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50 free Arctic Ocean trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Arctic is the ocean that breaks the rules. It is the smallest and shallowest of the five, the only one smaller than Russia, the least salty because so many great rivers pour into it, and the only one that spends most of the year under a lid of ice. Some oceanographers will not even call it an ocean, preferring 'Arctic Mediterranean Sea'. This quiz covers all of that, plus the Lomonosov Ridge that splits its floor, the Fram Strait through which its water escapes, the Beaufort Gyre and the reasons its ice is vanishing. Then it turns to the people and animals: Pytheas and his 'congealed sea', the myth of the Open Polar Sea, Nansen freezing the Fram into the pack, the airship Norge over the Pole, USS Nautilus beneath it, Wally Herbert's dog sleds, Amundsen's Northwest Passage, the ghost ship Baychimo, polar bears, narwhals, walruses and the seed vault buried in Svalbard. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the Arctic Ocean and its features, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Try our Antarctica, Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How does the Arctic rank among the world's five oceans by size?
Smallest
It is also the shallowest and coldest, covering about 14 million square kilometres, roughly the size of Antarctica.
Q 02The Arctic Ocean is the only ocean smaller than which country?
Russia
Russia's land area of 17.1 million square kilometres beats the ocean's 14.06 million.
Q 03Some oceanographers liken the Arctic Ocean to which enclosed sea, calling it the 'Arctic ___ Sea'?
Mediterranean
It has also been described as roughly equivalent to an estuary of the Atlantic.
Q 04Which ocean has the lowest average salinity of the five?
Arctic
Low evaporation, heavy river inflow and limited exchange with saltier oceans keep it fresh.
Q 05The Arctic Ocean connects to the Pacific through which passage?
Bering Strait
On the Atlantic side its border is the Greenland-Scotland Ridge.
Q 06What is the average depth of the Arctic Ocean?
1,038 m
The Atlantic averages about 3,646 m and the Pacific about 4,000 m by comparison.
Q 07The deepest point in the Arctic Ocean, Molloy Hole, lies in which passage?
Fram Strait
It reaches about 5,550 metres; the same strait between Greenland and Svalbard is where most Arctic water flows out.
Q 08Which underwater mountain chain divides the deep Arctic basin into the Eurasian and Amerasian basins?
Lomonosov Ridge
Drilling suggests it is a sliver of continental crust that split from the Barents-Kara Shelf and may hold 10 billion barrels of oil.
Q 09The Siberian Shelf holds what world record among features of its kind?
Biggest by area
It is one of three Russian shelves, along with the Barents and Chukchi shelves, and holds big oil and gas reserves.
Q 10The large circular current in the Canadian side of the Arctic is called what?
Beaufort Gyre
Strong winds from the Beaufort High drive it clockwise, and it is unusually fresh thanks to Canadian and Siberian rivers.
Q 11The Arctic's surface water stays close to what temperature year-round?
-1.8 °C
That is essentially the freezing point of seawater.
Q 12Arctic sea ice reaches its maximum extent in which month?
April
The minimum comes in September, and the swing between the two is about 7 million square kilometres.
Q 13September 2012's record-low Arctic ice was down what share from the 1979-2000 average?
49%
The mean winter extent has been declining at about 12.85% per decade since 1980.
Q 14Research suggests the Arctic could be ice-free in summer for the first time in human history by which year?
Q 21Nansen's ship Fram was designed with a rounded hull so that the ice would do what?
Push it up on top
Shipwright Colin Archer built it with an outer layer of greenheart wood and almost no keel.
Q 22Which submarine made the first transit under the North Pole in 1958?
USS Nautilus
The first surface ship to reach the Pole was the Soviet icebreaker Arktika in 1977.
Q 23Who led the first surface crossing of the Arctic Ocean, by dog sled from Alaska to Svalbard in 1969?
Wally Herbert
Two decades later he examined Robert Peary's records and found serious discrepancies in his 1909 Pole claim.
2040
Less ice lowers Earth's albedo, which drives further warming in a feedback loop.
Q 15The Arctic region is warming how much faster than the rest of the planet?
Twice as fast
During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum 55 million years ago it was warm enough for tropical plankton.
Q 16Which four great rivers feed the fresh, low-salinity top layer of the Arctic Ocean?
Ob, Yenisei, Lena and Mackenzie
Their water floats on the saltier, denser water below, separated by a halocline.
Q 17Water leaves the Arctic through which strait between Greenland and Svalbard?
Fram
It is about 2,700 metres deep and 350 km wide, which lets water flow in and out at once.
Q 18Which Greek explorer sailed north in 325 BC and described a 'congealed' sea near a land he called Thule?
Pytheas
He was probably describing loose sea ice, and his Thule was probably Norway.
Q 19Which persistent 19th-century myth held that warm, ice-free water surrounded the North Pole?
Open Polar Sea
British Admiralty secretary John Barrow promoted expeditions in search of it from 1818 to 1845; it was disproven by the early 1900s.
Q 20Who made the first nautical crossing of the Arctic Ocean, from 1893 to 1896?
Fridtjof Nansen
His plan was to freeze the ship Fram into the ice and let it drift across the top of the world.
Q 24The first undisputed expedition to reach the North Pole did so in 1926 aboard what?
An airship
The Norge overflew the Pole with 16 men, including Roald Amundsen; the earlier claims of Cook, Peary and Byrd are all disputed.
Q 25Robert Peary claimed to reach the North Pole on 6 April 1909 accompanied by four Inuit men and whom?
Matthew Henson
Henson's account of tortuous detours contradicts Peary's story of a straight-line dash, one reason the claim is disputed.
Q 26Which explorer completed the first passage of the Northwest Passage entirely by ship, in 1903-1906?
Roald Amundsen
He sailed the small sloop Gjøa from Greenland to Alaska along a southerly route John Rae had found in 1854.
Q 27In which year did Sir John Franklin's two-ship Northwest Passage expedition vanish?
1845
Franklin died in 1847 and Captain Francis Crozier took command; searches for the ships mapped much of the Canadian Arctic.
Q 28Which airline flew the first commercial flights over the Arctic Ocean in 1954, LA to Copenhagen?
Scandinavian Airlines
The polar route cut hours off the trip between the US West Coast and Europe.
Q 29From 1937, which country began monitoring the Arctic from manned stations on drifting ice floes?
Soviet Union
The scientific settlements were carried thousands of kilometres by the ice; Russia continued the drifting-station programme after the Soviet era.
Q 30In which year was the ghost ship Baychimo abandoned, before drifting the Arctic for decades?
1931
The Hudson's Bay Company fur trader was last sighted in 1969.