Gale Force NorthTechnical Consultancy

Selected Work

Projects delivered across cloud systems and field operations.

Software products, AWS infrastructure, cybersecurity labs, applied research, Greenland operations, and Arctic expedition work.

Each case sets out the situation, GFN's role, the work completed, and the outcome. The first four are the principal evidence for the two operating domains.

Gale Force North

Field operations and technical delivery.

Swiss Camp, the Air France Flight 66 recovery, a Rannís-funded software product, and the Frostbyte / NCC-IS lab lead the record, followed by additional software, research, and expedition work.

01 / Field systems

Swiss Camp Decommissioning

Glacier and field support for the 2026 decommissioning of Swiss Camp on the Greenland Ice Sheet.

Swiss CampGreenlandGlacier travel
02 / Rannís-funded startup

Rannís-Funded Startup Architecture & Delivery

Product architecture, cloud footing, design handoff, and delivery structure for a Rannís-funded startup.

Product architectureTechnical project managementCloud architecture
03 / Aviation recovery

Greenland Ice Sheet Aviation Recovery & Under Ice

Air France Flight 66 fan-hub recovery, ice-sheet field work, and the Under Ice documentary record.

Greenland Ice SheetSearch-and-rescue backgroundArctic field operations
04 / Cybersecurity

Frostbyte / NCC-IS Lab Buildout

Cybersecurity lab launch with servers, virtualization, networking, self-hosted services, and student teams.

ProxmoxLinuxMikroTik
05 / EGU 2025 poster

Subsea Fibre Seismic Research

MSc thesis research using HPC earthquake simulations and observed signals from a subsea cable.

Nokia Bell Labs collaborationResearch infrastructureHPC
06 / Cybersecurity research

Memory Forensics And OS Identification

Applied cybersecurity research pipeline across memory dumps, binary analysis, Slurm processing, and GPU training.

Memory forensicsDeep learningHPC
07 / Arctic logistics

Svalbard SAR Expedition Planning & Execution

Planning and execution of a 60 km Svalbard SAR expedition with route, camp, comms, and marine extraction.

Expedition planningSARRisk management
08 / Product platform R&D

Booking Platform Product R&D

Two-year booking-platform R&D across frontend state, checkout, APIs, content, auth, and data modeling.

Next.jsReactRedux Toolkit

Swiss Camp Decommissioning

GFN supported expedition preparation, glacier and field leadership, technical equipment, communications, documentation, and helicopter-supported removal work during the 2026 Swiss Camp decommissioning operation.

Field systemsSwiss CampGreenlandGlacier travelHelicopter logisticsField documentation

Challenge

The operation had to dismantle and remove infrastructure from a remote research station in a crevassed ice-sheet environment. The work depended on limited aviation windows, sling-load movements, technical equipment, reliable communications, and a small field team working around weather and glacier hazards.

Role

GFN participated in the operation in a glacier and field leadership capacity. The work included preparation before deployment, glacier travel and self-rescue systems, technical equipment, communications, field documentation, operational support on the ice, and support around helicopter movements and demobilization.

Approach

Before departure, GFN selected, inspected, recorded, and packed the equipment assigned to its part of the operation. In Greenland, the work covered approximately 12 days associated with preparation, deployment, work on the ice, and closeout. Equipment and field systems were adjusted around the team, weather, glacier conditions, and aviation plan.

Outcome

The operation completed its primary field objective and removed approximately 80% of the material remaining at Swiss Camp. Thousands of kilograms were moved from the ice by helicopter sling load. These figures describe the result of the wider operation, not work owned by GFN alone.

Swiss Camp field team beside a helicopter in Greenland

Swiss Camp Decommissioning

Field team and helicopter support during the 2026 Swiss Camp operation in Greenland.

Rannís-Funded Startup Architecture & Delivery

Selected Gale Force North client engagement with a Rannís-funded Icelandic startup, bringing a service-marketplace concept into a structured product, architecture, cloud platform, design handoff, and delivery path.

Rannís-funded startupProduct architectureTechnical project managementCloud architectureAWSMarketplace platformUX / design coordinationDelivery processTechnical leadership

Challenge

The project is a two-sided marketplace for Icelandic licensed trade work, where product design, trust, scope definition, offers, agreements, documents, payments, and property maintenance records all have to operate as one coherent software system. Clear architecture and delivery structure keep the product flows, decisions, payments, trust signals, and infrastructure aligned.

