Debating on how we should approach this….

The temperature of the water was – 2.6, almost frozen in a couple of weeks…

Seconds away from the dip!

YES!!!

As soon as we came out from the water, ice was taking over our bodies!

More pictures today. Some are from one of our our plane rides (wait to see our documentary for the whole thing – it’s worth it, we promise and tobogganing experience. Tomorrow, pictures from our polar dip and then more with the locals!!!

On our way from Longyearbyen to Oslo, Matt convinced one of the flight attendants on Scandinavian Air to introduce us to the rest of the plane. We took over the PA system and told our story – everybody clapped at the end!!!

Okay, we had to pay something for taking over the PA system. We had to kiss the Scandinavian Air pilot! It seems she didn’t like it at all…

Getting ready for the New Year’s Eve party!!!

Just getting ready for another one of our awesome tobogganing rides…with two girls under 10 years old, Erin and Aurora – Kjersti’s girls.

…and there it goes!!! The little girls lost us long time ago

We don’t remember which one of us is this one, but it was a great feeling! Trust us on that one

One of the moments when we really need to breathe…

Keep in mind this logo/image. Just saying…

As we promised, we are back! We just needed some time to readjust to the normal life For the next few days we are going to post blog articles and pictures about the new friends we made in Svalbard. Today, the first batch! Tomorrow, about our plane and tobogganing experience, and then about our polar dip!!!

Dog sledding with Svalbard Husky – the best company in the Arctic!

Thanks Robert Nielsen and Svalbard Husky for your rides!

The wine cellar at Huset hosts around 20,000 bottles of wines, making it one of the largest wine cellars in Scandinavia! This is just one of the rooms.

Tommy, the manager at Huset, took us on a tour of his place. Huset is the place to go while in Longyearbyen!

Guys like Steve and Stig (both on the right hand side) made our life easier in Svalbard. Inviting us to their houses to their private gatherings without fully knowing us made us really appreciate where we are!

Stig Halvorsen, owner of Sports Centeret, gave us a huge hand by lending us a super flashlight that could lit up a mountain, for the three weeks we spent in Svalbard. He turned out to be a great guy as well, so we’ll visit him again on our next trip!

We spent the New Year’s Eve at Radisson Hotel, in a great atmosphere and good company. Very quiet, but unique

Despite the brightness of the picture, we could barely saw our snowmobiles. The camera’s aperture does wonders!

The dog camp belonging to Svalbard Husky, the company that graciously took us for the ride.

The fantastic scenery of the Arctic makes everything look so good. Two of the dog sleds we used today, in the splendour of night.

Another dog camp. On the right hand side of the picture, you can see dead seals that the owners decided to hang, to bait the polar bears – in order to avoid having the dogs being eaten first!

Meet Carmen ‘Electreyes’ – one of the cool huskies who took us for a ride. She just wants to play all the time!

A quick shot of our start in the adventure! These dogs were so eager to run that we already hit a post after 5 seconds of riding No serious impact, just a side touch.

A shot from the ‘passenger seat’. Shaky but cool, nonetheless.

If you would have to guess, what does this look like? Nope, it’s not! Well, it’s the entrance in coal mine number 7, one of the largest here in the Arctic.

This is our small town where we are staying – Longyearbyen, with a population at the moment (winter season) with just a little bit over two thousand people.

What an amazing last couple of days it’s been up here. We’ve been so busy filming and trampling around in the arctic that we haven’t had any time to upload the blog! So, instead of writing everything down we figured to just post some pics… and a video (up top) Check it out, enjoy!

Having some fun at an interview after our first snowmobile trek into the polar night. What an amazing journey that was. No encounters with Polar Bears equals no usage for the rifle… perfect.

Taking a breather in some of the most breathtaking environments we’ve ever experienced.

