Arctic Sea Routes and the Northern Sea Route
The Arctic shipping routes are the sea lanes through the Arctic, chiefly the Northern Sea Route off Russia and the Northwest Passage through Canada.
The Arctic shipping routes are the sea lanes through the Arctic, chiefly the Northern Sea Route off Russia and the Northwest Passage through Canada. Almost all the trade today runs on the Russian side. Mariners began looking for this short way between Europe and Asia about 500 years ago. The Northern Sea Route reached 103 transits in 2025, and by the end of September 2026 it had already passed that number.[3]
Three Routes
Commercial ships have three possible routes through the Arctic. The Northern Sea Route (NSR) follows the Russian coast for about 5,600 kilometres between the Kara Strait and the Bering Strait. The Northwest Passage links the Atlantic and Pacific through the Canadian islands. The Transpolar Route runs close to the pole and is out of reach for commercial ships without icebreakers. The Northeast Passage, which Vega sailed, is the wider name that also includes the Barents Sea.
The Search for a Short Way to China
The search began for reasons of trade. For England and the Netherlands on the Atlantic, a northern sea route to China and India would have been hugely profitable. Hugh Willoughby sailed into the Barents Sea in 1553. Willem Barentsz rounded the northern tip of Novaya Zemlya in 1596 but found no practical route.[10] From the other direction came the Russians. Semyon Dezhnev sailed from the mouth of the Kolyma to the Pacific in 1648, showing there was no land link between Asia and America. Vitus Bering reached the strait now named after him in 1728.[10] The pieces were known, but nobody had sailed the whole way.
Nordenskiöld and Vega
The man who did it was a geologist. Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld was born in Helsinki in 1832. Suspected of political activity against Russian rule, he had to leave Finland in 1857 and settled in Sweden. On scientific voyages to the Arctic he reached the mouth of the Yenisei by sea in 1875, and repeated the trip on the Ymer the next year to show it was no fluke.[11] The next step was the entire Siberian coast. King Oscar II approved the plan in 1877. Funding came from scientific bodies and two private donors, the Swedish merchant Oscar Dickson and the Siberian businessman Alexander Sibiryakov.[1]
Vega, built as a sealer and whaler, left Karlskrona under Captain Louis Palander on 22 June 1878. It passed Cape Chelyuskin, the northern tip of Asia, on 19 August. On 28 September it was stopped by ice off Chukotka, a few days short of the Bering Strait.
The crew wintered beside the Chukchi village of Pitlekaj. The ship broke free on 18 August 1879 and passed the strait two days later, the first time the northern route between Europe and Asia had been sailed from end to end. After repairs in Japan, Vega went home through the Indian Ocean and Suez and reached Stockholm on 24 April 1880, having circled Asia.[1]
The Soviet Route
Because Vega spent a winter in the ice, the voyage offered little commercial promise. Polar Record notes that only three ships had got through the NSR by the summer of 1932. That year, on 28 July, the Soviet icebreaker Sibiryakov left Arkhangelsk with Otto Schmidt's expedition and completed the whole route in one season.[4][12] By the mid-1930s the route had official status under a regular administration.[12]
What pushed back the ice limit was the nuclear icebreaker. Lenin entered service on 3 December 1959, and from 1978 the Arktika class made year-round navigation possible in the western Arctic.[12] Traffic reached its Soviet peak in 1987, with sources giving between 6.8 and 7 million tonnes.[13] On 1 October that year Mikhail Gorbachev promised in his Murmansk speech to open the route to foreign ships. That happened on 1 July 1991, and the French ship Astrolabe became the first non-Soviet vessel through.[12][13]
Commercial use started slowly. Kandalaksha carried cargo from Yokohama to Kirkenes in 1995, and in 2010 Nordic Barents became the first non-Russian bulk carrier on the route.[12] The real growth came from Russia's own LNG and oil projects. Moscow named Rosatom infrastructure operator in 2018, and in 2022 route management moved to its Glavsevmorput unit. Total cargo set a record of 37.9 million tonnes in 2024.[12]
The Northwest Passage: Franklin to Manhattan
