Voyages to polar regions are rightly sold as wondrous wildlife experiences with dramatic icebound scenery seen nowhere else on Earth. However, as itineraries to the polar regions become more ambitious, history and indigenous culture increasingly share the limelight. I returned recently from a two-week voyage to Antarctica’s Weddell Sea following the exploits of a little-known adventurer, Otto Nordenskjöld. I’ve been privileged to join a themed expedition about the inimitable Sir Ernest Shackleton. In the Arctic, a few years back, the grim fate of Sir John Franklin’s 1845-8 expedition stole centre stage during a Northwest Passage transit. 

Experiencing the human dimension inspires a sense of awe at how explorers and cultures can survive in hostile surroundings and can pique curiosity at morbid outcomes. What drove the Franklin expedition’s men to cannibalism? “What makes the history of the polar regions thrilling is that early explorers, especially in Antarctica, all came near to death but rarely ever died. They had clear goals, worked well in teams, and leaders led from the front,’ said Brad Borkan, author of When Your Life Depends on It: Extreme Decision-making Lessons from the Antarctic. “We can look at decisions made by Scott, Shackleton, and Amundsen, who risked their lives for science, discovery, and exploration, and wonder what we would have done in similar circumstances. Would we have been so brave?”.

The historical dimension resonates with passengers. “While the lure of polar wildlife drew me to Antarctica, I’ve become just as enthralled with polar history and the Arctic’s Inuit culture. I’m in awe of the drive of scientists and explorers to understand the secrets of this incredible region,” Misty Macduffee, a passenger from Vancouver, told me on a recent expedition. Most renowned polar explorers have been male, but times are changing as women write powerful narratives in polar exploration. As far back as 1773, Louise Séguin led the way, exploring Antarctica alongside Yves Joseph de Kerguelen.

Despite wild speculations about lost tribes during the geographical dark ages when Antarctica was known as Terra Australis Incognita, no settlement has ever existed there. It is expeditioners who blazed a path to its understanding. James Clark Ross achieved epic feats between 1839 and 43 discovering the Ross Sea and attempting to reach the magnetic south pole. Epitomising the fine line between disaster and survival, Adrien de Gerlache’s Belgica Expedition 1897-99 became the first to overwinter, albeit unplanned, trapped in pack ice. Furthering the cause of science, Otto Nordenskjöld carried out extensive research in the Weddell Sea, before spending two winters marooned after his vessel was crushed by pack ice between 1902-3. p

Fast forward to the zenith of the so-named ‘Heroic Age’ of exploration. The greatest Antarctic survival story ever told is Shackleton’s 1914-16 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition when his ship, Endurance, sank in the Weddell Sea, and he led his men through a struggle against death to eventual safety. His great rival was Robert Falcon Scott. He and 4 other teammates ultimately perished in 1912 during the Terra Nova expedition, which set off from Eastern Antarctica. After reaching the North Pole, he would die disappointed to find he was pipped by 34 days to being the first by Roald Amundsen. Meanwhile, Geologist Douglas Mawson became Australia's hero after his 1911 science expedition from Cape Denison went disastrously wrong. By sheer willpower and eating his huskies, he returned home. 

Traces of many of these expeditions are threadbare. The most tangible presence is that of Shackleton’s epic. Although unable to see his Endurance ship, discovered recently in the Weddell Sea, voyages to the Antarctic Peninsula often make it to the remarkable Point Wild at Elephant Island. Here, the bulk of his party endured 128 days in winter under two upturned lifeboats. It’s a ferocious and hostile island, where I shivered thinking of their privations. The beach bears a plinth of Luis Pardo, captain of the ship, Yelcho, who rescued them. Longer voyages combining South Georgia include visiting Shackleton’s grave in Grytviken, where he died in 1922. If you’re in London, Dulwich College hosts the original James Caird lifeboat from his sunken ship. 

