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Arctic travel guide

The Arctic is often reduced down to polar bears, icebergs, and Inuit - but this vast area occupies around a sixth of the world's surface area, and eight countries. Our Arctic cruises travel guide reveals why one of the best ways to explore this region is on a small ship expedition cruise, and compares the different arctic areas - with volcanoes, Northern Lights, Inuit art, dog sledding, old whaling camps, walrus, and - of course - polar bears.

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Arctic travel guide

Evocative names – Svalbard, Longyearbyen, Disko Bay, the Northwest Passage – fall softly across the Arctic map, conjuring images of midnight sunshine, frolicking whales, rainbow-painted wooden houses and enormous herds of caribou and musk oxen spilling across the tundra. Strange creatures inhabit the roof of the world – tusked narwhal and walrus, blubbery seals, and the lonesome polar bear, which can fast for eight months of the year, hunkered down with tiny cubs. The Inuit that live alongside them straddle the widening chasm between tradition and modernity – hunting, fishing, taking tourists for rides on dog sleds.

The polar bear is an awesome animal to have as your figurehead - but these northern lands hide so much more behind their icy exterior.

A cruise in this wild region is eye opening in more ways than one. As well as discovering what – and who – lives on the edge of the ice, you’ll see how far the ice has shrunk, threatening the futures of both the animals and the people that depend on it. Read more in our Arctic cruises travel guide.

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Is/isn't...

The Arctic is...

enormous, occupying around a sixth of the world's surface.

The Arctic isn't...

an uninhabitable wilderness. Four million people live above the Arctic circle.

What we rate & what we don't

Underrated

Other wildlife

The bear may be the polar poster child, but in your hunt for the king of the Arctic, don’t overlook the other wildlife that shares his frozen kingdom. The impossibly huge walrus, with metre-long tusks, is an astonishing sight. Arctic foxes are adorable balls of fluff, and narwhals are an eerie sight in the icy seas.

Eastern Russia

Navigating these waters is possible for just a few months each year. The wilderness islands include the Wrangel Nature Reserve, whose mammoth steppe vegetation is filled with strange endemic flora. Visit the remains of a 3,400 year old Eskimo camp, and look for grey whales, polar bears, musk oxen and Pacific walrus. Brown bears and smoking volcanoes can be seen along the Kamchatka Peninsula.

Group rapport

People spend so much time thinking about what’s surrounding the boat that they rarely consider what is on it. The rapport with other passengers – particularly on smaller ships, is often a trip highlight. You can share stories and adventures, have photography competitions and meet likeminded expeditioners from around the world. The vessel is all part of the voyage.

Food onboard

You might think that being on a boat for a fortnight would leave you living off uninspiring rations – or facing the quantity over quality cruise ship approach. But this is a high-end vacation – with high-end cuisine to match. You need good food in a cold climate, and restaurants serve an excellent variety of dishes. More luxurious vessels have three course meals and extensive wine lists.

Rated

Polar bears

Top of the Arctic cruise bucket list, the earth’s largest land predators is certainly deserving of the acclaim. Look out for them on ice floes, peering for seals beneath the breathing holes, or leading their cubs from their winter dens across to the sea ice. Onboard lectures explore the life of the polar bear – you’ll learn about its life cycle and how such a huge creature can survive in such an inhospitable landscape.

Inuit art

Canada's Baffin Island is the place to go for Inuit art. Always a creative culture, the Inuit traditionally used bone, ivory and antlers for their carvings. Soapstone and serpentine are now common, although hand carving is still the preferred method. Prints, baskets textiles, painting and wall hangings are superb, and buying items ensures the traditions are taught to future generations – as well as providing much-needed income.

Svalbard

Far beyond the Arctic Circle, this archipelago is the stuff of icy legend. Walrus and auks, reindeer and bearded seals, foxes and some 2,000 polar bears inhabit the snowy shores and mountains – meaning there’s more bears than people! Spitsbergen, the largest island, has glaciers and fjords to explore. Trek across flowering, windswept tundra, visit the polar research station and try your hand at dog sledding.

Northeast Greenland

As you approach from the sea you’ll witness 2,000m-high mountains rising in the distance. There are dramatic fjords, including Scoresbysund, the largest in the world. You’ll navigate around sea-sculpted icebergs, while venturing on to the tundra reveals musk oxen, Arctic hares and maybe the odd polar bear. More fascinating still is meeting the Inuit communities that thrive in this frozen wilderness, along with their sled dogs.

Overrated

Old whaling camps

While bases in the Antarctic are well established relics of an old way of life, those in the Arctic are remnants of ephemeral, temporary campsites, a hut and a few whale bones in the bleak middle of nowhere. It is a part if the region’s history, but in our opinion there are better ways to spend your time up here.

Northwest Passage

The passage’s history is fascinating and brutal; this route around the top of the world was long sought. Today, however, there are much better ways to see the Arctic – with more wildlife, more culture and much better accessibility. Additionally, slapping the name “Northwest Passage” instantly equates to a higher price tag – it’s the cheeky designer label of the Arctic cruise world.

Whale meat

Defying international regulation, Norway still allows whale hunting – as well as eating whale meat. While we accept that native communities should be permitted to maintain traditional hunting practices, commercial whaling is a totally different prospect, posing a threat to the survival of the species. Don’t support it.

Penguins

You won’t find them waddling about in the Arctic, penguins can only be found in the southern hemisphere.

Travel Team

If you'd like to chat about Arctic cruising or need help finding a vacation to suit you we're very happy to help.

