The Arctic Fox summer 2011 is beginning and on June 1st we have open from 10-22 as will be the opening time for the rest of the summer. We offer you Arctic Fox Café, Exhibition, Theater loft, Nature films, childrens corner and conserts all summer. At The Café we have traditional pastry as before and a brand new soup&bread as well as smooties from fresh fruits. Beer and wine will be available and we have a special brand from Borg Brugghús. Later during the summer we will offer various blueberry dishes in relation to Blueberry days in Augst 26th to 28th.
 
We will have some of our "old" but also new staff members as well as helpers around at the centre this summer. Mauritz from Germany has been with us for two weeks and has shown great talents in lecturing, guiding at the exhibition, baking waffles and serving coffee - we call him Móri, a traditional male arctic fox name in Iceland. We have had some volunteers already, such as lexie and Conor from US, Tobi and Karlien from Belgium, Sabrina and Remco from Netherlands, and Móri.

The arctic fox monitoring in Hornstrandir Nature Reserve will begin in mid June and there will be some arctic fox watching tours too.

We have got positive responses from the almost three thousand people who have visited us since we opened for the first time in June 2010. Furthermore, it looks like our little centre is still in some peoples mind after they come home from their Iceland tour.

One of our new friends is Lillie Calistri-Yeh from New Jersey, USA. She is only 12 but has achieved many things in her life. Lillie is an arctic fox supporter at WWF and travels around with her „teddy arctic fox", Lucky. As soon as she heard about the Arctic Fox Centre, she asked her parents if they could visit it. When they came at the centre last summer, Lillie and Lucky met Frosti and loved him, of course. Now Lillie is writing a book about arctic foxes and dedicates it to Frosti and the Arctic Fox Centre. We are proud of Lillie and find her a great roe-model for others who want to make an effort and let their dreams come true. We look forward to have the book sent - congratulations Lillie.

During the Easter we got a package from Birgit Lattermann and her family in Germany. They came to visit the centre in March and wanted to give us something. They looked out for a literature on arctic foxes in German and found this great old children's book about a little fox: Der kleine Polarfuchs. It is a Russian story by Juri Kowal, translated to German. They sent us the book and now we have a special literature for German speaking visitors at our "library". We are grateful for the gift and it´s nice to know that there are people out there, willing to share. 

The Arctic Fox Centre will be open 13 - 17
during the Easter weekend:

Saturday, April 23th and Monday, April 25th

- Arctic Fox Café: Hot chocolate, Fine Coffee, New baked pastry, ..

The Exhibition is open too - entrance fee 800 ISK for adults, free for kids with parents

Happy Easter

The first volunteers of this year have already arrived. They are Conor Handley and Alexia Siebuhr from California. They came to Westfjords last weekend and have already experienced their first Icelandic winter storm. Borea Adventures got them some activities, for example they went to Simbahöllin in Þingeyri and horseriding in Dyrafjordur. Now they have placed themselves in Heydalur, just like the hunters do, waiting for the foxes to show up. We hope they will see Frosti and Flame, but every fox would do since photographers are arriving soon, aiming for good winter photos of arctic foxes.

We wish Conor and Lexie all the best and hope everything works out as planned.

More about volunteering plans of 2011 on a special page here

 

Ester, from The Arctic Fox Centre and Sigursteinn Másson, from IFAW visited all elementary schools in northern Westfjords during the last days. Later on we hope to get a chance to visit schools in the southern part of Westfjords and Strandir.

Sigursteinn introduced animal welfare and projects where animal and human welfare were combined while solving problems caused with conflicts between humans and wildlife.  Ester went into ecology and ecosystems and how these factors are important for animal welfare and the abilities we have to utilize the nature in a sustainable way. The Wild North project was introduced, the aims and ideas of the project as well as the Arctic Fox Centre´s rule, in collaboration with other partners, in Westfjords and wider.
It is our hope that the younger generations will have the knowledge and awareness needed to be able to solve many of the problems that we, the older ones, have left for them to deal with. They will need all the effort they can get and sustainability is a key word for the coming generations if the nature is supposed to be the major resorce in the future as it has been in the past.

Generous friends came for a visit to the latest board meeting of The Arctic Fox Centre. Those were Sigurdur Jonsson and Runar Oli Karlsson, from Borea Adventures. They formally handed out their 1% donation to the centre, as members of 1% For The Planet. Borea Adventures and The Arctic Fox Centre are the first Icelandic members of 1%.  The board was of course very happy to receive this support but as donors, Borea can support any non-profit organisation out of approximately three thousand organisation on the 1% list. The Arctic Fox Centre is proud to have such encouraging support from Borea and hopes to to meet the supporters' expectations. 

There are many ongoing projects at The Arctic Fox Centre despite our winter closing, this is the time to prepare for the coming summer and the many projects we want to accomplish this year.

We have had several guests this year and our visitors have had to show patience towards construction works since the house is being restored a bit. Last weekend we had a bus load of happy people from Oddfellow, on an adventure tour and that was fun. Never have so many people gathered in our little café but everyone's faces were smiling and the guests were thrilled about the house and the exhibition. Inga Vala and Lilja served light refreshments while "Little Skundi" played live music. Thorsteinn from muurikka.is brought smoked mussels from the fjord - delicious light food which we´d love to have on our menu next summer (great with beer or white wine)..

We are preparing the volunteer´s schedule for next summer and this will be listed up on a special site on our web page soon. There interested people can choose project, time and send an e-mail to see if we can agree. This is new for us because we have never had so many volunteer offering (thanks to Lonely Planet Tour Guide). We could also use people with skills in techniques, statistics, graphical design, childreens guidance/playful education, puppies, theatre, music, garden design.... etc  

The first volunteers of this year will work on the project: "Where is Frosti?" and as it sounds, they will try to find Frosti, our little fox from last summer, locate him and see if he is ok and willing to participate in the "winter photographing period" ...

Next weekend The Arctic Fox Centre will take part in the conference "Without Destination" and have a lecture with other members in The Wild North group under the theme: Practicing Nature Based tourism. The conference is in English, free of charge and you can find it here: http://www.artmuseum.is/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-2182/3368_read-1723/date-1625/ We still have the „open by agreement" scedule and regular openings will begin in June. During the Easter we will probably have some event going on, which we will let you know on the web page in time. 

The year 2010 has been adventurous for us at The Arctic Fox Centre. The excitement reached it´s highest on June 12^th when we finally opened the house but this had been the aim since we founded the Centre in September 2007.

We have put together a little report and hope you enjoy it as well as we do. You can find the report in pdf or in pps which runs automatically while opened.

We thank you for all the visits, helping around, volunteering, cooperating, and spreading the knowledge. It is precious to us to know that we have so many friends and supporters to help building up our little arctic fox project in this old and historical house, Eyrardalur in Sudavik.

Thank you and welcome again

The Arctic Fox Centre wishes you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year

Many thanks for all the visits and good words on our first opening year

Special thanks to collaborators and sponsors

Happy Holydays!

 

The Arctic Fox Centre

Sudavik - Iceland

The Forth and last advent Sunday at The Arctic Fox Centre, open from 2 - 6 on December 19^th

We light the forth advent candle and have a hot chocolate at the Café, with apple cake, chocolate cake, brownies, muffins or whatever you like.

Cosy market at the loft, nice handcrafts, local dry fish, Christmas things on good price from the rescue team, all the Foxy souvenirs on a special price.
 

Welcome to the Arctic Fox Centre during the Advent