Local board chairman Terje Aunevik said it directly in his opening speech at the start of Polarjazz 2026: “Nowhere else are so many of the local population on stage as artists, as here on the Kulturhuset stage in Longyearbyen during Polarjazz”.
The local board chairman gave the number 120 for the number of local heroes on stage during the Polarjazz festival’s traditional Vorspiel on Thursday evening.
The longing for the North Pole!
The Vorspiel is a magnificent presentation of the local culture in this community at 78° 13′ north latitude. With the exception of Ny-Ålesund, with 30-40 inhabitants in winter, it is supposedly the northernmost place on earth with a permanent winter settlement that the public has access to. Other settlements further north are meteorological stations and military intelligence installations. It is quite possible that a very few people spend the winter in the old Russian settlement in Pyramiden as well.
It is about 1300 km to the North Pole from here, a distance that Salomon Andrée, Roald Amundsen, and Umberto Nobile set out to cover through flights with hydrogen-filled craft: Andrée with the balloon Örnen in 1897, and Amundsen and Nobile with the airship Norge (1926) and Nobile again with the sister ship Italia (1928). Andrée’s flight failed, and the three people on board were not found dead on Kvitøya until over thirty years later. The Norge expedition succeeded in crossing the Arctic Ocean for the first time. But the journey led to strong disagreements between Amundsen and Nobile about who would lead the Amundsen-Ellsworth-Nobile Transpolar Flight.
Nobile’s 1928 expedition was primarily scientific, and should have garnered great recognition. But we know the story. After the third flight, the airship was destroyed, and much of the crew perished. Nobile and a few others were later found and brought back to Svalbard. General and airship designer Umberto Nobile was accused of abandoning his colleagues and arrested.
He was branded a coward by the Italians, and was demoted by Mussolini, the Italian government he himself strongly opposed. In Norway, he was also blamed for Roald Amundsen’s disappearance and death during the search operations following Nobile’s expedition. On his way back home, he was treated as a leper in Norway. It was only after the fascist regime in Italy was overthrown, and after World War II, that Umberto Nobile received the recognition he probably deserved.
The weight of broad culture
According to Statistics Norway’s population statistics for Svalbard, a total of 2,881 people lived here in the second half of 2025. Of these, 2,528 lived in the ‘Norwegian’ settlements of Longyearbyen and Ny-Ålesund. Two out of three of these are registered residents of the Norwegian mainland. In winter, 30-40 people live in Ny-Ålesund, so about 2490 people are registered as residents in Longyearbyen. With Aunevik’s figures, himself, the festival board and other prominent figures, a total of 5.0% of the population is on stage this evening.
Arild Andersen and Gard Nilssen
In ‘metropolitan’ Oslo, Oslo and its surrounding area, based on settlement and traffic patterns, the population was, according to Statistics Norway, 1.11 million as of 1 January 2025. So the corresponding figure for stage participation and popular culture in the Oslo area would be more than 55,000! That is about half the number of students in the cultural school for the whole of Norway.
There are few other societies where popular culture is stronger, and is more important, than here ‘up there’. Culture is the most important and useful community-building force there is. It is still somewhat disappointing for a visitor from outside the city to see how little space cultural policy work is given in the current Local Community Plan 2022-2033. There is not much more than the traditional municipal formulations here.
But it speaks to the Local Board’s definite advantage that its leader stands on stage and speaks out about the significance and importance of popular culture in a way that should be absolutely binding for the future. Aunevik’s theme and statements are a credit to the local board. Then it is only necessary to ensure that there is not the usual eulogy from politicians, but that these broad objectives and formulations about the important task of popular culture are maintained and followed up in political priorities.
Homoculture
The first Homo genera, such as habilis and erectus, were probably the first great apes to systematically develop and use ability-extending and -enhancing tools, the first to develop technology, almost three million years ago. Culture – and popular culture in particular – is the most important, most useful and most productive – the most valuable – tool that the great apes have ever created.
Today, this insight is more critically important than ever before, in the face of major and dramatic geoclimatic and geopolitical changes. In few places is this insight more important than here. The entire settlement here ‘up there’ – and not least the rapidly growing tourism industry, which is supposed to be the new generation – is a great paradox.
For we are in a place where ongoing hyper-rapid climate change is expressing itself most clearly in the entire world, where the pressure for – the demands for – new lifestyles and changed patterns of employment, consumption and nature use is greater than anywhere else in the world. And greater than at any other time in human history, 2-3 million years since the early Homos arose and migrated across the African continent, and into Asia.
In plans, corporate strategies and public documents at local, national and international levels, there is beautiful talk about the sustainability of society and decisions about structural changes that are justified by demands for emission limits locally and globally, and policies that are intended to reduce the pressure on natural and climate conditions. Perhaps here more than in most other places. But in connection with nowhere else is there a more tacit consensus about the trade-off between this and global security and resource policy trade-offs. About taking a large and tacit cost that is like an elephant in every room.
Few places in the world are as clear as here: The notion of a climate-neutral society is a physical and social impossibility. Sustainability conditions here ‘up there’ require a systematic exchange of factor inputs with the mainland. To put it bluntly: The only way a locally and regionally long-term sustainable society can be established here is to move all settlement from here — only a society without people present can be truly sustainable. The cost of maintaining a society and business activity here is largely paid for by the national and international community; the local community cannot bear the full cost.
But if you, like me, are interested, not out of populist expediency, but out of the interest of a rational and open conversation, in finding out what all this implies in terms of society’s willingness to pay to maintain local communities here, then it is impossible to find. What does the actual climate account look like? What is required in terms of exchange with the mainland to maintain regional climate neutrality in the North Atlantic area? What implicit price do the Norwegian authorities place on a resident here? The questions are many, the answers are far, far fewer.
Today, when diesel is now being shipped ‘up’ here after Mine 7 was closed, to run the power plant, what are the possibilities for alternative energy sources here? A fairly recent article in the scientific journal Geothermics [Senger et al., June 2023, volume 111, #102702] concludes that
«We conclude that Svalbard’s geology is well suited for geothermal exploration and potential production, though challenges … need to be adequately addressed prior to geothermal energy production. Specifically for Longyearbyen, high geothermal gradients of 40–43 °C/km in the nearest borehole (DH4) suggest promising sub-surface thermal conditions for further exploration of deep geothermal potential near the settlement».
So maybe the future with it would be a little brighter here ‘up there’?
The magic of light
At the same time, it is very easy to fall in love here ‘up there’. In love with nature, with geology, with history, and not least with the light. The older I get, the more aware and deeply I understand why the painters of the latter half of the 19th century were so preoccupied with the magic of light, with the continuous color gradations of the sky from the darkest polar night to the most intense sunlight over a tropical sea.
The play of light in a cloud cover, in a turbulent sea. As expressed by Harald Sohlberg in his many variations of the vision he had of Rondane in the ‘blue hour’, one Easter night while he was on a ski trip with friends. The ski trip was no more than a year and a half after Salomon Andrée’s shipwreck with the Örnen. Sohlberg’s ability to express his own impressions and recreate the same reactions in the spectators captivates many of us, often intensely. And yet we all know: nothing can reproduce the real colors in the faint, intense, almost deep, royal blue reflection of the snow on the Opera, Hiorth and Advent mountains in the dark blue absence of light as the polar night draws to a close.
Nothing shows the magic of light, and the expression of colors like a continuum from the dark, warm infrared to the dark, black-violet light that only vaguely suggests a light source somewhere ‘on the other side of the world’. It is a profound aesthetic, bodily, emotional and cognitive experience, an experience that the world is so much more than any natural science, social science or humanistic description is able to convey. As a physicist, I can talk for hours – which I have done – about quantum mechanical calculations of Rayleigh and Thomson scattering of sunlight in the atmosphere, and about how it characterizes the sky’s play of colors throughout the day. And it is beautiful physics.
But still: It is only one of several facets of what is beautiful. Because it does not capture the beauty and complexity of the full visual appearance and impression. ‘Use the color yellow’ we say, but there is no color yellow. The color spectrum is continuous, there is no distinction between red, yellow and blue. What we choose to call ‘yellow’ is a shade between red and blue somewhere that is impossible to define. There is no place where we can say that yellow ends: ‘This is yellow, this is not yellow’. Or green, blue, indigo, violet. Have you ever tasted Roggbife? It is not one or two cubits long, it is infinitely, immeasurably long. And yet: the eye’s receptors, light-sensitive cells in the back wall of the eye, only see a limited, limited part of the light spectrum. At one place the receptors say ‘no, there is no light here’, and at a slightly different place in the spectrum they say – or a few of them – ‘yes, there is light here’. What you experience is a small part of an infinitely long asymptotic movement of light towards total darkness.
A darkness that you can never see. The darkness you see outside is never completely dark, you are always exposed to a little light in the visible parts of the spectrum. And few places are as obvious as here ‘up there’. You experience this marginal beauty in few other places than in the polar regions. And nowhere else can you be in the transitional phases between light and darkness, as in the ‘blue hour’, for as long as here, especially at the beginning and end of the polar night.
Opera, wine and Nefertiti
And in the middle of the blue hour, music sings: At the entrance to Adventdalen, the Operafjellet massif bears five peaks, the Conductor, the Soprano, the Alto, the Tenor and the Bass. And spring comes to the area with a wine glass of snow in the mountain wall. Some claim it is a champagne glass, but I do not agree. Regardless: When the stein is broken, it is summer in Longyearbyen. It is easy to think of music here. When the wine flows into the stein, the opera choir sings the praises of summer.
Just across the fjord from Longyearbyen, on the mountainside towards Adventfjorden, there is a different musical snow form that appears every year. The profile of the famous bust of Nefertiti, which is located in the Deutsches Museum on the Museum Island in Berlin, is a global icon on a par with Edvard Munch’s The Scream. The snow formation at Adventfjorden, which resembles this profile, makes it easy to think of Philip Glass’s opera Akhnaten, the pharaoh who took the name Akh-n-Aten. Together with Nefertiti as one of his spouses, the two were possibly the parents of the young pharaoh who died before he was 20 years old, and who was born as Tut-Ankh-Aten.
When Longyearbyen was no older than the young Tut was, and a few years after the Spanish Flu, a Tutmania spread throughout the world. As contagious as the Spanish flu and as Covid-19, but not as deadly. I do not know when the snow formation got its name, but it may have been at that time. The bust of Nefertiti was found by the German Ludwig Borchardt just over ten years earlier than the discovery of her possible son Tut. Locally, the snow formation is referred to with the early German transcription of Nfr.t-jy.tj – ‘the one beautiful has stood forth’ – Nefretete, may point in this direction. So perhaps it is the vocal group at Operafjellet singing Nefertiti’s praise? Beautiful she was, at least. I was probably 12-13 years old when I first discovered her and fell in love with her who was nefer-neferu-aten ‘beautiful as [the sun god] Aten’ himself.
Prelude Thursday and lunch Friday
We gathered in Longyearbyen’s cultural center during the first evening of Polarjazz. As described, a broad presentation of small and large local culture. The biggest impression was probably left by the lecture of Jokke Nielsen’s “If I were you, I would treat you to a beer”, and David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”. The prelude is a local festival performance, primarily aimed at the local population. And a very successful one at that.
As far as I understand, the tradition has existed for about 25 years now, and for many of these years drummer Finn Sletten has contributed to these. Bodø native Sletten is deeply rooted in the shores of Svalbard and Kongsfjorden, and returns to the island in the north when Polarjazz approaches. E’Olen, the quartet Blow!, collaborations with Marit Sandvik, Chipahua, the list is long. Last year, the recording with Nipe Nyrén’s quartet from the Kongsberg jazz festival in 1976 was released, with Sletten on drums. An album we never got to review in salt peanuts*. And so at Polarjazzens Vorspiel, this year as before.
On Friday, when it is light for up to several hours in the middle of the day, we will bring three events. First up is what they call a lunch concert in the foyer in front of the library and the Kulturhuset’s main stage. The concert is with a young trio from Tromsø, the Fause/Aspaas/Rygg trio consists of young musicians from the music community in Tromsø, and from Konsen, the music conservatory at the University of Tromsø.
