I wrote this exactly 30 days ago, from deep in the polar arctic. I couldn’t post it at the time, but it’s calling to be shared now.
I’m writing from deep in the polar arctic - Svalbard, or Spitzbergen. It’s 10:19pm and the sun won’t set for another month. That, combined with the insane amount of chocolate I consumed this evening to stave off the cold, means I have energy to write way past my regular sleep time.
This is not a place for the faint-hearted. Two days ago, a polar bear was shot at a research station in the north (Ny Alesund), because it was attacking two work-people at the base. I can’t walk outside of the town perimeter here without a gun. I’ve never held a gun in my life, so I haven’t walked outside the town perimeter.
Since arriving directly from Hawai’i where the Gods and Goddesses are named and articulated and prayed to and honoured, I’ve been wondering – who should I pray to in these lands? Who governs this place? What beings form the Council of the Arctic?
From what I’ve been able to discern, there’s no living human tradition from the Spitzbergen archipelago, and no evidence of humans living here in the recent past. Humans probably lived here at some point, because many millions of years ago this island was in the South Pole, and it’s been slowly making its way up north. But apparetnly we have no evidence of this. Which means I’ve had no waymarkers to follow for what sacred human contact with the essence and spirit of this land should involve.
So, I spent a week listening. This involved donning a drysuit and jumping in the ocean for a kayak course, hearing lots and lots (and lots) of stories about Polar Bears and their attacks or near misses, and also lots and lots of stories of how Europeans have attempted to make a living from this place, either through mining, or trapping, or whaling. I found it extremely interesting that most of these attempts failed. Either people lost lots of money, or were killed by the Arctic. The more I heard, the more I was getting a hunch that this island was not very welcoming to humans. To be more precise, the sense that this archipelago was actively barring humans from entering this place.
for millenia people have been
unwelcomed
to the polar night
for this is beyond human ears
however things have changed
the world has turned
and now we need you to breathe our air
for it is an antidote to rushing
(and more besides)
After about a week, I was ready to step into a ceremony of greeting with this place. Of course, protocol normally stipulates that a ceremony of greeting is done immediately upon arrival - or at least, before anything else important is conducted. That first day, I did make sure to introduce myself to the place, and say hello to the glacier, and the wind, and the arctic fox, and the ocean, and the mountains. But it’s challenging to properly introduce myself when I don’t know who I’m talking to. I was feeling as if I hadn’t actually said hello to the essence of place, because I hadn’t synced myself to the rhythms of this land enough to discern who/what/where the Guardian Essence of Svabard is.
After spending a week sleeping on the earth and lying in the midnight sun, and cycling through the arctic wind to town and back, I was ready in my spirit to ask. Who is asking for my prayer? Who guards these lands? And since there are no humans I’ve met who know this answer, I decided to enter into a ceremony of asking permission to meet the essence-of-place, and the gods/guardians of Svalbard.
When the ground is prepared, the answer arrives. I cannot really convey the knowledge in normal words, and I guess soon a poem will arrive (which you can read whenever it’s ready to be written and shared). Suffice to say – the Arctic Ice Polar Beings made themselves known to me. If you ever arrive in the Arctic regions, be sure to offer them the proper respect they deserve. Respect like, 4 layers of wool and a heart which sings to the emerald crest of dragon eye glinting in the ice-portal across the fjord.
But here’s what really wants to be communicated from them to you, and why I followed a hunch to open my laptop and write a Substack post before bed. I am going to leave the following completely unedited, as it arrived just now on this page. From the ice-glacier essence, through my tired fingers, to you, take what resonates to your being, and leave behind what doesn’t.
“Sing the glacier-ice songs while you still can. Honour the forms of ice-chalice. Carve your body into dances with snowflake. Absorb with all the water in your fragile form the beauty of glacier arching its way across a timescale of rock. Melt into the miniature trees hidden inside permafrost moss, and join the council of seeds gathering underneath a hillside. Let the strength of knowing vanish into a horizon of golden lattice portals strumming around Islafjord, where whales dance amidst the aching thrum of diesel ship. And most of all – honour, dance, sing with Ice and Glacier. Let the lattice-like structures of crevasses anchor into our folklore, so when this Ancient Cold retires for a while beyond our human sight we will still remember the song of ice. Deep inside the drumbeats of ceremony we can call towards those ancestors. For they have offered us wisdom as long as we know how to ask. And when, after forever, they return – we will remember how to sing to glacier and find home inside the ice of air bubbles carrying the messages of last eon. So sing now and be glad of this time together. Be glad.”
Until next time
A cold bear hug,
Moran
Thank you. I will remember this when the Canadian Arctic bleeds down to my southern Ontario home, which is usually later winter these days.