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At 7 this morning, Copenhagen time, a truck dropped off a huge wooden box more than 2 metres tall. It stand in one of Copenhagen’s oldest squares, the site of the original city hall, surrounded by majestic buildings. On this day it was surrounded by more as well – immediately behind the box, a collection of three sides wooden structures went up, to be topped by breathtaking photos of the Arctic, in all its splendour and fragility.

Silent Sound completed her epic voyage through the Canadian Arctic on October 10, four months and four days after slipping her moorings in Victoria, BC. It was a cold day with pouring rain when she pulled into Halifax Harbour, but there was still a crowd of family and friends waiting to welcome us ashore, reminding us of the community that has formed around the Open Passage Expedition.

The front yard of the average Inuit home will contain several snowmobiles, some of them working, some of them being repaired, some in a state of despair. There will also be a few quad bikes, and, if the resident works for the government or one of the town’s big companies, they will have a late model truck or SUV parked in the driveway. Mounted on a wooden stand next to their modest bungalow will be a steel tank containing diesel that slowly drips into their furnace and keeps them warm. Spread around the rest of the yard will be an array of broken toys, wooden sleds, chained dogs and the other detritus of modern northern life.

There was more sea ice in the Arctic this summer than in the past two years, contrary to early spring ice forecasts and the longer term trend of melting sea ice. “Arctic ice is holding in there, with about 20 percent more than in 2007,” Dr Humfrey Melling, a research scientist with Canada’s Institute of Ocean Sciences, told me.

Silent Sound has crossed the Arctic Circle marking her official transit of the Northwest Passage! We entered the Arctic via the Bering Sea two months ago to the day, and since then we’ve sailed some 3,400 nautical miles, seen a lot of ice and learned a lot about the Canadian North.

The first time I saw one I couldn’t believe my eyes. I checked the charts, looked through the binoculars and asked the crew to double check what I was seeing. A small island had suddenly grown by a few hundred metres, towering high on the horizon miles away.

Shortly before Silent Sound set off for the Canadian Arctic last spring the region’s seal population made the headlines. The European Union banned seal products, angering Inuit hunters and artisans and prompting Canada’s governor general Michaelle Jean to skin one of the creatures and eat a piece of its heart raw to show solidarity with the Inuit.

Now that we are ‘on the road’ again I can give you some impressions of the third legendary sea we are travelling through, the Laptev Sea. It is named after Dimitry Laptev, one of the leaders of ther famous russian Great Arctic Expedition. Lying between the Taimyr peninsula and the New Siberian islands, the Laptev is, like the Barents and the Kara, part of the hgue russian arctic continental shelf. It is also, like the Kara, shallow (we haven’t been through water deeper than 25 metres yet!), and very, very empty.

Silent Sound may be halfway home, but we’re now entering some of the most treacherous waters in the Arctic as we sail past the graves of those who died seeking this passage hundreds of years ago.

We have been anchored for a day in the calm and beautiful Bukta Pronchishchevoy, basking in 15 degree temperatures and bright sunshine. It’s ideal for filming the rarely seen Laptev walrus (which Frederik is doing) and adjusting to the 6 hour time change between Murmansk and Tiksi which we chose to’ implement’ on ‘ship time’ here.