northern Norway because there's tons there. But definitely I've seen the most fin whales and beluga whales this summer. And like we're talking a pod of like 60 whales.

So yeah, they're huge. And they just come into this quite small fjord. And they can go all the way into Longyearbyen. So they will like be laying around there, you know, just like fearless is everything because nobody really fears us. You know, they're like, we're these people. And I know you have a lot of walrus. Yeah. I think I love them the most. They're so funny. They're so grumpy. I love your drone footage of walruses on the ice flows just where they're oh yes feels so good in the sunshine or like a mama and her baby on a piece of ice just

chilling that's when you really know you're like in the arctic you know in the middle of nowhere suddenly comes an ice float with two super heavy polar bears so walrus is on it and they're just dead asleep you know they slept there for hours completely didn't care float along with her little baby yeah it's beautiful it's crazy i mean we legitimately could talk for another three hours i'm just gonna have to get back because i know people have more questions they want to know more things about things like schools churches churches, government, like they want to know universities. They want to know so much. We'll have to have another episode. We talked a lot about wildlife and whatnot on this one, but we will talk again in the future about some more of the other details.

And thank you so much for having me. So exciting. I love that you have a podcast. Thank you so much for having me. This is so exciting. I love that you have a podcast. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this

episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. I cannot wait to have another mind-blown moment with you next episode. Thanks again for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast.