What is this shadow in the Arctic?

0:00 You can learn a lot about a place from its shadows, how high its mountains are,

0:06 how dense its cities, how long its days are in the summer,

0:09 and how short they are in winter.

0:12 But sometimes it's not clear what a shadow means.

0:17 Not too long ago, I saw this shadow

0:19 on Google Maps and I wanted to know its story.

0:22 The shadow is on Novaya Zemlya,

0:24 a Russian archipelago in the Arctic where the sun never

0:27 rises in the winter and never sets in the summer.

0:30 I first saw it on Reddit in December 2025.

0:33 In the comments, people had their theories, an antenna, a microwave relay tower,

0:38 a lighthouse, but one explanation caught my eye most of all.

0:43 It's a cross.

0:46 Over the past few weeks,

0:47 I've gotten obsessed with figuring out what this thing is.

0:49 If it's a cross, what is it doing here in the middle of nowhere?

0:54 Are there more like it?

0:56 And who are the people who put it there?

0:58 (audio chiming) (keyboard clacking) (audio chiming) Okay, so what do we know?

1:07 The object was photographed by satellite on August 12th,

1:12 2025 in the next most recent historical image on Google Earth from March 2021,

1:20 it isn't there, which means that it was

1:25 installed sometime in that span of four years.

1:30 Novaya Zemlya is an archipelago made up of two islands,

1:33 Yuzhny Island and Severny Island.

1:35 That's Russian for southern island and northern island.

1:39 The object sits right in the middle at the southernmost part of Severny Island.

1:44 It's an island that is long served as a proving

1:46 ground for Russia's strategic ambitions in the Arctic.

1:51 (person speaking in foreign language)- Just 50 kilometres away

1:57 from this shadow is the 1961 test site of Tsar Bomba,

2:01 the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated.

2:04 Between the mid 1950s and 1990,

2:06 Russia conducted a total of 132 weapons tests on Novaya Zemlya.

2:14 Pretty quickly, I learned that Russia still takes an interest in Novaya Zemlya.

2:18 On the Reddit post, one user linked to a 2024

2:21 article about a church building mission on Novaya Zemlya,

2:24 and a project involving the placement of large crosses elsewhere in the Arctic.

2:29 At the bottom of the article was this photo, the caption reads a huge cross was

2:34 erected in Archipelago Franz Josef Land in 2023.

2:40 Franz Josef Land is another Russian Archipelago, 800 kilometres north.

2:44 And the article mentioned another cross

2:46 too on the Norwegian Archipelago of Svalbard, all the way over here.

2:51 The caption goes on.

2:52 Behind the initiative or the Orthodox Church,

2:55 the Russian Geographical Society, and the Russian Armed Forces.

3:00 This is a geopolitical statement rather than a religious statement.

3:05 Because some of these, you know, seems so remote,

3:07 it's like who is gonna see this thing?

3:09 Why are they doing it?

3:11 Where they are doing it?

3:14 This is not new actually in the context of Russia,

3:16 because I mean, about the Arctic.

3:18 In 2007, Explorer Arthur Chillingarov went to the North Pole

3:22 and he planted the Russian titanium flag in the ocean floor.

3:27 (Arthur speaking in foreign language)- But then

3:40 Russians are doing something extra here.

3:43 They're bringing their, you know,

3:45 religion less symbols and trying to provocate, maybe.

3:50 [Christophe] On Svalbard in 2023, the cross wasn't the only Russian symbol.

3:54 Look closer at these photos and you can see an orange and black ribbon.

3:58 This is called the St.

3:59 George ribbon.

4:00 It's a Russian military symbol that's become an icon

4:02 of support for the Russian war against Ukraine.

4:05 And already Bishop is very political.

4:10 [Christophe] In December 2011, Patriarch Kirill,

4:12 the head of the Russian Orthodox Church,

4:14 established a new diocese covering a vast area of the Russian Arctic,

4:18 and appointed this man, Bishop Vladika Iakov in charge.

4:22 Bishop Iakov has travelled to the remote reaches of his diocese,

4:25 erecting crosses and conducting symbolic blessings,

4:28 including a 2014 mission where he installed an orthodox cross on the North Pole.