On the Canadian side the search was older still, and it went worse. John Cabot looked for the way in 1497 and Martin Frobisher in 1576 to 1578. In 1845 Sir John Franklin set out with two ships to complete the last uncharted section. The ships were trapped near King William Island in 1846, Franklin died in 1847, and the survivors abandoned ship in 1848 and walked south. None came back.[5] Robert McClure, captain of one of the ships sent to look for Franklin, crossed the passage in 1850 to 1854, partly by ship and partly by sledge. Franklin's wrecks were found only in 2014 and 2016.[5][14]
The first transit entirely by ship was made by the 45-ton herring boat Gjøa, which left Kristiania in 1903 with six men. Roald Amundsen spent two winters at King William Island and reached Nome at the end of August 1906.[5]
The commercial trial came with oil. When oil was found at Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, Humble Oil wanted to see if tankers could take it to the East Coast. The 115,000 dwt tanker Manhattan was strengthened and entered the passage in 1969 with Canadian and US icebreakers. The voyage succeeded but the sums did not, and the oil ended up in the Alaska pipeline.[5][15] Canadian public opinion saw the voyage as a breach of sovereignty, and Ottawa passed the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act in 1970.[15][16]
In 2013 the 73,500 dwt Nordic Orion came through on a draught too deep for Panama, and in 2016 Crystal Serenity crossed in 28 days with about 1,500 people on board.[5] There is still no regular service. The legal status of these waters is disputed too, as the maritime law article explains.
Legal Status
Russia treats some straits on the NSR as internal waters, relying on historic rights and on Article 234 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which gives coastal states pollution powers in ice-covered areas. The United States regards them as international straits and rejects Russian authority. The difference matters, because in internal waters a foreign ship loses the right of innocent passage and needs the coastal state's permission. Canada takes a similar line on the Northwest Passage. When the US icebreaker Polar Sea crossed in 1985 without asking, Ottawa declared straight baselines around its Arctic. The two countries reached an agreement in 1988 without either giving up its legal view, under which US icebreakers would ask for Canadian consent.[16]
Istanbul Bridge and the China Service
The recent novelty is the Chinese container service. China published its Arctic policy on 28 January 2018, tied these routes to the Belt and Road and gave them the name Polar Silk Road.[17] The same year Maersk ran a one-off trial with the ice-class Venta Maersk from Vladivostok to St Petersburg. The company said the route was usable about three months a year and needed costly icebreakers, and that it was no commercial alternative to existing east-west services.[18]
The Chinese operator Sea Legend did its sums differently. In October 2025 the 4,890 TEU Istanbul Bridge reached Felixstowe from Ningbo in 20 days and 22.5 hours, with no icebreaker, at 15 to 17 knots. The same trip via the Suez Canal takes more than 30 days.[6] For 2026 the company planned eight weekly sailings. Some were delayed or not completed, and the last two ships left on 27 September, earlier than planned, because of ice forecasts. More than 14,000 TEU of export cargo moved during the season.[7]
On paper the distances look persuasive. Yokohama to Murmansk is 12,840 nautical miles via Suez and 5,770 via the NSR. Shanghai to Hamburg compares at 10,800 against 7,300 miles, and Busan to Rotterdam at 11,000 against 7,500. Between northwest Europe and the Far East the saving is about 40%.[12]
The Numbers for 2026
The Centre for High North Logistics (CHNL) counted 104 completed transits by 30 September 2026, above the 103 for all of 2025. Estimated cargo was 3.7 million tonnes, 15% more than all of 2025. About 2.1 million tonnes moved east on tankers and 1.1 million on bulk carriers. Container ships made 13 transits, four of them Asia-Europe voyages that did not touch Russia. The centre projects close to 150 transits and more than 4.5 million tonnes for the year, and stresses that the figures are provisional.[3] Rosatom's Vladimir Panov said on 27 October that he expected more than 7 million tonnes of transit cargo in 2026 and more than 40 million tonnes in total.[19] The two counts rest on different bases, and the official Russian transit figure is well above CHNL's ship-tracking estimate.
