The epic tales of polar explorations are littered with mysterious tragedies. In the event of success, history is written by the protagonists, but it is the failures that most interest scholars, engendering various theories about the fate of men who are unable to recount their defeats. Such was the case of the notorious Danish expedition in north-east Greenland that Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen, Niels Peter Høeg-Hagen and Jørgen Brønlund carried out between 1906 and 1908. Only Brønlund’s body was recovered, but the Danish claim for that unexplored territory, in contention with the United States, depended on the location of the other two, as well as their journals and maps. These geopolitical implications led to a new mission: seven men departed on the Alabama; two of them, the ambitious captain Mikkelsen (played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who also wrote the film) and the inexperienced mechanic Iversen (Joe Cole), set out repeatedly into the icy desert. But confirming the discoveries of Mylius-Erichsen and Høeg-Hagen turned out to be the easy part. The journey became an odyssey that tested the limits of survival and was to acquire legendary status of its own.