Multibeam data were collected during R/V Polarstern cruise ARK-XXVI/3. Data recording was executed in central Arctic Ocean passing North Pole and on transit alongside Norway. Data are unprocessed and may contain outliers and blunders. Therefore the data should not directly be used for grid calculations and charting projects but need to be edited furthermore. The dataset consists of 1889 files in HYPACK ASCII rawdata format (.HSX + .RAW) which are compressed with GZIP to size of 5.06 GB. Normally one file contains a measurement period of half an hour. HYPACK data files can be processed using the software packages CARIS HIPS/SIPS or with the open source software package MB-System (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/pi/MB-System/). Contact mailto:infobathy@awi.de for data access.