In August 2007, Russian submersible Mir-1 placed a titanium Russian flag at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.1
In the summer of 2012, icebreaker Xue Long (Snow Dragon) became the first Chinese ship to sail through the Arctic into the Barents Sea.2
In 2014, Chinese entrepreneur and part-time poet Huang Nubo attempted to purchase land in Northern Norway, having previously tried similar purchases in Iceland and Svalbard.3
In 2016, plans were revealed for creating an undersea tunnel connecting Helsinki and Tallinn. One of the funders of the project was Finnish venture capitalist Peter Vesterbacka, also known as one of the creators of Angry Birds.4
In January 2025, the newly re-elected American president Donald Trump announced that he wanted to buy Greenland, again.5
All of these developments have one thing in common: the fight for the Arctic, with its geopolitical significance, its untapped natural resources, and of course, its melting ice.
Two possible future shipping routes in the Arctic. Drawing: Furian.
Not too long ago, interest in the polar regions was limited to specialists working on the topic. Today, the Arctic is increasingly becoming the center of the world’s attention. While the fight for Greenland and other geopolitical feuds might seem like the reason for this surge, these are only the tip of the iceberg. The real reason for the Arctic becoming a new hotspot is simply climate change. If the Arctic ice wasn’t melting, the region would continue to wait in the wings. But it is, and at a non-glacial pace. It is now possible to navigate the Arctic by sea in the summer months. Marine traffic on the Northern Sea Route is estimated to increase gradually by the year 2035, when most of the Arctic Ocean is estimated to be free of ice between June and October.6 The Northern Sea Route is also China’s preferred route for its Polar Silk Road (PSR).
The Polar Silk Road versus the traditional transit sea route between China and Europe. Source: JKS, FEA.
The PSR is projected to become a new transit route for shipping and trading between China and Europe through the Arctic, as opposed to the traditional one, which runs through the Strait of Malacca, the Indian Ocean, and the Suez Canal. If realized, the PSR would be shorter than the traditional route—but not necessarily cheaper. It is proposed to pass through ports with Chinese engagement including Russia’s Sabetta, developed for the shipment of natural gas from the Siberian region of Yamal, and Norway’s Kirkenes, the entry point of the proposed Arctic Corridor with new railway links to Rovaniemi in Finland. Although currently on hold, this rail corridor was expected to improve the transport of goods from Asia to Scandinavia, then down to the Baltic regions and Eastern Europe with the help of an underwater tunnel (the one funded by the co-creator of Angry Birds).
The proposed Arctic Railway. Source: Brett Dietrich/China Daily.
Given the ambiguity of PSR-related projects, the research I have been conducting together with Russian artist Sasha Azanova does not focus on the realization or the feasibility of the route, but on its probability and what that entails. In this sense, it has been less important for us to explore the geographical locations where the route might pass through, than the possible geostrategic and geopolitical repercussions of it. Similarly, the exact breakdown of stakeholders in each project has been less important than the “geopolitical picture” formed by the relationships/alliances between them. Within this context, journalism or reports by think tanks, even private firms, have proven to be better sources than academic publications because many PSR projects get modified or canceled during the time it would take for scholarly work to be published.
Arctic Actors
The PSR is not only about shipment or trade. The Arctic is rich in minerals such as uranium, gold, diamonds, zinc, nickel, coal, graphite, palladium, iron ore, and rare-earth minerals. It also holds 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered natural gas reserves.7 The natural gas reserves of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in northern Siberia alone amount to 15 percent of the world’s natural gas supply, and 80 percent of Russia’s. These reserves are processed by the Yamal LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) project; a joint venture between Russia’s Novatek, France’s Total, China Natural Petroleum Corporation, and the Silk Road Fund (a Chinese Government Guidance Fund).8 Yamal LNG began its commercial operations in 2017 through its port, Sabetta. The main export market for Yamal’s LNG is China, using the Northern Sea Route.
The planting of a Russian flag on the Arctic sea bed in a televised event in 2007.
