Midnight Sun

This issue’s intrepid Apprentice joins travel, landscape, and wildlife pro Chris Mclennan in the pristine Arctic wilderness of Svalbard

Aurora had travelled halfway around the globe for what was to be an amazing experience on one of Chris’s photo expedition workshops. Her destination was Longyearbyen (which aptly translates to Long Year City), in Norway’s remote Svalbard archipelago. Her flight touched down at around 1:30am – though the sun was shining bright just as it would be at 1:30pm. Firmly within the Arctic Circle, this is the Land of the Midnight Sun, and getting used to 24 hours of sunshine was going to take a few days. Longyearbyen is located at 78º North, making it the northernmost settlement of any size in the world, and where the duo and the rest of the expedition would be boarding the MS Polarfront, which would be their new floating home for the coming two weeks. The small group of photographers, a dozen in total, were the only guests on the ship, which Chris had chartered exclusively for the expedition. After spending a night in Longyearbyen, they set sail to explore