A three-year study of the content and distribution of organic carbon in High Arctic soils was conducted in Thule, northwest Greenland. Soils were sampled by manual and mechanical excavation in seasonally thawed soils to a depth of approximately 1 m and analyzed for carbon and other soil parameters. To provide an extensive estimate of soil carbon over a varied terrain, study sites were selected based on NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index) values from remotely sensed ASTER satellite images. The sites traversed a diversity of bedrock, soils, vegetation, topography, and patterned ground features, all of which are believed to influence carbon storage. This study reveals that previous estimates of organic carbon in High Arctic soils were underestimated substantially, particularly in the most sparsely vegetated landscapes. Previous studies did not account for carbon brought to depth by soil mixing due to freezing and thawing cycles; typically over 50% of the soil organic carbon was found to be stored below 25 cm in these barren landscapes that have largely been ignored as they were previously thought to have negligible amounts of carbon. Two temporally and spatially distinct carbon pools were discovered in association with non-sorted stripes during a 16 m long trench excavation; an active carbon pool ∼0.06--52.7 ka and an older buried soil dated to 27.5--31.9 ka. The older carbon likely reflects carbon frozen in the permafrost and may be a substantial pool that could enter the active carbon cycle if climate continues to warm and the active layer becomes deeper. Analysis of remote sensing spectra reveals that vegetation was the most highly correlated surface feature to soil organic carbon storage. Two methods of satellite-based vegetation assessment (NDVI and spectral linear unmixing) explained approximately one-third of the variation in SOC content, and potentially may be used to provide an updated estimate of soil carbon over the large extent of the High Arctic.