At the time of its opening as the Arctic World Archive on 27 March 2017, the Brazilian, Mexican and Norwegian governments deposited copies of various historical documents in the vault.

[8] Data is stored offline on film reels made using a refined version of ordinary darkroom photography technology.

[1][4] The film is made of polyester coated in silver halide crystals[7] and powder-coated with iron oxide, and has a life span of at least 500 and possibly up to 2,000 years, if stored in optimum conditions.

The "hot" (accessible online repositories) and "warm" (e.g. Internet Archive) layers both have the weakness of being founded upon electronics – both would be wiped out in a repeat of the 19th-century geomagnetic storm known as the "Carrington Event".

[7] Realising that people in the very far future may not understand what they see in the vault, a kind of "Rosetta Stone" has been devised to help decode the data, in the form of a guide to interpreting the archive.

If data is requested, the relevant reel of film has to be manually retrieved,[1] then uploaded via a fibre optic connection to the mainland, to Piql's headquarters in Drammen;[4] the fastest possible retrieval time is 20–30 minutes, but it can take up to 24 hours with an active subscription and up to 72 hours without an active subscription.

[7] Governments, researchers, religious institutions, media companies and others store some of their most significant records in the vault; Brazil and Norway have archived their constitutions and other important historical papers.