Story highlights Kayakers Olly Hicks and George Bullard are traveling from Greenland to Scotland over six weeks

They plan to be the first modern explorers to make this journey

(CNN) Two men have set out in a kayak, eager to become the first travelers in centuries to reach Scotland from the Arctic Circle.

What would make them challenge nature and themselves in an attempt to make this self-propelled, 1,200-mile voyage? To spend days and nights at a time in a kayak on frigid, untamed seas, at times paddling instead of sleeping beneath the midnight sun?

It's a journey that has "an element of all adventure," explains kayaker Olly Hicks via Skype from Tórshavn, the capital of the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic Ocean. He's about halfway between Iceland and Norway on a day that the weather has him stuck on dry land.

There's a whole lot of empty ocean out there, as the two adventurers are finding.

"You've got islands. You've got high seas. We've got storms, gales, hostile wildlife, polar bears, walruses, icebergs," he says, listing elements of an adventurer's dream, "as well as huge endurance to make the ocean crossings, as well as a lot of jeopardy and risk in the project.

"The "project," as he calls it, is the challenge of paddling from Greenland to Scotland, a planned 1,200-mile crossing in a sea kayak over approximately six weeks this summer. It's an expedition Hicks and his paddling partner George Bullard are close to completing, and they say they hope to be the first modern explorers to do it.

Read More