The three have had very competent teachers there such as Andreas Fliflet, Jan Gunnar Hoff and Saft Sylte himself, the prophet of jam juice, Torstein Lofthus. And it shows. The trio displays a musical and knowledgeable playfulness with their own and others’ compositions, where they are presented by Bendik Vaaja Aspaas on piano, Beatrix Rygg Andresen on electric bass and Nils Henrik Fause on drums.
Fause’s “Somewhere, Somewhat”, Rygg Andresen’s “Brennesle” and Vaaja Aspaas’ “Bird Song” and “Lullaby” testify to their good ability to create interesting songs, and good starting points for the trio’s improvisational journey. They end a light and leisurely with Wolfgang Muthspiel’s “Father and Son” and David Bowie’s “Life on Mars”. A lunch concert to take with you out into the daylight that still barely hangs over Longyeardalen at its end.
Sorrow songs and Oslo songs
We gather at the Nordover art center – which, incidentally, is located at the southern end of the building in which it is located! Curator and subject manager Julie Lillelien Porter invites you to a conversation about the NMH project Glacier Lamentation, its background and content, as well as a vernissage for a sound sculpture inspired by Svalbard’s glacial topography. The sculpture was made by Julie Freeman, and is part of the Glacier Lamentation project. The project is discussed in a separate article here, so for further discussion of the conversation and the project’s two concerts I refer to this one. Listen to the mournful songs as carriers of a different experience and recognition of the world in climatic change, by reading this article.
We move towards the evening’s main concert, a solo set with pianist/vocalist Janove Ottesen, and a meeting between the jazz trio Maridalen and Oslo poet Lars Lillo-Stenberg. We only catch the end of Ottesen’s set, and leave it at that. Maridalen is an Oslo-based jazz trio with heartfelt music that goes straight into the Norwegian folk soul. Two of their three albums are reviewed here in this magazine, the album Bortenfor, and the latest album Gressholmen.
An inquiry to Lillo-Stenberg from the trio about a collaboration resulted in the mini-album Fransk Utgang, released in November last year. We are presented with this music, as well as other songs from Lillo-Stenberg’s and the trio’s catalogs. “Why are we going?”, what are we going to do there? … with life in an unknown place. Maybe, we can understand a little more there and then … than here and now.
There are pleasant jazz songs; jazz songs, like jazz songs, base songs like brook songs, base songs. With reed songs and reed songs. Alf Prøysen, Lillebjørn and Alle fuggler sing every day. Easy to follow, easy to experience. But maybe too easy? Pleasant, maybe like stroking a polar bear with its hair while it sleeps? I miss a little resistance, something that scrubs my ears. Whisker movements create other emotions, other sound bases and other sonorous depths. Do we dare to venture out into the depths together?
We end the evening at KB, Karlsberger Pub, where the smell of the old society here ‘up’ is stronger than in many other places in this city. Where ‘Daris’, ‘Kommeroggår’ and other nicknames for old buses are not only well-known stories, but also memories of famous people. But as they say: “What happens at KB, stays at KB”!
Charging in progress and dirges for pingu
Saturday morning: We stop by Stationen for Saturday’s lunch concert, where Trondheim-based Supercharger Duo with Eirik Tveten on keyboards and vocals and Ernst Wiggo Sandbakk on drums and vocals are giving a show. It’s accessible, easy to understand, bordering on sing-along. It’s half past eleven in the morning, and admittedly some have found the time ripe for the day’s first(?) pint, but this is music that would probably have thrived better in a ‘Round About Midnight than a ‘Round About Midday. The duo plays danceable old music, so the busta is blowing! It’s not that. But: Washboard, New Orleans, “Honky Tonk Train Blues”, “Take the A-train”, Fats’ “Aint’ Misbehavin'” and Oscar Peterson, it smells of a completely different mood than the one you’re in, sharp and alert after a good breakfast.
