The last week of July Wayne and I and the children spent vacationing in the high Arctic - at Svalbard, an island group belonging to Norway, situated between 76°and 81°North. In English it is known as Spitsbergen, I believe, which seems to partly reflect a misunderstanding: "Spitsbergen" is actually the name of the biggest of the islands (and the only one with some small human settlements), whereas the general name for the whole group of islands is Svalbard (old Nordic language meaning "the cold coasts"). During the first five days we stayed in Longyearbyen, the Norwegian "capital" of Svalbard (1200 inhabitants), exploring the near surroundings in the company of an armed local guide. You are not allowed to walk outside the town limit unless you carry a rifle and know how to use it - or else you pay a guide with a rifle to accompany you - because of the danger of meeting a polar bear (they can be quite aggressive, and if this is the case, you don't have a chance of survival (if you're not armed). The last part of the vacation we spent aboard a ship, on a 2-day cruise northwards along the West coast of Spitsbergen. On this cruise, we crossed 80°N and visited a colony of walruses - incredible animals! They are about 3.5 meters long, unbelievably fat, and funny-looking. A great sight. But the absolute climax of the whole tour was actually seeing a big polar bear, when we were in a fjord at the foot of a huge glacier. The polar bear was wandering around, and then taking a rest, on the ice in the water just in front of the glacier, and through binoculars we had a truly great view of the animal. Its fur was quite yellow, as it gets in the summertime (in the winter, it is pure white).
  Of course there are no trees or bushes this far north, but there is no lack of tiny, beautiful, flowering plants on the western part of Svalbard, where the climate is mildest. Most of them belong to the saxifraga family. And it may take the flower-buds as long as 7 years to develop into a flower. . . !

  I'm running out of space here, so - best regards.