ARCTIC: An Icelandic Village for Sale & more – 4th Nov 2025

Haluu from BA! This is the Rorshok Arctic Update from the 4th of November twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what’s going down North of the Arctic Circle!

Let’s kick things off this week with some rare good news for Arctic climate science. Norwegian State broadcaster, NRK, reported on Friday the 31st of October that scientists from the Norwegian Polar Institute have been studying Kongsfjord, a fjord in Svalbard, to see how the local environment is reacting to a warming climate.

They discovered that while Kongfjord is warming and changing, the new environment is acting as an effective carbon sink, absorbing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. This fjord was chosen as a study site because it is seen as a good example of an arctic fjord, so research there can be applied to other fjords across the Arctic. So this study gives hope that the Arctic can function as a carbon sink and slow the growth of climate change in the north.

Keeping Norway’s climate healthy will be difficult after a crucial court decision, though. On Tuesday the 28th, The European Court of Human Rights announced it has ruled in favor of Norway's government in a climate lawsuit brought by young activists who said the country's policy of Arctic oil exploration had put their future at risk.

The activists, along with Greenpeace, believed their human rights had been violated by Norway’s plans to accelerate fossil fuel extraction in the north. The European Court unanimously agreed that no such violation had occurred. Now, after years of legal blockages, Norway can move forward with its ten planned Arctic oil projects.

The US continues its own Arctic oil push too. Last week, we covered how the US government opened up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. Now, on Thursday the 30th, the US Senate voted to cancel environmental protections in the National Petroleum Reserve in northern Alaska. The Biden-era measures had given about 13 million acres, over 50,000 square kilometers, protection from industrial development while allowing Native communities to live and grow.

The Senate statement on the vote said that these protections were a governmental overreach, and detrimental to native wellbeing. But several Alaska groups responded, saying the lands have huge environmental value and the removal of these protections are “an affront to our right to live safely.”

Oil isn’t the only Alaskan industry getting a boost, as natural gas in the state has a new customer. On Friday the 31st, Tokyo Gas, Japan’s largest gas company, signed a letter of intent saying that it would buy up to 1 million tons of liquefied natural gas a year from the proposed trans-Alaska natural gas pipeline, a long-debated project that wants to make shipping gas from Alaska to Asia much quicker.

With this letter, the pipeline has agreed arrangements for 11 million tons of gas annually across Asia. But Glenfarne, the pipeline developers, say they won’t begin construction until they hit agreements totaling 16 million tons annually, to ensure financial backing for what is expected to be a hugely expensive project.

Russia is putting vast sums of money into transforming its own Arctic. On Wednesday the 29th, the Russian government approved a new development plan for up to twenty thirty-five for the northern city of Vorkuta, a settlement considered to be one of Russia’s Arctic backbone communities. The government’s plan will invest $4 billion US dollars into Vorkuta in order to develop the city into an economic force.

Coal mines will be expanded, railways and sea routes will be created, and the city’s infrastructure will undergo sweeping repairs to restore the city to its former strength when it held a population of over 250,000 in the nineteen forties. Decades of decline after the end of the Soviet Union have left the Arctic’s third-largest city with a population under 70,000, but a new beginning is on the horizon.

Russia is learning how expensive it is to create a new Arctic community, but there might be an easier way in Iceland. On Friday the 31st, West Iceland’s news agency, Skessuhorn, revealed that the entire campus of the Bifrost University has been put up for sale. Listed at just over $25 million US dollars, you can buy almost 180,000 square metres, or eighteen hectares, of land with accommodation for about 700 people.

The Bifrost University remains open, but only for online learning now. The campus is unique in Iceland as the only dedicated community built for a university, and for someone, it could be a unique new home.

Moving home is never easy, but the town of Kiruna in Northern Sweden is finding it harder than most. As we’ve covered in previous episodes, 18,000 residents were told to move as the local iron mine expands, and a new area of the city is being built to house them.

But, according to a study published by the University of Gothenburg on Wednesday the 29th, the city planners didn’t take into account Arctic conditions when building the new city. The original city was built on a slope to receive as much direct sunlight as possible. But the new area has been built in a ground depression where cold air collects, and the buildings are blocking sunlight from spreading throughout town.

As a result, the modern Kiruna reports temperatures around ten degrees Celsius, fifty Fahrenheit, colder than the original town.

Climate change might be warming the Arctic, but Kiruna is freezing.

Meanwhile, in Greenland, the beginnings of justice for historic Danish abuses are appearing. The Danish government recently formally apologized for the forced contraception program it applied to Greenlandic women from the nineteen sixties until twenty fourteen, and opened up a compensation program to those affected.

According to the Greenlandic state broadcaster, KNR, from Thursday the 30th, twenty women so far have applied to receive compensation, though currently the program is only available to women who got IUDs inserted after nineteen ninety-two. The women could receive just over $40,000 US dollars each in compensation.

One of the women, Arnaq Knudsen-Frederiksen, told KNR she got an IUD inserted when she was just fifteen and while no amount of money can heal the pain, she is glad there is finally some accountability for her suffering.

In science news, the importance of the polar bear to the Arctic has been made very clear. On Tuesday the 28th, Canadian researchers published their research into the impact of polar bears on the whole Arctic food web.

million kilograms, over: 8000

This research shows that if polar bears continue to decline, they will take one of the region's biggest food sources along with them.

While polar bears are the current dominant Arctic creature, there used to be some very unusual animals roaming the north. In research published on Tuesday the 28th, the Canadian Museum of Nature has revealed its discovery of a hornless rhino that lived in the Canadian Arctic about 23 million years ago. Fossils of the polar rhino, named Epiatheracerium itjilik, were found on Devon Island, in Canada's eastern Arctic. The expedition to uncover these fossils also found a seal that had feet instead of flippers.

The Arctic continues to surprise all those who study it.

Human discovery in the Arctic has a long and often tragic history. On Saturday the 1st of November, BBC writer Beth Timmins published a piece reflecting on the explorers who tried, and failed, to reach the North Pole.

Norwegian adventurer Roald Amundsen finally succeeded in May nineteen twenty-six, but attempts date back to eighteen sixty-one, when a Swedish professor’s expedition ended abruptly after his reindeer escaped. Among the most infamous was Salomon Andrée’s eighteen ninety-seven Arctic balloon expedition, where three men in tuxedos and champagne glasses tried to float from Norway to Canada over the Pole in a single day. Their remains were discovered decades later.

As humanity’s reach across the Arctic expands, remembering these fragile beginnings helps us appreciate how far north we’ve come.

Check out the piece with the link in the show notes.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

We have some new t-shirts coming out soon, just in time for Christmas! Stay tuned!

Ilaannilu