NORDUnet presents Polar Connect as a building block for European digital sovereignty and resilience at the Danish national conference for research infrastructure
At the DeiC Conference 2026 in Kolding, Thomas Frøyland, Chief Strategy Officer at NORDUnet, presented Polar Connect: a planned Arctic route giving Europe a direct, diverse path to Asia and the North American west coast. He shared a progress update on route planning from this summer’s Arctic expedition and placed the Polar Connect initiative in the Danish and European picture of digital sovereignty, resilience and critical infrastructure.
Research infrastructure in a turbulent world
The DeiC Conference took place this week under the theme “Digital Research Infrastructure in a Turbulent World”. Geopolitical tensions and rising costs shaped the program. Sessions featured important discussions on how to keep research data secure yet accessible as the world fragments, how to protect infrastructure and build the governance needed to meet new threats, and how Denmark can get the most from key European initiatives such as EuroHPC, EOSC and future investment in quantum infrastructure.
Polar Connect: Route diversity for Europe
Thomas Frøyland’s presentation directly addressed the conference theme. Polar Connect would give Europe a direct route to Asia and the North American west coast across the Arctic, adding route diversity to connectivity that today depends on a small number of paths.
For the research and education community, such diversity matters. Data-intensive research relies on global collaboration and resilient routes help keep it running in a period of growing fragmentation and geopolitical tension.
Thomas also reported on this summer’s Arctic expedition, which made significant progress on route planning and made it clear that a subsea cable across the Arctic sea can be realised. He summed up by placing Polar Connect in both the Danish and the European landscapes: as critical infrastructure which strengthens digital sovereignty and resilience, and which supports the interconnections that global research depends on.
Building resilience together
NORDUnet will continue the route planning for Polar Connect together with its partners, building on the results of the summer expedition.
