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The explorer stood on the damp, cool sand and listened to the waves lapping at the shore as the sun began to rise over the horizon, casting long shadows across the beach. But this was no picture-postcard moment – it was a scene of utter carnage. To his left he could see the rampaged remains of his tent; to his right lay the body of a 360kg polar bear. And at his feet, the battered form of his expedition partner, whose head lay in a steaming puddle of syrup-thick blood. He knew the situation was critical. If he were to save the life of his friend, he would have to move fast.
Sebastian Plur Nilssen and Ludvig Fjeld had set out on a world-first attempt to kayak around Svalbard, the isolated archipelago that sits in the Arctic Ocean between mainland Norway and the North Pole. The rocky outcrop consists of four main islands – a round trip of more than 2000km. There are two reasons why no-one had managed this feat: In the winter the weather is brutal, with savage, sub-zero gales; and in the summer the Austfonna glacier ‘calves’ (or, in layman’s terms: Spits hull-shredding icebergs into the sea).
The glacier squats over the northeast coast and is so prolific in its berg birthing that it makes it impossible to come ashore for some 120km. Nevertheless, the pair of Norwegians elected for a two to three month summer expedition, heading out on July 5, 2010.
Mountainous, beautiful, and treacherous, the surface of Svalbard consists of nearly 65 per cent protected areas, including three nature reserves, six national parks, and 15 bird sanctuaries. The summer thaw offers enough respite to allow humans to inhabit the islands and would make it easier for the explorers to make occasional forays into the isolated villages that dot the landscape. Additionally, the relentless 24-hour sunlight would illuminate a safe path through the icebergs.
The flip side of travelling this time of year was the presence of predators – and not just any predators – but polar bears, the world’s largest land carnivores. Capable of speeds of up to 40km/h, able to eviscerate a man with a single swipe of a razor-sharp claw, and with the power to crush through bone with their jaws, polar bears are the top of the Svalbard food chain.
Although in their early-20s, Plur Nilssen and Fjeld were experienced survivalists, having adventured together extensively for seven years, including an 18-day, 900km sea kayak trip around the southern tip of Norway and two assaults on Mont Blanc, the highest mountain (4,810m) in Europe. This Svalbard trip, however, was to be their first major expedition, complete with funding and several months of rigorous planning.
On July 22 the pair reached Nordaustlandet, Svalbard’s second largest island and home to the infamous Austfonna glacier. But the bright skies and calm seas they had enjoyed for the previous three weeks had vanished, and as the weather turned the pair were forced to set up camp. When the cold currents from the North Pole meet the warmer winds from the south, the resulting windy conditions can be suicidal for oceangoers. “In the morning it was very windy – too windy to kayak – so we had to stay there and wait for the weather to improve,” recalls Plur Nilssen. It was a delay that would take him into the jaws of death.
Plur Nilssen and Fjeld had done their homework and were well aware of the risk the polar bears posed. Statistically speaking, black bears are responsible for more attacks on humans, but
that’s a result of them living in much closer proximity to human populations. And they’re lightweights compared to the power, weight,
and ferocity of polar bears, which typically live
in uninhabited regions.
Svalbard is the ursine exception to the global rule. The archipelago covers an area about two-thirds the size of Tasmania, with a population of 2,500 humans and 3,000 polar bears. That being said, the two species co-exist with a nervy respect: There have been just five fatal attacks in the past 40 years, including 17-year-old Horatio Chapple, who was killed by a polar bear last August.
“It’s very rare for the bears to attack,” says Dr Kari Schroder Hansen, who was stationed at Svalbard’s Longyearbyen hospital at the time. “On Svalbard we hadn’t had an attack since 1995, when two people were killed.” Plur Nilssen and Fjeld knew they might have to defend themselves and had packed trip wires and flares to protect their camp as they slept. They also each carried guns, knowing that the noise of a shot is usually enough to scare away all but the most desperate man-eaters.
However, a sighting near their camp that night had already made the travellers nervous. “We wanted to move the camp, but the wind off the sea that night was brutal,” says Fjeld. “We would have lost everything.” The pair decided to keep watch, peering into the midnight sun for any creeping shadow or flash of white fur. “We stayed awake for five hours that night,” Plur Nilssen says. “We made sure our trip wires were set up, but eventually we had to go to sleep, as we had such a long journey in the morning.”
The shock awakening they received in the early hours was not from the biting Arctic cold or even the blinding phosphorous flame and piercing scream of a tripped flare. It was from the impact of a polar bear’s claw.
“Neither of us woke until the bear ripped into the canvas,” recalls Plur Nilssen. “It tore the whole front away with one punch. I started screaming to Ludvig, but the bear grabbed me and sank its teeth into my neck, dragging me out of my sleeping bag. He then bit my head really hard. I could feel his teeth going deep into the flesh, and I knew it was serious. It was sickeningly painful.”
The animal attacked in a frenzy – ripping through Plur Nilssen’s skin and sending a searing jolt of pain through his body. “It was all going so fast,” says Plur Nilssen. Running on adrenalin and instinct, he remembered that his shotgun was lying nearby, and as the creature paused for breath, he impulsively made a grab for it.
Ludvig Fjeld, meanwhile, was scrambling for his own weapon. “I woke up a split second after Sebastian,” he says. “The bear immediately attacked him, so I started looking for my gun, but the bear had done a lot of damage to our camp. I had to dig around in the sand, and I could feel the seconds passing as I searched for it.”
