The Next Cold War

If you are going to war in Finland’s Arctic, you’ll need skis and tanks, of course, but you may also need newspapers. The Fins have been using this cheap, homemade innovation for sweat-absorbent (and disposable) insoles for decades. Warm boots mean sweat, and sweat means wet and cold feet if you happen to be deployed in a forest fighting a war with no time to take your boots off to dry them. Fresh insoles can keep you moving and fighting, especially in temperatures that can reach negative 40 degrees Celsius.

Finland has been preparing for war with Russia for more than eighty years—ever since the Soviet invasion at the beginning of World War II that led to the annexation of Finnish territory. After so many decades and billions of dollars spent on military exercises, they’ve achieved a kind of mastery of the use of artillery in this Nordic theater, and they’re happy to share this expertise with their neighbors. In fact, much of the weaponry and tactics Ukraine has been using in its fight against Russia have long been part of the Finnish strategy.

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A Finnish soldier practices lighting a fire without matches or a lighter. Sodankylä, Finland, February, 2023.

One thing I’ve learned over decades of covering the Arctic is that this is a uniquely problematic environment in which to wage war. Winter brings weeks of near total darkness, while summers are marked by unrelenting daylight. Here, before any shooting starts, the greatest threat you’ll face is the weather. The key to surviving is understanding how snow and ice behave in the wilderness, how to move through these elements, and how to use them to your advantage.

In 2019, I toured the Finnish and Norwegian encampments during joint ground exercises with US and British troops in Norrbotten, Sweden—my third trip to the Nordic front. American, British, and Norwegian troops played the enemy this time, helping to replicate what an invasion might look like. We were in a dense forest, deep snow. Biting cold. You could hear the deep chugging of a Leopard 2 tank, the most sophisticated in the European theater, and vital to Ukraine’s defense. You could hear skis slithering across the snow as rows of infantry moved between the trees with remarkable agility. Helicopters thudded overhead; snowmobiles zipped across the horizon. At one point, troops gathered around a Norwegian priest, who led an impromptu prayer next to one of the Leopard 2s. The engines went quiet, and you could hear a light breeze brushing the branches as the priest spoke. When he was done, the Leopard 2s cranked up again.

I’ve been with the idea of Arctic conflict since childhood, growing up in Canada during the Cold War. My first exploration of this region as a photographer began in 1993, documenting mining in the Northwest Territories. In 2006 I headed to Afghanistan to cover the war, what ended up being a five-year commitment, and about a year or so into that assignment I was struck by the news that Russians had planted a flag on the North Pole’s seabed. It became clear to me that the most pressing danger to humankind wasn’t terrorism, but the growing existential threat posed by climate change—the environmental hazards and geopolitical insecurity it introduced. I began to research the Arctic, which grew into an obsession over threats much closer to home. By 2015, I’d shifted my focus to the changing geopolitics and militarization of the region, looking at the legacy of Cold War defense strategies in Alaska, across Canada, and into Greenland. A few years later, my fieldwork led to the Nordic region to look at how Finland, Norway, and Sweden—countries that endured conflict during World War II and what we would now call hybrid warfare during the Cold War—were preparing for the possibility of a Russian invasion. Neither Sweden nor Finland was part of NATO at the time. But Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 dramatically altered the calculus of many Western European countries that now find themselves at the edge of a war that could consume the continent.

On a 2023 trip to Finland, it became apparent to me that the US, by now Finland’s official military ally, was sorely deficient in any Arctic capability. I watched US soldiers jump into a hole cut into a frozen lake—fully dressed, backpack on with skis strapped to it. Many of them struggled, and some panicked. One soldier was so shocked by the cold water that he couldn’t swim at all and instead clung to his floating backpack—refusing, in a shivering voice, the Finnish military trainer’s directions. Eventually the trainer coached him toward the ice’s edge so he could climb out of the water. The Finns, meanwhile, jumped in, got out, and in freezing temperatures changed their wet clothes for dry as if it were a summer day.

During the predawn hours of another trip, I stood in the serenity of a dense, snow-covered forest for a live-fire exercise held by the Finnish army. The tranquility was suddenly ripped apart by the nightmare flash of rockets. We were at Rovajärvi, the largest artillery range in Western Europe, a landscape endlessly dotted with military vehicles draped in camouflage, like a surreal art installation of industrial sculptures. The scale and extraordinary organization of this installation for such a small country speaks to the importance of Finland’s role in deterring Europe’s greatest threat, which sits just seventy miles to the east. The range also happens to be in the Lapland region of Finland, near the city of Rovaniemi, which was destroyed by the Germans in WW II, and which the Finns claim to be the home of Santa Claus.