Exciting reminders of Otto Nordenskjöld's science mission are scattered around the Weddell Sea. On Snow Hill Island is a creosote-black prefabricated hut where his team overwintered for two seasons once they became marooned. Likewise, at Hope Bay and on Paulet Island, you can visit stone huts built and used by Nordenskjöld’s scattered party when their vessel sank. Amundsen left little behind during his rapid sprint to conquer the South Pole, but his vessel from this 1911 triumph, Fram, is in an eponymous Museum in Oslo.  

De Gerlache’s Belgica and Ross’ Erebus and Terror ships subsequently sank. Yet the spirit of these expeditions’ presence remains alive in place names, such as the scenically marvellous Gerlache Strait and the Ross Ice shelf. The latter even gave his name to the Ross Seal. More tangible, East Antarctica hosts a clutch of historical monuments, especially from Scott’s two North Pole attempts. Scott’s 1901-4 base is Hut Point on Ross Island, and another is at Cape Evans, the hut for his fateful Terra Nova North Pole expedition from 1911. Both are time capsules of preparations filled with old food supplies and spare polar equipment. Not a million miles away, Shackleton’s Cape Royds hut was built for his 1907-9 Nimrod Expedition, while Mawson’s Huts at Cape Denison, four of them, include his overwintering quarters and magnetograph hut. 

It was an overcast morning when our zodiac dinghy crunched into Beechy Island’s gravels in Canada’s Arctic Nunavut. Ahead were three simple wooden graves from Sir John Franklin’s infamous expedition to seek the Northwest Passage. All 128 men on this fabled voyage died. As I stood before the headstone, I sensed the ghosts of their tortured souls. Beechey Island is a powerful evocation of the trials and travails faced by all polar explorers. 

High Arctic travel reveals a history of gritty exploration: from seeking the Northwest and Russian Northeast Passages to exploring Greenland’s coast and reaching the North Pole. Expeditions go way back to the 16th century. At various stages, explorers encountered the Arctic’s indigenous peoples, which number over 40 different groups. Travellers typically encounter Inuits, but the region is represented by the Sámi reindeer herders of Arctic Scandinavia and Russia’s Nenets and Chukchi. Expeditions that embraced the survival skills of these indigenous cultures often flourished, and those who didn’t face hardships. 

For a start, the Inuit would’ve told Jens Munk in 1620, during his Churchill Bay expedition, not to eat undercooked polar bear meat, which left 62 of his sixty-five crew dead from trichinosis. Franklin was similarly dismissive of Inuit ways, unlike Roald Amundsen. He claimed the first traverse of the Northwest Passage, linking the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean through Arctic Canada between 1903-6 on his vessel, Gjøa. Two of those years were spent learning from Inuit about Arctic survival at Gjoa Haven. 

Amundsen’s Norwegian mentor was Fridtjof Nansen, who embraced skis and dogsleds. The race to the North Pole was well underway when, in 1893, Nansen employed the extraordinary tactic of deliberately lodging his ship, Fram, in pack ice to use the currents to drift north. The expedition laboured for 3years without achieving its ultimate goal but reached a record 86º13.6’N.  The eventual prize of the North Pole featured a disputed claim between two Americans: Robert Peary and physician Frederick Cook. The latter was a fraudster who ended up in prison, and his claim of reaching the pole in 1908 was dismissed. Peary claimed it on April 6th, 1909, in the company of four Inuit men, although later reinterpretation suggests he may’ve fallen short. Inuit explorers have also played a significant part in Arctic exploration, especially in Greenland. The remarkable Greenlander Knud Rasmussen covered 29,000 kilometers from 1921 by dog sled, taking three years on his Fifth Thule Expedition to cross the Northwest Passage and beyond to far eastern Russia.

