List of Arctic expeditions

15th century

• 1472: Didrik Pining and Hans Pothorst mark the first of the cartographic expeditions to Greenland
• 1496: Grigory Istoma, venturing out of the White Sea, travels along the Murman Coast and the coast of northern Norway

  16th century

• 1553: English expedition led by Hugh Willoughby with Richard Chancellor as second in command searches for the Northeast Passage
• 1557: English expedition led by Stephen Borough reaches the Kara Strait
• 1576–1578: English expeditions led by Martin Frobisher reach Baffin Island
• 1579: Danish-Norwegian expedition led by James Alday fails to reach Greenland due to ice
• 1580: English expedition led by Arthur Pet and Charles Jackman reaches the Kara Sea
• 1581: Danish-Norwegian expedition led by Magnus Heinason fails to reach Greenland due to ice
• 1585–1587: English expeditions led by John Davis explore the Davis Strait–Baffin Bay region and reach Upernavik
• 1594: Dutch expedition led by Willem Barentsz, Cornelis Nay and Brandt Tetgales reaches the Kara Sea via Yugorsky Strait
• 1595: Dutch expedition led by Cornelis Nay fails to make further progress towards a Northeast Passage than in the previous year
• 1596–1597: Dutch expedition piloted by Willem Barentsz discovers Spitsbergen and registered the first recorded Farthest North

  17th century

• 1605–1607: Danish-Norwegian king, Christian IV of Denmark, sends three expeditions led by John Cunningham, Godske Lindenov and Carsten Richardson, to search for the lost Eastern Settlement, one of the Norse colonies on Greenland
• 1606: John Knight, who had captained the in 1605 with John Cunningham, dies commanding a joint Muscovy Company/East India Company expedition in search of the Northwest Passage
• 1607: Henry Hudson explores Spitsbergen
• 1608: Henry Hudson gets as far as Novaya Zemlya in his attempt to find the Northeast Passage
• 1609: another unsuccessful attempt by Henry Hudson at finding the Northeast Passage
• 1610: Jonas Poole thoroughly explores Spitsbergen's west coast, reporting that he saw a "great store of whales"; this report leads to the establishment of the English whaling trade
• 1610: Russian Kondratiy Kurochkin explores the mouth of the Yenisei River and the adjoining coast
• 1610–1611: Henry Hudson reaches Hudson Bay in an attempt to find the Northwest Passage
• 1612: James Hall and William Baffin explore southwest Greenland
• 1612–1613: Button expedition, commanded by Thomas Button, in search of the Northwest Passage
• 1613: Several whaling expeditions, consisting of a total of at least thirty ships from England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands crowd Spitsbergen's west coast
• 1614: Dutch and French expeditions discover Jan Mayen
• 1615: Robert Fotherby, in the pinnace Richard, is the first English expedition to reach Jan Mayen
• 1615: English expedition captained by Robert Bylot and piloted by William Baffin reaches the Foxe Basin in search of the Northwest Passage
• 1616: English expedition captained by Robert Bylot and piloted by William Baffin explores the Davis Strait–Baffin Bay region
• 1619–1620: Danish-Norwegian expedition led by Jens Munk in Enhiørningen and Lamprenen to discover the Northwest Passage penetrated Davis Strait as far north as 69°, found Frobisher Bay, spent a winter in Hudson Bay
• 1633–1634: I. Rebrov explores the mouth of the Lena River
• 1633–1635: Ilya Perfilyev explores the Lena and Yana Rivers and intervening coast
• 1638: I. Rebrov explores coast between the Lena and Indigirka Rivers
• 1641: Dimitry Zyryan and Mikhail Stadukhin explore the mouth of the Indigirka River and adjoining coast
• 1646: I. Ignatyev explores the mouth of the Kolyma River and adjoining coast
• 1648: Ya. Semyonov explores the mouth of Kotuy River and adjoining coast
• 1648: Semyon Dezhnev and Fedot Alekseyevich Popov explore from the Kolyma River through the Bering Strait
• 1649: Mikhail Stadukhin explores the coast from the Kolyma River to the Bering Strait
• 1676: English expedition led by John Wood fails to find the Northeast Passage
• 1686–1687: Ivan Tolstoukhov expedition explores the mouth of the Yenisey River and the coast of the Taymyr Peninsula

  18th century

• 1712: Merkury Vagin and Yakov Permyakov explore the vicinity of the mouth of the Yana River and adjoining coasts, both were murdered by mutineering expedition members
• 1725–1730: Vitus Bering leads the First Kamchatka expedition
• 1728: Claus Paarss attempts to cross Greenland's interior from the west in search of the old Norse Eastern Settlement
• 1733–1743: Second Kamchatka expedition explores the north coast of Russia and discovers Alaska
• 1751: Lars Dalager attempts to find the lost Eastern Settlement by crossing Greenland's ice sheet from the west
• 1751–1753: Peder Olsen Walløe explores the east coast of Greenland from Cape Farewell in umiaks
• 1760–1763: S. F. Loshkin explores Novaya Zemlya
• 1765–1766: Vasily Chichagov explores the Kola Peninsula coast and Spitzbergen
• 1768–1769: F. F. Rozmyslov explores Novaya Zemlya and the Matochkin Strait
• 1770–1771: Samuel Hearne traces the Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean
• 1773: Ivan Lyakhov discovered Kotelny Island
• 1773: The Phipps expedition towards the North Pole reaches 80° 37 N, north of Spitsbergen. This was the first Arctic expedition to carry out scientific research.
• 1776–1780: James Cook charts the northwestern coast of America and sails through the Bering Strait during his third voyage in search of the Northwest Passage
• 1785–1794: Russian expedition led by Joseph Billings explores Eastern Siberia, the Aleutian Islands, and the west coast of Alaska
• 1789: Alexander Mackenzie traces the Mackenzie River to the Arctic Ocean