Role

Gale Force North provides technical leadership and project management across product architecture, implementation direction, cloud infrastructure, delivery planning, UI/UX hiring, design handoff, and coordination with external contributors. The work has carried the technical foundation into structured delivery artifacts and cloud-platform implementation.

Approach

The work connects product intent to implementation. A system architecture and infrastructure plan defines the frontend, backend API, database, identity, environments, deployment, monitoring, backup, and security model. A marketplace design brief translates the product into roles, journeys, requirements, trust signals, payment states, evidence records, and development-ready design-system expectations. The cloud work has established a governed AWS foundation with development, staging, production, and shared networking accounts, Terraform/Terragrunt workflows, DNS and certificate controls, operator-access boundaries, and repeatable delivery practices. Design coordination includes hiring for UI/UX capability and preparing external design work for review and implementation against explicit requirements.

Outcome

The project now has a defined product scope, architecture, implementation-ready UI flows, design-system expectations, cloud infrastructure plan, multi-environment AWS footing, DNS and certificate control model, and delivery path that future contributors can inspect.

Greenland Ice Sheet Aviation Recovery & Under Ice

Field participation in the Air France Flight 66 fan-hub recovery on the Greenland Ice Sheet, followed by the four-month creation of Under Ice, an IMDb-listed documentary artifact about the mission.

Aviation recoveryGreenland Ice SheetSearch-and-rescue backgroundArctic field operationsTechnical extractionDocumentary production

Challenge

Recovering an aircraft engine component from the Greenland Ice Sheet is not a normal field task. The missing fan hub fragment had separated from an Air France A380 during flight and was needed for further aviation safety investigation. After nearly two years of scientific search and localization work by specialist teams, the recovery party was flown to the confirmed site in a remote crevasse-field environment where the component was buried under snow and ice.

Role

Joined the privately organized recovery expedition as an Icelandic field specialist, bringing glacier travel, rope, and rescue experience to the extraction work. The expedition was not an Icelandic SAR operation. After the mission, Arnar Ingi created Under Ice, a 30-minute documentary about the final recovery expedition, over a four-month production period. The film is listed on IMDb and serves as a public documentary artifact for the project.

Approach

The recovery was treated as a controlled field operation. Crevasses, snow bridges, weather, polar-bear risk, camp safety, heavy-object handling, and helicopter-supported logistics all had to be handled as operational constraints. The work involved crevasse-area safety, fall-arrest systems, digging and melting through snow and ice, multi-directional rope hauling, sled movement, winch support, and preparing the more than 200 kg fragment for helicopter sling transport. The documentary work then turned the field material into a coherent account of the mission context, camp work, extraction process, crevasse risk, rope systems, and helicopter sling preparation.

Outcome

The fan hub fragment was recovered from the Greenland Ice Sheet and delivered for further inspection as part of the aviation safety investigation. Under Ice preserved the final recovery work as a public documentary record, extending the value of the field operation beyond the extraction itself.

Under Ice Trailer

One-minute trailer for Under Ice, Arnar Ingi's documentary about the Greenland ice-sheet recovery of the Air France Flight 66 fan-hub fragment.

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Greenland ice-sheet recovery camp and marked work area

Greenland Ice-Sheet Recovery Site

Field camp and marked work area on the Greenland ice sheet during the fan-hub recovery mission.

Recovered Air France Flight 66 A380 fan-hub fragment on the Greenland Ice Sheet

Flight 66 Fan-Hub Recovery

The recovered fan-hub fragment with the field team and lifting equipment on the Greenland Ice Sheet.

Pulley and rope system lowering into the Air France Flight 66 recovery pit

Ice Pit Haul System

The rope and pulley system used to control the fragment during extraction from the snow-cut pit.

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Under Ice Documentary

The full 30-minute documentary created over a four-month production period, following the final recovery operation on the Greenland ice sheet.

Frostbyte / NCC-IS Lab Buildout

Year-long work driving the Frostbyte / NCC-IS lab buildout from concept and limited infrastructure into a working technical environment with servers, networking, virtualization, storage, student teams, and operational structure.

