When I was a young girl, I read Philip Pullman's book Northern Lights, a fantasy of polar expeditions, science and talking polar bears. The book kept mentioning Svalbard, which I didn’t realize was a real place until later in life. When I found out it actually existed, I made it my mission to go there.
Svalbard is so isolated, difficult to get to and expensive that I didn't have chance to visit until 2015. My emotions when I finally arrived and took my first steps outside were overwhelming.
I remember crying tears of happiness as I trudged through the snowy streets of Longyearbyen.
The next day, I embarked on a journey around the archipelago on an icebreaker expedition ship. It was incredible: breaking through icebergs, hiking through the tundra, seeing polar bears mere feet away and smelling the fresh, unadulterated air of the Arctic. The smell is something I will never forget. It was cold, clear and had a slight saltiness to it, where the wind had whipped up the scent of the sea. Everything was shades of blue and white, with intense and varied textures of ice and mountains. At one point, while I was standing on the bow of the ship, a guide told me I was the most Northerly person in the world at that point.