The North Pole

Throughout recorded human time, few places on Earth have inspired as much fascination as the North Pole. This is an otherworldly place with no latitude and no longitude, a place where the sun rises and stays aloft for six months before setting, plunging the expanse of ice and water into darkness for half a year. Long before we ever journeyed to the North Pole, human beings have wondered what the northernmost point of our planet might be like. It became densely mythologised by writers, thinkers, historians and philosophers across civilisations. Perhaps it was the actual garden of Eden? Or the sunny land of the Hyperboreans, as Herodotus surmised? Only recently did we get to the North Pole - fending off scurvy, polar bears and frostbite - to report on its strange wonders.