Despite being pinned to the floor, Plur Nilssen managed to angle his own shotgun in the direction of the bear. He pulled the trigger. Nothing. No deafening explosion of gunfire. No howl of pain. He ran his fingers along the barrel and realised that the bear had broken the gun in two places.
Fjeld watched in horror as the mangled gun dropped from his friend’s hand and the monster’s jaws clamped around his head. He redoubled his own search, frantically digging through the tattered remains of the groundsheet while the bear began to drag Plur Nilssen away from the tent, his blood-curdling screams piercing the air.
“At that moment I wasn’t sure if it was one or two bears,” recalls Plur Nilssen. “I was thinking: If there are two bears, it’s game over. He released me from the bite and then stood on my chest with his two front legs. He was heavy, but the pain in my neck and shoulder was much greater. It seemed like a long time that he stood on me. He looked at me, and I looked at him, and we actually made eye contact. I raised my arms as he came in for another bite, and I remember the soft feel of his fur. I tried to hold his head as he attacked, but I had no chance. He was too big, too powerful.”
The bear had dragged Plur Nilssen 30m across the sand and jagged rocks of the shoreline, leaving a sickening trail of blood. It was about to come in for the kill – for the final, lethal bite.
Racing from the tent, Fjeld raised his weapon, only to find the bear clutching his stricken partner, blocking a clear shot. “When the bear noticed me, it picked Sebastian up by his head and stood up on its hind legs, lifting him clear off the ground.
“I was afraid I’d hit Sebastian. He was hanging down in front of the bear, leaving me with perhaps a foot-and-a-half [half a metre] of space where I could shoot. I didn’t know how injured my friend was, but I knew he was alive because he was shouting at me to shoot. It was good to hear – I knew I could still save him.” He took a breath and squeezed the trigger.
The crack of the shot split the cold silence, and the bullet found its mark, slamming into the animal’s flesh. The bear howled and dropped Plur Nilssen to the ground, presenting the opportunity Fjeld had hoped for. He fired another round, running toward the injured animal and letting loose another three rounds until the bear finally slumped in the sand.
Lying on the blood-spattered shore, the bear’s body just a couple metres away, Plur Nilssen stared at the sky and watched the wisps of breath leave his body. “It wasn’t easy to lie there, because the pain was so bad. I was afraid my neck had been broken. I could still move my fingers, but the pain was like nothing I had felt before.”
Meanwhile, Fjeld desperately called for help on the emergency channel of their satellite phone. Deep in shock, Plur Nilssen rested as his friend tried to dress the horrific injuries, knowing that, though he had survived the attack, their remote location meant any helicopter would take hours to reach them. Quietly, Fjeld had another, possibly more pressing, worry.
“We had seen more bears and knew there were a lot of them in the area. I was extremely worried because there was blood all over the tent, Sebastian, and the camp. I’d heard that polar bears can smell blood from a long distance away.”
Fjeld set to work keeping his friend conscious – nervously checking the perimeter of their ruined camp for bears – while Plur Nilssen cursed his way through the pain. “It was a relief when I realised I was still alive, but the pain was terrible. I also remember thinking it would take four hours for anyone to reach us.”
At the time, medic Aksel Bilicz was stationed at the hospital in Longyearbyen, one of the world’s northernmost towns. The medical staff is accustomed to treating those who have succumbed to the hostile environment of the Arctic, but even here polar bear attacks are a rare event – and almost always an attack delivers a corpse rather than a casualty. “I took the call at reception,” recalls Bilicz. “When Ludvig told me his friend had been attacked by a polar bear, my first thought was that he was very lucky – I know how big these bears are. I told him to get Sebastian in a sleeping bag to keep him warm and that it was important to keep him conscious. Then I got his GPS co-ordinates, and we were off.”
The helicopter took just over two hours to get to the campsite. Bilicz stabilised Plur Nilssen and bundled him onto the helicopter for the flight back to Longyearbyen. Two doctors happened to be on duty, and even before the blades of the emergency helicopter had shuddered to a halt, Plur Nilssen was in the operating theatre. “They found my neck hadn’t been broken but that I had suffered deep tissue lacerations to my shoulder, back, neck, chest, and head,” he says.
“When Sebastian arrived, there was a lot of blood, but he was awake, which was a very good sign,” says Dr Hansen, who performed the emergency surgery. “Once we were happy that his other injuries were not immediately life-threatening, the priority became preventing infection, because there are a lot of germs in a polar bear’s mouth.”
That Plur Nilssen survived the attack is staggering – a miracle even. “Polar bears will attack animals larger than Sebastian. The odds of surviving an attack are not good. He was very, very lucky,” says Dr. Hansen. “But the bottom line for a polar bear is never attack a guy whose friend has a gun.”
“It took three hours for them to patch me up and three months for me to recover in the hospital,” says Plur Nilssen. “The muscles in my shoulder had been very badly damaged, and there was a worry that they would never fully heal. It was very depressing to hear this because of the expeditions and training I do.
“It was a difficult time, for sure. My recovery has been painful and difficult. But I was able to get back in my kayak within the year and return to the islands. And now I must be one of the only people in the world who can say when people ask me about my scars, ‘I got them in a fight with a polar bear.’ ”
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