Hunter in Svalbard’s Wilderness



Tommy Sandal, 37, sees more polar bears than humans in the course of a year.

In one of the world’s most beautiful and most dangerous wildernesses at the Svalbard Island, hunter and trapper Tommy Sandal, 37, lives with his Greenland Dogs. His life is about man against nature, about solitary encounters with nature’s powerful forces, about killing to survive, about the love of nature and a desire to live as one with it. “I want to keep old traditions alive and take care of them. To live from nature and with nature,” says Tommy.

All year round, he hunts prey that he transforms into food. Every day, he eats his own prey. He preserves ancient hunting traditions and hunts the old-fashioned way. He has few modern conveniences, and uses dogs, sleds and skis to get around in the winter.

Tommy is at one with nature. He crouches down and moves soundlessly. The prey, a big reindeer buck, is a few hundred meters (yards) away at the water’s edge. It must not see him or catch his scent. Reindeer are more frightened by the smell of a potential threat than the sight of it. He is camouflaged by the terrain. His eyes and facial expression change as he gets closer to the animal. The buck sniffs something. The hunter stops, still as a mouse. Then he lies down on the ground, and worms his way toward the reindeer. He studies it in his rifle scope : Big, but not one of the biggest. Not a sound, not a movement. The buck raises its head. He pulls the trigger. Before the ringing of the shot even fades, the buck is dead on the ground. “We shouldn’t romanticize nature,’’ says Tommy. “It will always be raw and brutal. We humans have lulled ourselves into the illusion that all creatures should be friends and live forever.”

Tommy left the Norwegian mainland eight years ago in search of his hunter-trapper dream on the remote Arctic islands of Svalbard. Since he was a little boy, he followed in his grandfather’s footsteps toward prey, with hunting and trapping as his main interests. And no matter what else he did in life, he always ended up on the same track : Wanting to be his own boss and live exclusively off whatever prey he could harvest. The freedom, the experiencesand the challenges were his driving forces. With extreme cold, glacial crevasses, thin ice, months of darkness with no contact with the outside world and dangerous encounters with polar bears in a terrain where they compete over the same prey.

An univited guest approaches the cabin at a fast pace. It’s heading for the meat scaffold. Its head is swinging from side to side. The dog Rusk sounds the alarm. He pulls so hard on his chain that the whole cabin creaks. Tommy runs out, rifle in hand, and sees the polar bear approaching at high speed. He releases Rusk to keep the bear at a safe distance, and the big Greenland Dog storms fearlessly toward the world’s biggest predator. The bear spins around, and picks up speed toward the mountain behind the cabin. “In nature, we eat each other. It’s as simple as that,” says Tommy.

He lives off killing animals. That may seem brutal in many ways, but his greatest concern is wildlife preservation. He does not place himself above the animals, but rather alongside them. Tommy follows nature’s rhythms, and plans his hunter’s year from July to July. In the fall, he hunts reindeer, grouse and seal, as well as fishing for humpback salmon and Arctic char. He makes blood sausages and reindeer sausages, and smokes hearts, tongues, livers and fish. From November until well into March, it’s all about Arctic foxes. He lays trap lines back and forth along the Wijdefjorden inlet and is out for weeks at a time. He sets about 150 traps over vast distances, and sometimes bears get there before him and smash all the traps to pieces.

Spring is the time for seal-hunting, and Tommy hunts them on the ice. It is also the time for the most frequent polar bear visits. His meat scaffold is full of seal carcasses and blubber. “When a bear gets wind of blubber, things can, indeed, get rough. After all, it is their food I’m messing with,” says Tommy. He has learned to live with the bears. He is on their premises. He understands their behavior, and knows how to act.

The life tommy lives completely breaks the patterns of modern man. He enjoys every moment, even though the going often gets tough. He remembers each special moment in encounters with Arctic animals. He lives and breathes for the long treks on the ice, for the fox tracks in the snow, for the polar bears and the seals, for the grouse prancing around the cabin, for Rusk watchfully scanning the fjord, for the calm of polar winter night and the return of the sun, for the quiet and freedom, all of which makes this man of the wilderness feel so rich.

Text: Julie Cathrine Knarvik
Photos: Sverre Chr. Jarild