How life makes life on Earth possible
Without life, the Earth would not be a place suitable for life. Sounds like a Catch-22? You bet. But it is true. In this blog post, we will explore how […]
Category Archives: Svalbard/Spitsbergen
Glaciers: The slow sculptors
It’s springsummertime in Oslo! Sun! 20 plus! Hepaticas are in full bloom on the Cambrosilurian on Hovedøya! Any better time for one last escape back to the lovely, cold Arctic? […]
A visit to Mordor – a.k.a. Hornsund, Svalbard
Tuff – tuff – tuff… MS Origo moves slowly thorugh the water, her engine puffing, almost as taking a pause to think and look around between each stroke. She is […]
Politics in stone: Svalbard’s Cenozoic coal
Today, we come full circle: Our journey on Svalbard started with coal in the Carboniferous, and it will end with coal. But with much younger coal, from the Early Paleocene, […]
When Greenland met Svalbard: A geological love story
I have teased you like a movie trailer a couple of times now: Akseløya, the tilted hard limestone island. The Festningen profile, where the rocks are tilted into a vertical […]
How to see 170 million years in two kilometres
I am a petroleum geologist for my day time job. Petroleum geologists study sedimentary rocks, because they are the ones that contain oil (sand and limestones) or are the source […]
Karsten makes a mistake on karst
Sorry, I cannot resist a good pun :) In the first blog post in the series on Svalbard, I wrote that the holes in the limestone, up in the mountainside […]
Fjordblock island: The Upper Permian of Svalbard
I promised you the Permian on Svalbard, after the Carboniferous. Well, the lower Permian on Svalbard was basically the same as the Upper Carboniferous, and 300 million years ago is […]
Cold seams: The Carboniferous of Svalbard
Svalbard. What comes to mind? Polar bears that eat kids alive if they don’t carry guns in the settlement. Which they do. At least the parents. Dark as a coal […]