Arctic
Far to the north, the world is full of contrasts: the largest whales feed on the ocean’s smallest animals, sharks can swim for centuries, while buzzing insects may survive for just a few days. The shimmering ice holds thousands of years of knowledge about climate change, and each year the long, dark winter gives way to a short but brilliantly colourful summer.
In the exhibition, you will experience a fragile yet magnificent natural world teeming with life that has adapted to the harshest conditions on Earth. Along the way, we look both back in time and ahead to the future.
You will encounter the full spectrum: from the polar bear, the walrus and the musk ox you might expect to see, to lesser-known species such as the Arctic bumblebee, the copepods and the Arctic willow – species which all life in the Arctic depends. For it is the smallest organisms that sustain the largest: no copepods, no whales; no flowers, no bumblebees – and without sea ice, neither would exist.
What you can experience
The exhibition consists of four zones, each focusing on life in the far north. There is no set route: you move freely around the major experiences in the space, while light and sound change around you, just as they do in the Arctic itself.
Life on land throughout the year. Experience the same landscape at two extremes: musk oxen on a flower-filled tundra in summer, and the white winter wildlife – the Arctic fox’s fur and the snowy owl’s feathers – as darkness descends. Explore the bird cliffs, where thousands of birds make their presence heard in their seasonal chorus.
Sea ice. Crawl into the seal’s den and take care not to get caught by a polar bear. Meet the walrus on the coast and discover how the ice is both a home and a hunting ground.
Beneath the Arctic Ocean. Dive beneath the ice, where the largest meets the smallest. Come face to face with the Greenland shark, which is believed to live for up to 400 years and still swims in the Arctic Ocean today. See the floating skeleton of the bowhead whale brought to life by light and sound and feel just how small you are as the giants of the ocean swim past. Meet the copepods, tiny keystone species on which the entire food web depends. Even the great whales feed on them.
The ice sheet. Read thousands of years of climate history in an ice core and understand the consequences of climate change for life in the Arctic
- The Greenland shark: Get up close to a shark that can live for up to 400 years. It is the longest-living vertebrate on Earth.
- The bowhead whale: Experience the floating skeleton in motion, brought to life by light and sound
- The seal’s den: Crawl inside the seal’s den and take care not to get caught by a polar bear.
- The bird cliffs: Be overwhelmed by the diversity and sounds of Greenland’s spectacular bird cliffs.
- The musk oxen: Meet the musk oxen on the Arctic tundra in summer and see the contrast with the white wildlife of winter.
- Touch the ice sheet: Hold thousands of years of climate history in your hand: layer upon layer of ice revealing how the climate has fluctuated throughout Earth’s recent history.
- The copepods: Encounter these tiny keystone species on a giant scale and discover how the entire food web depends on them.
A landscape of ice, light and adaptation
The Arctic is one of the coldest, darkest and most inhospitable places on Earth for life. And yet it teems with life, from the great polar bears at the top of the food chain to tiny copepods at the bottom. The secret is adaptation: the Arctic fox changes its coat with the seasons, while the Arctic bumblebee can keep its body warm as it flies through air so cold that other insects would die. The Greenland shark moves so slowly that it can live for several hundred years, while the Arctic willow grows to just 15 cm tall. Everything here is adapted to survive conditions that would kill animals and plants elsewhere in the world.
But the Arctic is also a landscape in transformation. Ice is more than just cold: it is the world’s memory of our climate. Each layer of the ice sheet traps air from a distant past, and ice cores tell us how the climate has fluctuated over thousands of years. When the ice melts, we do not just lose the landscape. We lose that memory.
That is why the Arctic matters far beyond its own boundaries. What happens here affects the entire planet: the ice at the poles influences ocean currents and weather far to the south, and the changes scientists are measuring in the Arctic today tell the story of the future we will all have to live in. In the exhibition, we let nature tell that story itself, through light, shadow, space, silence and sound.
