Day 1: Oslo, Norway
Fly to Oslo. Upon arrival, check into the Hotel Bristol. In the afternoon, explore this charming city. Stroll among the famed Vigeland sculptures—hundreds of life-size human figures set in terraced Frogner Park. Visit the Fram Museum, dedicated to the wooden ship sailed by Norwegian explorers Nansen and Amundsen. The evening is at leisure.
Day 3-5: Exploring Northern Norway
Spend two days exploring Norway’s spectacular northern coast. Carved by glaciers over millions of years, these shores are laced with steep-walled
fjords, mountainous islands, and chiseled peaks. Cruise along vertical rock faces, and through serene fjords. Be on the lookout for seabirds and marine mammals and learn about the region from our expert natural history staff.
Day 6-24: Exploring the Russian High Arctic, Siberian Coast and Russian Far East
In keeping with the nature of an expedition, our day-by-day itinerary will be flexible. We’ll take full advantage of the extensive experience of our captain, crew, and staff as well as of our technological resources and ice-strengthened ship to chart a course around impenetrable ice, through one of the most remote regions on Earth, and toward once-in-a-lifetime sightings of the Arctic’s abundant wildlife.
Franz Josef Land
A little-explored world of pack ice, towering volcanic mountains, icebergs and glaciers, Franz Josef Land is the world’s northernmost archipelago, and part of the largest Arctic marine reserve—a sanctuary for such emblematic species as the Atlantic walrus, bowhead whale, polar bear, narwhal, and rare ivory gull. The scattered islands of Franz Josef Land were not discovered until 1873 by the Tegetthoff Expedition.
Novaya Zemlya
Watch for Arctic wildlife as we navigate past Ice Harbor, where Dutch explorer Willem Barents spent the winter between 1596 and 1597. Cruise the Barents Sea en route to the heavily glaciated coastlines of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, a chain of mountainous islands draped in ice that have yet to be thoroughly explored. Seals, walruses, and polar bears may be found on coastal ice floes year-round, and rich birdlife inhabits the shorelines during the summer months.
Severnaya Zemlya
As we sail under 24 hours of daylight, our naturalists will be on deck, seeking out beluga whales and other marine mammals that inhabit the shallow coastal waters bordering the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. Discovered only in 1930, this chain of isles—separated from the coast of northern Siberia by the Vil’kitskogo Strait—is one of the planet’s most recently charted territories. Pass Cape Chelyuskin, the most northerly point of the Eurasian continent, on our way west.
New Siberian Islands
Often surrounded by heavy pack ice, the 500-foot-high volcanic spires, cliffs and buttresses of these rocky outposts are a magnificent backdrop for abundant wildlife. We keep a lookout for elusive Ross’s gull, named after the polar explorer. Walrus haul out in numbers and seabirds nest on great cliffs on De Long islands, discovered by the Jeannette expedition in 1881 on their search for the North Pole.
East Siberian Sea
Depending on our course and weather, explore granite towers, luxuriant tundra and ancient ceremonial sites along the coast where mammoths once roamed. A hallmark of any Arctic expedition is flexibility and our options are many as we cross the top of the world. The surrounding pack ice is an ideal place to find walruses, polar bears and other wildlife of the circumpolar north.
Wrangel Island
Spend time exploring the World Heritage–listed Wrangel Island Reserve in the Arctic Ocean. With the world’s largest population of Pacific walruses and the highest density of ancestral polar bear dens, Wrangel Island offers incredible opportunities for wildlife viewing. The island escaped glaciation during the last ice age, and now has the highest level of biodiversity in the high Arctic, with an astonishing variety of plant life. It was also the last refuge of woolly mammoths, whose bones and teeth have been discovered amid the island’s riverbeds, providing intriguing clues to their past existence. As we explore by ship, by Zodiac, and on foot, keep an eye out for gray whales, which can be found in these prime feeding grounds.
Chukchi Sea
Go ashore at Kolyuchin Island and Kolyuchin Inlet on the northern Chukotka coast. An enormous tidal estuary, Kolyuchin Inlet offers excellent hiking and birding opportunities. Nearby, Kolyuchin Island is a high, cliff-lined isle where puffins and guillemots nest, and Pacific walruses occasionally sunbathe on the rocks below. Explore this remote and untouched coastline in a Zodiac, and conditions permitting, head ashore to go hiking with our naturalists.
