Why the Arctic makes a perfect setting for children’s stories

The Arctic is often framed around geopolitics, scientific research, or climate change, but for Finnish sea captain and author Teemu Leppälä, it’s a place made for storytelling.

“It looks and feels like a fantasy world and when you’re there in the darkness, with the ice, the storms and the silence, it feels like you’re already inside a story with nature as the main character,” says Leppälä, founder of Sleetfleet, a creative studio building Arctic story worlds across books, games and animation.

Winter night watch

In the late 1990s, when Leppälä was in his 20s, he sailed up Greenland’s west coast for the first time, an experience he still vividly recalls. During a lifeboat drill, a humpback whale surfaced beside the crew, sending a column of water into the air “almost like a greeting.” The memory stayed with him.

In 2012, during a similar night watch on board an icebreaker, the idea of becoming an author first came to Leppälä. “Suddenly it struck me: why doesn’t someone put all this into writing? And then I thought, why not me?” He began imagining icebreakers and lighthouses as characters, able to tell their own stories of Arctic missions and storms.

Yet the Arctic is not only powerful; it is changing. Working first as a seaman and later as a maritime professional in northern waters, for nearly 20 years Leppälä has made multiple trips to Greenland by ship and seen these changes firsthand. Since then, he has continued to follow research related to the Arctic region.

Current scientific data show that the region has been warming nearly four times faster than the global average. Glaciers and sea ice are melting, opening new shipping passages and commercial opportunities. At the same time, the region has also become synonymous with environmental fragility and a source of climate anxiety, particularly for young people.

Avoiding the climate lecture

Leppälä wants to approach the Arctic through fantasy rather than fear. “The goal is not to frighten readers, but to give them a language and imagination so the Arctic does not just become another abstract tragedy.”

This thinking has shaped “Icecube and the Arctic Awakens,” his latest trilogy, which was originally published in Finnish. In the series, an icy heroine must gather the scattered fragments of the shattered Heart of Ice and restore balance to the Arctic, in a quest that unfolds across countless frozen seas and polar nights.

The idea for that Arctic world didn’t arrive fully formed. While writing the seventh Icebreaker Snow book, “The Magical Treasure,” Leppälä introduced a sapphire puzzle piece discovered inside a wreck at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. This fragment would later grow into an entirely new mythology centered on the Heart of Ice.

Restoring the heart also requires opposition. Her antagonist is Kelvin, the King of Flames. “He’s my Darth Vader,” says Leppälä, a long-time Star Wars fan. “It took me a while to find him, but the bad guys are usually the most interesting characters.”

The central conflict emerged from the elemental logic of fire melts ice. “Nature provided the answer in the eternal battle between ice and fire,” he says. Through that struggle, he explores balance and responsibility while being careful not to turn the story into a climate lecture.

Going beyond the page

Leppälä’s Arctic world does not end with the written word. The Ice-cube trilogy is being developed as an animated series and a mobile game. In Finland, home to global gaming companies such as Rovio and Supercell, the crossover between storytelling and interactive media is increasingly common.

“The book is informing the game also,” Leppälä says. “It’s chicken and egg.” In fact, Icecube herself first emerged during game development. “The main character was originally a snowball,” Leppälä explains in the book’s preface. “But the round form proved difficult to animate consistently. The solution was as much practical as it was symbolic. And soon a sharp-edged, icy character called Icecube was born.”

The cube was easier to draw and animate than the sphere, but it also sharpened his character’s identity, with clean lines replacing softness, and shaping an Arctic heroine that was more defined and more resilient.

A story of hope

Beneath the books, game mechanics and animation scripts lies something quieter. “There is also a warning in the story,” Leppälä writes. “The Arctic is melting. We are sailing in uncharted waters. Ice no longer carries as it once did. Story and reality intertwine.”

For Leppälä, expanding the Arctic into interactive formats is not about merchandising a brand, but about giving audiences more ways to enter the world he has created. If young audiences can move through that world, rather than just reading about it, the connection may run even deeper, and so might their desire to protect.