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North Pole Day
“And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.”
~ The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798
Inspired by the stark beauty and mysterious wonders of the far North, this striking Arctic tartan weaves together the colors and geometry of polar life. With cool blues, icy whites, and shadowy greys, the pattern evokes drifting ice floes, the silhouettes of polar bears, and the ethereal light of a sun low on the horizon. Much like its Antarctic cousin, this tartan is more than decorative—it's symbolic. Each thread represents a feature of Arctic geography, wildlife, and the rare atmospheric phenomena that make this region unlike anywhere else on Earth.
In the Arctic, nature puts on a show that borders on the supernatural. Because of the unique atmospheric conditions—especially the presence of suspended ice crystals—light and sound behave in ways that defy ordinary experience. This results in a host of strange and beautiful phenomena. Auroras dance across the sky in green, violet, and red. Coronas shimmer around the sun and moon, while anticoronas—colored rings that form around a person’s shadow—emerge like a secret known only to those who notice. A “water sky” signals open water ahead by darkening clouds above it, while “ice blink” reflects ice that may lie far beyond the visible horizon.
Then come the mirages: the fata morgana stretches distant objects into towering, warped illusions, often mistaken for cliffs or ghost ships. Optical haze—or "shimmer"—makes the solid appear to melt. Halos form cold fire rings around the sun. Sundogs hang like vertical slices of rainbow at either side of the sun’s glare. In whiteout conditions, the line between earth and sky disappears entirely. And on the quietest of days, a fogbow—a colorless, ghostly rainbow—can arch silently through the mist.🤍 💙 💗 💚 🖤 🐻❄️ 🧭 ❄️ ❄️ ❄️
Today marks the date of the first verified attainment of the North Pole.
From the official tartan register: "Almost identical in colours to the Antarctic tartan, (the Antarctic has yellow instead of green) and mirrored in geographical design, they are twin tartans, 'poles apart' in geography and wildlife and yet 'poles together' in what they symbolise and the conservation issues that they are designed to help."
Although there are many well known claims for achievement of the pole, most have been disputed or disproven.
The first consistent, verified, and scientifically convincing attainment of the Pole was on 12 May 1926, by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his US sponsor Lincoln Ellsworth from the airship Norge. Norge, though Norwegian-owned, was designed and piloted by the Italian Umberto Nobile. The flight started from Svalbard in Norway, and crossed the Arctic Ocean to Alaska. Nobile, with several scientists and crew from the Norge, overflew the Pole a second time on 24 May 1928, in the airship Italia. The Italia crashed on its return from the Pole, with the loss of half the crew.
For fascinating optical and acoustical phenomena of the arctic, including auroras, coronas, anticoronas, water sky, ice blink, fata morgana, optical haze, halos, sundogs, and whiteout, click the fogbow at the North Pole, taken by Sam Dobson in 2011.