Are similarities of temperature, snow and ice cover, and (certain) marine mammals sufficient to warrant both polar regions being considered a single object of study or governance? We argue that their treatment as a unit is an invitation to examine the motivations behind the choice to be polar rather than Arctic or Antarctic. For individuals such as James Clerk Ross or Roald Amundsen, logistical requirements and analogous goals facilitated careers spanning both the Arctic and the Antarctic. This trend continued through the 20th century as individual scientists studying phenomena such as glaciers, sea ice, or aurora defined their research as “polar” in nature. Organisations such as the Scott Polar Research Institute and Norwegian Polar Institute could draw on traditions of national exploration in both polar regions, while the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St. Petersburg gained its southern mandate with the importance of the International Geophysical Year. By comparison, neither the Arctic Institute in Copenhagen nor the Argentine Antarctic Institute felt any need to become polar. The creation of polar identity is ultimately a matter of geopolitics, of the value states see in instruments and symbols that speak to polar rather than Arctic or Antarctic interests. In cases such as Finland’s icebreaker industry, a technological capability justified Antarctic interest even without any national research tradition. We conclude by asking whether there is anything more natural about the polar regions than there is about the concept of a “tripolar” world in which the high alpine regions form a natural unit along with the Arctic and Antarctic.

The 1959 Antarctic Treaty made Antarctica the world’s first and only demilitarised continent, the world’s first denuclearised zone, and pioneered a comprehensive inspections system. This article explores Antarctic arms control as past precedent. It finds that the United States, which spearheaded the Antarctic Treaty negotiations, initially rationalised arms control in Antarctica as an isolated endeavour. Yet its potential elsewhere quickly appealed to various officials involved in the treaty negotiations and aligned with public perception. Subsequent initiatives for arms control took broad inspiration from the Antarctic Treaty, but regional differences limited specific adaptations.

This article provides an historical account and analysis of the repurposing of Ny-Ålesund from Arctic coalmining settlement to Norwegian-administered international research base in Svalbard. Three levels of analysis are employed to explain the settlement’s transformation and its rising geopolitical significance, focusing primarily on the period of rapid internationalisation and expansion of scientific activities starting in the late 1980s. The local level examines Norway’s efforts to maintain effective occupation of greater Kongsfjorden by promoting research, underpinned by the economisation of the area’s near-pristine natural environment as a non-extractive resource for science; the global level applies the concept of telecoupling to consider the role of events and processes at larger spatial scales that facilitated Ny-Ålesund’s transformation; and the “glocal” level explains how the interaction of Norwegian and global actors in the locality of Ny-Ålesund have collectively shaped the community’s institutions over some 30 years. The article also reflects on recent policy changes signalling more assertive Norwegian administration and greater coordination of research in Ny-Ålesund.

This study argues that collective memory is a relevant concept that can be used to analyse how the outlooks on industrial futures are shaped in remote northern locations. The case in question is the Sydvaranger iron mine in Kirkenes in the north-easternmost part of Norway. By drawing attention to the long periods of time often involved in forming collective memory, this study questions the viability of top-down processes of forming opinions aiming to set local minds on the track towards either “place-renewal” into an unknown post-industrial future or towards attaining a “social licence to operate” for any new or continued raw material producing industry. This exploration includes a discussion of memory studies, an overview of the industrial history of Kirkenes as part of a Euroarctic borderland and a study of the manifestations of collective memory in the contemporary local media. Revealing insights were obtained in Kirkenes through informal conversations and participant observation.

On 24 May 1847, Sir John Franklin’s third expedition reported “All well”, but less than a year later, on 22 April 1848, the 129 sailors who had set out from Britain on Erebus and Terror had been reduced to 105 survivors departing their frozen ships in a desperate attempt to escape the Arctic. At least 24 were so unhealthy that they would perish after having travelled little more than 100 km from the ships. By contrast, the small mortality rates on other contemporary Arctic expeditions, some of which stayed in the Arctic considerably longer, were consistent with the mortality rates in the Royal Navy worldwide. This paper explores the question of what difference caused so many of Franklin’s crew to die during their final months on-board the ships and in the initial stages of the escape attempt. From the perspective of cultural ecology, the most significant difference, and the ultimate cause of the catastrophe as it unfolded, was wintering in the ice pack. This distinguished the Franklin expedition from all of the other comparable overwintering expeditions, and precluded the Erebus and Terror crews from hunting or fishing. That in turn led to nutritional deficiencies due to much greater reliance on stored provisions than other expeditions.