4:34 The front page of the website

4:36 for Bishop Iakov's diocese features an illustration

4:38 of orthodox religious symbols reaching their way

4:41 all the way up to the North Pole.

4:43 Along with a note from Bishop Iakov,

4:45 describing the diocese mission as reviving the Russian

4:48 Arctic under what it calls the Russian Arctic Project.

4:53 He's a very important person, I guess, for Russia and for Russian Arctic.

4:57 This has become a regular part of the Orthodox Church's role in Russia.

5:01 Church leaders bless soldiers, military bases,

5:04 even weapons with holy water and special ceremonies,

5:07 and there are key influence on public opinion about the war.

5:12 Okay, so to recap really quick under the title, the Russian Arctic project,

5:16 the Russian Orthodox Church has partnered with the Russian

5:19 Military to plant huge orthodox crosses in the Arctic.

5:23 They planted one here in Svalbard and one here in Franz Josef Land.

5:27 So it seems like that's what this probably is too.

5:30 Here's the problem though now.

5:31 None of these websites actually confirm that or have a picture of it,

5:36 and I wanted proof, so I came up with a plan.

5:39 Hey, real quick, I've been kind of laser focused on reading

5:43 about this one very specific story for the past few weeks, but most of the time,

5:47 I preferred to read about a variety of topics to keep my media diet balanced.

5:52 Stories like why lawyers buy so many billboards,

5:55 how people are renting sheep to graze land on solar farms,

5:59 or how new platforms are letting people bet on basically everything.

6:02 These are the kinds of stories that The Hustle

6:04 covers every day in their free newsletter.

6:06 They're the sponsor of this video.

6:07 I've been a subscriber since January 2020.

6:13 How about that?

6:14 I've been a subscriber for all of that time

6:15 because I love discovering stuff like this.

6:18 I especially read it when I am looking for new things to cover.

6:22 It's quick, it's well written and I always leave having read it

6:26 with something new to think about or talk about or keep researching.

6:30 If you like the kinds of stories I cover on this channel,

6:32 I think you'll love it.

6:33 If you go to the link in the description,

6:34 you can subscribe to The Hustle and you'll get

6:37 their latest trends report and you can thank me later.

6:39 Okay, let's get back to the video.

6:42 We already have photographic proof of these two orthodox crosses.

6:46 If I could also find them on satellite imagery

6:48 and their shadows look the same as this shadow,

6:51 maybe that would confirm that this one was

6:53 also laid down by the Russian Arctic project.

6:59 Svalbard is a remote arctic archipelago.

7:02 It belongs to Norway,

7:03 but it's governed by a unique treaty from over a century ago

7:07 that allows almost anyone to live and work there without a visa.

7:11 In the late 1920s and early 1930s,

7:13 the Soviet Union took over two settlements on Svalbard,

7:16 Barentsberg and Pyramiden.

7:19 Pyramiden was once the world's northernmost town,

7:21 a Soviet coal mining settlement home to 2,000 people,

7:25 but today it's a ghost town.

7:28 When the coal mine closed in 1998, Pyramiden was abandoned.

7:33 Playgrounds and classrooms, a cafeteria and a gym, dirty dishes and paperwork.

7:39 Everything in the town is frozen in time.

7:46 I found this video from August 2023 on the Russian social media site VK.

7:51 It was posted by an account named Arktikugol.

7:53 It shows a team led by Bishop Iakov,

7:56 erecting across on the outskirts of Pyramiden.

7:59 But as I looked closer and closer,

8:02 I realised there was something weird about it.

8:06 This pier and these smokestacks in the background

8:08 match these visible and satellite imagery,

8:11 so does this dark spot on the other side,

8:13 which would place the cross right about here.

8:16 But across multiple satellite imagery sites, it isn't there.

8:20 As I read more of The Barents Observer coverage, I realised why.

8:24 The cross was moved.

8:28 The initial cross had been placed without Norway's knowledge,

8:31 and the governor of Svalbard demanded it be moved.

