New book reveals the parts of remote Siberia stuck in time

Dikson, a port town on the North Sea route, sits silently beneath the fading light of the aurora borealis during the Arctic winter. The town was once legendary among the polyarniks – carefully selected polar scientists – who were lured there by the romanticism of Arctic exploration — Dikson, a port town on the North Sea route, sits silently beneath the fading light of the aurora borealis during the Arctic winter. The town was once legendary among the *polyarniks* – carefully selected polar scientists – who were lured there by the romanticism of Arctic exploration

Photographer Evgenia Arbugaeva takes readers on a remarkable journey into remote Siberia, in her new book Hyperborea: Stories from the Arctic

A career-to-date retrospective of Russian-born, London-based photographer and filmmaker Evgenia Arbugaeva, new book Hyperborea: Stories from the Arctic takes readers on a remarkable journey into some of Siberia’s most inaccessible areas, offering dreamlike encounters with its people, landscapes and fauna. Arbugaeva grew up in Tiksi, a town on the shore of the Laptev Sea in the Republic of Yakutia. Over the past decade, she has repeatedly returned to the Russian Arctic coast to connect with people living in this inhospitable environment, where time seems to have simultaneously stood still and sped up, as global warming has wrought profound change.

A walrus peers through the doorway of marine biologist Maxim Chakilev’s hut on Cape Serdtse-Kamen in Chukotka. The migrating walruses would usually rest on floating ice, but now, warming sea temperatures force them to haul out on the shore instead, where they are at risk of being trampled in stampedes. At the peak of the haulout, which lasted two weeks, Chakilev estimated that about 100,000 walruses had come ashore

Most of the houses in the village of Enurmino, home to some 300 Chukchi people, were built during the period of Soviet collectivisation in the 1930s and have been little changed since. The village’s inhabitants have been hunting marine mammals for millennia, but warming seas are making it more difficult to predict where they will find prey

Nikolai, a Chukchi elder from Enurmino, remembers the time before Russian colonisation, when people sometimes died if the hunting season was poor but they were generally happier, living off the land and sea in balance with the spirits. He lived in an abandoned meteorological station by the sea with his wife until she passed away last year

Crackling radio waves connect Slava with the meteorological office in Arkhangelsk every three hours, at which point he relays readings to someone he has never met

The aurora borealis appeared the moment Slava opened the booth that houses the meteorological instruments, as if switched on by his magic

The old lighthouse last glowed about ten yeas ago. It now acts as a source of firewood when Slava, the chief of the Khodovarikha meteorological station, runs low. Slava first arrived at the station 13 years ago

Having braved the cold to collect his three-hourly weather data, Slava returns to write down his observations in a journal yellowed by age — The old lighthouse last glowed about ten yeas ago. It now acts as a source of firewood when Slava, the chief of the Khodovarikha meteorological station, runs low. Slava first arrived at the station 13 years ago

Geographical readers can purchase Hyperborea for 25 per cent off the RRP. Simply visit thamesandhudson.com and enter HYPER25 at the checkout. Offer ends 31 October