No one, not even those of us who sat at the center, can or will know the full outreach impact of IPY. If one remembers and trusts public reaction one can deduce that, for a short moment, IPY research and outreach worked together to put a good face on science.

This essay serves as an introduction to the special issue recognising the 60th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty. It provides the geopolitical and scientific context informing the creation of the negotiations for a new treaty between October and December 1959. Thereafter, it identifies some of the challenges facing the contemporary Antarctic Treaty System. While none are thought to be threatening to the collaborative spirit that informs the legal and political status quo, there is no room for complacency either. Finally, the contributors and their essays are introduced for the reader. Taken together, it showcases the diversity of work being undertaken by scholars in the humanities and social sciences.

The ratification of the Antarctic Treaty established a unique construct for human presence and activity in Antarctica. The designation of the continent for peace and science has inspired and informed the work of artists from across the world. This paper explores relationships between the Treaty and contemporary visual artists’ responses to Antarctica. Using data from interviews with scientists, cultural professionals and exhibition audiences, I explore the value to science and society of artists’ presence in Antarctica. I look at why in the last 2 years the number of artists being supported to work in Antarctica has declined and conclude with some observations on how this downward trend might be addressed.

Analysing the Danish-Greenlandic debate on Greenland’s plans to extract and export uranium, the article advocates bringing the fields of extraction studies and cultural studies into dialogue. Drawing on discourse analysis, critical theory and the “emotional turn” in social sciences, the article demonstrates how the current discussion about secession is linked to a Danish-Greenlandic affective economy instituted during the colonial era. Conceived as the antithesis to the unhappy condition of present postcoloniality, independence has become the ultimate political goal for the Greenlandic nation. The reasoning is that history has made the Greenlanders citizens in a foreign nation, which has left them in a state of alienation. In order to lock colonialism away firmly in the past and attain future happiness, the Greenlanders must attain statehood. Uranium is supposed to promote this goal and is thus circulated as a “happy object”, positioning opponents of uranium mining as “affect aliens” or “killjoys” in the independence discourse. In Denmark, the Greenlandic detachment has led to “postcolonial melancholia” – and to a greater receptiveness to the Greenland desire for equality. In Greenland, disappointed expectations of rapid economic progress and growing distrust of large-scale projects have sparked a discussion about the significations of the concept of “independence”.

Professional scientist-geographer Erich von Drygalski led the first German expedition to Antarctica in 1901–1903. The expedition saw itself as purely scientific, which turned out to be at odds with the expectations of Imperial Germany at the time. It was one of the first to use photography extensively and effectively to document and record scientific activities and to shape the public’s image of the work that was being done in this remote and unknown part of the world. Ice was the leitmotif of Drygalski’s life. He had prior experience in the Arctic, and the year spent in Antarctica confirmed his nuanced way of viewing the ice: on the one hand, and foremost, scholarly and objective, while still appreciating its aesthetic qualities; on the other, infused with feelings of human vulnerability. Using discourse analysis, this article examines Drygalski’s published work and photographs he chose to illustrate it, in order to investigate what the ice meant to him. In his writings, it was the scholarly, objective attitude which predominated and this may have contributed to the generally lacklustre reception of his Antarctic achievements. The photographs he chose to illustrate his published work, however, were many and varied, often capturing the awe-inspiring beauty of the ice and contributing to good sales of his narrative of the South Polar Expedition.

The Russian naval officer Faddej Faddeevich Bellingshausen began life with a slightly different surname, in his case ‘Billingshausen’. It is possible to work out roughly when the Russian surname ‘Bellinsgauzen’ was chosen. Considerations prompting the selection of that particular Russian version can also be suggested.