8:33 Arktikugol, which is a state-owned Russian coal mining

8:36 company that still runs operations in Pyramiden asked

8:39 for permission to relocate the cross here inside

8:41 the zone where Arktikugol has land use rights.

8:45 I tried to locate this second position too.

8:47 There weren't many photos from news coverage,

8:49 but because Russia has opened Pyramiden up to tourist activity,

8:52 there are now plenty of geotagged photos on social media.

8:56 And in some, I could see the cross at its new location in the background,

9:00 between a wooden walkway and a small house,

9:03 which would place it approximately here.

9:08 It's gotta be here.

9:09 It might be this line right here or hidden by the shadow of the house,

9:14 or maybe the satellite imagery is just outdated but I couldn't find the shadow.

9:18 It wasn't the proof that I wanted.

9:20 We reached out to the governor of Svalbard

9:22 who confirmed that the cross had been relocated, but his office said,

9:26 "Beyond this, the governor has no further comments about

9:29 the case." Finding cross shadow number one was a bust,

9:34 so I tried to find the next one.

9:38 Franz Josef Land, an archipelago of 192 islands in the Arctic.

9:44 It's the northernmost point of Russia, inhabited only by military personnel.

9:49 (missile whooshing) In September 2023,

9:52 just a month after planting the cross in Svalbard,

9:55 Bishop Iakov led a ceremony planting a cross here too.

9:58 I wanted to figure out where this was exactly.

10:01 To verify that our original cross is one

10:03 of these, we need to see this cross's shadow.

10:07 So back to Google Earth.

10:10 The Barents Observer described the cross as on a peninsula

10:13 on the southern coast of Aleksandra Land.

10:16 That's this island here, and it said the cross was located about

10:20 60 kilometres away from the naval base Nagurskoye.

10:24 A local Russian newspaper reported that the cross was installed on Cape Dvoinoy,

10:28 but I couldn't figure out which cape that was.

10:31 The Russian translation of Cape Dvoinoy led me

10:33 to the Russian Wikipedia page for Aleksandra land,

10:36 which listed all of the islands capes clockwise from the westernmost cape.

10:40 I counted the capes and scold around.

10:42 The closest I could find were these tyre tracks,

10:45 but it's quite possible that in most images,

10:48 the cross is completely covered in snow.

10:51 Cross number two was a bust, so I tried one more thing.

10:55 Hey, it's Christophe from Tunnel Vision.

10:57 I posted a message to Newpress.

10:59 Newpress is the platform I'm building with Johnny

11:01 Harris and Sam Ellis from Search Party, and we got some amazing responses.

11:05 One Newpress member, Charles Lunde, found what looks like the shadow of a cross

11:09 on a tiny 50-meter long island on Novaya Zemlya.

11:13 Another member, Lex W, found this one in Siberia,

11:16 and another member, Finn Cullen, pointed me to the Bellona Foundation.

11:20 It's an environmental NGO based in Norway,

11:23 and I reached out to them to see if they might know anything.

11:26 So I had a few new leads, but I still had the same problem.

11:29 I couldn't confirm that this was cross erected

11:32 by Bishop Iakov and the Russian Arctic project,

11:35 which meant that I couldn't confirm that this one was either.

11:38 But then I had one last idea.

11:42 We know from news coverage that the cross

11:44 placed in Pyramiden is seven metres tall,

11:46 and the cross in Aleksandra Land is eight metres tall.

11:49 If we could confirm that the object casting

11:51 this shadow is also seven and eight metres tall,

11:55 we'd have some confirmation that at least it's

11:57 the same size as the Russian Arctic projects' crosses.

12:01 So I did some math.

12:03 To figure out the height of the object, we need to know two things.

12:07 First is the length of its shadow.

12:09 With Google Maps, I measured that distance to be about 12.22 metres.

12:13 The second thing is this angle between the sun's ray and the shadow.

12:17 That angle depends on where on earth the object is located,

12:21 and it also depends on when its shadow is being measured.

