List of Arctic expeditions

15th century

• 1472: Didrik Pining and Hans Pothorst mark the first of the cartographic expeditions to Greenland
• 1496: G. Istoma, venturing out of the White Sea, explores the Murman Coast, the coast of northern Norway, and the western coast of Novaya Zemlya

  16th century

• 1553: English expedition led by Hugh Willoughby with Richard Chancellor as second in command searches for the Northeast Passage
• 1575–1577: English expeditions led by Martin Frobisher reaches Baffin Island
• 1579: Danish expedition led by John Allday fails to reach Greenland due to ice
• 1585–1587: English expeditions led by John Davis explore the Davis Strait–Baffin Bay region and reaches Upernavik
• 1596–1597: Dutch expedition piloted by Willem Barentsz discovers Spitsbergen and registered the first recorded Farthest North

  17th century

• 1605–1607: Danish king, Christian IV of Denmark, sends three expeditions led by John Cunningham, Godske Lindenov and Carsten Richardson, to search for the lost Eastern Settlement, one of the Norse colonies on Greenland
• 1606: John Knight, who had captained the in 1605 with John Cunningham, dies commanding a joint Muscovy Company/East India Company expedition in search of the Northwest Passage
• 1607: Henry Hudson explores Spitsbergen
• 1610: Jonas Poole thoroughly explores Spitsbergen's west coast, reporting that he saw a "great store of whales"; this report leads to the establishment of the English whaling trade
• 1610: Russian, K. Kurochkin explores mouth of the Yenisei River and adjoining coast
• 1612: James Hall and William Baffin explore southwest Greenland
• 1612–1613: Button expedition, commanded by Thomas Button
• 1613: Several whaling expeditions, consisting of a total of at least thirty ships, from England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands crowd Spitsbergen's west coast
• 1614: Dutch and French expeditions discover Jan Mayen
• 1615: Robert Fotherby, in the pinnace Richard, is the first English expedition to reach Jan Mayen
• 1616: English expedition piloted by William Baffin explores the Davis Strait–Baffin Bay region
• 1619–1620: Danish expedition led by Jens Munk in Enhiörningen and Lamprenen to discover the Northwest Passage penetrated Davis Strait as far north as 69°, found Frobisher Bay, spent a winter in Hudson Bay
• 1633–1634: I. Rebrov explores the mouth of the Lena River
• 1633–1635: Ilya Perfilyev explores the Lena and Yana Rivers and intervening coast
• 1638: I. Rebrov explores coast between the Lena and Indigirka Rivers
• 1641: Dimitry Zyryan and Mikhail Stadukhin explore the mouth of the Indigirka River and adjoining coast
• 1646: I. Ignatyev explores the mouth of the Kolyma River and adjoining coast
• 1648: Ya. Semyonov explores the mouth of Kotuy River and adjoining coast
• 1648: Semyon Dezhnev and Fedot Alekseyevich Popov explore from the Kolyma River through the Bering Strait
• 1649: Mikhail Stadukhin explores the coast from the Kolyma River to the Bering Strait
• 1686–1687: Ivan Tolstoukhov expedition explores the mouth of the Yenisey River and the coast of the Taymyr Peninsula

  18th century

• 1712: Merkury Vagin and Yakov Permyakov explore the vicinity of the mouth of the Yana River and adjoining coasts, both were murdered by mutineering expedition members
• 1725–1730: Vitus Bering leads the First Kamchatka expedition
• 1733–1743: Second Kamchatka expedition – explores the coast from the Ob River to the Lena River
• 1751–1753: Peder Olsen Walløe explores the east coast of Greenland from Cape Farewell in umiaks
• 1760–1763: S.F. Loshkin explores Novaya Zemlya
• 1765–1766: Vasily Chichagov explores the Kola Peninsula coast and Spitzbergen
• 1768–1769: F.F. Rozmyslov explores Novaya Zemlya and the Matochkin Strait
• 1773: Ivan Lyakhov discovered Kotelny Island
• 1773: Captain Constantine Phipps in and Commander Skeffington Lutwidge in reach 80° 37' N, with a young midshipman, Horatio Nelson among the crew.

  19th century

• 1800: Yakov Sannikov charts Stolbovoy Island
• 1809–1811: Yakov Sannikov and Matvei Gedenschtrom explore the New Siberian Islands
• 1818: Royal Navy expedition led by captain David Buchan
• 1818: Royal Navy expedition led by John Ross, with his nephew, James Clark Ross, to search for the Northwest Passage extended north along the west coast of Greenland to Pituffik and met the Inughuit of Cape York
• 1819: Royal Navy expedition aboard and led by William Edward Parry
• 1819–1822: The Coppermine expedition, led by John Franklin, included George Back and John Richardson
• 1820–1824: Ferdinand von Wrangel and Fyodor Matyushkin explore the East Siberian Sea and the Chukchi Sea areas
• 1821–1824: Fyodor Litke explores the eastern Barents Sea and the west coast of Novaya Zemlya, including Matochkin Strait
• 1821–1823: Pyotr Anjou continues exploration of New Siberian Islands
• 1822: William Scoresby lands in east Greenland near the mouth of the fjord system that would later be named for him – Scoresby Sound
• 1823: Douglas Clavering and Edward Sabine explores East Greenland northwards to Clavering Island, where they get in contact with the now extinct Inuit of Northeast Greenland
• 1825–1827: The Mackenzie River expedition – descends the Mackenzie River and maps much of the Arctic coast
• 1826: Frederick William Beechey aboard explores the Alaskan coast from Point Barrow to the Bering Strait
• 1827: First Norwegian expedition to the Arctic, led by Baltazar Mathias Keilhau
• 1827: Royal Navy expedition to Spitsbergen led by William Edward Parry reaches 82°45’N
• 1828–1830: Danish expedition led by Wilhelm August Graah tries to locate the Eastern Settlement in southeast Greenland, but does not reach Ammassalik Island.
• 1829–1833: Royal Navy expedition led by John Ross to search for the Northwest Passage became the first European to explore James Ross Strait and King William Land, located the North Magnetic Pole
• 1833: P.K. Pastukhov explores the southern half of the eastern coast of Novaya Zemlya
• 1833–1835: Royal Navy expedition led by George Back going from Fort Reliance, became the first European to see the Back River and then on to the mouth at Chantrey Inlet
• 1836: George Back attempts to ascertain if Boothia Peninsula is an island or a peninsula but his ship,, is trapped by ice near Southampton Island
• 1838–1840: La Recherche expedition, under the command of Joseph Paul Gaimard, was a purely scientific nature, rather than a colonial venture
• 1845: Franklin's Northwest Passage expedition is sent to map the remaining Northwest Passage
• 1848: John Richardson and John Rae lead the Rae–Richardson Arctic expedition and searched overland for Franklin's lost expedition
• 1850: McClure Arctic expedition led by Robert McClure, a British search for the members of Franklin's lost expedition
• 1850–1851: First Grinnell expedition led by Edwin De Haven, first American search for the members of Franklin's lost expedition and found the graves of crew members John Torrington, William Braine and John Hartnell on Beechey Island
• 1852: Edward Augustus Inglefield in the and sponsored by Jane Franklin, Franklin's widow sets out to search for Franklin's ill-fated expedition
• 1853–1855: Second Grinnell expedition led by Elisha Kane looks for Franklin searching Grinnell Land
• 1857–1859: McClintock Arctic expedition led by Francis Leopold McClintock was the fifth expedition sponsored by Lady Franklin and found artefacts, a crew members skeleton and the final written communications from the last survivors of the Franklin expedition
• 1860–1861: American expedition led by Isaac Israel Hayes who claimed to have seen the Open Polar Sea
• 1860–1862: First expedition led by American Charles Francis Hall
• 1864–1869: Second expedition led by Charles Francis Hall