Russia has the longest shoreline in the Arctic, which normally includes a 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone extending to the sea. Under UN rules, an Arctic country’s exclusive economic zone can be extended if it can prove that the undersea territory it wants to claim is geologically part of its own continental shelf—in other words: a natural extension of its own territory. This gives them the right to extend activities like fishing, building infrastructure, and extracting natural resources.9 With the 2007 televised act of planting a Russian flag at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, and by taking soil samples from the Lomonosov Ridge to prove that it is a part of its continental shelf, Russia has been making claims to annex huge swathes of the Arctic. In 2023, a UN commission finally recognized the majority of Russia’s claims for approximately 1.7 million square meters of Arctic seabed.10 Whether the overlapping claims of Canada and Denmark will also be accepted, or what resources lie beneath these continental shelves, is still a mystery.
Map of China’s commercial, extractive, and research activities in the Arctic, with the Polar Silk Road, Xue Long’s 2012 trip, and China’s imports from Yamal LNG using the Northern Sea Route indicated. Map: Kelsey Aho. Source: Liz Bowman and Qingchao Xu, China in the Arctic: Policies, Strategies, and Opportunities for Alaska (2020).
A few years after Russia’s flag stunt, a senior public commentator from the People’s Liberation Army said that China should copy Russia’s behavior and plant its own flag on the Arctic seabed.11 China’s engagement with the Arctic goes back to 1925 when it signed the Svalbard Treaty, which granted all signatory nations rights to commercial activities (mostly mining) on the island. China did not act upon this until 2004, when it began constructing its Yellow River Station. Today, the ambiguous “research” activities of this station are a matter of concern for the other Western signatory nations.12 The Chinese icebreaker Xue Long’s first venture into the Arctic is thought to be in 1999, when it traveled undetected all the way to Northern Canada, raising alarms about the inability of Canadian authorities to track the vessel.13 It has made several journeys since then, sometimes accompanied by research submarines, which are also thought to be used for mapping the continental shelves.
In 2013, China became an observer at the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum for addressing issues faced by Arctic governments and Indigenous peoples.14 Being an observer does not give rights to implement policy in the region, but in an effort to gain more influence in the region, China declared itself as a “near-Arctic nation” in 2018. This claim is dismissed by the USA, who wants to be more dominant in the Arctic (hence its desire to buy Greenland).15 That same year, a Chinese governmental white paper described the polar regions as a “new strategic frontier” (战略新疆域, zhanlüe xin jiangyu) and announced the Polar Silk Road for the first time, thus officially incorporating it into the Belt and Road Initiative. Also in 2018, China opened its second Arctic research station in Iceland. But not all of China’s research stations in the Arctic are built on land; some are built on floating icebergs. As early as 2010, China has been setting up new floating ice stations on each voyage of the Xue Long, as drifting ice often makes earlier stations inaccessible or the ice underneath them melts.16
Norway is another key actor in the Arctic. With the PSR and the Arctic Corridor, its northern town of Kirkenes has been aiming to become the Arctic Rotterdam. Although the plans for a new deep-water port with Chinese investment have yet to be materialized, Kirkenes has already been gearing for closer relations with China.17 Its mayor and trademark winter festival, the Barents Spektakel, have been equally enthusiastic about China, so much so that the 2019 edition of the event claimed to transform the city into “The World’s Northernmost Chinatown.”18 The festival was opened by China’s ambassador to Norway, with theater troupes from China performing traditional dances for Kirkenes residents. According to its mayor, “Kirkenes is mentioned more often than Oslo on Chinese search engines. For China, this is Norway’s geopolitical center.”19 The Chinese entrepreneur Huang Nubo (the one who tried to buy land in Norway and Iceland), founded a Chinese-Icelandic poetry festival in the city, after setting up previous editions in Reykjavik and Beijing.20 Not surprisingly, some of his own poems were read during the festival. Kirkenes’s ties with Russia have a longer history. The town is right on the Russian border, and Russian influence can be felt everywhere. Even the street signs are bilingual: Norwegian and Russian. In its previous editions, the Barents Spektakel used to focus on Russian artists and themes.
