The Arctic region or Tundra extends for more than 5000 miles from the Siberian Coast and Aleutian Islands in the West to northern Labrador and parts of Greenland in the east. This unique area touches three oceans: the Pacific, the Atlantic and the Arctic, which freezes during the winter and breaks into ice floes during the summer. The climate is fierce and unforgiving. Winters are extremely long and bitterly cold with only a few hours of sunlight per day. In mid-winter, above the Arctic Circle, the sun never rises above the horizon. In mid-summer however, peoples here enjoy 24 hours of sunlight.
The Arctic region gets very little precipitation: it is essentially a frozen desert. Blinding blizzards consist not of new snow but rather existing ice and snow that has been kicked up by gale force winds. This interaction forms snowdrifts in much they same way that sand dunes are formed in the desert.
While the land is frozen in the winter, it is not a wasteland, it comes to life for a very brief period during the summer when the ice melts to form small ponds and streams that dot the Tundra. In summer, the Arctic region becomes an oasis full of hardy, flowering plants. Because of the climate and permafrost, Tundra vegetation is consists mainly of small plants, mosses, lichens and stunted shrubs.
Despite the climate, wildlife in the Arctic is quite diverse. It includes sea mammals such as walruses, seals, and sea lions as well as salt and fresh water fish. Seagulls and waterfowl breed here. Large land mammals like polar bears and caribou migrate across the tundra seasonally. In the summer there are also smaller animals such as rabbits, rodents and owls. Arctic peoples hunted both on land and at sea. Following their food sources, they usually migrated between summer camps along the coast and winter camps on the ice.
The Arctic peoples are made up of two groups, the Inuit and the Aleut, who common language and cultural roots.