Franz Josef Land Archipelago Voyage

Franz Josef Land, Russian High Arctic · Russia

Moderate13 daysArctic~£10,500 est.

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Overview

Franz Josef Land is the Arctic's locked room: 192 islands of basalt and ice at 80 degrees north, closed to travellers for most of the Soviet century and still reachable only by expedition ship. Zodiacs put you below Rubini Rock, a fluted basalt organ-pipe cliff seething with tens of thousands of guillemots and kittiwakes; on Champ Island you walk among perfectly spherical stone geodes up to two metres across that look machined rather than natural. The history lands as hard as the geology. At Cape Flora you stand where Nansen, drifting south after his Pole attempt, stumbled into Frederick Jackson in 1896 — one of exploration's great chance meetings. Polar bears patrol the pack ice, and walrus haul-outs number in the hundreds. Be honest about the booking reality: this is Russian High Arctic territory inside the Russian Arctic National Park, and sailings (historically from Longyearbyen or Murmansk, around 13 days) have been intermittent, hinging on permits and geopolitics. Book only through polar specialists and expect around £10,500 for a berth when voyages run. The variable is the pack ice itself — some years whole islands stay out of reach.