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"Do you want to cross Svalbard?"
That — or something along those lines — is what Jonas said to me when he approached me back in 2021.
He told me about a project he’d had in mind for quite a while. And since I’d been his adventure partner and filmmaker, I was the obvious first person to ask.
Jonas had been living on Svalbard for nearly a year, wrapping up his training to become an Arctic Nature Guide. Meanwhile, the farthest north I’d ever been was Denmark. I’d never set foot on Arctic ground. Never slept in a tent for more than three winter nights in a row.
Now Jonas needed a cameraman, a filmmaker, and — most of all — a good friend to join him on this mission. (Framing it as a film project would also make the finances a lot easier to justify than a purely private trip.)
And I? I was craving a new kind of adventure — something I’d never experienced before.
So when he came to me with that question, there was only ever going to be one answer.
I said yes. Instantly.
I also started thinking about why we’re doing this, or rather these kinds of things. [...] mostly I think it is the experience of the unknown, perhaps even the exclusiveness of these adventures.
— from my expedition diary
After about 18 months of funding our undertaking — which included onboarding a London-based production company — I found myself sitting on a snow scooter, heading toward a place called Doktorbreen.
The team Jonas had put together was, apparently, just the two of us — and five Norwegians he’d met during his education on Svalbard: like-minded adventurers who were just as excited as I was to spend the next 40 days in an Arctic desert.
I slowly started to realize what lay ahead. We were about to spend more than a month in tents, in sub-zero temperatures. We’d be skiing almost every day — through snow, over ice, and occasionally in the rain — covering nearly 700 kilometers. And I wouldn’t just need to figure out how to survive in this unfamiliar environment almost on the spot — I also had to film and capture every moment that might one day make it into a movie.
Looking back, I’d call this phase: “getting comfortable being uncomfortable.”
Here’s the thing: on that first night, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I saw Jonas taping his feet — blisters were already forming, and it was still day one — and I braced myself for what was coming. I’m notoriously prone to blisters on any multi-day trip I’ve done so far.
I remember watching the others pitch the tents and build camp, while wondering what on earth I was supposed to do.
Where should I put my giant, self-made power bank to charge my equipment? What even needs charging? Are the batteries too cold to charge? Should I film now — or crawl into the tent and try to warm up as fast as possible?
If you could’ve looked into my mind that evening, it would have been pure chaos.
Unreal becomes reality
The funny thing is — that first day felt completely alien. I was thrown into a world I didn’t know, and I kind of had to re-learn how to walk. By day 30, I remember getting up and out of the tent thinking, “So this is my life now. Just another Tuesday morning.” I had my routines. I knew what would happen next. Everything felt like I’d never done anything but ski, pitch tents, sleep, and eat — day after day.
It’s almost a shame that the expedition only lasted another ten days from that point on. Roughly halfway through the trip, I started sensing a shift in my reality. What had felt strange and unnatural before suddenly felt… comfortable.
Let me tell you something: that feeling is one of the best in the world. (Well, love is up there too. But you get the point.) And the cool part is — you can experience this phenomenon in so many areas of life.
When I start editing a massive project — like this expedition movie — I usually feel awful. Overwhelmed. I have no idea how I’ll ever finish something so complex. But give it a few days or weeks, and things start to settle. That soothing feeling kicks in. I’ve recently started running ultra-marathons. The first few kilometers? Brutal. My mind screams at me: How can you possibly run this far? But after a while, that voice fades. I start focusing only on the next move. The next step. And I finish — with style — what I got myself into.
If you haven’t yet, I strongly recommend watching the film that covers this expedition: End to End Svalbard. In just 93 minutes, you’ll get a real sense of what was going on in our heads, discover the island through my lens, and — hopefully — feel inspired to set off on your own next adventure.
if you have trouble watching the movie in your country, a VPN set to the UK usually works.
BELOW: one of our most exciting campspots. We had to pitch camp early, since Mats Eriks knee started to badly hurt that day. We encountered a storm. And we had some of the most beautiful light of the whole trip.
Diary from the field
I wrote 71 pages of diary entries during our 40-day expedition — almost two pages a day.
Though it wasn’t a regular “every-evening” kind of writing — more like “whenever-I-have-time-to-write.”
Many evenings were already consumed by either recovering from the day’s exhaustion or backing up memory cards and charging my equipment.
One of the reasons I deliberately made time to write down my thoughts was the idea of using them later as a narrative framework for the film. In the end, that approach didn’t quite work out — but some of the passages actually did make it into the final movie. (If you’ve seen it, you’ll recognize them especially in the voiceover from our final expedition day.)
Although a diary is typically considered something deeply personal — something never meant to be shared with the world — I wrote mine with the idea of publishing at least parts of it in mind.
In the following paragraphs, I want to invite you to dive into the mind of young explorer-Moritz, and glimpse what he felt during this extraordinary experience. I’ve chosen the passages that best reflect my feelings, struggles, and thoughts — both during the journey, and about it.
Monday, 03. April 2023 — Day 1-5
When the snowmobiles started in the morning and we slowly drove through the quiet town, it felt like a last walk towards execution. You could feel the tension in the air; everyone was calm, frozen in excitement, wondering what the next weeks would look like.
