Page 62 - 2003 SVALBARD, NORWAY

Hiking the Tundra with Reindeer
The land over which we hiked was boggy tundra, cut regularly

with little or slightly bigger streams created by the runoff of the
melting snow patches like the one where the reindeer grazed.

There were many kinds of tundra flowers and we even saw two
different species of tiny mushrooms. Sometimes the tundra
growth looked like flat black stones but when stepped on they

sank under our weight and metamorphosed into sponges instead.
Here was a hike where the Wellington boots were a very good

thing indeed. We saw the ribcage skeleton of a baby reindeer,
probably taken by Arctic foxes shortly after its birth, according to

Magnus.