A Map of the Arctic Ocean

Cropped section of a map of the Arctic Ocean showing ice lines, bird and whale migration routes, existing and proposed shipping lanes, oil and gas prospecting areas and linguistic regions. Photo: Jennifer Rainsford

The Arctic Institute Cryosphere Series 2026

• The Arctic Institute’s 2026 Connecting the Cryosphere Series: An Introduction
• A Map of the Arctic Ocean

There is an ocean at the top of the world that most of us will never visit, and yet it may be the one place on Earth where the consequences of our civilisation are most legibly written. The Arctic Ocean is changing faster than any other body of water on Earth. This map was made to freeze some of this change in time and space— a speculative overlay of trajectories and borders. The initial purpose of the map was to make visible the traces of permanent and ephemeral change in a remote sea. As the project evolved alongside emerging geopolitical tensions over Greenland, the map revealed present shifts and also glimpses of a possible future.

At the heart of the image are the ice lines. Drawn in dashed white lines, they trace the predicted retreat of the ice caps around Greenland at intervals from 1970 to 2100.¹⁾NSIDC (2024) Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis. https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today. Accessed 9 March 2026. By 2050, according to current projections, the Arctic Sea will be almost entirely open water during summer months. What was once a barrier will become a corridor.

The ocean itself is crossed with claims by states, marked as dark yellow lines.²⁾Maritime jurisdiction and territorial delimitations of the Arctic Ocean – IBRU / IBCAO. https://www.lecerclepolaire.com/the-arctic-ocean-belongs-to-whom/. Accessed 10 May 2026.

Marked as yellow lines tracing routes vertically across the map are the existing and proposed shipping lanes as drawn up by the United States and China.³⁾Arctic Portal (2024) Arctic Shipping Routes Map. arcticportal.org/maps/download/maps-shipping. Nordregio, Sea Routes and Ports in the Arctic. https://nordregio.org/maps/sea-routes-and-ports-in-the-arctic/. Accessed 9 March 2026. Some of these routes already pass through open water. Others cut through zones where ice still exists today. Here, a new passage for global trade is being planned around a change in progress. The economic logic: shorter routes mean cheaper freight, faster delivery and geopolitical advantage.

Drawn in red are linguistic regions — some of the territories of the languages spoken by the peoples of the Arctic and its edges.⁴⁾Linguistic regions in the Arctic. http://site.uit.no/sagastallamin/language-map. Accessed 9 March 2026. These communities — Inuit, Yupik, Sámi, and many others — have lived in relation to this ocean for thousands of years. Their knowledges of it is carried in their languages, their stories, their understandings of ice and current and animal behaviour.

Marked in blue are prospected areas for oil and gas extraction.⁵⁾Nordregio (2019) Resources in the Arctic. https://nordregio.org/maps/resources-in-the-arctic-2019/. Accessed 9 March 2026. Alongside them, existing infrastructure already in place: pipelines, gas plants, and mines dotting the coastlines. In the sea, here are plans for mining on the seabed.⁶⁾Greenpeace International (2024) Gambling with the Deep Sea. p.8 https://www.greenpeace.org/international/publication/70141/gambling-with-the-deep-sea/. Accessed 10 May 2026.

Threading across the image in green are the migration routes of birds and whales — routes shaped over millennia by the contours of land, currents, water temperature, ice, food access, and season.⁷⁾Arctic Council (2024) Arctic Migratory Birds Initiative. https://arctic-council.org/news/the-arctic-migratory-birds-initiative/; GridArendal (2019) Migratory pathways in the Arctic. https://grida.no/resources/13345. Accessed 9 March 2026. These paths are not fixed. As the ice retreats and coastlines shift, as the timing of seasons changes, the whales and birds adapt. The green lines on the map are a record of ancient migratory patterns and contain a question about their future paths.

This map is an artistic tool that brings together traces of environmental change, political power, ecological life, human history, language, and questions of territory and positionality within the same image. Constructed from scientific data, it functions as a tool for drawing connections between past and future trajectories of transformation—processes that may reshape our world order. By assigning each trace an equal graphic value, the map proposes an understanding of the Arctic Ocean as a polyphonic body of water and a region of continuous change. A change so complex that no single discipline or dataset can fully encompass it. In doing so, it asks the viewer to open up to a perspective that moves beyond a state-centric view, offering instead a layered and relational way of seeing the ocean.

At the same time, the map connects the cryosphere by dissolving its apparent isolation. Where ice is no longer a distant, frozen surface but emerges as a shifting field of relations, holding traces of currents, borders, histories, and futures. Through this layering, the cryosphere appears not as a stable object, but as something in flux—entangled in the movements of climate, power, and perception.

Jennifer Rainsford is a Stockholm-based artist working at the intersection of art and science. Her practice spans documentary film, XR, and architecture, engaging with fields from astrophysics to lunar geology. She is currently Artist-in-Residence at MAX IV Laboratory and Adjunct Lecturer in Video Art at the Royal Institute of Art (KKH), Stockholm.