While their wives are at home, fretting about their husbands lives, the polar explorers Larsen, Svendsen and Eriksen embark on a dangerous expedition into the Arctic. In Greenland they hire the Eskimo Milak as a musher. As Svendsen follows the coastline by ship, Larsen, Eriksen and Milak head towards the North Cape by sled. Competing against a rivalling American expedition, they live through a number of dangerous adventures involving crevasses, snow storms and polar bears. Ultimately, they run out of provisions. Exhausted, the men break down in the middle of the endless ice desert. One dog, however, saves them. ... Shot to a large extent on the island of Spitsbergen and on location in Greenland "based on true events of the expeditions by Scott, Mawsen and Koch". The polar bear, though, came from Hamburg's zoo, Hagenbeck's Tierpark.