Trollkjeldene

Trollkjeldene sits roughly eight kilometres further up the remote Bockfjorden valley from Jotunkjeldene, on the northwest coast of Spitsbergen at about 79.4°N — together the pair form the northernmost documented thermal springs on land on Earth. First recorded in 1910 and studied in detail since the 1990s, Trollkjeldene runs noticeably warmer than its neighbour, with surface temperatures measured between 25 and 28°C, and spreads across roughly 50 by 100 metres of smooth, stepped sinter terraces built from calcium carbonate the water picks up passing through ancient Hecla Hoek marble along a fault linked to the extinct Sverrefjellet volcano. The terraces host six plant species found nowhere else on Svalbard. Like Jotunkjeldene, the site lies deep inside Nordvest-Spitsbergen National Park, is reachable only by Zodiac from expedition ships out of Longyearbyen in the short Arctic summer, and direct contact with the springs or their fragile deposits is prohibited by law to protect this globally unusual formation.