But recently, things have changed for Kirkenes. Following the Covid pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the EU sanctions that followed, all Russian collaborations came to a halt. For decades, the city had hopes to re-open its iron ore mine (closed since 1996), but the mine’s proximity to the Russian border (only a few kilometers) scares away investors. And Norwegian security services and some environmental groups are now advising Kirkenes Port Authority against collaborating with China’s COSCO for the deep water port.21 For Kirkenes, betting on a Sino-Russian project like the PSR seems to be a risky move, at least for now.
In the background is Kiruna’s iron ore mine; in the foreground is a placard placed by LKAB at the spot where the town hall, which was moved to a new location in 2018, once stood, 2024. Photo: Köken Ergun.
Not far from Kirkenes, in the Swedish part of the Barents region, the town of Kiruna has an iron ore mine that is very much alive. During our research there, every night between 1:15 and 1:45 a.m., we would be woken up by a loud explosion and shaking that came from the depths of the Earth. We were told not to panic: these were controlled explosions in order to go deeper into the ore body. Later, we found out that in 2020, one of these controlled explosions caused a magnitude 4.9 earthquake. The Kiruna mine is so productive that the city has to be moved to a new location in the east to make way for more digs. LKAB, the company operating the mine, is not only paying for this move, but also for temporarily decorating deserted buildings with dead corporate art produced by artists who have no relation to the region (many local artists turned down these commissions). The cracked roads and pavements of these ghost neighborhoods no longer carry cars or people on them, yet under the earth, buses carry curious tourists from all over the world on a tour 540 meters underground into the 1,365-meter-deep mine. The automated, cold, and often patronizing tour guide is an employee of the mining company. As she parrots the official company line, fascinated audiences passively celebrate the advance of the extractions. After coffee and cookies are served, tour participants are told that they can bring back pieces of iron ore with them to the surface, inside a package labeled “LKAB.” Most of them do …
At the moment, Kiruna’s iron ore is sent by rail to the closest port in Narvik, Norway. But if one day the Arctic Rail Corridor materializes, it could also reach Eastern European markets via the Baltic tunnel, or the Northern Sea Route via the new port in Kirkenes. Kiruna also has a space center which had been used by China since 2010 to launch its meteorological satellites. In 2017, China further established a remote-sensing ground receiving station at the Esrange Space Center on the outskirts of Kiruna to research environmental conditions, mineral distribution, and climate change in the Arctic. But in 2020, the Sweden Space Corporation (SSC), which runs Esrange, announced that, due to changes in geopolitics, it would no longer renew contracts with China or accept new Chinese business.22
Like most of the Northern regions of Scandinavia that will be (or already are) affected by PSR-related projects, Kiruna and Kirkenes are on Sami land. Decisions about mines, ports, and railways that will have direct consequences on the livelihoods of the Indigenous Sami people are mostly made in the southern parts of the nation-states they are subjects of, or in board rooms of international corporations. They also reap most of the benefits of these investments, while Sami people end up losing the lands where they herd their reindeer, the rivers they fish from, and the clean air they have breathed for centuries. Many Sami people we spoke to in Kiruna felt colonized by Sweden. With the PSR, this could turn into a larger and more multi-national colonization, not only on land but also on the sea.
Breaking the Ice
Even if the Arctic ice melts completely in the summer months (as projected for 2035), the PSR can only be a real alternative to the longer Indian Ocean route if year-long traffic can be sustained. This requires the ice to be broken ahead of the ships. Currently, Russian authorities require all boats using the Northern Sea Route to be escorted by a nuclear-powered icebreaker and charges high fees for this forced accompaniment.23 At the moment, only Russia owns nuclear icebreakers. Both China’s Xue Long and its newer Xue Long II are non-nuclear icebreakers, with limited capability of breaking ice. It is more than probable, however, that in the near future, China will have its own nuclear-powered icebreaker. The activities of an increasing amount of nuclear icebreakers in the region pose diverse threats to the environment and Indigenous people like the Sami.
