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The Swedish icebreaker Oden.

The Swedish icebreaker Oden.
The Swedish icebreaker Oden.
The Swedish icebreaker Oden.
The Swedish icebreaker Oden.
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Linder, Christopher
The Swedish icebreaker Oden.
Still Image
09/11/2007
graphics/agave2/cl_20070629_agave07_oden_005.jpg
Our home away from home for the next 40 days and nights-well, not nights, because starting in mid-April the sun never sets in this part of the world until the end of August. Oden, 107.7 meters (353 feet) long and 18 years old, spends its winters keeping northern Scandinavian harbors free of ice for commercial shipping. But during summer "vacations," it switches mode and becomes an ice-breaking vessel for polar research. It has reached the North Pole four times and taken part in eight expeditions to the Southern Ocean off Antarctica. Its shape is unusual. It is relatively flat-bottomed, like a skiff, and many people at first cannot tell the difference between its stern and its blunt bow (above), which is designed not to ram sea ice but to "porpoise" on top of it and break it with the ship's weight.
Photo by Chris Linder
© Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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