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Map by Jenn Boggs

This tension between the ideas of what the Arctic is has been at the center of my fascination with it. To juxtapose these two narratives—of fairy tale and conflict—is to see the inherent strangeness of trying to decode such a complicated region. As the writer Barry Lopez discovered, the Arctic is a landscape of dreams and projections. To many, it is a mythical part of the world that invites speculation and fantasy. To others, it’s Earth’s evidence room, a place where all of our environmental negligence and malpractice comes to a head. To others still, it’s like a geopolitical chessboard.

Over the years of photographing and interviewing people invested in this region’s identity and its future—from academics to politicos to military officials—perhaps the most heavily debated question revolves around the idea of whether the Arctic is a region of peace or conflict. On the one hand, much of the region is too physically foreboding for combat. And yet for decades the Cold War, old and new, has played out almost invisibly here—through nuclear submarines jockeying under the sea ice, Russia planting a flag at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean; espionage, disinformation campaigns, cyberattacks; and policymakers mapping out routes of access based on projected ice decline.

In the era of Vladimir Putin, and especially with the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, new narratives are crowding their way in among the more familiar ones, so that the Arctic now seems precariously balanced—both environmentally and militarily. What is unquestionable is the fact that the Arctic has reached an unprecedented tipping point. Global powers are examining and asserting their possible claims to territory while climate change reconfigures how we imagine the Arctic Circle—a place famous for extreme cold and ice. The questions I keep asking are: As the world keeps warming, how does the Arctic get redefined? And is there a point at which it ceases to exist?

One fact, though, reverberates through all the others: Ukraine’s July 2024 drone strike on Russia’s Olenya air base marks the first incursion of combat in the Arctic since World War II. Olenya is one of several bases many in the West assumed would be the source of a hypothetical attack on the US and Canada during the Cold War. So war has finally come to the Arctic, but not in the ways we imagined it would. And like many of the narratives that shape this region—both real and imagined—its future, and by extension the future of the world order, is full of unknowns.

This story was produced in partnership with the National Geographic Society and the Pulitzer Center.

A Finnish soldier holds a special saw for testing ice thickness while training US troops for winter warfare. Sodankylä, Finland, February, 2023.

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A Finnish soldier demonstrates “through-the-ice” recovery techniques to US troops. Sodankylä, Finland, February, 2023.

Norwegian soldiers practicing how to move and set up camp. Øversjødalen, Norway, January, 2020.

Finnish soldiers participate in a live-fire exercise on Rovajärvi, the largest artillery range in Western Europe. Lapland, Finland, December, 2018.

Scouts on motorbikes, part of the Finnish tank-unit strategy used to survey enemy activity as well as draw in enemy units. Lapland, Finland, December, 2018

A US Marine struggles during a “through-the-ice” exercise, which includes wearing and recovering his skis while in the water. Norway, January, 2020.

Finnish and US soldiers navigate an obstacle course. Sodankylä, Finland, February, 2023.

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Finnish soldiers remove their socks and boots for a cold-weather-injury inspection during winter-warfare training. Sodankylä, Finland, February, 2023.

The road to the Russian border, which lies just over the horizon line. East of Kirkenes, Norway, January, 2020.

Artillery shells prepared for live-fire exercises. Rovajärvi, Finland, December, 2018.

Norwegian soldiers are led in a prayer during joint exercises with Finland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States armed forces. Norrbotten, Sweden, March, 2019.

A camouflaged Finnish military command center in a forest east of Rovaniemi. Lapland, Finland, December, 2018.

Swedish soldiers prepare food in a winter-camouflaged tent during military exercises. Norrbotten, Sweden, March, 2019.

US soldiers tethered together and pulled by a Finnish tracked vehicle, a strategy used for the swift movement and repositioning of infantry. Sodankylä, Finland, February, 2023.

A rocket fired from a HIMARS launcher during live-fire exercises. Rovajärvi, Finland, December, 2018.

US solders (in green) struggle to learn how to scale a slope while training with Finnish soldiers. Sodankylä, Finland, February, 2023.

Snowflakes fall on the surface of the water as a Norwegian military explosives-ordnance-disposal diver learns to locate World War II–era munitions. Narvik, Norway, February, 2020.