Once we save it, it's safe… for centuries, and millennia.

No electricity. No server. No AI. No software.
Nothing needed for data to survive.

Here's why.

Written on film, readable by light.

Data is written onto piqlFilm: an ultra-durable optical film built to last for centuries. It needs no power to keep, and no software to read – the instructions to decode it are stored on the film itself.

A hand holding a reel of piqlFilm above a light table.
The entrance to the Arctic World Archive vault inside the mine.

Kept in one of the most stable places on Earth.

The piqlFilm is sealed deep inside a decommissioned mine in Svalbard, in the high Arctic – far away from everything, in a cold and dry climate that extends the life of the data.

Preserving forever isn't free.

Every collection we save is digitized, prepared, written to film, and sealed in the Arctic.

That process has a real cost – and for the institutions, communities and records that can't pay it themselves, someone has to. That's what your support funds: the act of preservation itself.

Support the mission Helping us by preserving your own data? →