I set sail on the same route 200 years after his voyage with a group of artists in a square-rigged barquentine not very different from his ship, the Trent. But where Franklin found ice I found nothing but open water, blue and flat as far as the eye could see. The ice cover around Svalbard had dropped 40 percent below a four-decade summer average, and our captain, a Dutchman, reported that the frozen edge of the Earth's ice cap was 100 miles farther north than we had time to sail."Where Franklin found ice I found nothing but open water"
A mother polar bear and two cubs on an expanse of sea ice in Svalbard. Photo courtesy of Rachel Honnery
Vision was sharp and clear in the dry, dustless air. Photo by Craig S. Smith
Russia is the most Arctic of countries, controlling 40 percent of the land area above the Arctic Circle and home to three-quarters of the polar region's population. It has recently been building up Arctic military bases that had been closed or neglected since the end of the Soviet era."No one thinks about politics here"
Our boat anchored off Rossøya. Sir John Franklin encountered impenetrable sea ice at this point 200 years ago. Photo by Craig S. Smith
Melting Arctic ice is opening up an increasingly viable freight passage. Photo by Craig S. Smith
As the world's largest source of outbound tourism, China is likely to dominate Arctic tourism, too. Already Arctic countries are wary of the numbers that could involve. Local opposition stopped Chinese entrepreneur Huang Nubo's plans to build a luxury resort in a remote part of Iceland several years ago as did local opposition to his plans to buy land on Svalbard. In 2014, he finally succeeded in buying land in northern Norway but has yet to develop it."The real conflict looming in the Arctic is what it has always been: nature against man"
To see a walrus in the wild is to feel at some primal level that Earth is bigger and more powerful than man or anything he has wrought upon it. Photo courtesy of Rachel Honnery