Meet Hilde Fålun Strøm

Hilde Fålun Strøm, our new ambassador at large, is one of the most inspirational voices calling for protection of the Arctic. With friend and fellow explorer Sunniva Sorby she founded Hearts in the Ice, which is dedicated to motivating climate action, in 2018. In 2019, she and Sunniva embarked on what was planned to be nine months in an isolated cabin, conducting scientific research and highlighting climate change in the Arctic, but which turned into 19 months because the Covid pandemic struck while they were there and they could not be picked up as planned.

Recently named one of the Explorers Club 50 — 50 people who are changing the world — by the Explorers Club, here she talks to us about her inspirations and upbringing, about protecting the Arctic, and about living in an isolated cabin while a pandemic raged worldwide.

What prompted your interest in the Arctic?

I grew up in Norway, not very far from Oslo, and I had very active and outdoorsy parents and siblings. I was the youngest of four, and every single weekend, even from the age of 2, 3, or 4, before I could walk, I was in a rucksack on my father's back. So I was introduced to the natural world when I was a young kid, and I’ve always been fascinated by the North even without being there. Then I traveled the world with the tourism industry in what you might call my former life, and in my mid-20s I saw an advertisement for a position in Svalbard. I thought, “Whoa! That’s far away. That’s almost the North Pole.” I moved there in 1995 and I really wanted, from very early on, to explore and to be part of all the seasons, part of the natural world.  

I would take care of a trappers’ cabin in the north of Svalbard for two months during the high winter season, April and May. A friend and I would hunt seals for the trappers who lived there while they were gone for two months, and because we were doing that, we had a lot of polar bear encounters.

So that was a taste of the life that I really wanted to do. It’s a very simple life in the cabin. There’s no running water, electricity or connectivity, so you need to work every day to survive and make sure that you are safe. Mentally and physically, it’s a harder type of living, but it’s so purposeful.

But early on, I saw the impacts of changes in the climate, and they really scared me. And then in 2015 a big avalanche hit Longyearbyen; 12 of my neighbors’ houses were destroyed, and 17 people were buried inside their homes. My husband and I were both very much involved in the rescue operation, and I ended up taking care of a mother who was looking for her two-year-old and four-year-old. We found them after about two hours of digging, but the two-year-old did not survive; I was together with her family for three full days and nights, and it just changed me.

Research has shown that Longyearbyen now has an increased risk of avalanches due to climate change, and I knew that I needed to do something different. I knew that I wanted to be more part of the solution, not only part of the problem.

I met Sunniva in 2016, and she soon said that she wanted to join me. And it took us basically two-and-a-half years to prepare: We worked really, really hard to get sponsors on board, to get contracts with all the researchers that we wanted to work with as citizen scientists, collecting data for them. We worked really, really hard to get this off the ground as two women.

Living in such an isolated environment for nine months must be immensely hard. But suddenly realizing you couldn’t leave as planned must have been tremendously emotionally challenging.

Since we didn’t have radio, we didn’t have television, we didn’t have any imagery of what was happening out there. We got a message from the person who was helping with our social media; she was the one who told us there was a pandemic. And we thought, “OK, it will not affect us because we’re so far from anyone.” But then we started to understand what was happening.

We were scheduled to be picked up by the same ship that had dropped us off. We had had a huge celebration with our send-off, and we anticipated having a huge celebration when we came back. We had artists lined up, we had press, of course. We had our science partners, we had our business partners and family and friends, and everyone was going to come and pick us up. And I remember a journalist writing to me and saying, “Hilde, I think you need to cancel the whole event.” So we found out about all this on March 9th, and we canceled on Sunniva’s birthday, the 17th. So that was a roller coaster. It was a big disappointment, of course, a longing to come back to a normal world. And then we understood how you guys were, and we were worried about our friends and family out there that were being struck by something that seemed to be so scary.

It was tough, but we felt more purposeful being out there gathering data, doing the thing that is close to my heart, talking about what’s happening in the Arctic and how to actually make a difference. It just felt right.

Were you isolated for the entire time?

All of a sudden, we were considered the experts on isolation, and we had press from all over the world reaching out to us and reporting that we were stuck in the Arctic and couldn’t come home because no one could pick us up. That was not the full truth, of course, because my husband could have picked up Sunniva and me and Ettra, our dog, in our boat. But we couldn't leave everything behind, because it was a big operation, and we had a lot of dry food and a lot of equipment, and the cabin itself is a cultural heritage site. Leaving a hut with no one to protect it when you have a lot of stuff, both inside and outside, is not a good thing when you have polar bears around. So that was a big consideration. 

So we planned a short little expedition to go back to Longyearbyen, which also meant a lot of preparation and a perfect weather window for us to actually cross the sea ice, cross all the glaciers, having Ettra on the sled and then running beside us and then on the sled again. We stayed in Longyearbyen for a few days in May, when we were originally supposed to have been picked up, and then returned to the cabin. 

We expected friends and family to come a week later with some more supplies, but then, boom, all of a sudden, there was no longer enough snow to support a snowmobile. So that never happened. By July, we were completely out of everything. 

In August, after the ice had broken up enough, my husband was able to visit in his boat, and we returned to Longyearbyen for another two months to resupply and then returned to the cabin for another seven months. So we eventually came home in late May 2021, after 19 months.

Was that hard? Were you ever tempted to say, “We’ve done 12 months, nobody would blame us if we didn’t return?”

You bet. That was really, really hard for both of us, and we couldn’t bring Ettra back either, she became sick while we were in Longyearbyen and had to have surgery. It was really, really tough.

Did you need a lot of time to recover before plunging back into advocacy?

Yeah, I think we used the full summer. But then we did a road trip along the Norwegian coast with an electric car, meeting nine- and ten-year-old kids in their classrooms, signing climate agreements with them and their local mayors. We had reached out to 104,000 kids, I think, through our stay in the cabin. So to be able to physically be there with them and talk to them and  be inspired by them and vice versa: that was great.

I get the impression it’s very important to you not just to tell people what to do for the climate, but to help empower them to make their own choices. Is that part of what drew you to Polar Bears International?

Yes, I think so many people are afraid of how this will impact their life, and all the things they think they have to stop doing. But for me, it’s more about focusing on optimism and on values. I think all of us have a set of values, and if you stand for your values, you will find that being a caretaker for the natural world is a more purposeful life. 

And that's why I'm tremendously proud to be associated with Polar Bears International. I find PBI's work very inspiring and I hope to be able to work with them to inspire others. 

What do you want people to know about the Arctic?

The Arctic affects all of us, not only the 4 million people that live there. What’s happening in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic. And what I mean by that is the fact that a warming Arctic impacts weather systems and impacts temperature rise. When ice and snow cover melts in the Arctic, the ground and water below absorbs more warming: like wearing a black T-shirt on a summer’s day.

So I really want people to understand that what’s happening in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic. So we need to make sure that we mitigate the impact of this now, and it’s not all about technology and new solutions. It’s about ourselves. It’s about our greed. We need to learn how to share more and we need to learn how to take less. And when we do, we’ll find that that life, I think, is going to be more purposeful and enjoyable.  

Anything else you’d like to add?

Only that I hope people understand how important they are as individuals, because it’s us individuals that collectively will move the needle. It is us that vote for politicians, it’s us that go to the grocery stores and make decisions on what to buy and use.  Of course, we need system change. We need big change. Shifts happen, but it all starts with us.

Kieran Mulvaney is the author of The Great White Bear: A Natural and Unnatural History of the Polar Bear. He is a frequent contributor to the Polar Bears International website and also writes for publications including National Geographic, Smithsonian, and The Guardian.