• 1868: First German North Polar Expedition led by Carl Koldewey along the east coast of Greenland
• 1869–1870: Second German North Polar Expedition led by Carl Koldewey reaches Sabine Island
• 1871: Benjamin Leigh Smith's first expedition discovers supposed eastern boundary of Spitsbergen marked on the charts was an imaginary one.
• 1871–1873: Polaris expedition, known for the death of its commander, Charles Francis Hall
• 1871: Benjamin Leigh Smith's second expedition
• 1872–1874: Austro-Hungarian North Pole expedition led by Captain Karl Weyprecht
• 1875–1876: British Arctic Expedition led by Captain George Nares
• 1876–1878: Norwegian Northern Seas expedition in Vøringen explored the Northern Atlantic up to 80°N
• 1877–1878: Henry W. Howgate leads the Howgate Preliminary Polar Expedition to promote scientific experiments, and whaling as a source of revenue
• 1878: J. A. D. Jensen explores the inland ice sheet from west Greenland
• 1878–1881: different voyages with Dutch polar schooner Willem Barents in the area around Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya, organised by Royal Dutch Geographical Society
• 1878–1879: Swedish Vega expedition, led by Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld
• 1879–1882: Jeannette expedition commanded by George W. De Long
• 1880: Henry W. Howgate leads the Howgate Arctic expedition to do scientific and geographical exploration of Greenland
• 1881–1882: Benjamin Leigh Smith's final expedition and is shipwrecked.
• 1881–1884: Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, US Army Signal Corps expedition led by Adolphus Greely
• 1882–1883: As part of the First International Polar Year the Danish Dijmphna expedition travels to the territory between Russia and the North Pole
• 1883–1885: Umiak expedition, led by Gustav Frederik Holm and Thomas Vilhelm Garde along the southeastern coast of Greenland in the shallow waters between the coast and the sea ice
• 1883: Failed attempt by Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld to cross Greenland from the west
• 1886: Failed attempt by Robert Peary to cross Greenland
• 1888–1889: First successful crossing of the Greenland inland ice by the Norwegian expedition led by Fridtjof Nansen
• 1891–1892: The East Greenland expedition on the Hekla led by Carl Ryder fails to get through the sea ice of east Greenland, but explores the Scoresby Sound system in detail
• 1891–1892: Third Peary expedition to Greenland led by Peary to discover if Greenland is an island or a peninsula
• 1892: Björling–Kallstenius Expedition led by Alfred Björling was eventually wrecked on the Carey Islands
• 1893–1895: Fourth US Greenland expedition led by Peary
• 1893–1896: Nansen's Fram expedition by Fridtjof Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen on the and over ice towards the North Pole
• 1894–1897: Jackson–Harmsworth expedition, led by Frederick George Jackson
• 1895-1896: Ingolf expedition, hydrographical and biological studies in the waters around Greenland, Iceland and Jan Mayen
• 1897: Salomon August Andrée leads a failed three man Arctic balloon expedition on an attempt to reach the Pole, Andrée along with Knut Frænkel and Nils Strindberg die
• 1898–1902: Second Fram voyage by Otto Sverdrup
• 1898–1900: The Carlsbergfund expedition to East Greenland led by Georg Carl Amdrup explores the Blosseville Coast
• 1899: Alfred Gabriel Nathorst explores the fjords of northeast Greenland, in particular the King Oscar Fjord system
• 1899: Attempt to ski to the North Pole from Franz Josef Land by Walter Wellman
• 1899: The Swedish–Russian Arc-of-Meridian Expedition was a five summer season and one winter season measuring of the meridian arcs
• 1899–1900: Italian North Pole expedition led by Prince Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi on the renamed captained by Umberto Cagni

