The Arctic contains millions of square kilometers of land. Eight countries have territory within the Arctic Circle, including vast stretches of northern Russia, Canada, Alaska, Greenland, and Scandinavia, along with Iceland and several archipelagos. The North Pole itself sits over ocean water covered by floating sea ice, which is where the common misconception comes from, but the Arctic as a whole is a mix of ocean, ice, frozen ground, tundra, rivers, and even forests near its southern edges.
Land Masses Surrounding the Arctic Ocean
The Arctic region is typically defined as everything north of the Arctic Circle, which sits at roughly 66.5°N latitude. Within that boundary, there is an enormous amount of solid ground. Northern Russia alone contributes the largest land area, with the Siberian coastline wrapping around the Arctic Ocean for thousands of kilometers. Canada’s Arctic territories include a sprawling archipelago of islands, some of them among the largest in the world. Greenland, the world’s biggest island, is almost entirely above the Arctic Circle. Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, Finland’s Lapland region, and Sweden’s northern reaches all fall within the Arctic. So does a sliver of Iceland and the entirety of Alaska’s North Slope.
These are not barren moonscapes. Arctic lands host tundra ecosystems, boreal forests at their southern fringes, mountain ranges, river systems, coastal plains, and active geological formations. People live in the Arctic, too. Indigenous communities have inhabited these lands for thousands of years, and modern cities like Murmansk, Tromsø, and Fairbanks sit well within the region.
What Lies Beneath the Arctic Ocean
The central Arctic Ocean is where the “just ice” perception comes from, and it is true that the North Pole itself is located over deep ocean water, not land. The ocean beneath the polar ice cap reaches depths exceeding 4,000 meters in some basins. But even the ocean floor here is far more complex than an empty basin. Mapping it has been a longstanding challenge because perennial sea ice limits data collection to icebreakers, submarines, and drifting research stations. As of the latest international mapping effort, just over a quarter of the Arctic Ocean floor has been surveyed with individual depth soundings.1Europe PMC. The International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean Version 5.0
What those surveys have revealed is a seabed full of ridges, continental shelves, and deep basins. The Arctic Ocean is ringed by some of the widest continental shelves on the planet, particularly along the Siberian coast, where the shallow sea floor extends hundreds of kilometers offshore before dropping away. These shelves are submerged extensions of the surrounding continents, geologically no different from the dry land on shore, just slightly lower in elevation and flooded by seawater since the end of the last ice age.
The Lomonosov Ridge and Continental Crust Under the Ocean
One of the most striking features of the Arctic seabed is the Lomonosov Ridge, a band of continental crust that stretches roughly 1,800 kilometers across the Arctic Ocean, dividing it into two major basins. This ridge runs from the continental shelf north of Greenland, across the North Pole, and down toward the Siberian shelf. It is not volcanic rock formed at a mid-ocean spreading center. It is a piece of continent, a fragment of landmass that rifted away and subsided beneath the waves tens of millions of years ago.2Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems. Morphology and structure of the Lomonosov Ridge, Arctic Ocean
Near the pole, the ridge rises as a single blocky feature with its shallowest points around 950 to 1,400 meters below the surface. On its Siberian side, it fans out into a series of parallel ridges spread across about 200 kilometers, with some peaks as shallow as 650 meters below the surface.2Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems. Morphology and structure of the Lomonosov Ridge, Arctic Ocean Seismic measurements indicate the ridge is made of a swath of continental crust up to 500 kilometers wide, consistent with a history of uplift and erosion stretching back into the Cretaceous period.3Journal of the Geological Society. The Lomonosov Ridge, central Arctic Ocean – the world’s longest submarine ridge of continental origin So in a geological sense, there is “land” even directly under the North Pole, it just happens to sit nearly a kilometer beneath the ocean surface.
The Lomonosov Ridge matters politically as well as scientifically. Russia, Canada, and Denmark (through Greenland) have all argued that the ridge is an extension of their respective continental shelves, which would grant them sovereign rights over the seabed and its resources under international law. These overlapping claims remain unresolved.
Permafrost on Arctic Land
Across the Arctic’s land areas, one of the most distinctive geological features is permafrost: ground that remains frozen year-round, often to enormous depths. In parts of Siberia and northern Canada, permafrost extends hundreds of meters below the surface. It underlies most of the Arctic landmass, particularly in zones classified as continuous permafrost, where essentially all of the ground below a shallow seasonally thawing layer stays frozen.
This frozen ground stores staggering amounts of organic carbon. As plants died over thousands of years, the cold preserved their remains in the soil rather than letting them fully decompose. Research at treeline sites in Canada’s Northwest Territories has shown that the amount of carbon stored in permafrost soils relates more to the landscape’s topography and drainage patterns than to the vegetation growing on top.4Arctic Science. Vegetation structure and soil organic carbon storage across northern forest-tundra ecotones in continuous permafrost That finding matters because as the Arctic warms, the fate of all that stored carbon depends on how the ground itself responds, not just what grows on it.
