Koldewey Station, Ny-Ålesund, Norway

This cover came back to me today from the AWI's Koldewey Station in Ny-Ålesund. Koldeway was originally a German research station but the AWI merged its Arctic research operations in Svalbard with the French IPEV and now conduct their research in the Archipelago jointly.

I sent this cover to the AWI headquarters in Bermerhaven, kindly requesting that it go up to Koldewey station and be mailed back to me. And at the time I was under the impression that all of the station's mail was somehow returned to Bremerhaven where it would enter the mail stream so I stuck some German postage on it. But in hindsight, why would they do that?!? It's in Ny-Ålesund; home of the world's most northern post office. I should have just mailed it directly to the station with the correct Norwegian postage on it. Fortunately someone up there (thank you very much whoever it was) was kind enough to stick the correct postage on it and mail it back to me through Ny-Ålesund.

Two reasons I'm glad this came back through Norway Post: 1) It has a different version of polar bear franking labels on it (these were either older labels, or labels used exclusively in Svalbard... can't recall) and 2) it has the new Ny-Ålesund postmark on it.