Arctic With Bruce Parry

Its summer solstice in Siberia, a time of endless daylight and extraordinary festivals. Bruce Parry journeys to meet the Sakha horse people and a remote encampment of Eveny reindeer herders in the wild Verkhoyansk Mountains, where he finds out how they are embracing the challenges of a post-Soviet Arctic. For Bruce, its also a journey of personal discovery as he goes in search of the ancient shamanic religion of these wild northern lands.

Bruce travels to Alaska, Americas last great wilderness, where modern-day pioneers are harvesting the vast natural wealth of the seas. Bruce learns the ropes onboard a salmon-fishing boat, and dives to the bottom of the Bering Sea to look for gold. In the far north Bruce witnesses the annual whale hunt of the Inupiak people whose ancient tradition is now at odds with the modern world and questions what is more important: the life of a whale or the death of a culture?

The final stage of Bruce Parrys six-month journey is through Arctic Europe. He travels to a remote Russian village, deep within the vast Boreal forest that stretches for thousands of miles across the top of the world. Life here has changed little for hundreds of years, and people still depend on the food they gather from the woods that surround them. Bruce then travels north into Norway, where he lives with the Saami, reindeer herders who use snow machines, boats and even helicopters to move their animals. Bruces last stop is a remote scientific community in the Svalbard archipelago, where he learns about the fragility of Arctic ecosystem. As the long winter night draws in, Bruce is treated to an iconic Arctic spectacle as the aurora borealis light up the night sky.