Hello! Danielle here, I'm a PhD student working primarily in the Arctic marine environment. This is a fun question -- mainly I have spent time on ice breakers during field campaigns as well as a bit of time up in Svalbard. The research ships can have a very intense environment, after a couple of days it really starts to feel like you have spent weeks together with the same group of people. This is really a perfect setting for people to meet new ship-romances (whether they admit it or not that is a second thing) -- but I agree with one of the other comments from Stefan earlier, a lot of these field campaigns seem to be their own social experiments in a way! In my experience there is also a high likely hood that any flirty behaviour is noticed by the rest of the crew pretty fast, for me it always ends up feeling a little bit like you are at an adult summer camp forming some pretty deep connections while also "giggling" a bit about different developing relationships. For the second part of your question about what do to for fun -- Svalbard is a really incredible place to explore! Personally, I am pretty excited to be outdoors at home but in Svalbard it is on another level, and with the added element of having to keep polar bear safety in mind for even small hikes! :) Thanks for the question!

I currently live in Tromsø, a great city surrounded by mountains. You can practice lots of outdoor activities here like kayaking, skiing, climbing, diving, biking and much more!!! If you are a city person maybe this is not your place even though there are some students and tourism so even if there is a small city there are some things to do in the city and some ambiance in the bar! My favorite activity in winter is skiing the landscape is amazing and the mountains are so close that you can go after work!! But unfortunately this year I am not able to ski due to an injury and I have to confess that this winter is harder mentally because the winter is very long up here! Relating to dating a fun fact is that many couples I know here fell in love during a stay in Svalbard :P

In the town of Longyearbyen on Svalbard there are a number of bars and even a night club (Huset!) which we visited when being there for research for a couple of weeks. I remember we tried using Tinder while there and the only people nearby were those of us sitting together or in Tromsø (>900km away!) so not so successful :)

On field stations there is usually quite a good social scene with the other people there as the others have said. Since you are so remote you can form some very good friendships with people quite quickly, and getting to be in such a special place as the polar regions with someone is a great bonding experience.

On research ships, particularly in the Arctic, since the internet doesn't always work, you tend to play a lot of board games, or watch movies (many ships have a very big DVD collection) when taking a break from the research.