Arctic Holidays: Arctic Expedition cruises to the Siptsbergen, Greenland, Franz Joseph Land, Northwest Passage and to the North Pole

Arctic & North Pole Expedition Cruises

The top of the world

Introduction to the Arctic and North Pole Cruises
Cruises to the Arctic and North Pole

Introduction to the Arctic and North Pole Cruises

Everyone's first impression of the Arctic is that it is a cold, lifeless and empty place...an icy desert with the spare, balanced, quiet landscape common to all deserts. However, with some investigation, it reveals itself to be, instead, a place that has a wealth of biological detail. The monotony of its vistas is not only relieved by weather systems that move through, but also by the activities of the animals that have adapted to the harsh environment. The flora of the area can also surprise and delight the eye with unexpected color on an otherwise plain canvas. And occasionally, there are remnants of human presence, both ancient and modern.

Our pages present the detailled itineraries of several famous journey into the Arctic, lasting between 8 and 20 days, leaving from Murmansk (russia), Spitzbergen, Iceland or Canada.

Arctic People
The people native to the coastal regions of Labrador, Greenland, The Northwest Territories, Alaska and northeastern Siberia, have many cultural traits in common that differ from those of adjacent Indian tribes. The word "Eskimo" comes from eskipot, an Algonquian word meaning "an eater of raw flesh." Some Eskimos feel this attribution puts them in a poor light with modern audiences and prefer to use other terms. The most widely used is "Inuit" which really refers specifically to the Eskimos of the eastern Canadian Arctic. In the Bering Sea region, Eskimos prefer to be called "Yup'ik," while the North Slope Alaska Eskimos prefer "Inupiat" and Mackenzie Delta Eskimos prefer "Inuvialuit."

Polar Bear - Arctic Widlife
At first glance, the Arctic landscape appears desolate and lifeless. With vegetation generally limited to a few inches in height, and often sparsely distributed, the term "barren grounds" would seem highly appropriate. Yet there is a surprising richness in this vegetation; trees are there, even though they cling close to the soil rather than reaching upwards, and lichens, mosses, grasses and even flowering plants, though quite tiny, cover the ground where they can find conditions even slightly favorable for them. Arctic plant life has succeeded in overcoming the extremely harsh conditions imposed upon it: the shallow, often sterile soil, the abrasively high winds, the low soil temperatures, the frequent freeze-thaw fluctuations - all these factors have developed plants that cannot fail to capture our admiration and respect for their adaptions to such marginal conditions.
Arctic seas, partially frozen so much of the time, would also seem to be too inhospitable for large concentrations of life. Yet, paradoxically, both Arctic and Antarctic waters teem with marine life on a prodigious scale that vastly outproduces more benign tropical seas. It is a physical law that the lower the temperature of the ocean water, the greater its capacity for dissolved gases like oxygen and carbon dioxide. Nutrients such as silicates, nitrates, and phosphates borne by riverine runoff from the surrounding landmasses combine in the photosynthesis process with oxygen to form diatoms and other single-celled plant life, which is the flora at the base of the marine food chain. These organisms propagate at an incredibly rapid rate in the late summer.
Aboard our human sized and specially prepared expedition vessels, join us for exciting and unique adventures on the planet's last frontier.

Cruises to the Arctic and North Pole

General Information

Our expedition vessels

Cruises

NorthWest Passage Cruises
North Pole Cruises
Spitsbergen Cruises
Greenland Cruises

For more information about our cruises, download our brochures with exact itineraries, additional information, dates and prices in USD or EUR for 2009 in pdf format