Arctic Experiences: The 15 Best Expedition Cruise Activities

From watching polar bears, walruses, and reindeer and trekking out onto an ice sheet to admiring a fabulous Northern Lights display as it ripples over icebergs and mountain horns, there’s so, so much to experience on an Arctic cruise. To help you dream up the perfect trip to the Far North, we’ve compiled 15 of the very best things to do on a polar voyage. Let’s get started!

(1) Zodiac Cruising & Kayak Tours

Boasting the tough-as-nails design and supreme maneuverability that inshore Arctic waters demand, Zodiacs give cruisegoers the ability to cruise among icebergs and along glacier-backed cobble beaches, and (of course) facilitate shore-landings for terrestrial exploration. And many cruises provide the option for guided sea-kayaking forays into pristine Arctic ice- and seascapes. There’s nothing like motoring or paddling by a towering iceberg or into a soaring, swoon-worthy fjordland.

(2) Polar Plunges

It may sound crazy, but many top-of-the-world vacationers thrill at the opportunity to take a dip in Arctic and subarctic waters. While certainly by no means required, taking a polar plunge during your cruise is a rite of passage for more than a few, and an opportunity for nabbing an absolutely top-rung lifetime photo op!

(3) Hiking, Snowshoeing, & Glacier/Ice-trekking

Some of the paramount Arctic adventures on a cruise take place on foot. Hiking along the pristine shores of an unpeopled tundra island, taking a walkabout on an outflow glacier, setting foot (literally) at the sea-ice-lidded North Pole: Expert-led rambles get you as deep into the Arctic environment as possible—signing, sealing, and delivering memories to be cherished for a lifetime.

(4) Wildlife-Viewing & Photography (Including Whalewatching)

The stirring vastness and beautiful austerity of the Arctic are drawn to a razor-sharp point in the animals you may see during your cruise. Whether it’s sailing along in view of cavorting whales or a raucous puffin rookery, studying wolf prints on a tidewater beach, or perhaps glimpsing that near-mythic ruler of the Great White North, the polar bear, wildlife-viewing and photography are highlights of any Arctic expedition.

(5) Visiting Local Communities

The Arctic may, overall, be sparsely populated, but people are a fundamental and long-standing part of its environment, and cultural experiences are as much highlights of a cruise up here as the scenery-gazing and wildlife-spotting. From stunningly isolated Ittoqqortoormiit in East Greenland to the Baffin Island community of Pangnirtung in Nunavut, boasting an utterly gorgeous backdrop, interactions with Inuit residents and other Indigenous peoples of the Arctic deepen your appreciation for the many dimensions that compose this remote realm.

(6) Seeing the Northern Lights

The technicolor flashings of the Northern Lights—the Aurora Borealis, conjured by atmospheric gases reacting to the charged particles of the Sun’s solar wind as they’re channeled through Earth’s magnetic field—are, to employ an overused but completely apropos term, simply breathtaking. And no place presents such a productive theater for viewing the Northern Lights than the Arctic.

The pulsing firmament created by the Aurora Borealis is most fruitfully hunted on “shoulder-season” cruises to the Arctic, as the around-the-clock summer daylight of the Midnight Sun understandably minimizes aurora-viewing possibilities.

(7) Education Lectures & Workshops

Onboard lectures and presentations by experts on a whole variety of Arctic subjects, from glaciology and geology to marine mammalogy and botany, greatly expand your appreciation for the scenery and ecosystems you’re sailing through. These “shipboard study” talks are fabulous opportunities for you as a passenger to learn, and for these scientists, guides, and other specialists to share their knowledge and convey their abiding passion for their fields—and for these incredible places.

(8) Snorkeling & Scuba-diving

Arctic cruises of the “adventure” variety may give you the opportunity not just to sail upon polar waters, but to actually dip below their surface. Marveling at the glow and sculpture of an iceberg’s underwater contours, glimpsing a graceful seal or a bed of anemones, perhaps (for those with enough experience) diving into the blue-green dreamworld below the pack ice—snorkel and scuba tours show off a side of the Arctic few people ever see.

