“It makes you small,” Stefano Unterthiner says of Svalbard, the Norwegian archipelago perched in the high Arctic, where he and his family spent a year. In 2019 the Italian photographer moved with his wife, Stéphanie, and their young son and daughter to Longyearbyen, Svalbard’s largest settlement. They felt at ease right away: Though the town is home to only about 2,100 people—scientists, tour operators, students—they come from around the globe and represent some 50 nationalities.
To learn how a vulnerable ecosystem changes in this fastest-warming place on Earth, Unterthiner went in search of Arctic wildlife. He traveled by snowmobile and on foot, equipped with binoculars and a mandatory rifle, as well as camera gear. He found fjords melting, avalanches increasing, and rain-drenched permafrost icing over the vegetation the wildlife must eat to survive.
Unterthiner fears the area is “changing so quickly that most of the species—because they are so adapted to this environment—eventually won’t be able to evolve in such a rapid way.”
Male Svalbard reindeer fight over a harem of females that one had gathered during mating season. The winner chased the loser away. Rainfall instead of snow imperiled reindeer, encrusting the plants they survive on in ice.
Two male reindeer battle for dominance.
What really surprised Unterthiner during his year in Svalbard? “The transformation of this environment is so quick,” he says. In August in Adventdalen, a valley on Spitsbergen, he marveled at this view: the tundra colors changing as the short Arctic summer ended.
A curious young polar bear watches photographer Unterthiner from shore. When winter sea ice forms, polar bears (except pregnant ones) traverse it searching for food. With Svalbard ground zero for climate change, its polar bears must adapt to diminishing sea ice.
Unterthiner had always joked to his wife, Stéphanie, that he wanted to spend a year living in Svalbard. “Maybe next year,” she’d reply. In August 2019, the couple and their two children, Rémi (6) and Bahia (3), embarked on their yearlong residency, which they titled, “A Family in the Arctic.”
At the end of May, barnacle geese reach their breeding areas on high cliffs in some parts of Spitsbergen, Svalbard’s largest island.
Two Arctic terns, known for their epic annual migration from the Arctic to Antarctica, get into a heated tussle. The species is highly territorial and fiercely protective of its nesting sites.
Arctic foxes grow thick, protective coats in winter. A fox looks for scraps on the picked-clean carcass of a reindeer, a sought-after winter food source. Once summer arrives, foxes feed primarily on eggs and chicks from nests and occasionally on seal pups.
PHOTOGRAPH BY STEFANO UNTERTHINER
As summer ends, the sparse vegetation on Svalbard begins to yellow, providing a colorful landscape for this lone polar bear. “The transformation of this environment is so quick,” says Unterthiner. “That’s something I was really surprised about.”
In Adventdalen, a Svalbard reindeer patrols the group of females he’s gathered for mating.
PHOTOGRAPH BY STEFANO UNTERTHINER
From a cliff above the Bjørndalen valley, Unterthiner spotted movement on the drift ice below. “It’s a dream to find a bear,” he says, but “kind of a nightmare at the same time.” Svalbard’s polar bears and humans have a tenuous relationship; each species has killed the other, albeit rarely.
