Polar Express
Keith Gessen travels on the Nordic Odyssey, a cargo ship that, thanks to rising temperatures, can sail the Northeast Passage, from Russia to China.
At the pier in Murmansk, the world's largest city north of the Arctic Circle, trains kept pulling in with coal and iron ore. Tall yellow cranes deposited it onto huge mounds. "It was as if Russia were coughing up her insides." And through these waters, Danish ships now sail to China—the new polar express.