12:25 We know that this image was taken on August 12th,

12:28 2025, and the shadow is pointing almost perfectly north,

12:31 which means that this image was taken close to solar noon,

12:34 which on that day happened at 11:28 AM local

12:38 time when the solar elevation angle was about 31.6 degrees.

12:43 Plug those numbers in, and the estimated height

12:46 of this object is 7.5 metres just like the other two.

12:54 A while later, I heard back from the Bellona Foundation,

12:56 a representative sent me a news article about an eight-meter tall cross erected

13:01 on Novaya Zemlya in April 2021 to commemorate

13:04 the site of an 1822 Arctic expedition.

13:09 If we drop down to the exact location of our original shadow on Google Earth,

13:13 the horizon lines up.

13:19 So there we have it.

13:20 This is an orthodox cross, eight metres tall, put there in April 2021.

13:24 Two years before the crosses were erected in Svalbard, and Franz Josef Land.

13:30 Then I realised one more thing.

13:31 At the very beginning of this whole journey, I'd seen this photo of a cross.

13:36 According to the caption, it's a photo of cross number two,

13:39 the one erected on Franz Josef Land in 2023,

13:42 but the terrain, the flags, the attendees,

13:45 they don't match the photos of the Franz Josef Land cross blessing ceremony.

13:49 They match the photos from Novaya Zemlya,

13:52 which means I had a tab open with a crystal

13:55 clear picture of our mysterious object almost from the very beginning.

14:00 And from this angle we can see who's behind it,

14:03 Bishop Iakov and the Russian Arctic project.

14:08 But I still wanted to know why crosses,

14:12 and towards the very, very end of working on this video, I found one more thing,

14:17 a 2024 piece from the New Yorker that finally gave me a clue.

14:21 The Pomors.

14:25 They're a Russian ethnographic group based on the coast of the White Sea.

14:29 For the better part of the last 500 years,

14:32 the Pomors hunted and fished in what is now northern Norway,

14:35 and they would leave orthodox crosses wherever they had been,

14:39 like this one in Svalbard from 1752.

14:42 Inspired by that history,

14:44 the Russian Orthodox Church has restored old Pomor crosses

14:47 and erected new ones through initiatives like the Russian Arctic project.

14:52 According to the Svalbard museum,

14:53 the Pomors may have used these crosses as navigational aids.

14:57 Today, hundreds of years later, they serve a different purpose.

15:01 It's a symbolic one and a geopolitical one,

15:05 to assert that the Arctic is Russian.

15:08 Russia, like every nation border in the Arctic,

15:10 has a major strategic interest in oil and gas,

15:13 in minerals and rare earth elements and shipping

15:16 routes that are newly accessible as Arctic ice melts.

15:20 And it's trying to legitimise its claim on those resources,

15:23 not just physically but symbolically.

15:26 Whether it's planting a tiny flag at the bottom of the ocean on the North Pole,

15:31 or putting a cross on an uninhabited island.

15:35 Few people will ever see these symbols in person,

15:39 but that's not really the point.

15:40 These symbols are only as impactful as the amount of attention they're given.

15:45 That attention includes mine.

15:48 I saw something strange on satellite imagery.

15:50 I tried to understand what it was, and I made a whole video about it,

15:55 and I wonder if maybe that's the kind of attention they were counting on.

16:01 Hey, thank you so much for watching.

16:03 This is a really fun episode to make.

16:05 I wanted to share a special shout out to Angelina Penkina.

16:09 Right as we were wrapping up this episode,

16:12 Angelina shared these incredible photos of the original cross on Novaya Zemlya.

16:17 Angelina found them via some Russian internet

16:20 sources and shared them with us on @newpress.com.

16:23 Newpress is a new website I'm helping build with fellow journalists.

16:26 If I had just asked Angelina two months ago,

16:28 this would've been case closed right away.

16:30 This video would've been dramatically different with Angelina's help sooner,

16:33 and it shows just how much a community like

16:36 this can expand the horizons of what we do.

16:39 You can go to the link in the description and join @newpress.com,

16:42 where you can help me solve mysteries and tell stories

16:45 and do more of the journalism that this channel is all about.

16:48 (gentle music)