Travel Insurance: A necessity when traveling to the Arctic Circle
Travel insurance is a good idea for almost everybody who takes a trip but it is especially important if you are planning a trip north of the Arctic Circle. There are lots of things that can go wrong on any vacation but there many additional things that can go wrong when you are traveling in the arctic. More importantly the costs when something bad does happen will make travel insurance critical. Everything costs more in the arctic, medical care in particular costs a lot more. There is no reason to be unduly paranoid that something bad will happen if you take a trip to the arctic but you will want to make sure that you protect yourself with travel insurance.
The biggest reason that you are going to want to have travel health insurance is in the event that you get hurt. The cost of medical care is very high, probably much higher than your regular medical coverage is going to pay for. More importantly if you do get hurt they are almost certainly going to have to evacuate out of the arctic. This usually involves chartering an airplane, if you don't' have insurance that is going to come out of your pocket. There are very few medical facilities in the arctic and almost none of the towns will have a doctor let alone a hospital. The nearest medical facility is likely thousands of kilometers away and that is going to cost you a lot of money if you don't have insurance.
Another reason that you may want to have travel insurance is that the weather can often make travel difficult. There is a fairly good chance that you will ended up stranded in one place which means that you may miss connecting flights and there may be places that you have purchased tickets to that you simply can't get to. Flights north of the Arctic Circle get cancelled a lot more frequently than they do down south. If you do get stranded somewhere the cost can be pretty steep so you are going to want to make sure that you have insurance to cover you if this happens.
A trip to the Arctic Circle can be very expensive, in many cases it will be the most expensive vacation that you will ever take. Unfortunately sometimes tour companies go out of business and when this happens you will end up holding the bag if you don't have travel insurance. This is a bigger problem with trips to the arctic because it is so new as a tourist destination most of the tour operators are fairly small companies that haven't been in business very long. Unfortunately some of them are going to fail. Given how much it costs to book a vacation north of the Arctic Circle you are going to want to make sure that you have the protection of travel insurance.