  19th century

Early Period (1800–1818)

• 1800: Yakov Sannikov charts Stolbovoy Island
• 1809–1811: Yakov Sannikov and Matvei Gedenschtrom explore the New Siberian Islands
• 1815–1818: Otto von Kotzebue explores the Bering Strait during the Rurik expedition

  Ross">John Ross (Royal Navy officer)">Ross, Parry">William Edward Parry">Parry and Franklin">John Franklin">Franklin (1818–1846)

• 1818: Royal Navy expedition led by captain David Buchan sails north from Spitsbergen
• 1818: Royal Navy expedition led by John Ross with his nephew James Clark Ross, sails north along the west coast of Greenland to Pituffik in search of the Northwest Passage and encounters the Inughuit of Cape York
• 1819: Royal Navy expedition aboard and led by William Edward Parry in search of the Northwest Passage
• 1819–1822: The Coppermine expedition in northern Canada, led by John Franklin, includes George Back and John Richardson

  1820s

• 1820–1824: Ferdinand von Wrangel and Fyodor Matyushkin explore the East Siberian Sea and the Chukchi Sea areas
• 1821–1824: Fyodor Litke explores the eastern Barents Sea and the west coast of Novaya Zemlya, including Matochkin Strait
• 1821–1823: Pyotr Anjou continues exploration of New Siberian Islands
• 1822: William Scoresby lands in east Greenland near the mouth of the fjord system that would later be named for him – Scoresby Sound
• 1823: Douglas Clavering and Edward Sabine explore East Greenland northwards to Clavering Island, where they get in contact with the now extinct Inuit of Northeast Greenland
• 1825–1827: The Mackenzie River expedition descends the Mackenzie River and maps much of the Arctic coast
• 1826: Frederick William Beechey aboard explores the Alaskan coast from Point Barrow to the Bering Strait
• 1827: First Norwegian expedition to the Arctic, led by Baltazar Mathias Keilhau
• 1827: Royal Navy expedition to Spitsbergen led by William Edward Parry reaches 82°45 N
• 1828–1830: Danish expedition led by Wilhelm August Graah tries to locate the Eastern Settlement in southeast Greenland, but does not reach Ammassalik Island.
• 1829–1833: Royal Navy expedition led by John Ross to search for the Northwest Passage explores James Ross Strait and King William Land, locates the North Magnetic Pole

  1830s and 1840s

• 1832–1835: Pyotr Pakhtusov explores the southern half of the eastern coast of Novaya Zemlya
• 1833–1835: Royal Navy expedition led by George Back from Fort Reliance to the mouth of the Back River at Chantrey Inlet
• 1836: George Back attempts to ascertain if Boothia Peninsula is an island or a peninsula but his ship,, is trapped by ice near Southampton Island
• 1837: Karl Ernst von Baer leads a natural history expedition to Novaya Zemlya
• 1838–1839: Avgust Tsivolko leads an expedition to Novaya Zemlya, primarily for surveying
• 1838–1840: La Recherche expedition, under the command of Joseph Paul Gaimard, a scientific venture to explore the islands in the North Atlantic
• 1845: Franklin's Northwest Passage expedition is sent to map the remaining Northwest Passage

  Search for Franklin">Franklin's lost expedition">Franklin (1846–1857)

• 1848: John Richardson and John Rae lead the Rae–Richardson Arctic expedition and search overland for Franklin's lost expedition
• 1849: Henry Kellett discovers Herald Island searching for Franklin's lost expedition
• 1850–1854: McClure Arctic expedition led by Robert McClure, a British search for the members of Franklin's lost expedition
• 1850–1851: First Grinnell expedition led by Edwin De Haven, the first American search for the members of Franklin's lost expedition, finds the graves of crew members John Torrington, William Braine and John Hartnell on Beechey Island
• 1851: William Kennedy leads a search expedition for Franklin in the Prince Albert, sponsored by Lady Franklin
• 1852: Edward Augustus Inglefield sets out to search for Franklin's ill-fated expedition in the, also sponsored by Jane Franklin
• 1853–1855: Second Grinnell expedition led by Elisha Kane looks for Franklin searching Grinnell Land
• 1857–1859: McClintock Arctic expedition led by Francis Leopold McClintock is the fifth expedition sponsored by Lady Franklin and finds artefacts, a crew member's skeleton and the final written communications from the last survivors of the Franklin expedition