Action shot. They call snowmobiles “scooters”… so from here on we shall refer to them as such! Actually, they suited us up with the Arctic Panthers… to be exact (the brand name of both our rides). That sounds much more badass so we’ll go with that instead

New Year’s Eve dinner at the Radisson. 5 course meal, very fancy… included some of the arctics delicacies such as arctic king crab soup, raw beef with sauce drizzle and soy bean things (not sure the real term here lol, sorry), reindeer steak, and arctic berry’s and creme for dessert. Smallest portions ever, but an experience none-the-less. Not to mention, the couple next to us living in Oslo, Norway and offering us to rappel down a 30 story building for a fundraiser/stunt in our film when we get back that way this week. We’ll see how that one pans out. We have a few more things up our sleeve, do keep in the loop.

Shot of a scooter. Notice how the back is frozen stiff… Yup, what you heard is true, it gets pretty cold up here at the top of the world!

Our favourite little arctic munchkins! Welcoming us into their Svalbard home was Kjersti, the Tourism Manager and her four beautiful girls… two of which you see here. We had the privilege of indulging in some of the best cake ever. So good in fact that we had to throw a picture of it up here. Drool*

Kjersti and the family’s home. Contrary to the exterior world surrounding it, it was very warm and cozy. We felt at home almost immediately. So did their pet albino rat. He was camera shy, sorry no photos.

The cake! Need we say more?

Checking out the remains of an old aircraft, en route in our polar night scooter adventures.

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That’s all for now, thanks again for stopping by! Happy New Years & God Bless to all of our friends, family, major sponsors (cough* Canada Goose, GLS Construction, Rigid Mechanical, Pinnacle Realty & Management… and more! ) and of course our viewers… who are now following from more than 40 countries around the world. AWESOME. Until next time everyone,

Matt & Sorin — err — Sorin & Matt!

Yet another day spent in the Polar Night… but this time the sky will be lit up. A forecast of Northern lights and fireworks is on the menu! This evening we’ll be getting ready for the big one – the Arctic New Year’s Eve party! Starting off with a massive dinner with all of the locals, including a 5 course meal and about 300 people.. then heading off to the local restaurant/bar turned nightclub for tonight’s celebration and countdown.

Our Canada Goose gear arrived just yesterday and we are THRILLED about that. As we’ve now set up 4 of the next 5 days worth of all-day excursions (today being the first) we’ll definitely be putting that gear to good use. Just today Sorin and the cameraman took the gear into the wilderness for a 5 hour hike up the largest glacier on the island to capture the night sky and hopefully some wildlife. I stayed back at the hotel resting up from being hit with a nasty bug of some sort (awesome). Shortly after their departure I received an email from one of the locals who gets the Northern Lights predictions 4 hours in advance 3x daily, and from what is said to be the best satellite station in the world (SvalSat), and he said to rush out and see the lights because this afternoon the lights will be very strong. We’ll see how the guys made out.

Last night the camera man and I headed out to a little hut to play chess and listen to old arctic stories with one of best chess players in the world, who happens to also be the oldest and longest living man in the entire arctic. I guess when you’re up here there’s a lot of down time… which makes for some good chess practice. Here’s a shot below of me getting schooled four games in a row by one of the guys, Dan “the man” Celius he’s now called. It’s all about wearing a full body leather suit made out of arctic moose and reindeer hide, 24/7. He plays a mean Pink Floyd on the guitar too… I might add. He had us over to his house the night before and we got our jam on. Good times.

Looks like we got the right connection with the Russian miners… we are one step away from on Wednesday getting into the Russian mines by push-cart to film! This was one of our goals and we can’t wait to see what the lifestyle is like down there. Nobody gets to go down there, not even the locals. Just so happens that the mining community feels under-rated and they want to tell the world their story. Our new friend at the chess club made the pitch for us in his broken Russian and told of our documentary efforts. Permits will be made in the next couple of days to get us in there if all goes well. Pays off to stay up all night hanging with the locals!!

Every radio station in Edmonton has been called this morning and Polarfaith.com is now wishing all of Edmonton a Happy New Years on air today. So if you listen to the radio, check us out! We’re still offering our packages for sale and would LOVE to sell a few more. The next $400 AND $1000 package that we sell we will write a song about how awesome you are (or your loved one) and put it on our home page video screen for a day for the world to see!

That’s all for now, enjoy the pics and please send us emails, check out our Facebook or leave us a message! We love to hear from you! — info@polarfaith.com or a message at (250) 896-1264 for media or sponsorship inquiries

Happy New Years, God bless and lotssssss of love from the top of the world!!!