After crossing the main road one last time, our group headed into the wilderness of Svalbard on snakelike paths through gigantic mountain ranges and over frozen fjords. This surreal scenery will be our home for the next 40 days.
Our drivers dropped us off in a place where a glacier presses against a frozen lake, creating these bizarre structures of ice rising up against the sky. No one knows how fast this ice is moving.
We put our food for depot in a hole, covered it with snow, and there came the moment when nothing else was left to do except start walking.
On day 2, a wide glacier lay before us to cross, and the clouds made our surroundings look like a fantasy world.
Jonas had to get his feet taped on the first day, my feet followed one day later, and at the end of day 3 I began to feel ill, lying in this tent unable to move. But there was no time to rest. We have to keep going to reach our goal. And although my motivation returned the next morning, the island had another plan for us.
Wednesday, 05. April 2023 — Day 7
Slowly the nice little snowfall turned into a heavy storm. The snow transformed from falling nearly vertically down on our heads to a blast of wind and wetness coming in a straight 90-degree angle, leaving us and our equipment nothing but cold and wet.
When we could see no further than the tips of our skis, we were forced to find shelter.
A snow cave, built in no less than five hours, spent us the warmth and the rest that we needed. We knew the next day would not allow us to keep going, so we prepared ourselves for two nights in the cave, sleeping, waiting, and watching Star Wars.
And after two nights under the snow, all seven of us crawled out of the hole into the blinding light of a new day and — as if time had stood still — started packing our pulks and kept going south.
At late afternoon we reached the sea ice, finding it in extremely bad condition.
It is frozen, rock solid, but it seems as if the rough sea froze in seconds, standing still in time, with its harsh surface still in place. This left us with only two choices — continue the demanding path over the ice, having to walk until darkness surrounds us, or build camp here, close to the ocean front. The group voted to stay, and as the weather forecast predicts a storm for the following day, we prepare for yet another day of rest, filled with sleeping, waiting, and watching more Star Wars.
We already count our remaining food and gasoline to make sure we reach our depot in time. Another one or two days without covering any distance could already force us going back earlier than planned, and we haven’t even reached the south end of Svalbard yet, the actual starting point of our tour.
Tuesday, 11. April 2023 — Day 13
[…]
I also started thinking about why we’re doing this, or rather these kinds of things. It’s been “only” 13 days; some of them I enjoyed, and on some I wished they would soon come to an end.
My general mood is good though, so I guess one possible answer can be “because we enjoy it”.
But what is “it”? The expedition in general? The nights in tents? Or being outside for a long period of time, maybe. It could be a combination of all. But mostly I think it is the experience of the unknown, perhaps even the exclusiveness of these adventures.
However, I still have plenty of time left to think about that.
Wednesday, 22. April 2023 — Day 24
Yesterday was what I will remember as a real expedition day. Cold weather and wind forced us to cover up all our faces; ski goggles replaced our sunglasses. The look of extraterrestrials was perfect. Throughout the day the wind got stronger and the sun slowly disappeared behind a wall of mist.
I felt like I was walking on the moon!
The camp was reached one hour early, as Mats Erik started to get problems with his knee. The wind was still strong, so building a camp on the moon was our game that evening.
As midnight came closer the sun came out of the mist, and thanks to flying cameras I was able to get some extraordinary images from above our tents.
Seeing the wind hitting our homes made me realize even more where I was; basically in the middle of nowhere, only a few millimeters of fabric between me and the raw force of nature.
Saturday, 29. April 2023 — Day 31
This night in the camp on the moraine I really enjoyed my polar bear watch shift. 4:23 was the time my alarm went off, and at 4:30 I stood outside, meeting Mats-Jørgen coming from his shift and handing me the rifle and flare gun. Above our camp was a long ridge of the moraine (was it even moraines next to the ice, or just regular mountain land? At least it was also next to the glacier), and I went up there on what turned out to be a 10-minute walk to a beautiful viewpoint over the next glacier front. It looked very rough, raw ice crushed together over decades. A wonderful sight of nature’s forces. Back at camp I found a nice little rock to sit on, and I took my time to record a little video message to my loved one.
Our day and night rhythm seemed to normalize again. We started walking at around 11 instead of the afternoon like the days before. It seemed to be a good day, although a thick layer of clouds covered the sky. Everybody was in a good mood and the ice conditions got a little better towards lunch. After this daily break that once terminated after exactly 45 minutes and now is regularly stretched to one hour or more, we continued towards the last crux of our tour: the bight in front of the last glacier joining directly into the sea.
We were not sure if sea ice conditions would allow us to walk there or not, and in order to find this out the only choice was to go there and have a look. About a kilometer before we would lay eyes on the glacier the overwater — that is, water on top of the ice — got more and more and transformed the surface we were walking on into a wet snow slush, making skis, skins, and shoes slowly wet. At a certain point the security awareness of the team grew bigger and bigger, and eventually, after measuring the ice to be only five centimeters thin, we decided to continue on land.
