A UN expedition of scientists from different countries come to barren arctic Bear Island (Norway), between Svalbard and northern Norway, to study climate change. However, several of them turn out to be more interested in the fact that (according to the film) there was a German U-boat base on the island during the Second World War. American scientist Frank Lansing has come because his father was a U-boat commander who died there, and as accidents start to decimate the expedition he begins to realise that some of his colleagues are after a shipment of gold aboard the U-boat that his father commanded.