Episode list

Bruce visits two 'brigades' of the 540 native tribes in Russia's vast Arctic Siberian wilderness. Since the Soviet collapse, much has changed, much remained. The Sakha breed a very tough local horse breed. The Eveni keep reindeer. Bruce is fascinated by shamanism, which originated here, but can't be revived after the Soviet persecution.

In Greenland, Bruce joins a dog sled hunt with one of the last traditional Inuit hunting parties. He learns about their views on the effects on global warming, conservation measures, modern life and technology. Next he visits a town, where everything is imported at crushing prices, and a metal mine run by an Australian firm in layers made accessible by a retreating glacier.

Bruce starts his visit to Alaska with the cabana family, which makes a fortune by fishing salmon three months a year in a smart, allegedly ecologically sustainable way. Next the hazardous adventurers who 'mine' gold by diving for it in coastal water near Nome. Finally he joins an Inuit village's annual semi-traditional, controversial whale hunt and ponders its crucial cultural and pragmatic value.

Bruce joins Canadian Gwich'in Indian-Mountie Stephen Frost's family on the annual caribou hunt during the herd's spring migration over the Crow river, to calve in Alaska. Their tribal ways are in respectful harmony with nature. In total contrast, southern-more Alberta is world champion in tar sands, an extremely energy-consuming way to win oil from soiled soil, yet also of great economic value, also to local tribes.

Bruce visits a Russian Artic Circle village. In Norway, Bruce visits Lapland, where the Samen people still practice ancient reindeer herding. Finally he board a ship to Spitsbergen, the northernmost 'inhabited' European territory, extremely inhospitable but rich in natural resources.