Not only icebreakers are needed to accompany ships working on this route, but the ships themselves have to be re-fitted and adjusted (or completely fabricated) to fit the harsh Arctic conditions. The same goes for the ports on the path of the PSR. On the other hand, when ice melts, it moves faster, which poses a threat to ships. Currently, there is a lack of detailed charts on Arctic sailing routes, making the journey perilous. Moreover, today’s insurance policies do not cover risks of navigating uncharted icy waters, only adding to the cost of making an Arctic journey. Also, most commercial shipments are time sensitive, and navigating such dangerous waters can lead to delays. Given all this, it becomes clear that China’s (or any country's) interest in Arctic sea routes reflects geopolitical and geostrategic priorities more than commercial ones, at least for now.24 Despite all this, marine traffic in the Arctic is increasing. However, it still remains localized between Arctic ports, rather than the international transit shipment intended by the PSR.25
Theater of Geopolitics
Maps have been historically used as a vehicle for stating expansive territorial claims. Each era has its own geographical perspective, and maps were shaped according to each perspective. Throughout most of history, the majority of world maps have put the culture that created them at their center. The most known example of this “egocentric mapping” is the Mercator projection—the quintessential projection for Western dominance, which unsurprisingly puts Europe at the center. European colonialism relied heavily on this projection, particularly because it was an ideal fit for marine navigation. The user-friendly digital maps of today—which use Mercator projection—also put the user in the center of the map. You are the center of the world whenever you request an Uber…
Like Western powers, in order to mobilize a domestic constituency, Chinese mapmakers are also attempting to reconfigure their country’s geographical disposition in the world. For example, as the Chinese Communist Party has mounted its influence into the South China Sea, Chinese cartographers have slightly tilted the axis of the map of China in a way to make it look like its belly is going down towards the south.26 With the added visual help of the now infamous “nine-dash line,” this makes the South China Sea look like a natural sea of mainland China and less marginal or incidental as it does in Mercator projection.27
Another cartographical attempt to represent China’s global influence gave up on Mercator projection’s east-west focus altogether, making the polar regions its focus. Under this north-south projection, China appears to be more at the center of the world. Europe, on the other hand, is at the periphery and almost indistinguishable. These vertical maps of the world were created by Hao Xiaoguang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Although they had been used by China’s State Oceanic Administration to chart voyages in the two polar regions since 2006, and were adopted by the People’s Liberation Army as an official military map since 2009, they were first published in 2014.28 As opposed to regular horizontal maps based on Mercator projection, which unwrap the world along the lines of latitude (meridians), these vertical maps unwrap the world along the lines of longitude (parallels).
According to Hao, horizontal maps like Mercator’s are best suited to reflect the relationships between East and West, but fail to show the relationship between North and South. During an online interview, he claimed that his vertical maps fill in this gap, allowing the viewer to see a “more nuanced picture of the world.” They were also ideal for us to show the proposed route of the PSR, along with an outline of the conventional Indian Ocean route on two different projections of the world, centered on the northern and southern poles. We thought that viewers would then be able to compare the two routes and look at the world through the lens of the polar regions, which would eventually generate a discussion.
That is exactly what happened, with audiences both in Oslo and Kiruna spending a lot of time in front of these maps, discussing geopolitics and their countries’ role in the PSR, or the route and ports they saw on the maps. Sometimes their attention would be diverted away from the maps, and people who previously did not know each other would start a conversation about other topics ranging from conspiracy theories related to Russia and China, or what Europe would do in case of a war. The simple gesture of tracing a possible route on an (unconventional) map created a kind of stage. The two-dimensional works became performative.
Audience in Oslo discussing their country’s involvement in the Polar Silk Road, 2023. Photo: Sasha Azanova.
When the Flemish mapmaker Abraham Ortelius published a book of world maps in 1570, he named it Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (The Theater of the World). He used the Greek definition of theater (teatron) as a place for viewing a spectacle. For him, geography and maps were a theater of memory, because when “[a] map [is] laid before our eyes, we may behold things done or places where they were done, as if they were at this time present.”29 The Polar Silk Road is nothing of the present. In fact, it might not even be realized in the near future. But by creating maps of it, we created a theater where it stands in the present.
“2 августа 2007 года был совершен первый в мире спуск глубоководных обитаемых аппаратов в точке Северного полюса,” {On August 2, 2007, the world's first descent of deep-sea manned vehicles took place at the North Pole} Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, ➝.
