The global Arctic: A year in pictures

At the end of 2014, I published a post called “The Arctic: A Year in Pictures.” To continue that tradition with a twist is 2015’s version: The Global Arctic: A Year in Pictures. This also builds on last week’s post, “A Year in the Global Arctic.” There, I wrote that in this globalized era, you have to go outside the region to really begin to understand it.

Three times this year, I traveled to areas that would generally be described as the Arctic – first in Bodø, Norway in March, second in Solovki and Arkhangelsk, Russia in August, and third in Fairbanks, Alaska in September – but only in Bodø was I actually above the Arctic Circle, and only barely so. If we define the Arctic according to the Arctic Circle, north of which the sun doesn’t set on the summer solstice, I was only there for a couple of days this year.

That detail of geography aside, I still witnessed the ways in which the Arctic is tied into the rest of the world by traveling to places like Spain (where Icelandic bacalao was on sale at the market), Singapore (where I visited Keppel Offshore and Marine, which produces ships and jack-up rigs for the Arctic), and Seattle (where the Arctic Club building proudly stands in all its walrus-ensconced glory). So here is a set of photos about the Arctic, but mostly taken south of the Arctic Circle.