NEW LAND is an arctic adventure with an historical twist - A 1000km epic journey into the arctic wilderness.
Tobias Thorleifsson is a ‘polar nerd’ with a curious dream: He wants to travel through the northenmost Canadian arctic in the footsteps of Otto Svedrup – a polar legend no-one has heard about. His noble quest: a pile of rocks.
In 1898 Otto Svedrup set off from Norway aboard the famous ship, the Fram. With a crew of 16 men he ventured into the unknown. Over the next four years they achieved the greatest mapping feat of their time - mapping 150 000 square km’s of land in the arctic.
In his expedition diary, Svedrup writes that they built a cairn at their Northernmost position, Land’s Lokk – the end of Land. To date this cairn has never been found. Teaming up with American polar traveler, John Huston and Canadian Hugh Dale-Harris the team travels to Lands Lokk in search of Sverdrup’s lost cairn. South African filmmaker, Kyle O’Donoghue was the 4th member of the team who documents this incredible journey to the edge of the world. We witness a stand-off with a polar bear, a dance with arctic wolves and the silent awe of prehistoric musk oxen.
The film is an intimate, humorous, honest story of four men and four tempestuous Inuit dogs, Napu, Larry, Axel and Elle. Their search for traces of a forgotten polar explorer takes them on an unforgettable journey through one of the most intriguing places on earth.
“I venture to assert that no other arctic region can show a greater abundance of specimens of arctic animals. It would be correct to consider these regions as the sole natural Arctic Zoological gardens which have escaped the destructive hand of man”
Otto Sverdrup, Oslo, Norway, January 1929
