So are we tourists?

Of course we are. (But we don't feel like it.) What is a tourist anyway? Are you a tourist in any place where you only visit for a short time? All of Scotland feels like home to me;  I travel to the our furthest shores and never feel like a tourist, yet I don't live in these places I visit. I have no house there. What's the difference between me visiting Caithness and visiting Svalbard?  What and where is the line you step over from being a local to being a tourist? It's not the language (otherwise I'd feel at home in N. America or Australia - and I don't). If it's simply a feeling of identifying with the place you're in at the time, or having a feeling of somehow belonging, then the whole world can be home. Can't it?

We're in Magdalene fjord in the north-west of Svalbard, a spectacularly beautiful wide bay with turquoise blue glaciers and ragged mountains made up of a million whites. It's a bomb-proof shelter for boats and deep enough to accommodate huge vessels - like cruise ships. But not so long ago this place used to be a busy whaling station. At one time these beaches would have been covered with whale blubber and blood, not so much a glamorous image as a sobering thought.

There's a large snow covered mound at the back of the beach which turns out to be a whalers' graveyard with driftwood crucifixes marking the graves. It's enclosed by a fence. A fence. We're in the middle of Arctic wilderness and there's a man-made fence around this graveyard to keep people (tourists like us) from traipsing all over it. I find it disturbing. We're told that for the last few summers, huge cruise ships have been visiting this fjord bringing literally hundreds of people ashore at once. Apparently tourists pay no heed to where they walk therefore have to be restricted by fences so as not to disturb the graves. I like to think that there's no one in our party who would walk over or damage these graves (or anything else) fences or no fences. But it's one rule for all.

I feel at home in this wilderness (but I've no idea why). It doesn't feel alien or frightening (though it probably should). I feel comfortable walking in the snow and ice along its shores and feeling part of the whole place for a while.

At the far end of the beach, we find a small 'tourist hut' (tourist hut) and nearby a huge boulder, probably left there by the ice about ten thousands years ago. On the seaward side of the rock is graffiti, the names of a few whaling ships scrawled in large sloppy letters for all to see. Vandals or artists? Tourists or locals?