CybersecurityProxmoxLinuxMikroTikGitLabMinIOStudent leadership

Challenge

Launching Reykjavík University's part of the Frostbyte / NCC-IS lab required more than a nominal lab concept. The project needed physical infrastructure, server-room installation, virtualization, networking, Linux environments, internal services, backup strategy, student coordination, web presence, and a working space where technical development could happen.

Role

Drove the project forward across technical leadership, procurement, physical setup, student hiring, student supervision, infrastructure planning, and operational execution through a year-long launch and early-operations period.

Approach

The work followed a startup-style execution model: secure and equip a working space, assemble a motivated student team, define the technical direction, and build usable infrastructure quickly. Physical servers were procured and installed, networking was planned around MikroTik equipment, Proxmox provided the virtualization layer, Linux virtual machines supported lab services and exercises, and internal tooling included GitLab plus a MinIO-based backup strategy.

Outcome

The project moved from limited initial footing to a functioning Frostbyte / NCC-IS lab environment with physical servers, virtualization, networking, Linux systems, internal development tooling, backup strategy, web presence, student participation, and operational direction. It helped create the foundation for a lab that later gained dedicated workspace and long-term research and education value.

Subsea Fibre Seismic Research

Ongoing MSc thesis research using high-performance computing to compare earthquake simulations with observed signals on the Iceland-Ireland subsea cable, presented as a research poster at EGU 2025.

EGU 2025 posterNokia Bell Labs collaborationResearch infrastructureHPCEarthquake simulationsSubsea cable dataPython

Challenge

The research sits between geophysics, signal processing, scientific computing, and infrastructure. It uses data from the Iceland-Ireland subsea cable and compares observed cable signals with synthetic earthquake waveforms, which requires careful data handling, simulation workflow design, high-performance computing, and enough structure for research collaborators to inspect and extend the work.

Role

Carrying out ongoing MSc thesis research after completing the coursework component of the degree, with collaboration involving Nokia Bell Labs and academic partners. Presented the work as a research poster at EGU 2025, the European Geosciences Union General Assembly, Europe's largest and most prominent geosciences event.

Approach

The work uses high-performance computing platforms to run earthquake simulations and compare synthetic waveforms with observed subsea-cable signals. The implementation focus is reproducible research workflow: organized data processing, repeatable simulation runs, structured comparison of observed and synthetic signals, and code that remains understandable as the research question evolves.

Outcome

The project has produced a visible research artifact through the EGU 2025 poster and continues as ongoing thesis work. For Gale Force North, it is evidence of applied technical work across scientific data, HPC, signal processing, research infrastructure, and external collaboration.

EGU 2025 conference poster on seismic waveforms observed on the IRIS subsea cable

EGU 2025 Research Poster

Research poster presented at EGU 2025, the European Geosciences Union General Assembly, for ongoing MSc thesis work on seismic waveforms observed on the Iceland-Ireland subsea cable.

Arnar Ingi Gunnarsson with the subsea-cable research poster at EGU 2025

EGU 2025 Poster Presentation

Arnar Ingi with the subsea-cable seismic research poster at EGU 2025.

Memory Forensics And OS Identification

Applied MSc cybersecurity research using deep learning to identify operating systems from memory dumps, with kernel extraction, binary disassembly, Slurm-based HPC processing, and GPU-accelerated training.

Cybersecurity researchMemory forensicsDeep learningHPCSlurmGPU training1.5 TB dataset

Challenge

Operating-system identification from memory snapshots is useful for VM management, security monitoring, and forensic analysis, but raw memory dumps are large, noisy, and difficult to compare directly. The project needed a scalable pipeline that could turn kernel-level binary material into structured features suitable for machine-learning classification.

Role

Designed and implemented the research pipeline for an MSc cybersecurity project, covering data preparation, kernel extraction, binary disassembly, feature-vector generation, HPC processing, and GPU-accelerated model training.

Approach

The workflow started from a 1.5 TB memory-dump dataset and reduced it to a 39 GB kernel dataset before transfer to the HPC platform. Feature extraction used the iced_x86 library for kernel disassembly, histogram-based function-size features, and Slurm array processing across 100 CPU tasks, reducing a roughly eight-hour serial job to about twenty minutes. A GPU-trained feedforward neural network then classified the retained operating-system classes from the processed vectors.

