Page 60 - 2003 SVALBARD, NORWAY

what looked for all the world like mountain tarns--icy blue and

reflective and ringed with snow.

Some of the floes contained tiny bodies of water that recalled the
ponds craft folk create for their Christmas villages--smooth, color

arising from beneath a shiny surface, quite artificial looking and
yet appropriate to call to mind winter ice-skating and fishing.
Color was as various as shape in this sea ice universe. We saw

glasslike pieces with the translucency of windows. There were
some the color of clotted cream or melted butter. White itself

comes in an amazing array of shades in nature just as it does on an
artist’s palette or a home decorator’s paint samples. There were

gray-white, blue white, ivory white, hospital white, reddish white.
Finally the cold drove us indoors again and we had a cup of hot

tea and a delicious Norwegian fishcake sandwich to warm us up.