Galya Morrell: An Arctic life from Red Army to ice artist

Galya Morrell has spent most of her life in the Arctic.

The child of Siberian Komi nomads, she became a Soviet army officer and worked as a journalist for Pravda.

Today she is a polar explorer and an ice artist and has devoted her life to the wellbeing of the "northern nation" of Arctic denizens.

Morrell, 51, still undertakes hard-core expeditions and spends only about one month a year in the New York City apartment she shares with her American husband.

Last June, she navigated the Greenlandic seas with three fellow explorers in a small open boat the size of a sofa. In hard weather conditions when it was impossible to dock, the group would spend days on end at sea.

"The secret is to accept and try to adapt," she says.

Produced by Anna Bressanin; camera by Ilya Shnitser

Video and photographs from the Arctic courtesy of Galya Morrell

Music by Hivshu, Robert Peary Jr.