October 10th, Moffen Island, 80°N, 14.5°E

From this completely flat island on the horizon we see nothing, as if we are deposited in some alien sea.  It is strangely warm and moist, nothing like the endless winter one might imagine at the end of the road of darkness.  Through September it is forbidden to land on this island in case breeding walruses and seabirds might be disturbed.  By October the law permits us, and it is now possible to walk right up to huddled walruses and tap them on the shoulder, inject them with tranquilizers, and take a sample of something.  But we're not scientists, so we don't do that, though we do approach close enough to feel their eyes looking right at us, squinting, trying to see something of interest.  Eye of the walrus-doesn't sound as romantic as ‘eye of the whale,' and I don't know how humans have been changed or touched by it.

The tiny human forms traipse across the white landscape, looking for something, as always, an idea, a creative spark, a mood borne out loneliness that might find a place in the civilized world after we return.  On the islands flat snow-covered plain are old glass bottles with clear liquid inside that hasn't frozen.  Vodka?  Turpentine?  We can't smell it, we can hardly tell.  There are spheres the size of soccer balls, made of plastic, metal, buoys for fishing nets.  "Once I picked up one of those," says our leader Jan, "and instead I found it was a human skull."  If you die up here no one will come to take your body out.