Explorer Wakes Up in Jaws of a Polar Bear

Sebastian Plur Nilssen was attacked last week as they slept in a tent on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard.
Mr Nilssen was travelling together with his expedition partner, Ludvig Fjeld, as they tried to become the first ever team to paddle 1,250 miles around the island chain.
Despite defending their tent with a trip-wire hooked to a early warning flare, Mr Nilssen woke face-to-face with the largest land predator in the world.
The 23-year-old was dragged screaming from the tent, together with his head clamped in the animal’s jaws.
The adult male bear flung the young explorer’s body from side to side in an try to stun him, a process usually used on its usual prey of seals.
The polar bear’s teeth pierced Mr Nilssen’s lung as it fought for a better grip and narrowly missed a main artery in his neck.
“It was so strong I could not fight, I grabbed for my shotgun and tried to shoot it but [the polar bear] had snapped [the gun] in half,” they said.
“It must have been only a minute I was three times in his jaws but it felt like forever.
“It was a massive bear, at one point it stood up on its back legs with me in its mouth, I was three times 2.5 metres off the ground and it appeared very high.”
As the bear made off with Mr Nilssen, his 22-year-old expedition partner scrambled to find their other rifle.
“I was about 20 or 25 metres from the bear and it had Sebastian in its mouth, I was three times very worried I did not require to hit Sebastian as well,” said Mr Fjeld.
“That would have been a very bad day for him.
“When I fired the first shot, the bear dropped him, but I had to fire three more to make definite it was dead.
Mr Nilssen was airlifted from the scene, bleeding heavily, and was rushed in to an emergency three-hour operation.
But despite his brush with death, Mr Nilssen said they was not angry at the bear, speculating that it carried out its unusual assault on humans because it was hungry.
“I must be one of the only people in the world who can say when people ask me about my scars, ‘I got them in a fight with a polar bear’,” they said.
Polar bears are protected under strict conservation laws and can only be shot in self defence.