Round the Polar seas

Following in the Viking's wake

One team, ten years, and a six-metre outboard motor boat. With this, the ‘Polar Passage 2000’ expedition has successfully travelled 24,000 kilometres and circumnavigated the Arctic Ocean.

Arctic communities are struggling to adapt to modern influences; alcoholism is the negative price that some of these people are paying for education, medicine, transport and communications. ‘Polar Passage 2000’, led by the Dane Anders Bilgram, visited all of the communities on the perimeter of the Arctic Ocean. The team recorded the peoples’ problems and hope that the research will lead to solutions and help to preserve and further develop these communities.

Celebrating the northern indigenous peoples was central to the expedition and the organisers chose an open boat in order to best replicate sailing conditions from the Viking period. Salty spray and biting wind in their faces, these modern adventurers tasted the Vikings’ experiences from centuries ago as they too explored the most northerly waters of the world.

The expedition was continually at mercy of the elements. They sailed only in the summer months; ice blocks many ocean passages in the winter. Starting in Denmark in 1999, ‘Polar Passage 2000’ voyaged every following summer, except 2002 and 2005, until finishing at the Tiksy settlement, Russia.

In August 2003, the crew was forced to issue an SOS signal; they were buffeted into trouble at the mouth of the Indigirka River by a violent storm. The ship ‘Captain Bogatyrev’ came to their rescue, taking them to Tiksy Port, Russia. Sailing in the summer months did not always guarantee a navigable route. In August 2007, the explorers arrived in Dickson, Russia, and here their journey ended for the year due to thick ice in the Vilkitsky Strait. Particularly in a small, open boat, successfully circumnavigating the Arctic relies on skill, persistence but also, good fortune.