Time has become an abstract concept. Not only is Svalbard time different from our homelands, but time aboard is different again to Svalbard time. We’re on ship’s time, the clock changed by two hours to make the most of the daylight. To take it even further, being on a boat in an alien environment thinking only of the here and now, means that the there and then grows more distant. The Clock, if it exists at all, is reduced to simply Day Time or Night Time, and with Dark Time fast approaching, the boundaries becomes increasingly blurred.

We clamber into our insulated gear and slide our way onto the Zodiac in the first light of a calm nearly-pink sunrise. The sun hasn’t hit our patch yet and we’re glad of the gear as we head for land.  There are huge lumps of waist-high ice littering the shore, mostly devoid of colour in the dawn shade. Cold icy ice, beautifully sculpted forms with serrated sea shaped surfaces. Walking among them in the shallow water, I can feel the cold of the sea through my boots, and I enjoy it as I would when listening to rain falling on a tent. Small friendly sounds of ticking and cracking rise up, the water that gently bobs through empty spaces quietly gurgling and popping, an obscure conversation in the stillness. Crouching down, human bodies passing by, bend the light, the ice diffusing and altering shapes into surreal and mysterious forms. So the world has changed once more, perception of the Arctic turned on it’s head when viewed at a different scale. 

Day Time for now consists of creeping around at ground level, observing and recording this strange icy world, connecting in small ways to these micro Arctic spaces, until the light fades and we swing back into Night Time and its now familiar habits.