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Inside, I drop my bags in a small but comfortable cabin and am soon sitting in the dining area with a cold beer. There’s a small and friendly Dutch crew on the boat, including a chef. I’m just in time for dinner, which is of a surprisingly high quality bearing in mind the remoteness of the location.

After dinner the crew spread out a number of postcards and envelopes on the table, and started to frank them with a series of custom stamps. They’ve registered the ship as a post-office and have rubber stamps made for the world’s only polar dog mail. Any letters are carried back to Longyearbyen by a dog team, before joining the regular mail. They’ve not had any dog-sleds visiting for a while, and have built up a large backlog. Because of the melt, there would be no more visitors to the ship this season, and in a couple of days a Norwegian Navy ice-breaker will be coming into the fjord to clear a path for the Nooderlicht to make it back out to open water.

It turns out that the Norwegian Navy are quite happy to use this as a training exercise, and also encourage the presence of the ship as it acts as a permanent rescue station in this hostile environment. Apparently a number of people who have got into difficulties and wouldn't have survived the journey back to town have been saved by the presence of such a warm and safe haven.

The following morning it’s a slow start as we watch and photograph the dog teams’ somewhat frenetic and chaotic departure over the frozen surface of the fjord before making our way up to the Von Post glacier. This vast and ragged wall of ice soars up to thirty metres from the frozen surface of the fjord.

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