Jon Kristian Bø

Read Time:1 Minute, 42 Second

Two men returning to their anchored boat at Fredheim on Friday evening got a not-exactly-warm welcome from an uninvited guest as a polar bear climbed aboard and destroyed “significant valuables,” in addition to “slaughtering” the inflatable boat they used to reach shore to go on a hike.

Jon Kristian Bø (who took the above photo) and Dag Nilsen saw distinctive claw and teeth marks on the raft upon their return, causing the men to immediately scan the landscape for bears before turning their attention to the water, according to Svalbardposten (article in Norwegian – no subscription required). That’s when they saw the bear rummaging on the motor boat about 30 meters away.

“It was a strange feeling to see the polar bear sitting in the boat,” Nilsen told the newspaper. “It was both beautiful and scary at the same time.”

About Post Author

Mark Sabbatini

I'm a professional transient living on a tiny Norwegian island next door to the North Pole, where once a week (or thereabouts) I pollute our extreme and pristine environment with paper fishwrappers decorated with seemingly random letters that would cause a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters to die of humiliation. Such is the wisdom one acquires after more than 25 years in the world's second-least-respected occupation, much of it roaming the seven continents in search of jazz, unrecognizable street food and escorts I f****d with by insisting they give me the platonic tours of their cities promised in their ads. But it turns out this tiny group of islands known as Svalbard is my True Love and, generous contributions from you willing, I'll keep littering until they dig my body out when my climate-change-deformed apartment collapses or they exile my penniless ass because I'm not even worthy of washing your dirty dishes.

marksabbatini@yahoo.com

http://icepeople.net