David Scott, “China Coming Into the Arctic: Shaping a Flanking Strategy,” Second Line of Defense, January 10, 2016, ➝.
“Kinesisk milliardær har kjøpt 1000 mål i Troms,” {Chinese billionaire buys 1000 acres in Troms} NRK, May 16, 2014, ➝.
Finbarr Bermingham, “Angry Birds mogul aims to tunnel through Baltic anti-China sentiment,” April 3, 2021, ➝.
This was not the first time Trump announced his wish to purchase the semi-autonomous island, nor was it the first time his country (with a history of large territorial purchases) desired it, see Paul Hockenos, “Greenland’s Door Is Open for Trump,” Foreign Policy, January 27, 2025, ➝.
Alexandra Jahn, et al. “Projections of an Ice-Free Arctic Ocean,” Nature Reviews Earth & Environment 5, no. 3 (March 2024): 164–76.
USGS Energy Resources Program, “90 Billion Barrels of Oil and 1,670 Trillion Cubic Feet of Natural Gas Assessed in the Arctic," podcast, episode 55, July 22, 2008, ➝.
“Сообщение ПАО «НОВАТЭК» в отношении танкеров ледового класса Arc7,” {PJSC NOVATEK's announcement regarding Arc7 ice-class tankers} PJSC NOVATEK, October 22, 2019, ➝.
"Law of the Sea,” Britannica, ➝.
Martin Breum, “Russia gets approval for the data behind much of its Arctic Ocean seabed claim,” Arctic Today, February 17, 2023, ➝.
Anne Marie Brady, China as a Polar Great Power (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 78.
Didi Kirsten Tatlow, “China's Expanding Arctic Ambitions Challenge the U.S. and NATO,” Newsweek, July 21, 2024, ➝.
Rob Huebert, “China is on a relentless mission to control Canada’s Arctic waters,” Macdonald-Laurier Institute, August 25, 2023, ➝. (Originally published in The Globe and Mail).
The Arctic Council is composed of eight Arctic states (Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Russian and the USA), permanent participants representing the Indigenous people of the Arctic, and thirteen observer nations, such as France, Singapore, Poland, India and Switzerland.
In 2019, US secretary of state Marc Pompeo claimed “There are only Arctic states and non-Arctic states, not other category exists,” see Matthew Lee, “US warns China, Russia against aggression in Arctic region,” AP News, May 6, 2019, ➝.
Zexun Wei, et al., “Overview of the 9th Chinese National Arctic Research Expedition,” Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters 13, no. 1 (2020): 1–7.
Ingrid Hjellbakk Kvamstø, “North Norwegian port manager welcomes controversial Chinese shipping giant to the Arctic,” NRK, August 18, 2024, ➝.
“Barents Spektakel 2019,” Barents Spektakel, ➝.
Ingeborg Eliassen and Paulo Pena, “Arctic Silk Road: China eyes Norway as first port of call in Europe,” Investigate Europe, December 18, 2019, ➝.
Anja Kristine, “To the Borderland with Poetry,” The Barents Observer, August 21, 2013, ➝.
“Bellona urges Norway’s Prime Minister to not support Northern Sea Route development,” Bellona, September 9, 2024, ➝
Jonathan Barrett and Johan Ahlander, “Exclusive: Swedish space company halts new business helping China operate satellites," Reuters, September 21, 2020, ➝.
Brady, China as a Polar Great Power.
Brady, China as a Polar Great Power, 67.
Frédéric Lasserre, “Arctic Shipping: A Contrasted Expansion of a Largely Destinational Market,” in The Global Arctic Handbook eds. Matthias Finger and Lassi Heininen (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2019), 83–100.
Howard French, Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps China’s Push for Global Power (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017), 56.
The nine-dash line demonstrates China’s claims on the South China Sea, a body of sea also claimed in part by Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, and even Indonesia. In protest to these claims, the Philippines adapted the name of “The Western Philippines Sea,” which brings to mind Trump’s re-naming of the Gulf of Mexico as “the Gulf of America.”
Brady, China as a Polar Great Power, 4.
Jerry Brotton, A History of the World in Twelve Maps. (London: Penguin, 2012), 10.