Outcome

The project produced a working applied-research pipeline across cybersecurity, binary analysis, data processing, HPC orchestration, and deep-learning model training, reaching 99.42% accuracy across the retained classes while still showing limits around rare classes. For Gale Force North, it is evidence of practical work at the boundary between software, infrastructure, research data, and security analysis.

Svalbard SAR Expedition Planning & Execution

Planning and executing a 60 km Arctic expedition for 18 members of an Icelandic search-and-rescue team, coordinating route design, polar-bear risk, weather, people, equipment, authorities, accommodation, transport, and marine extraction.

Arctic logisticsExpedition planningSARRisk managementPolar-bear safetyCommunications

Challenge

Moving 18 people safely through 60 km of Svalbard terrain required more than choosing a route. The expedition involved Arctic weather, rough terrain, polar-bear risk, communications constraints, group fatigue, accommodation, transport, equipment, authority coordination, and the practical reality of keeping a large volunteer team aligned over months of preparation.

Role

Planned and executed the expedition for members of an Icelandic search-and-rescue team. Led route planning, participant coordination, deadline management, travel logistics, accommodation coordination, safety-equipment planning, authority coordination, and extraction planning.

Approach

The expedition was planned as a controlled field operation. The route was designed around distance, terrain, weather exposure, group capability, camp logistics, and extraction feasibility. Safety planning included tent-group organization, night-watch structure, trained rifle capability in each tent group, flare guns, satellite phones, and coordination with Svalbard authorities and local operators. Marine extraction from Barentsburg was arranged with RIB boats and support boat capacity from Longyearbyen.

Outcome

The expedition was planned, coordinated, and executed as a successful 60 km Arctic field operation for 18 participants, with a defined route, safety structure, communications plan, polar-bear risk controls, camp organization, and planned marine extraction.

Svalbard Expedition Video

Field video from the three-day, 60 km search-and-rescue training expedition.

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Svalbard expedition team with full packs in open Arctic valley terrain

Svalbard Valley Route

The expedition team moving through open Svalbard terrain with full packs.

Svalbard expedition group at a polar bear warning sign outside Longyearbyen

Longyearbyen Night Walk

The expedition group at the polar-bear warning sign outside Longyearbyen before departure.

Svalbard expedition team travelling by boat on coastal water

Svalbard Boat Transfer

Local boat support during the coastal transfer and extraction plan.

Svalbard expedition member with pack in open terrain above a fjord

Svalbard Route Outlook

Open terrain above the fjord along the planned expedition route.

Svalbard expedition team moving over rocky tundra with full packs

Svalbard Loaded Movement

The expedition team moving over rocky tundra with full packs.

Campsite tents in Svalbard under midnight sun

Svalbard Midnight Camp

The expedition camp established beside the water under the midnight sun.

Booking Platform Product R&D

Earlier two-year product-platform work on a tour and booking system, covering Next.js application development, Redux cart state, checkout flow, Prisma/PostgreSQL models, API routes, Prismic content rendering, authentication, and payment-integration experiments.

Product platform R&DNext.jsReactRedux ToolkitPrismaPostgreSQLCheckout flowPayment integration

Challenge

A serious booking platform pulls many concerns into one system: product pages, schedules, participant counts, carts, contact details, checkout stages, payment redirection, content management, authentication, admin tools, and data persistence. The work required frontend state, content, database shape, APIs, payments, authentication, and infrastructure to be treated as one operating path.

Role

Designed and implemented substantial parts of an independent booking-platform R&D effort over roughly two years. The work covered architecture, delivery boundaries, application state, content, checkout, APIs, authentication, payments, and infrastructure ownership.

Approach

The implementation used a Next.js and React application with Chakra UI, Redux Toolkit, Next API routes, Prisma over PostgreSQL, Prismic-driven page rendering, JWT/Cognito-style authentication utilities, cart and registration APIs, checkout-stage pages, and Rapyd payment-integration experiments. The platform included booking-panel UI, date and participant selection, cart state, registrant/contact data, schedule and engagement models, management pages, publishing tools, user-management surfaces, and a custom article-builder direction.

Outcome

The project produced a substantial R&D codebase and practical implementation experience across product architecture, frontend state, CMS content, data modeling, server-side API boundaries, checkout, payments, authentication, and maintainability. It directly informed the Whirlwind approach to frontend, backend, content, authentication, deployment, and infrastructure decisions.

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