The Arctic is mostly a vast, ice-covered ocean (which is sometimes considered to be a northern sea of the Atlantic Ocean) surrounded by treeless, frozen ground. The Siberi in Arctic circle is one of the moust deserted area on the Earth.

Siberia (Russian: Сиби́рь, Sibir; Tatar: Seber) is a vast region of Russia constituting almost all of Northern Asia and comprising a large part of the Euro-Asian Steppe. It extends eastward from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, and southward from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and the borders of both Mongolia and China. All but the extreme south-western area of Siberia lies in Russia, and it makes up about 56% of that country’s territory.

Filming in tundra.
The deserted and seemingly endless potholed road to Lovozero cuts through a landscape of vast lakes and forests that has changed little since the nomadic Sami people arrived on the Kola peninsula some 5,000 years ago.

The vast arctic tundra provided good grazing for their reindeer, so they quickly fanned out across invisible borders to the west, into neighbouring Norway, Finland and Sweden. Over time, borders were drawn and strict controls were introduced. Then, during the Cold War, the border between Russia and the West was closed. Contact between Russian and Nordic Sami people was completely cut off.

Much of the displacement was caused by a steady expansion of industry, forestry and mining, and the arrival of hundreds of thousands of workers from other parts of the Soviet Union – many of them arriving as forced labourers in Gulag camps.

Then, during the Cold War, Sami coastal fishermen were ordered to move away from the shores of the Barents Sea, which is currently littered with secretive navy installations, and reindeer herders were forced away from a 200-mile exclusion zone that ran along the Cold War frontier.

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