Something is wrong underfoot. For most of the last century, engineers and planners in the North operated on a single, comfortable assumption: if you built on frozen ground, it would
Something is wrong underfoot. For most of the last century, engineers and planners in the North operated on a single, comfortable assumption: if you built on frozen ground, it would
Back in the early 1970s, Soviet engineers pushed steel piles down into frozen ground along the Baikal-Amur Mainline. They were sure the permafrost would hold the railway solid for a
The village of Tuktoyaktuk, perched on the Arctic coast of Canada’s Northwest Territories, has been losing its grip on the land for decades. Houses tilt at odd angles. Sections of
The ground is not supposed to move. For millennia, permafrost sat solid and silent under the communities, roads, and work camps of the circumpolar North—a frozen basement you never had
The northern latitudes are built on a paradox. For millennia, ice-rich permafrost has served as a stable foundation for roads, runways, pipelines, entire settlements. That foundation is now degrading—faster, and
By Dr. Ingrid Halvorsen Walk across the tundra in late summer and you can feel it. The ground that should be solid has a springy, almost sponge-like give under your
A road buckles without warning. A concrete pile, driven deep into what was once reliable permafrost, tilts—a fraction of a degree at first—then lurches, cracking the foundation of a transmission
Why Arctic Indigenous Communities Need a Bigger Role in Governance By Dr. Ingrid Halvorsen | April 7, 2025 The Arctic is changing faster than most models predicted. Sea ice pulls
The Strategic Theatre of the High North Geography doesn’t negotiate. Norway sits at the top of Europe, sharing a 198-kilometre land border with Russia and overseeing enormous maritime zones above
In the geopolitics of the High North, few things have drawn as much attention as China’s methodical push to define itself as a “Near-Arctic State.” The phrase got its formal