ISLANDS & POLAR
Islands & Polar Regions
Iceland’s parliament plains, the Antarctic Peninsula, Easter Island and Polynesian temples: even the most remote places have their own history and taboos.
City guides
Start with a city
Every city guide has a timeline, stories of local figures, must-see sights, festivals and local etiquette.
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Icelandic fermented shark
Poisonous Greenland shark, fermented and air-dried, has become Iceland's most hard-core national dish.
Lake Tekapo Dark Sky Reserve
An international dark-sky reserve in the southern hemisphere: the Milky Way and aurora australis above the Church of the Good Shepherd.
Arctic Village, Mohe
China's northernmost city and village, the coldest place in the country in winter; the aurora is occasionally visible, but chances are slim.
Fairbanks
A gold-rush town where the aurora is visible on more than 200 nights a year on average.
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Yellowknife
A northern town born of gold, and one of Canada's most popular aurora destinations.
Rovaniemi and the Arctic Circle
Santa Claus Village astride the Arctic Circle line, and a city rebuilt to Aalto's reindeer-antler plan.
Abisko National Park
A lakeside national park 195 km north of the Arctic Circle, free of light pollution, at the start of the King's Trail.
Tromsø and the Arctic Cathedral
'The Paris of the North': a university town in the auroral zone, with the triangular Arctic Cathedral.
Teriberka
A fishing village on the Barents Sea: filming location of Leviathan, an aurora coast with no city lights.
Murmansk
The most populous city north of the Arctic Circle: an ice-free port in the polar night, a nuclear icebreaker and the aurora.
Longyearbyen
One of the world's northernmost towns, with a 'doomsday seed vault' in the permafrost
Ilulissat Icefjord
An icefjord of Inuit hunters and giant icebergs, a World Heritage Site since 2004.
Bishop Museum
A cultural treasure house with the world's largest collection of Polynesian artefacts.
Rock Islands Southern Lagoon
A mixed heritage site of mushroom-shaped limestone islands and three-thousand-year-old stone villages.
Levuka
The best-preserved 19th-century colonial port town in the South Pacific.
Taputapuātea marae
The religious heart of Polynesia, a World Heritage Site since 2017.
Ahu Tongariki, Easter Island
An ancestral altar where 15 moai face inland, watching over their descendants.
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Antarctic Peninsula
The ultimate stage of polar exploration, where penguins share the shore with abandoned whaling stations.
Black Sand Beach (Reynisfjara)
A black beach with basalt cliffs and the 'petrified troll' sea stacks.
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Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon
A lagoon of floating ice calved from Vatnajökull, with 'diamond ice' on the black beach
Þingvellir National Park
The site where Icelanders founded their parliament, the Althing, in 930 — one of the oldest surviving parliaments in the world.
Reykjavík
The Arctic capital of the Vikings' descendants, where a basalt-inspired church and elf legends coexist.