Frozen Ground Beneath the Sea
Permafrost does not stop at the coastline. Across the broad, shallow continental shelves of the Siberian Arctic, relict permafrost extends offshore beneath the seafloor. During ice ages, when sea levels were much lower, these shelves were exposed dry land with deep permafrost. When the seas rose again, they flooded those landscapes, and the frozen ground persisted underwater. Ice-bearing permafrost on the Siberian shelf stretches from the shoreline out to sea depths of about 80 to 100 meters, spanning offshore distances as far as 800 to 1,000 kilometers in some areas. Remnants may exist locally at depths of up to 120 meters. Buried continuous subsea permafrost, 100 to 600 meters thick, has been identified beneath the Kara, Laptev, and East Siberian shelves.5Marine and Petroleum Geology. In situ bottom sediment temperatures in the Siberian Arctic seas: Current state of subsea permafrost in the Kara sea vs laptev and East Siberian seas
This subsea permafrost is not static. Warmer ocean water has been slowly degrading it for millennia, and the process appears to be accelerating. Where the permafrost thaws, it releases methane that had been trapped in or beneath the frozen layer. In the inner Laptev Sea, scientists using isotopic fingerprinting found that much of the methane bubbling up through shallow water is old microbial methane, with radiocarbon ages exceeding 48,000 years, released from preformed pools stored within the subsea permafrost system itself.6Communications Earth & Environment. Triple-isotopic analyses pinpoint microbial methane release from subsea permafrost in the inner Laptev Sea In the outer portions of the same shelf, where permafrost has degraded more extensively, methane emissions from largely thawed sediments are orders of magnitude greater than from areas where the sediments remain frozen.7PubMed Central. The East Siberian Arctic Shelf: towards further assessment of permafrost-related methane fluxes and role of sea ice
The amount of methane locked in and beneath Arctic subsea permafrost is uncertain, but the emissions already observed make this one of the more closely watched feedbacks in the climate system.
What Grows on Arctic Land
Arctic land surfaces are not lifeless. Tundra ecosystems cover enormous areas, ranging from barren polar desert in the far north to increasingly lush shrub tundra and eventually boreal forest as you move south. The boundary between these zones is not fixed; scientists define it by the structure of vegetation cover and regional climate, and the line between the High Arctic and Low Arctic has been moving northward over recent decades.8Europe PMC. The High-Low Arctic boundary: How is it determined and where is it located?
Even within what looks like featureless tundra from a distance, fine-scale differences in plant composition drive large-scale ecological processes. Drone-based surveys of Arctic tundra sites have shown that deciduous tall shrubs, the kind that can grow over two meters high, have a measurable cooling effect on the landscape, with canopy temperatures significantly lower than both local air temperatures and other plant types. The composition of these fine-scale plant communities accounts for the vast majority of variation in canopy height and temperature regulation across the landscape.9Environmental Research Letters. Landscape-scale characterization of Arctic tundra vegetation composition, structure, and function with a multi-sensor unoccupied aerial system
This vegetation is on the move. Across the Canadian boreal-tundra transition, high-stature vegetation, trees and tall shrubs, has been expanding northward. In the Southern Arctic ecozone, warming continues to relax the thermal limits that historically kept these plants in check, and satellite-measured greenness trends correlate positively with growing season temperatures.10PubMed Central. Northward expansion of high-stature vegetation reveals net surface-cooling feedbacks in the majority of Canadian Boreal-Tundra ecozones The tundra, in other words, is not just alive. It is gradually greening.
Greenland’s Hidden Landscape
Greenland deserves its own mention because it sits in an unusual category: it is unambiguously land, but most people never see it that way. Roughly 80 percent of Greenland is covered by an ice sheet up to three kilometers thick. Beneath that ice lies a complex landscape of bedrock, valleys, and mountains. Radar surveys through the ice have revealed detailed topography including features shaped by erosion over multiple glacial cycles, with streamlined subglacial landforms carved by the flow of the ice above.11Annals of Glaciology. Bed topography and subglacial landforms in the onset region of the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream
If the Greenland ice sheet melted entirely, which would take centuries to millennia at current warming rates, the island’s coastline would look dramatically different, with large interior basins initially sitting below sea level due to the weight of ice that has pressed the bedrock down. Over time the land would rebound. But the point is that beneath the ice, Greenland is rock, not frozen ocean. The same is true, on a much smaller scale, for the ice caps on Svalbard, Ellesmere Island, and other Arctic landmasses.
Arctic Sea Ice and How It Differs from Land
The sea ice that covers much of the Arctic Ocean is what feeds the impression that the Arctic is “just ice.” At its winter maximum, Arctic sea ice extends over roughly 15 million square kilometers, far larger than most countries. But this ice is floating. It sits on top of ocean water, typically one to several meters thick, and it grows and shrinks with the seasons.