  20th century

• 1898, 1899, 1906, 1907: Albert I, Prince of Monaco leads four Arctic expeditions with Princesse Alice
• 1900–1903: Russian polar expedition of 1900–1902 on-board is led by Eduard Toll
• 1901–1902: First North Pole expedition financed by US industrialist William Ziegler, led by Evelyn Baldwin
• 1902–1904: The Literary expedition led by Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen together with Knud Rasmussen explores the northwest Greenland coast between Uummannaq and Thule
• 1903–1906: Roald Amundsen's Gjøa expedition – first Northwest Passage traversal
• 1903–1905: Ziegler Polar Expedition overland, led by Anthony Fiala
• 1905–1906: North Pole expedition led by Robert Peary, from Ellesmere Island
• 1906–1908: The Danmark Expedition led by Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen, mapped the last unknown areas of Northeast Greenland, but ended fatally for the main exploring team
• 1906, 1907, 1909: The airship and Walter Wellman
• 1906–1908: Anglo-American Polar expedition
• 1907: Johan Peter Koch and Aage Bertelsen report seeing Fata Morgana Land, a phantom island off the coast of northeast Greenland
• 1907–1909: US North Pole expedition led by Frederick Cook
• 1909–1912: The Alabama expedition to northeast Greenland led by Ejnar Mikkelsen in an operation to recover bodies and logs of the ill-fated Danmark expedition
• 1908–1909: expedition led by Robert Peary
• 1910–1915: Russian Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition in and
• 1912: First Thule expedition – Knud Rasmussen and Peter Freuchen explores North Greenland and establishes that Peary Land is not an island
• 1912–1913: Johan Peter Koch and Alfred Wegener cross the inland ice in north Greenland
• 1912–1915: Brusilov Expedition, ill-fated expedition led by Captain Georgy Brusilov
• 1913: Crocker Land Expedition to search for Crocker Island, a hoax reported by Robert Peary
• 1913–1914: Russian expedition aboard Foka, led by Georgy Sedov
• 1913–1918: Canadian Arctic Expedition 1913–1916 led by Vilhjalmur Stefansson, initially in which was lost in 1913 and explored land that was unknown to the Inuit
• 1916–1918: Second Thule expedition – Knud Rasmussen and Lauge Koch explore North Greenland
• 1918–1925: Roald Amundsen traversed the Northeast Passage with
• 1919: Third Thule expedition – Knud Rasmussen explores north Greenland and lays out depots for Roald Amundsen's polar drift in Maud
• 1919–1920: Fourth Thule expedition – Knud Rasmussen explores east Greenland
• 1921–1923: Bicentenary Jubilee expedition led by Lauge Koch explores north Greenland
• 1921–1923: Wrangel Island Expedition – a land claim and colonisation attempt conceived, but not led by Vilhjalmur Stefansson – all members died apart from Iñupiat seamstress and cook Ada Blackjack
• 1921–1924: Fifth Thule expedition led by Knud Rasmussen crossed the Northwest Passage on dog sledges from Thule across Arctic Canada to Nome, Alaska demonstrates how Inuit culture could spread rapidly
• 1925: Flying boat expedition led by Roald Amundsen and Lincoln Ellsworth
• 1926: Aircraft flight by Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett
• 1926: The airship
• 1928: Carl Ben Eielson–Hubert Wilkins Arctic Ocean crossing
• 1928: The airship
• 1930–1931: Alfred Wegener's German Expedition to Greenland that led to his death on the Greenland ice sheet, halfway between Eismitte and West Camp
• 1930: Bratvaag Expedition, led by Gunnar Horn to Franz Josef Land, found long lost remains of Salomon August Andrée's expedition
• 1930–1931: British Arctic Air Route Expedition was an expedition, led by Gino Watkins, that aimed to draw improved maps and charts of poorly surveyed sections of Greenland's coastline
• 1931: Successful research trip by airship Graf Zeppelin led by Hugo Eckener
• 1931: Sir Hubert Wilkins with submarine
• 1931: Sixth Thule expedition led by Knud Rasmussen explores northeast Greenland
• 1931–1934: The three-year expedition to East Greenland led by Lauge Koch explores northeast Greenland
• 1932: Icebreaker makes the successful crossing of the Northern Sea Route in a single navigation without wintering
• 1932–1933: East Greenland expedition, also known as the Pan Am expedition, a four-man expedition to continue the work of the British Arctic Air Route Expedition
• 1933: Russian steamship managed to get through most of the Northern Route before it was caught in the ice in September
• 1935: Ushakov Island, the last piece of undiscovered territory in the Soviet Arctic, was found by Georgy Ushakov aboard the
• 1937: Soviet aircraft Tupolev ANT-25 made several transpolar flights
• 1937: Soviet and Russian manned drifting ice stations are, as of 2017, 41 scientific drift stations operating or were operating on drift ice
• 1937–1938: MacGregor Arctic Expedition was led by Clifford J. MacGregor and overwintered at Etah, Greenland
• 1938–1939: Mørkefjord expedition was an exploratory expedition to northeast Greenland led by Eigil Knuth
• 1946: Operation Nanook was a US cartographic mission to Thule and to erect a radio and weather station
• 1948: Russian scientific expedition led by Aleksandr Kuznetsov lands an aircraft at Pole
• 1952–1954: British North Greenland expedition was a British scientific mission, led by Commander James Simpson
• 1958: passes under the Arctic ice
• 1959: Discoverer 1, a prototype with no camera, is the first satellite in polar orbit
• 1959: USS Skate becomes first submarine to surface at the North Pole on 17 March 1959
• 1960: TIROS-1, is the first weather satellite in polar orbit; eventually returned 22,952 cloud cover photos
• 1968: Ralph Plaisted and three others reach the North Pole by snowmobile and are the first confirmed overland conquest of the Pole
• 1968–1969: Wally Herbert, British explorer, reaches Pole on foot and traverses the Arctic Ocean
• 1971: Former football player Tony Dauksza becomes the first person to traverse the Northwest Passage in a canoe
• 1977:, nuclear-powered icebreaker, reaches the North Pole
• 1979–1982: Kenichi Horie in Mermaid, was the first person to sail the Northwest Passage solo
• 1982: As part of the Transglobe Expedition Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Charles R. Burton cross the Arctic Ocean in a single season
• 1986: Will Steger and party reach the north pole by dog sled without resupply
• 1986–1989: David Scott Cowper became the first person to have completed the Northwest Passage single-handed as part of a circumnavigation of the world
• 1988: Will Steger completes first south–north traverse of Greenland
• 1988: Soviet–Canadian 1988 Polar Bridge Expedition a group of thirteen Russian and Canadian skiers set out from Siberia skiing to Canada over the North Pole aided by satellites.
• 1992: Crossing of the Greenland inland ice from east to west by a Japanese expedition led by Kenji Yoshikawa
• 1993–1994: Pam Flowers dog sledded alone from Barrow, Alaska, to Repulse Bay, Canada
• 1994: Shane Lundgren led expedition that began in Moscow and proceeded north of the Arctic Circle across Siberia to Magadan
• 1995: Marek Kamiński unsupported walked to the North Pole on 23 May 1995