Everyone, until we climbed the short wall dividing the land from the sea, started walking as on thin ice, which ironically was true in this moment. Some five or ten minutes later we took the last steps around the moraine, and ahead lay a gigantic glacier front — a worthy finale to all the glacier fronts we saw on this trip. My drone again was in the air in no time, and from above I saw the massive blocks of blue ice coming down from the mountains and straight into the sea.
What I also saw, very much to the disbelief of the others and generating a massive fall of everyone’s mood, was a very unstable surface of ice with patches of open water in between. It seems like all the nightmares came true and this bight, the last open question on our voyage to the north of the island, might be uncrossable.
We now have three options.
1. We wait one cold night and see if the ice stabilizes in this time. Still, this is the riskiest option.
2. Not less risky, but the success rate seems higher: we would climb the side of the glacier front, cross the glacier on top, and descend on the other side.
3. The safest yet most time-consuming option, will lead us back a couple of kilometers, then 500 meters up another glacier, and continue in the mountains towards the north, bypassing the bight that rejected us completely.
We set up camp and decide tomorrow.
Tuesday, 02. May 2023 — Day 34
It felt quite nice to be on the glacier again. Although the temperature fell to about -20 °C at some points, I really enjoy being up here. Some minor uphills followed our perfect campsite, but no extraordinary steeps like the days before. Walking in general in this area was rather boring, though. Here, in the north, the glacier is nothing but a giant white area; not even scenic mountains are to be seen. I was feeling generally good, but my motivation for filming was again at a low point; I got some beauty shots, but real storytelling was not there.
I am constantly thinking about how to end the movie, and although I know that this decision is made in the edit room, I can’t stop thinking about what there is still to film. And now that we are getting so close to the finish line, my head is dominated by the thought that I might have missed something. Did I get enough content from our camps? Enough from inside the tents? I know that it was really hard, on the one side, to motivate me to go out in the evening again to film something, and on the other side all my lenses fogged up when I went inside the tent. That made it almost impossible to film spontaneously, without heating my camera beforehand over the stove for half an hour.
Today I also realized that I did not film any “behind the scenes” from me with all my technical equipment, hard drives, charging routines, etc. Would it have been good to see in the movie? Maybe. But I guess it is not essential. That’s what I hope at least. These are the thoughts that come to mind these last days.
To be out here, walking, resting, pitching the tent every evening, and thinking back to everything we already experienced feels like I have been here forever. The days feel like there has never been something else than being out here, with six other people who all share the same goal. The thought of the end, that is so close now, is almost intimidating.
I am very grateful when this journey comes to an end, but also filled with grief that my “normal” life will return so soon. Sure, I am looking forward to finally living in a house again, with a shower and a bed that does not have to be inflated every night.
Pizza is something I am looking forward to; fresh bread, anything with dough really.
A tiramisu would be nice as well, and pancakes with as much chocolate on them as I want, not just half a bar, which is my daily portion right now.
Mostly though, I am looking forward to seeing my loved one again, exchanging kisses, cuddling her, and bringing her breakfast to bed. That will be one of the first things I will do!
Oh, almost forgot: a really good cup of coffee in the morning, not like this thin instant coffee we’re drinking here. With just two more days of walking ahead, this adventure slowly but surely comes to an end.
A once-in-a-lifetime-experience
I hate this phrase. As soon as I hear it, a thought starts forming in my head — a thought that implies I’ll only get to live this experience once in my life. And I don’t want that. I want this experience ten times, or a hundred times — maybe even more.
But now that some time has passed since we were there, and I look back on it, I’m slowly making peace with the saying. In a way, it really was an extremely unique thing we did — and even if we were to do the exact same thing again, it would probably be completely different. Another “once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
If my career as a filmmaker and cinematographer continues to grow — and I really hope it does — I’ll probably get to have many more of those so-called once-in-a-lifetime moments. Each one just as unrepeatable as the last. In fact, I already have. One of those moments was in New Zealand. Another in Nepal. Some feel more remote or exotic — like Svalbard. Others, like Nepal, I shared with many others walking the same path.
A few years ago, I would’ve shied away from calling anything a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Now? I’m chasing them. And if I’m lucky, I’ll live as many of them as I can.
ON THE RIGHT: the orange monument marks the geographical endpoint of our journey. The team takes a moment to reflect on those last 39 days and all the experiences they had.
BELOW: the orange monument marks the geographical endpoint of our journey. The team takes a moment to reflect on those last 39 days and all the experiences they had.
In the past months and years, I’ve been on a few trips — mostly for filming. Trips that other people would definitely call “once-in-a-lifetime experiences.”
I’ve been to New Zealand, exploring merino sheep farms. I’ve been to Nepal, trekking beside the world’s highest mountains. Those trips were great — but a different kind of great. Sure, it’s absolutely stunning to see Mount Everest up close. And yes, I had a great time petting baby lambs. But nothing I’ve done since Svalbard has brought that same level of adventure — that same alien feeling you get when doing something for the first time.
I’m still waiting for a new experience that matches End to End Svalbard. But there’s one thing I’m sure of: The moment Jonas turns to me and says, “I had an idea for a trip the other day — want to film it?”, I’ll know that the next big adventure might be just around the corner.
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