In 1907, Professor John Ivarsson and American archaeologist, finds himself on a strange mission. He has been persuaded by Sir Anthony Ross, a wealthy Englishman, to undertake a search for his lost son Donald. The youth disappeared in the Arctic wilderness leaving two clues; a page from an old Hudson Bay Company journal mentioning a hidden island "far beyond land's end where the whales go to die", and a curious map of curved whalebone.

The rescue party takes off in the Hyperion, a giant airship designed and piloted by Capt. Brieux and is astonishingly carried off into a mysterious, time-forgotten Viking kingdom hidden beneath dense volcanic clouds. It is there where they encounter an adventure beyond imagination as they attempt to rescue Donald from the island at the top of the world...