It takes a special sort of talent to write an instrumental piece about the most remote consistently inhabited place on Earth and to tell a story out of it.
That place is Longyearbyen, the capital ‘city’ of Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago located in the Arctic Ocean, situated between mainland Norway and the North Pole and closer to the latter.
A bustling metropolis that is home to around 2,400 of the 3,000 souls that live in the entire archipelago, a truly international location as anyone can live there without a visa, where there are no taxes on alcohol or tobacco, its supermarkets are packed with the world’s best products, there are restaurants and bars galore but where you are required by law to leave your car doors unlocked in case anyone needs it as an emergency shelter from a rampaging polar bear (which outnumber the human population and intend to keep it that way).
How do I know all this? I just happened to chance on a few You Tube videos about the place recently and weirdly fell in love with somewhere that looks like a North Korean army barracks in places.
And that’s why I’m delighted to come across this single from violinist and composer Tuva Halse – ‘Longyear’- which was composed during a stay in Svalbard. Her intention was that it should capture the stillness, biting cold, and towering mountains that overlook the township. I have visited Greenland and I know exactly what she means by stillness. It’s as if you opened a door in a spacecraft and stepped out into the void.
Also to contrast the majestic, frozen northern environment and the hectic pace of city life back home.
The title alludes both to the place and to the nature of time—a word play, “long year”, marked by longing, yearning, and memories stretching back through time.
That might sound a tad pretentious. Can anyone do that through music or is it really possible only in the domain of painting or sculpture?
Well she has a pretty good shot at it.
There is something both rustic and interchangeable about the opening 90 seconds, it could be set in a Longyearbyen of old when mining earned the visitor kroner rather than tourism, or equally in Greenland’s Disko Bay; a native Indian reservation in North America; a Malawian village clearing; at a watering hole in the Australian outback; or even at a northern England brass band concert.
It is the epitome of World Music.
But from around the 1:30 mark the harshness of the environment kicks in along with that contrast -between being on the end of the world, forbidden to stray beyond the ‘edge of town’ marker without carrying an AK47 and with air cover – with every luxury you could expect to find in a cosmopolitan city (a softer, ‘jazz club lounge’ part – I’ll bet there is even one of those in Longyearbyen).
Much of this instrumental imagery is carried by the trumpet, an appropriate one for a place where you might have to use it to summon help or to try to frighten off (ha!) a 10 foot tall, 550 kg white monster that makes your average WWE wrestler look like an underfed garden gnome.
Then the tempo suddenly and dramatically picks up in what might represent Longyear nightlife, which I guess is pretty wild when there’s no tax on alcohol and all the bars stay open until two o’clock in the morning, before it equally quickly fades into a attempt to sleep when the glaring light is there 24/7 without mercy for much of the summer.
If this review has read like a travelogue in parts that is because it is. Tuva Halse uses musical instruments to write a travel report from the edge without words and I can only hope the Tourist Board recognises her achievement!
(Continues after the Spotify link)
‘Longyear’ is the second and final single ahead of the forthcoming album ‘Reconnection’, due out in January 2026.
The musicians:
Tuva Halse – violin, composition
Oscar Andreas Haug – trumpet
Benjamín Gísli Einarsson – piano
Gard Kronborg – bass
Øyvind Leite – drummer.
Find her on:
Website; https://www.tuvahalse.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tuva.halse
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tuvahalse/
