Since the Alaska trip to find POTUS in Snow Crash, it's rare to see a Stephenson novel without some variant of The Nordic Voyage. Hackworth traveling to meet the drummers, Waterhouse inheritance dealings in the cold northern Midwest, Root in Boston, maker-kids driving up into the hills to their falcon9 knockoff. The Anthem north pole crossing fits right in, almost to the point of parody.
Interesting pattern - Reamde also provides an example. Of course, in Cryptonomicon there is also a literal Nordic Voyage, from the coast of Norway to the Swedish coast, but he skips over it entirely, only giving the highlights retrospectively from the perspective of his least reliable narrator.
