The Northern Sea Route is still frozen in my thoughts.

An abandoned building with orderly numbered memories in metal cases. No chairs. Just an empty shed with rows of films in cases.

Tikhaya Bay on Hooker Island is in Franz Joseph Land in the Arctic was a meteorological base from 1929 to 1963. Germans were marooned there during WW2.

I felt a weird sense of sanitisation walking along the timber walkways amongst the rocks. The remnants of the buildings have been preserved for tourists.

Cups and teapots stood awkwardly on the wooden sideboard. Functionality ceased. Redundant. 

Tikhaya Bay on Hooker Island is in Franz Joseph Land in the Arctic was a meteorological base from 1929 to 1963. Germans were marooned there during WW2.

I felt a weird sense of sanitisation walking along the timber walkways amongst the rocks. The remnants of the buildings have been preserved for tourists.

Cups and teapots stood awkwardly on the wooden sideboard. Functionality ceased. Redundant. 

There are many Polar Stations in the The Taymry Peninsular on Pronchishcheva Bay in the Laptev Sea; the New Siberians – Kigilyakh Meterological station on Great Lyakhovsky, the largest of the Lyakhovsky Islands; Bunge Land; Chetyrekhstolbovoy Island.

These decommissioned  bases in the isolated Arctic are desolate. The sense of abandonment was visceral.

Questions grew in my mind like dripping icicles… I kept wondering what it was like to live in such an isolated and extreme environment.

Other stations further away from the reaches of tourism show evidence of abandonment and hunting. Hunting for valuables. Scavenging the leftovers of previous life.

Tins and skins were strewn on the tundra.

Tools, shards of glass and ice lay scattered.

Buildings slide into the icy sea.