Expedition vessels offer month-long full traverses of the Northwest Passage by ship or shorter partial transits. With a historian onboard, you’ll feel the presence of these expeditions and visit tangible heritage remains, especially from the Franklin expedition. Beechey Island, where the graves of Hartnell, Braine, and Torrington are buried, is easily reached. These seamen were early casualties through sickness around 1845. A fourth grave belongs to Thomas Morgan, who died in 1854 while searching for information about what happened to Franklin. There’s also a wooden ruin on Beechey Island called ‘Northumberland House’ built by Franklin’s crew as a supply depot next to a crucifix of rusted tin cans used during the expedition. The cans were soldered with a high lead content, which may have contributed to the expedition’s poor health. Artifacts collected in the search for Franklin can be seen at the Royal Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

Museum-wise, a lovely collection in Ilulissat in West Greenland is partly dedicated to Knud Rasmussen’s remarkable exploits, located in the house of his birth. And aficionados of Nansen and Amundsen are afforded the treat of seeing the original Fram and Gjøa in the Fram Museum in Oslo. There’s also a statue dedicated to him in Tromsø, Norway. The Inuit settlement of Gjøa Haven was renamed after Amundsen. There, I once sat down with elders relating stories from their childhood about Franklin, passed down by oral history. This settlement’s location on King William Island is where Franklin’s expedition entered its death rattle. Parks Canada found his two sunken ships, Terror and Erebus, between two searches in 2014 and 2016. Scattered across Arctic Canada and Greenland are Paleo-Eskimo remains, typically hut circles, of Pre-Inuit cultures stretching way back to 2500 BCE.

Learning about Arctic peoples and admiring their adaption to high-latitude living adds a wondrous insight into expedition voyages. “Interacting first-hand with Inuit communities gives our guests a unique opportunity to understand their traditions, history, and ancestral way of life,” explained MS Vega’s UK general manager, who had recently visited the Northwest Passage and Greenland. Benefits are often two-way; carefully curated encounters bring revenue into these often marginalised communities. 

The Inuit are not one homogenous grouping. The Iglulingmiut are located around Baffin Island, while Greenland’s Inuit, who comprise 90% of the island’s population, are divided among the Kalaallit, Tunumuit, and Inughuit. These groups share many traits, from diet and history to linguistic similarities. They no longer live in igloos, even if I once met an old man in Gjøa Haven who grew up in one until age seven. Most live in modern prefabricated homes in settlements with a community shop and hunt nowadays with rifles rather than harpoons. The use of dogs for sledding has largely been replaced by snowmobiles, yet you’ll see huskies tied up in summer, off-duty, and erupting into a cacophony of howls. Life has changed dramatically for Arctic communities, with one foot in a rapidly evolving world and the other in the past. I’ve heard stories of climate change affecting their traditional hunting activities with less stable ice conditions. Hunting remains important to their psyche, as does a heavily-protein meat diet of seal and whale, which they call ‘country foods.’

In the western sector of the Northwest Passage, popular with expedition cruises, is Cambridge Bay, a starting hub for partial transits eastwards. This Victoria Island settlement is a fine hub for birdwatching, fishing for arctic char, and hiking in Ovayuk National Park. My favourite community is Pond Inlet on Baffin Island, where a flourishing theatre group puts on authentic cultural shows, passing down history and oral tradition to their young. Across the Davis Strait to Greenland, Ilulissat is an extraordinary town in Disko Bay, where an Ice Fjord disgorges huge icebergs. It’s the most tourist-orientated Inuit centre, with numerous activities and wondrous aurora borealis displays. Among several excellent museums is the incredible Icefjord Centre: a modern invocation of how nature has shaped the communities stretching back 4500 years. Tasiilaq is a base for late winter dogsled trips on East Greenland's coast. Yet, for sheer breath-taking serenity at Scoresby Sound, it’s hard to beat the remote settlement of 500 hardy souls at Ittoqqortoormiit, who spend much of the year frozen in from the outside world by ice. The further north you travel up this coast, the more traditional the communities are, existing closer to the way of their ancestors.