Matt & Sorin

Making things happen

Getting up at 6am this morning we sat down to an arctic buffet spread that would make one drool. We all agreed to set the day off properly and get a good head start, along with some serious planning. The tone was set. It’s now day three and if we are to make anything magical happen it’s going to be right now. Enough goal setting. It’s time for some action. 

The day started off right on track by opening us up to an interview with Mark Sabbatini, the journalist whose article on our story we posted yesterday. One of the most eccentric and worldly guys we’ve probably ever met, pulls up in his specially imported world’s-fastest Subaru sports rally ice car and sits down in our hotel lobby to get right to business. He turned out to give a great interview, along with a world of knowledge about the region and provided us with five key contacts with information for us to hunt down… including the local priest, who we were insistently given a paparazzi-esque shot of – climbing out of an ice hole from a leisurely “polar dip” in the arctic ocean, full on naked.

Booked for dog sledding and snowmobile trips!

After doubling back on the breakfast buffet for lunch before the 11am close (thanks to the early start) we filled up and veered off down the hill to meet with Tourism Svalbard’s head manager Kjersti Ellen Norås, who is probably the island’s coolest and most full of life woman ever. After a successful meeting focused towards helping promote Svalbard’s Tourism mandates through developing our documentary, we agreed to team up and tackle this island together. We now had our schedule set for the rest of our trip. Courtesy of Svalbard we will be given everything three travellers/film makers could dream of to get around and experience what this majestic arctic region has to offer. We will each have our own dogsled team of 8 dogs for an entire day, cruise around the island on ski-do’s for another, snow-shoe and ski to the highest glacier mountains, have an assortment of personal guides to escort us around and be given all of the gear needed to make this epic documentary happen. Svalbard, we are absolutely thrilled and welcome you to the team just as much as you have so graciously welcomed us!

Visit to the Global Seed Vault

Next up – Catching a taxi out to the airport (at an insane 150 Km/hr on a winding ice road) just in time to gather a collective of airplane arrival travel shots. This was a must. Approaching airport authorities to give us full access airport clearance, with a van ride out to the touch-down point on the runway for our shot, as well as the allowance to run out to the plane as it rolls in and take shots of the plane and it’s people coming in to the airport is always nice… A little much to demand perhaps but, well.. “ask and you shall receive”!

It is only 2:30pm but it feels like midnight already. We call a taxi and venture out to the long anticipated Svalbard Global Seed Vault, the place where all the spare seeds of the world are stored, in case of a worldwide calamity. As we drive up through the mountains we pass a sign saying authorized entrance only. The taxi driver continues driving past the gate as the blockade is somehow opened up. Emerging is the energetic display of emerald blue sparkling lights… YES. We are at the world renown “Doomsday Vault” and seeing it’s true wonder in real life. To look at something on YouTube addictively for the last 3 weeks and wondering if it’s even possible to visit, then ending up at it’s doors and experiencing it’s overwhelming presence in real life – on the other side of the world in the most random and remote location possible – it really was amazing. We all felt the soft hint of accomplishment on our sides. This is really it, we are actually in Svalbard right now. We did it.

As if our day wasn’t enough already, we still had lot’s left to finish up. We headed off to the local theatre to film a performance by a 19 year old singer-and-pianist duet (Simen Henriksen – Inger-Johane Mørk) who was rehearsing for the widely-known wedding that is happening on the island tomorrow night. We had offered to film them yesterday in hopes to get connected with the wedding and build relationships with some of the locals. A little giving goes a long way. Turns out the male singer’s best friend’s mom is the Governor General and we’re getting the said whereabouts and arrival times for when she’s coming to Svalbard… which is great because we want a sit down discussion to try and take our partnership with this country to the next level.

Svalbard Tourism then treated us out to a late evening dinner, where we ate reindeer… for real… and it tasted amazing. After that we headed to the local pub where we met a ton of people, including the wedding party who we offered our filming services to for tomorrow night. We’ll see how that goes. Episode of wedding crashers, arctic style.. this could be the most fun of the trip!