Now we’re looking forward to two sessions with Glacier Lamentation. And it will be a defining, distinctive, captivating and almost metaphysical experience. Among others, 120 people took the trip out to the foot of Hiorth Mountain to experience Torben Snekkestads, Morten Qvenilds and Anja Lauvdal’s music and interaction with a brightly alive, hectically working pingo. And we’re not talking about Pingu, who many of us know as a gentlemanly type – a penguin with a kind of well-developed letter syndrome – and who speaks in an almost intelligible, unintelligible sound-painting groove, with melodic traces of Italian. So that there is no doubt: Pingu literally lives on the other side of the world where we stand out in Moskushavna.
But this also emerges from a memory bank deep down in a cerebral ice dome: The name of this natural phenomenon we stand on top of, a pingo, is taken from the Inuit language Kalaallisut. The phenomenon is described in more detail in the article The Arctic is melting… In other Inuit languages, pingo is also transcribed as pingu. But this pingu is not a penguin. Let’s put it in a way that even the idiot who currently occupies the White House in Washington can understand: Penguins belong south of the equator, mainly in Antarctica, and on the Galapagos Islands. There is no Pingu, or close relatives of him, either in the Arctic or anywhere else than the ones mentioned. Do you understand, stupido?
The old ones are the oldest, though
Alongside the Glacier Lamentation project, and almost at the same time, during this year’s Polarjazz, Saturday’s main concerts in the Kulturhuset come: First the trio concert with Bugge Wesseltoft/Arild Andersen/Gard Nilssen Trio, and then the meeting with what I experience as an exuberantly renewed Valkyrien Allstars.
Let’s go to Vałka first, even though it is the last concert I experience during this year’s Polarjazz. Erik Sollid on guitars and other strings, Martin Langlie on drums and banjo, Magnus Larsen jr. on double bass and Tuva Syvertsen with strong lyrics and atmospheric synth spells and vocals. Lyrics that shout everyday beautiful poetry, Blanke morran, Handa på rattet, Err’u ensom harr’u meg. The hole that is in Oslo after the late Jokke Nielsen, Valkyrien fills with a different tone. Where the folk music-based tone was strongly prominent before, the music is now urbanized.
It is a different Oslo tone than Lillo-Stenberg’s. But both are parts and aspects of the Oslo that was, and is, a divided Oslo, a diverse Oslo. Together they emphasize for me the importance of diversity, the rich and multicultural, the exact opposite of what ignorant right-wing forces talk about and want. Forgive them, Lord, they do not know what they are doing, it says in the Book somewhere or other. They do not know what they want. But they are like the participants in a puppet theater, led and led by puppeteers who know. Do not forgive them, Lord, they know what they are doing.
It is multiculturalism that makes the world livable, it is multiculturalism that makes culture something worth experiencing, something to learn from. But have no doubt that Vałka is still folk music. Music for the people who listen, the people who are not interested in standing still. You ain’t heard no horse sing, have you? as Louis Armstrong is said to have answered the question of whether jazz was folk music. He who has both feet on the ground, stands still, said a Norwegian author who has left his strong mark on our culture after 1970. Vałka makes the legs move, to lift themselves up, above the ground. A prerequisite for moving, according to Bringsværd’s first theorem. To create change.
The music is not least from their latest release Venter på noke som venter på noke – and with this music the Valkyrien Allstars create bed-sickness and jaw-dropping. Wonderful, lordly, and feminine!
The trio Bugge Wesseltoft/Arild Andersen/Gard Nilssen Trio appeared on Bugge Wesseltoft’s new album Am Are, our review is here. An all-star trio if the term ‘all star’ has ever had any meaning whatsoever in the direction the wording points towards. I mentioned light and the many sides of light at the beginning. And that nowhere you experience is dark, in total darkness. It takes very special and very expensive conditions to create a room completely without light and sound, a reflex- and echo-free chamber. You will not be able to survive for long in such a room.
Bugge Wesseltoft and Arild Andersen.
And besides, no matter how far you travel from all settlements, no matter how lonely the place you choose is, there is always a sky above you. Did you know that this night sky has given rise to one of the most instructive, profound and far-reaching formulations about our universe ever formulated? Olber’s paradox is named after a German astronomer, although he was only the last in a long line of those who had formulated the paradox. The paradox that bears his name states that if the universe is infinite in extent, infinitely old, homogeneous in space and time, static and therefore unchanging, then the entire starry sky would be lit up: Any line of sight into the universe would sooner or later end in a star.