(9) Citizen/Community Science

You aren’t limited to simply hearing about polar science on an Arctic cruise: You can, in fact, actively participate in it! Efforts such as the Polar Citizen Science Collective (the Polar Collective, for short) coordinate researchers, tour operators, guides, and travelers for important data collection, from monitoring marine phytoplankton and recording cloud observations to helping with photo-ID surveys of whales and pinnipeds.

(10) Historical Sightseeing

History buffs have much to sink their teeth into many Arctic cruise routes. In South Greenland, for example, you can visit the UNESCO World Heritage Site called Kujataa, which showcases venerable Norse and Inuit farming outposts. And cruises through the legendary Northwest Passage trace famous (and infamous) historical expeditions, such as the doomed Franklin Expedition—graves of which can be seen on Beechey Island—and the first documented successful journey through the Passage, Roald Amundsen’s Gjøa voyage, which overwintered twice at King William Island’s Gjoa Haven.

(11) Helicopter Flights

Some Arctic cruises include the possibility of helicopter sightseeing in their itinerary. The chance to see endless sea-ice expanses, mountaintop icecaps and sweeps of valley glaciers, toothy peaks and pond-spangled barren grounds from a bird’s-eye vantage is not to be missed! Helicopters provide sightlines and access to some of the most remote and forbidding reaches of the Arctic, such as the blank beauty of the Greenland Ice Sheet.

(12) Experience the Magic of the Midnight Sun

During the summertime window of the Midnight Sun—also known as the White Night or Polar Day—the Arctic enjoys around-the-clock sunshine, a luxuriance of daylight that supercharges ecological productivity and brings with it the balmiest weather of the year. Those two factors alone are attractive to a cruisegoer, but there are further logistical advantages: retreating sea ice opening up seaways for sightseeing, and simply that much more opportunity during the extended days to sightsee.

And the sheer novelty of the White Night, and the intriguing, shifting patterns of light produced as the Sun loops up and down in the sky, refusing to dip below the horizon during that special seasonal stretch—are delights to experience firsthand.

(13) Ice & Lava Caving

From the ethereal subglacial caves of East Greenland to the lava tubes of Iceland, dyed-in-the-wool adventurers have some exceptionally evocative and otherworldly realms to explore on guided caving treks during polar cruises. These constitute some of the most unique activities in the Arctic, bar none.

(14) Dogsledding

The dogsledding tradition is a deep-rooted one in the Arctic, dating back many thousands of years and likely helping Inuit and other Native peoples spread widely across the region. Still fundamental to the livelihood of some Arctic communities in, for example, parts of Greenland, sled dogs were also instrumental to polar explorers such as Roald Amundsen and Robert Peary as they quested for the North Pole, the Northwest Passage, and other harsh and remote geographies.

Going “mushing” before or after an Arctic cruise, therefore, gives you a firsthand connection to an ancient and crucial regional mode of transportation. It’s also simply gosh-darn fun, racing along over the snowpack behind an eager team of huskies or malamutes.

(15) See the 2026 Total Solar Eclipse

On August 12, 2026, a total solar eclipse—when the Moon aligns precisely in line between Earth and the Sun, blotting out our home star to produce a sublime skywatching spectacle while turning day temporarily into twilight—will be viewable in the Arctic. This means a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness among the most astonishing of all cosmic phenomena in a truly unforgettable setting.

The eclipse’s path of totality will intersect such locales as northeastern Greenland and western Iceland, where, between the Westfjords and the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, the point of maximum eclipse will last some two minutes and 18 seconds.

We’re offering a variety of different Arctic cruises specifically centered on eclipse-viewing in 2026, and we hope you’ll join us for one of them!

Relish Arctic Adventure on an Expedition Cruise to the Far North

The above list certainly isn’t an exhaustive roundup of things to do in the Arctic Circle, but the spotlighted activities, we hope, suggest how thrilling, magical, and even life-changing a cruise up here at the top of the world can be. Explore all of our itineraries today!