 He went for the first time to the Arctic in the summer of 1922 as a coal mining technician in Svalbard.On the following winter he took a radio telegraphy course, and in the spring of 1923 he was hired as a meteorology assistant and radio telegraphist at the Kvadehuken station in Brøggerhalvøya by the director of the Geophysical Institute, along with his brother Finn Devold.Hallvard Devold remained on Kvadehuken until October 1924, when the station was wrapped up for financial reasons.