The bear he says brings that message home. "It gives people an opportunity to connect with literally the processes that are going on up on the sea ice of the Arctic Ocean around the North Pole which is melting,"
VOA: standard.2009.12.13
The Geographic pole is the top of the axis on which the earth spins, the Magnetic pole is where the compass points to, and the Arcticpole is the point on the Arctic Ocean furthest from any land.
Artur Chilingarov, an adventurer and deputy speaker of Russia's parliament, led two Russian mini-submarines to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean beneath the North Pole, where he collected gravel and planted the Russian flag.
Deep inside the Arctic Circle, far closer to the North Pole than to Oslo, Svalbard is at once one of Europe's last intact wilderness areas and the world's most accessible slice of the polar North.