
It’s always nice to have something in the picture that tells where a picture is taken. I think that everybody who has been cruising around Spitsbergen knows where this picture is taken: Ny London on Blomstrandhalvøya. On this place Ernest Mansfield unsuccesfully tried to mine for marble and left all his equipment behind when the adventure turned out to be a failure.
Now it’s a often visited tourist site, for the historic story, but also for the birdlife. This is the only spot on Spitsbergen where Long-tailed Skuas breed regularly and there is also a lot of other birdlife like waders and ducks. And, if you’re lucky you might find a Spitsbergen Ptarmigan, the local endemic subspecies of the Rock Ptarmigan. He decided to use one of the big kettles as a nice high lookout point, which gave me the possibility of combining history and the birdlife in one picture.