Since the night sky is dark, at least one of these assumptions must be wrong. But if you find a dark place, far from people, the clear night sky will still show you stars. But with a depth and intensity that is stunningly overwhelming, that can create ecstasy. And feel free to use one of my Quora answers as a guide on the way.
If the musical abilities, the power of improvisation, the power of interaction were homogeneously distributed in time and space, isotropically, in an infinitely old universe, the whole world would shine with the power and joy of music. That it does not, proves one thing or another, which it will be up to the students to explain.
Sirius and Betelgeuse shine
Regardless of how it shines in the starry sky, this piano trio shines brightly like Sirius in the night sky. It is like a Betelgeuse when this red giant star becomes a supernova sometime in the near future and lights up both day and night. Note that the pronunciation of the star’s name is not the popular beetlejuice, this is a modern, humorous popular term. The name is better and more correctly pronounced as bed-el-gause, from Arabic it means ‘the giant’s (Orion’s) hand’. The trio is the giant hand of Norwegian jazz, where it plays with the music and with us.
As on the album Am Are, Wesseltoft starts with “How?”, before the trio spreads its wings in the beautiful “BAG”, BAG Trio seems to be the only, true name for this musical community. The song gives obvious associations to the great Norwegian jazz from the 1970s, to the time when the new Scandinavian modal jazz was fresh and new. The time when playing on the energy, ‘on the wave’ was groundbreaking, and created places, styles and moods. Created connections in life. And it still does.
“Reel”, Andersen’s multi-layered bass setup sings in the room. Unfortunately, this is plagued in the same way as previous concerts in the Kulturhuset by a 100 Hz feedback that comes and goes. The first time we can live with it, the second time we grit our teeth, the third and sixth times we are just given up. The reasons for this must be clarified and corrected. But this has now been mentioned, and put behind us.
Gard Nilssen.
Because the music boils when Andersen’s recurring “Electra” drones into the room. After an introductory drum sequence of Nilssen-on-the-lid and -on-the-skin that shines in the same way as the dog star Sirius in the constellation Store Hund. Whether Store and Lille Hund in the starry sky were huskies or other polar dogs is probably very doubtful, but the guarding and protective dog with drumsticks and clubs leaves deep marks in the deep darkness of the polar sky outside. Mostly dreaming, seaming, wapping, flapping, flowing, … flowering. Wesseltoft’s swings from Jazid in the 1990s to the acoustic 2020s variant beckon and talk, elaborate, and laugh. Heartwarming, joyful, meltingly beautiful.
Nilssen’s deeply felt and heart-melting tribute, “Lokket til Jon og skärfet til Paul”. Jon is the one who among Norwegian jazz drummers can be described only with the term ‘Ener’n’ – Jon Christensen, while Paul is the one whose last name we discussed for a long time, Motian. Today’s consensus is məʊ:ʃn or məʊ:ʃən. Both are the incomparable and inimitable drummers in jazz history. There is a lot of wonderful music to enjoy.
The concert with BAG Trio ends with Andersen’s “The Fox” in a stunning, danceable version. We dance out to continue with Valkyrien Allstars. But the night is still young. Even if the body doesn’t always feel as young anymore.
I am the walrus
Im — Playing — Songs — Be Am — Am Are. A series of later Wesseltoft albums. Rewriting with two do. I am he — as you are she — we are all together. All while the walrus sings in the sunset, while he lets out a small gas vent. Maybe the walrus can one day solve Svalbard’s energy problem? None of us are waiting for the sun now, we are too busy with the changing light, the magic of music and the continuum of colors.
And so — When you come again, we have heard the many times, all these songs.
When you come again / next winter / I will be here again / And we will sing / All the songs again — this time here, again. / Next winter, / we will drink wine again … at the price of the northern lights.
And sit and talk together about the same, old things, and about the new things. Together we will once again experience the magic of light and music. If we dare!
Thank you to Polarjazz 2026. And thank you to all the musicians who created it all.
