Interview with The Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital for 80 North
Why Svalbard? What lead you to on this specific expedition?
BH: I’ve been interested in Svalbard since I was young. I discovered it through Phillip Pullman’s the Golden Compass. The story was fantasy, but Svalbard was real, although so far removed from Texas that it may as well have been a fantasy. As a young adult its remote location kept a hold on my imagination. As an adult, it came back to mind the more I learned about the relationship between the Arctic and global climate. There was a strange overlap for me between the book and real life in that Svalbard represented a place where, in a symbolic way, the fate of the world rests. It’s just a fascinating place as well in a number of ways I don’t have space to get into – from its geology, to its territorial and legal status, to the mixture of people who call it home.