Nearing the end of the night we met some crazy locals who showed us insane videos of them skiing off of the arctic mountains and launching themselves off cliffs to parachute 3000 feet down over the mountainside and landing in the city. It was INSANE and we just might have to come back here to do this in the summer. One guy attached an instant blow up dingy to his back and pulled the pin to inflate it just before landing in the arctic ocean… where his buddy met him with paddles as he detached his parachute and blew up the dingy just in time to land with style. There are no rules out here. The world is literally a giant playground. Unreal.

The lack of light, solved by a magic flashlight

Okay, so having been here a few days now one would think that we’d start to get a little bit used to things. Apparently that’s not the case. Either way you come to terms with it, having no sun is a huge pain in the ass. From having low-light camera shots to feeling tired 24 hours a day. Swallowing ten vitamin D pills at once less than made up for the lack of sun… however, a three thousand dollar 41,000 lumens flashlight free of charge from the local sports shop (Sports Centeret) today sure made things a lot brighter. This flashlight can lit up an entire mountain! Thanks a lot for the support Stig – you rock! As for our daily checklist of things to find, we’re now down to one thing left. We will finalize this blog posting by calling this day simply amazing. Video shots coming soon, everyone… thank you for reading!

Matt & Sorin

First of all, thank you all for keeping up on checking our blog updates! After a few days in transition, we finally arrived in Longyearbyen, Svalbard – the world’s most northern city, just miles away from the North Pole. We will post more videos and pics soon, but as for now we just wanted to make sure that our families and friends know that we are alive There is no cell phones usage here, so texting is not in the picture! Luckily, we have access to the Internet, but it is brutally slow. On the other hand, we made the front page of the local Ice People magazine (see above).

We left Edmonton on December 23 and so far we stopped in London, Frankfurt, and Oslo. In Norway’s capital we spent three days, just to get accustomed to the Scandinavian culture. After realizing that we actually landed in the most expensive city in the world (5 dollars for a can of Coke, 11 dollars for a beer) – we quickly headed off to Longyearbyen, the main settlement of the Svalbard islands where the majority of the population lives, even though more than half of them vacate for the winter back to the mainland

Dark 24/7
We arrived here on Tuesday afternoon and fell asleep for 14 hours, exhausted! We just woke up to a morning of pure darkness… finally understanding what it is like to experience “the Polar Night”. We’re now ready to spend 10 days full of adventures, starting with dog sledding trips, mountain and glacier hiking, ski-doo races and Aurora Borealis watching! However, before we do that, we wanted to share with you some of the most interesting facts about this place. So what do you need to know about the place we are at?

*** It has more polar bears (3,000) than humans (2,000 – probably half now). Anyone outside of settlements is required to carry a rifle.

*** It is dark 24 hours a day, from September to April (Polar night). It is quite weird to have lunch while outside is pitch dark!! Look below – that’s at 3PM!

Polar Night

*** Svalbard is the house of the Global Seed vault, which has duplicate samples of seeds held in gene banks worldwide. The seed vault will provide insurance against the loss of seeds in genebanks, as well as a refuge for seeds in the case of large-scale regional or global crises. Construction of the seed vault, which cost approximately $9 million, was funded entirely by the Government of Norway.

*** In the 1930s it was discovered that bodies buried in the Svalbard were not decomposing, because the permafrost was preserving them. People may not be buried there, and so those who fall gravely ill must be taken to another part of Norway, where they can be buried if they die.

Canada Goose on the way
As Canada Goose offered to sponsor our trip with winter clothing, right before Christmas they shipped to Svalbard parkas, jackets and pants for the three of us. We’re still waiting for the package, which should be here either today or tomorrow! We are very excited, since it’s not very warm close to the North Pole

The money raised from these packages will go to a) fulfillment companies for distribution b) help us on our trip c) a portion to WWF to save the bears (the purchaser will receive a certificate for adopting a bear).

Send us an e-mail with your proposal at info@polarfaith.com

Everything over $1,000 is a sponsorship, and you will get a personalized, creative, commercial video from the Arctic, tailored to your needs and produced by our professional videographer Mike Zinger.