There are two main categories: first-year ice, which formed during the most recent winter and is relatively thin, and multiyear ice, which has survived at least one summer melt season and tends to be thicker and harder. Satellite altimetry measurements have shown that first-year ice typically sticks up about 14 centimeters above the waterline in autumn, while multiyear ice stands about 35 centimeters above it.12Journal of Climate. Controls on Arctic Sea Ice from First-Year and Multiyear Ice Survivability The decrease in summer ice coverage over recent decades has been accompanied by a pronounced loss of multiyear ice, which means the remaining ice pack is younger, thinner, and more vulnerable to further melting.12Journal of Climate. Controls on Arctic Sea Ice from First-Year and Multiyear Ice Survivability
None of this ice is land. It floats and moves with currents and wind, drifting across the Arctic basin. If every scrap of Arctic sea ice melted, the ocean beneath would still be there, and sea levels worldwide would barely budge, because floating ice already displaces its own weight in water. Compare this with the Greenland ice sheet, which sits on bedrock. If that melted, the water entering the ocean would raise global sea levels by about seven meters.
Rivers Feeding the Arctic Ocean
One easy way to appreciate how much land the Arctic contains is to consider its rivers. Some of the world’s major river systems drain into the Arctic Ocean. The Ob, Yenisei, and Lena in Russia, along with the Mackenzie in Canada, the Yukon flowing through Alaska and the Yukon Territory, and the Northern Dvina and Pechora in European Russia, all carry enormous volumes of freshwater northward across the land and into the Arctic basin.
A synthesis of river-monitoring data found that the average annual discharge of fresh water from just the six largest Eurasian rivers to the Arctic Ocean increased by about 7 percent between 1936 and 1999, rising at an average rate of roughly 2 cubic kilometers per year. By the end of that period, annual discharge from those six rivers was about 128 cubic kilometers per year greater than when routine measurements began.13Science. Increasing river discharge to the Arctic Ocean That trend has continued. More freshwater flowing into the Arctic Ocean affects salinity, ice formation, and ocean circulation. But the rivers themselves are evidence of the vast drainage basins on land, networks of tributaries collecting rainfall and snowmelt across millions of square kilometers of terrain before delivering it to the coast.
How the Arctic Coastline Is Changing
The boundary between Arctic land and Arctic ocean is not as stable as it might seem on a map. Climate change is amplified in the Arctic, where less sea ice allows more energetic waves to reach the coast, while rising temperatures thaw the permafrost that holds coastal bluffs together. These compounding factors are accelerating the retreat of coastal tundra in places like Alaska’s North Slope.14Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface. Future Coastal Tundra Loss Due To Compounding Environmental Changes in Alaska
Entire stretches of Arctic coast are being eaten away as the frozen soil that forms their cliffs thaws and collapses into the sea. In some locations along Alaska’s Beaufort Sea coast, the shoreline has been retreating by meters per year. This is not just an erosion curiosity; it means that buildings, infrastructure, and culturally significant sites are falling into the ocean. The process also releases organic carbon that had been stored in the permafrost for thousands of years, adding to the Arctic’s role in the global carbon cycle.
The fact that Arctic coastline can erode at all underscores the point: there is real, solid ground there. Ice does not erode. Cliffs of frozen soil and sediment, carved by waves and undermined by thaw, are a feature of a landscape, not a frozen ocean.
Why the “Just Ice” Myth Persists
The confusion between the Arctic and the Antarctic probably deserves some blame. Antarctica is a continent, a single landmass buried under ice, surrounded by open ocean. The Arctic is the opposite arrangement: an ocean surrounded by continents and islands. Because both poles are white on maps and associated with ice, it is easy to lump them together as “the icy parts.” But structurally they are mirror images. Antarctica has land in the center and ocean around the edges. The Arctic has ocean in the center and land around the edges.
Media imagery reinforces the confusion. Photographs and documentaries about the Arctic tend to focus on sea ice, polar bears on ice floes, and icebreakers pushing through pack ice. These are dramatic and visually striking, but they represent only the marine portion of the Arctic. The millions of square kilometers of tundra, boreal forest, river valleys, and mountain ranges that make up Arctic land rarely get the same screen time. When people picture the North Pole specifically, they think of a flat white expanse, which is accurate for the central ocean, but is not representative of the Arctic as a whole.
Even the language can mislead. Phrases like “the ice caps” or “polar ice” blur the distinction between sea ice, land-based ice sheets, and glaciers. Sea ice is frozen ocean water floating on the surface. The Greenland ice sheet is compacted snow and ice sitting on bedrock. Mountain glaciers in Svalbard or the Canadian Arctic are ice flowing slowly downhill over rock. All three are “ice,” but they have fundamentally different relationships with land. Recognizing these distinctions makes it much easier to understand that the Arctic is, and always has been, a region defined as much by its land as by its ice.