Norway and the Central Arctic Ocean

In August of 2023 I was invited on a research cruise being conducted by the Norwegian Polar Institute to who were traveling to the Central Arctic Ocean. The project had multiple goals, but the main objective was to collect data to help answer questions about the overall state of the Central Arctic Ocean and how it is changing. The data was collected using many different tools, water temperatures and salinity were measured at multiple depths, helping understand how climate change was accelerating and mapping the North Atlantic Current. Phytoplankton and zooplankton were collected and documented as the ship traveled north along transects. Samples of the sediment at the bottom of the ocean were collected, samples of sea ice were taken, I could keep going about the data collected and the research being done, but if you’d like more info you should check out either the Norwegian Polar Institutes website, or the Arctic Council. I was invited as an Unungan graduate student, through the Arctic Council. I should talk more about all the organizations involved, but am very thankful to all of them for letting me join on the trip.

The trip started with my flight to Oslo, it was in August, the sun was rising as we were flying over Baffin Island in eastern Canada. We stopped at Reykjavik, Iceland for a couple hours, then continued on to Oslo. I got into Oslo in the afternoon, after traveling a long flight and the time zone change I fell asleep at 6pm Oslo time, and woke up at 4 in the morning the next day. I wasn’t traveling again until the next day, so I had a free day in Oslo. I decided to check out the Fram Museum, the Kon-Tiki Museum, and the Norwegian Maritime Museum, but they didn’t open until later in the morning, so I just walked around Oslo for a couple hours. My hotel was across from the Parliament Building, so I started there, then walked over to where the consulate buildings are, over to the harbor, and then to the museums right when they opened. I like museums so I thought it was really interesting to check out a couple, and they are all right next to each other. As a history guy I thought the Fram Museum and the Maritime Museum were great. The Fram had a really good way of showing the history of exploration of the Arctic and Antarctic, with the highlight being the actual Fram ship that took Amundsen to be the first man to reach the south pole. At the Maritime Museum I got to sit in on a guy talking to a group from a cruise ship about viking boats and how they made them, which was really interesting. The Kon-Tiki was alright, it was interesting to see and I thought it had some great displays, but I was thought the Fram and Maritime Museum were the best. I would still recommend going to the Kon-Tiki, but I thought the best part of Kon-Tiki was how it helped showcased the pride Norwegians have in their maritime culture and exploration spirit.