Svalbard & Jan Mayen · SJ

Monacobreen

Monacobreen is a spectacular 40-kilometre surge-type tidewater glacier at the innermost end of Liefdefjorden in northwestern Spitsbergen, Svalbard. Named in honour of Prince Albert I of Monaco—the pioneering oceanographer-explorer of the early 1900s—this glacier sends icebergs the colour of deep sapphires into the Arctic fjord and is a headline stop on expedition cruises sailing the high north. The glacier flows from the high Isachsenfonna icefield down to the sea across a remarkably smooth longitudinal profile, draining a catchment of roughly 400 km². In the early 1990s it surged, pushing its front 2 km forward; since then, it has retreated more than 2.5 km, revealing a small island called Nyholmen and severing its once-shared calving front with neighbouring Seligerbreen.