  21st century

• 2000: Ukrainian parachute expedition to the North Pole
• 2002: Jean Lemire and the crew of the successfully navigate the Northwest Passage on a three-mast schooner, sailing from Montreal to Vancouver in five months while filming La grande traversée and four other documentaries about the effects of global warming on the Canadian Arctic Archipelago
• 2003: Pen Hadow makes solo trek from Canada to North Pole without resupply
• 2004: Together to the Pole – a Polish four-man expedition led by Marek Kamiński, with Jan Mela
• 2004: Five members of the Ice Warrior Squad reach the Geomagnetic North Pole, including the first two women in history to do so.
• 2006: Start of the French Tara expedition
• 2007: Arktika 2007, Russian submersible descends to the ocean floor below the North Pole from the
• 2007:, BBC's Top Gear team are the first to reach the magnetic North Pole in a car
• 2007: The Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition uses Mars analog sites on Svalbard for testing of science questions and payload instruments onboard Mars missions
• 2008: Alex Hibbert and George Bullard complete the Tiso Trans Greenland expedition. The longest fully unsupported land Arctic journey in history at
• 2009: David Scott Cowper becomes the only person to have sailed the Northwest Passage solo in a single season
• 2011: MLAE-2011 led by Vasily Igorevich Yelagin travelled from Dudinka, Russia – North Pole – Resolute, Nunavut, Canada
• 2011: Edna Elias, at the time Commissioner of Nunavut and five other women, including the mayor of Cambridge Bay walked from Umingmaktok to Cambridge Bay
• 2011: Old Pulteney Row To The Pole, a publicity stunt sponsored by Old Pulteney whisky, organised by Jock Wishart who also operated the Polar Race
• 2013: Babouchka, a combination ice boat and sailing catamaran set out for the Pole. It was halted by ice. The two-man crew was rescued by a Russian icebreaker.
• 2015: Interdisciplinary Arctic Expedition "Kartesh" – complex arctic expedition, organized by the Polar Expedition Gallery project in collaboration with the LMSU Marine Research Center. Research tasks: assessing the Arctic coastline vulnerability towards human impact; marine and coastal ecosystem and Arctic seas landform condition monitoring; West Arctic biodiversity research; oil oxidizing microorganism activity research; testing new methods of water areas remote sensing.
• 2017: Arctic Mission of two 15m sailboats led by Pen Hadow made it to 80° 10' N, sailing from and returning to Nome, Alaska.
• 2017: Polar Row, led by Fiann Paul, is the world's most record-breaking expedition. The team covered 1440 miles measured in a straight line in the Arctic Ocean open waters in a row boat and pioneered ocean rowing routes from Tromsø to Longyearbyen, from Longyearbyen to Arctic Ice Pack and from the Arctic ice pack to Jan Mayen.

  Footnotes