As winter releases its grip on a frozen Scandinavia, animal characters begin a race to make the most of the summer. Puffins, Arctic foxes, moose, reindeer and eider duck all hurry to feed, find a mate and breed before the clock ticks down on the next dark winter. Hardship produces a charisma and ingenuity in these creatures seldom seen anywhere else on Earth, and the changing landscapes provide an epic backdrop to their compelling stories.
Winter in the Arctic Circle is as brutal as it is beautiful. But as the days grow longer, the sun melts the ice and snow. Amazingly, wild creatures thrive here, and now they begin to emerge. A bear family, hungry after their long hibernation are on the hunt. A pair of arctic foxes roam the wilderness on the lookout for lemmings. Capercaillie roosters call for females in the boreal forests. Droves of puffins and guillemots fly in to nesting sites in the Norwegian fjords, pairing up and rebuilding nests. Eider ducks renovate their nests destroyed by the last winter. Mating begins. Huge herds of reindeer emerge from the icy winter mists to begin a relentless summer migration.
As the sun moves higher, summer peaks and the race to winter is frenetic. The fox family have a large litter of cubs and the eider duck mother watches a clutch of eggs hatching. She has to defend them from a marauding white-tailed eagle and get them out of the water safely. As summer goes on, the foxes lose two cubs, leaving them with three survivors. The lemming run has been good this year, making their lives easier. The herds of reindeer pause for a while - males fight and chase females. Puffins return to young with beak-fulls of sand eels. Guillemot chicks undergo death-defying attempts to launch from the nest. Leaping into the air, some land in the ocean, while others fall short, only to meet the hungry mouths of the Arctic fox family.