"I've studied the North Pole, and I can tell you - it's a very mysterious, almost eerie place," says the International Arctic Science Committee's vice-president, Dartmouth's Oran Young. "There's often fog, and there are these mountains of ice all around.. There's absolutely no way Santa Claus and the entire village could be so seldom seen if they were anywhere else on the globe. Plus the ice floats. It's the only town in the entire world that does not lie at a specific latitute and longitude. It moves."

   In 1986 adventurer Will Steger braved these fierce elements and went to the top of the planet with his team of sled dogs. Listen, my childeren and you shall hear his story.

   "After 50 days on the ice, I was driving my team up this ice ridge," he says, "the sled crested, and at that moment the fog and mist blew away. There it was below us. The whole village. The reindeer. The small sleds being pulled all over by deer and elves. The moment I saw it, I was sure it wasn't true. I figured I was getting delerious, that the cold and fatigue were finishing me off. I mean, that's an ice world up there. Nothing can live there, right? But I rubbed my eyes, and the village did not vanish. I wondered if I had died, and was maybe in some kind of arctic heaven.

   Will Steger continues, "everything was small. The elves, the reindeer and Santa too. Therefore, the village is small. Only one mile in length, by two in width, the entire town is tucked away-hidden behind ice ridges and fog that swirls round the pole. On top of everything else, this elusive village is always moving. The polar ice cap is constantly shifting and drifting, and with it goes Santa's town. Today it is slightly west of true north and tomorrow slightly south. Now it is floating east, now northwest. For anyone to have happened upon this place is a miracle, nothing but a miracle.

   "It was certainly the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. The lovliest. The strangest and most unexpected."

   "Again," says Oran Young," we're the ones who are astonished by the news of elves and other Arctic phenomena.. The natives up there live with them and know them as neighbors."