Total cargo has stayed far below Moscow's earlier expectations. In 2025 it fell 2.3% to 37.02 million tonnes, 58% of it LNG. Sanctions reach projects such as Arctic LNG 2 and ice-class ships too, and the Arc7 LNG carrier Christophe de Margerie was listed in December 2024.[2]
Ice and Fuel
Ice sets the calendar. NSIDC data show the September minimum falling by an average of 12.1% a decade from 1979 to 2025. The 2025 minimum, 4.60 million square kilometres on 10 September, was the tenth lowest in the 47-year record. The agency also notes no clear downward trend since 2007.[8] For a line operator that means a schedule that moves from year to year. Sea Legend's season runs from about July to October, and its ships work other routes for the rest of the year.[7]
The rules have tightened too. The Polar Code has set design, equipment and training requirements since 1 January 2017.[20] Since 1 July 2024 heavy fuel oil may not be used or carried as fuel in Arctic waters. The rule covers fuels above 900 kg/m³ density at 15 °C or 180 mm²/s viscosity at 50 °C. Coastal states may exempt their own flagged ships until 1 July 2029.[9] So a ship planning an Arctic voyage looks to gas oil or low-viscosity fuel oil.
Frequently asked questions
What are the Arctic shipping routes?
The Arctic shipping routes are the sea lanes through the Arctic, chiefly the Northern Sea Route off Russia and the Northwest Passage through Canada.
How much shorter is the Northern Sea Route than Suez?
It depends on the ports. Yokohama to Murmansk is 12,840 nautical miles via Suez and 5,770 via the NSR. Shanghai to Hamburg compares at 10,800 against 7,300 miles.
Who first sailed the Northern Sea Route?
Vega, on Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld's expedition of 1878 and 1879, made the first full transit with one winter in the ice. The Soviet icebreaker Sibiryakov made the first single-season transit in 1932.
Is heavy fuel oil banned in the Arctic?
Yes. Since 1 July 2024 its use and carriage as fuel have been prohibited in Arctic waters. Exemptions coastal states may grant to their own ships run until 1 July 2029.
Sources
- Wikipedia. Vega Expedition.
- gCaptain. Northern Sea Route Traffic Slips in 2025 as Sanctions Constrain Russia's Arctic Ambitions.
- gCaptain. Northern Sea Route Transits Surpass 2025 Total as Arctic Shipping Gains Momentum, 19 October 2026, CHNL data.
- Polar Record. The Voyage of Sibiryakov, 1932.
- Wikipedia. Northwest Passage.
- Seatrade Maritime. Container Ship Sails from China to Felixstowe in 21 Days via Arctic, 2025.
- gCaptain. China Completes First Season of Regular Arctic Container Service, 7 October 2026.
- National Snow and Ice Data Center. 2025 Arctic Sea Ice Minimum.
- IBIA. HFO Use and Carriage Ban in the Arctic from July 2024; Transport Canada, SSB 19/2025.
- Wikipedia. Northeast Passage.
- Wikipedia. Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld.
- Wikipedia. Northern Sea Route.
- Wikipedia. Murmansk Initiative; Interfax, 8 August 2024; Maritime Executive. Russia Claims New Record for Cargo on the Northern Sea Route, 29 December 2023.
- Royal Museums Greenwich. HMS Erebus and Terror.
- Maritime Executive. Manhattan Anniversary Spotlights Arctic Tanker Safety, 17 September 2014.
- Wikipedia. 1985 Polar Sea controversy.
- CSIS. China Launches the Polar Silk Road, 2 February 2018.
- TerraDaily and AFP. Danish shipping firm tests Russian Arctic route, 27 September 2018.
- Interfax. Rosatom statement, 27 October 2026.
- Wikipedia. Polar Code.