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WHAT DOES AN ARCTIC CRUISE ENTAIL?

Ditch any ideas you have about 'cruising' – an expedition cruise in the Arctic is no floating Las Vegas. Black tie is replaced with all-weather gear, the onboard entertainment involves ecology lectures and photography lessons, and strict itineraries can go out the porthole. You’ll be sailing to the rhythm of the sea and storms, the melting of the pack ice and the bobbing of the enormous icebergs.

Generally, you’ll start your trip by flying up to your departure point – typically Svalbard, Iceland, Greenland, Canada or eastern Russia. This means that as soon as you set foot on your boat, your Arctic adventure has begun: you’ll be sailing through chilly seas, looking out for whales and seabirds, and generally cruising along coastlines. Sailing distances are relatively short up here and land excursions are offered each day – reached using a little zodiac or RIB.

Once on land, you may be visiting Inuit communities on the Greenland or Canada's Baffin Island; watching Arctic foxes hunting guillemots on Spitsbergen, admiring the strange tundra flora of Eastern Siberia or photographing long-abandoned whaling camps.

If you are shipbound there’s plenty to keep you entertained on board – and none of it involves crooners or chorus lines. Aboard each vessel are scientists and filmmakers, researchers and geologists – who offer masterclasses in Arctic photography, reveal fascinating secrets about polar wildlife and tell the tales of those who have explored this ice sheet. Some ships have reading rooms and libraries, areas where you can upload photos to your laptop – and daily photography competitions, overseen by some of the best wildlife photographers in the industry. And of course, there are always staff on deck keeping vigil for the Arctic’s number one attraction: the polar bear. Don’t be surprised if you get summoned from your bed at 2am (this is the land of the midnight sun!) to come and watch foxes, bears or seals out on the floating ice.

If all that sounds like hard work, remember that your ship will have a bar and maybe a sauna or even a gym, so you can pick your preferred style of warming up after a chilly Arctic adventure.

Is this trip for me?

A reasonable level of fitness is recommended for Arctic expeditions. Although you certainly won’t be roughing it onboard, getting in and out of the Zodiacs down a steep gangway is challenging even with assistance, especially during wet landings, during which you may be ankle deep in water (wellies essential!). You’ll also be able to join in other optional activities such as kayaking, snowshoeing and trekking through snow and tundra, making the most of this extraordinary landscape.

You will need to be well prepared with warm, windproof and waterproof clothing. All tour companies will provide detailed trip notes before departure, so be sure to read them! Some bulkier kit – such as rubber boots – may be supplied on board, but do check before departure.

Choosing your cruise

Deciding you want to go to the Arctic is just the very first step of planning your trip. You’ll also need to decide when and where to go, and on which ship. Our best time to go page will give you a heads up on what can be seen and when, from freshly sculpted icebergs to whale migrations. The best person to chat to is be your cruise operator, who can walk you through the different vessels and routes.

Additionally, it’s worth asking which experts will be giving the onboard lectures, to find a cruise that suits your personal interests, whether that's photography, geology or polar bears.

A brief history of The Arctic

Unlike bulky Antarctica, the Arctic is a rather intangible place. The tips of countries – including Canada, Norway, Russia, and Iceland – creep above the Arctic circle, but beyond that there is no land. The Arctic itself is an illusion, a creaking of sea ice stretching south from the pole to engulf islands and wild coastlines, before creeping back north each summer, in a kind of frigid migration. Yet these lands bordering the ice have been inhabited for some 10,000 years, as early Inuits travelled north to hunt whales and bears and gather the sparse vegetation. Read more

Arctic exploration is no modern concept. The first expeditions date back to ancient Greece, and the Vikings were, unsurprisingly, prolific explorers, even reaching the shores of North America via icy Arctic waters. By the 16th century, at the height of Europe’s Age of Discovery, the faraway frozen land began to appeal to those seeking trade routes, gold and other valuable resources – which soon turned out to be the blubber and bones of whales and seals, along with valuable furs. Ships penetrated further into the Northwest and Northeast Passages, though many expeditions were defeated by crushing ice, stormy seas and scurvy. The Northwest Passage was finally sailed in its entirely by Roald Amundsen in 1906. Just three years later, Robert Peary claimed to have reached the North Pole – although his conquest is greatly disputed. Although the North Pole is much more accessible than the South Pole, no one is actually confirmed to have set foot on it until 1948, when the Soviets landed a plane nearby and walked to the pole. Previously, airships had flown above it; it seems that the North Pole's accessibility made it less of a challenge and far less exciting than its southern counterpart.

Around the rim of the Arctic in the 1800s, colonisation began to take different form in northern Russia, Canada and Alaska, as native populations were 'civilised' by being forced into Western education systems and religious practices. Many were also moved off their ancestral lands, destroying communities, and with them their ancient ways of life. Industry spread further north and many native communities became outnumbered, as towns and cities sprung up around the region’s rim. Soviet gulags, nuclear submarines and coal mines soiled the face of the Russian Arctic. By the 1960s, the focus turned to oil, as well as natural gas and metal deposits. Though many of these resources have so far remained untouched due to their inaccessibility, environmentalists are aware that it is only a matter of time before yet more drilling begins, especially as climate change is shrinking the ice cap to reveal previously unseen land. The Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate of the rest of the world and the ice has been vanishing by 12 percent each decade for the past 40 years. While the Arctic landscape has historically changed at a glacial pace, it is suddenly melting into a very uncertain future.