The image of this lonely, troubled young woman spending her last moments among the icebound wreckage before walking naked into the dark is a haunting one.

The icebound river landscape may be at least 34 million years old, meaning that it would date to right before ice encrusted Antarctica.

With climate change, shipping routes are becoming less icebound and easier to navigate, making the Arctic more accessible and attractive for competitive commercial exploitation, as well as military adventurism.

As diphtheria - a serious and sometimes fatal bacterial infection - spread among Nome's people, its port was icebound, meaning antitoxin would have to be delivered overland.

When he writes that one of the icebound scientists was “mesmerized by its character; its power; its spectacular unsettling sounds — sometimes cracking like gunfire, sometimes shrieking as it split and cleaved,” we understand the fascination.