In the ambitious strategy of Greenland to attract foreign companies to engage in extractive industries as a means to create increased national independence the question of minerals emerges as pivotal. The article investigates how two prominent Greenlandic premiers (2009–2014) translated hard rock into soft human welfare in a complex post-colonial context. The article develops the concept of “brokers of hope” which points the analytical attention to the entrepreneurial activities of future- and people-makers in a dense field of indigenous politics. By linking this concept to the idea of “resource materialities” it becomes possible to see resources as relational assemblages that are in a constant state of becoming and also to examine how different engagements with substances can make certain political struggles and political systems legitimate. Furthermore, the article investigates how these “brokers of hope” use the Chinese interests, and ideas of new cooperation with Chinese partners to underpin the intrinsic motivation to create new beginnings and thus to transform existing asymmetrical relations between Denmark and Greenland. This process is conceptualised as “double orientalism”. The article points out how hope and promise in two quite different ways are creatively used to make the future work in the present and how people and nations are made up in that process.

This article investigates how in the Soviet Arctic researchers and indigenous communities searched and understood the mammoth before and during the Cold War. Based on a vast number of published and unpublished sources as well as interviews with scholars and reindeer herders, this article demonstrates that the mammoth, as a paleontological find fusing together features of extinct and extant species, plays an in-between role among various environmental epistemologies. The author refers to moments of interactions among these different actors as “environmental encounters”, which comprise and engage with the physical, political, social and cultural environments of the Arctic. These encounters shape the temporal stabilisations of knowledge which enable the mammoth to live its post-extinct life. This article combines approaches from environmental history and anthropology, history of science and indigenous studies showing the social vitality of a “fossil object”.

Diplomats, officials, scientists and other actors working with the Antarctic Treaty System have not simply negotiated a range of measures for regulating human access to the region in a physical sense. They are also continually negotiating a cultural order, one in which time is central. Antarctic actors are aware that the Treaty did not once exist and may cease to exist sometime in the future. They are conscious of environmental change. Each actor tries to elevate their standing and power in the system by deploying temporal ideas and discourses in their interactions with each other: bringing their histories into negotiations, trying to control the idea of the future. This article will map three temporalities within Treaty history: first, the deployment and potency of histories and futures, their relative rhythms and lengths; second, permanence and expiration, the questions and politics of how long the Treaty should or might last; and third, the periodisation of the Treaty period, both among actors themselves and among scholars studying Antarctica.

The visual arts have played an increasingly important role in examining and critiquing past and present human activities in Antarctica as governed by the Antarctic Treaty and its Protocol on Environmental protection. This paper analyses the work of six artists who have contributed to this scrutiny, awakening us to fabrications and helping to enrich Antarctic cultures beyond the scientific and the environmental. It encourages all signatory nations to the Antarctic Treaty System to embrace and empower a more diverse artistic engagement with Antarctica and suggests that artists find new ways to address threats to the Antarctic, whether they come from within and from without.

Barton Peninsula is an ice-free area located in the southwest corner of King George Island (South Shetland Islands, Antarctica). Following the Last Glacial Maximum, several geomorphological features developed in newly exposed ice-free terrain and their distribution provide insights about past environmental evolution of the area. Three moraine systems are indicative of three main glacial phases within the long-term glacial retreat, which also favoured the development of numerous lakes. Five of these lakes were cored to understand in greater detail the pattern of deglaciation through the study of lacustrine records. Radiocarbon dates from basal lacustrine sediments enabled the reconstruction of the chronology of Holocene glacial retreat. Tephra layers present in lake sediments provided additional independent age constraints on environmental changes based on geochemical and geochronological correlation with Deception Island-derived tephra. Shrinking of the Collins Glacier exposed the southern coastal fringe of Barton Peninsula at 8 cal ky BP. After a period of relative stability during the mid-Holocene, the ice cap started retreating northwards after 3.7 cal ky BP, confining some glaciers within valleys as shown by moraine systems. Lake sediments confirm a period of relative glacial stability during the last 2.4 cal ky BP.