The island of Nordaustlandet, located north and east of Spitsbergen, is almost completely covered by the 2000 foot thick Austfona Ice Cap. As it flows out to sea, the Brasvellbreen Glacier forms a cliff of ice 75 to 100 feet high, extending more than 100 miles along the south coast of the island.

This morning as the fog lifted we were cruising along the ice front, marveling at the exquisite shades of blue displayed, when suddenly curtain after curtain of the ice cliff crashed into the sea with a great roar and a huge splash--a process that glaciologists inexplicably call "calving".

Later in the morning we rounded a bend in the ice sheet and discovered this torrent of meltwater bursting from the ice. This was one of several meltwater streams flowing beneath the surface of the glacier that have been truncated by calving of the ice front, forming waterfalls that penetrate the cliffs. Olle, our Swedish naturalist, tells us that his son has actually put on scuba gear, climbed up onto the glacier, lowered himself into the meltwater stream via a crevasse, and came shooting out of the waterfall in the cliff. None of us have any inclination to repeat this adventure, though many aboard are hoping to take the kayaks out for a closer look.