Scott's Northern Party, led by Victor Campbell, after almost a year at Cape Adare was moved south by Terra Nova. They landed at Evans Cove for five weeks’ sledging in the Wood Bay area. Bad ice-conditions prevented the vessel from returning. Campbell's party, stranded with little food and only summer equipment, faced the 1912 winter alone. For shelter they dug a snow-cave and there survived for seven months, living mainly on seals and penguins. Finally in early spring they sledged 230 miles back to Scott's party at Cape Evans. The small snow-cave provided little privacy. Authors have mentioned how Campbell divided the cave into two virtual messes, one for the ratings, the other for the officers, with the associated naval implications that conversations in one mess were not to be ‘paid attention to’ in the other. Still, at times, private exchanges were needed. Hooper describes one silent conversation between Campbell and Levick found in the latter's cave-diary, and mentions some others relating to health matters. This paper describes one drawing and nine new written conversations between Campbell, Levick and Priestley found in a field-notebook held in the Victor Campbell Collection at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. The conversations are transcribed, interpreted, and placed in the context of the life in the snow-cave. All were written during September, their last month there, and show that officers often needed to converse silently in writing and, furthermore, that the two-mess concept was not a satisfactory context for private conversations.

This paper describes the co-operation, for the purpose of data collection, that was established between scientific institutions in Scandinavia and the sealing trade in northern Norway in the period 1865–1875. The paper describes the cartographic work carried out by sealing masters, notably the making of new charts of Nordaustlandet, Kong Karls Land and Novaya Zemlya. It also describes how a scientific network in Norway and Sweden saw the potential in the masters’ knowledge of the Arctic and encouraged them to record their observations and to gather scientific data. The reasons why sealing masters engaged in Arctic research are described. The paper includes charts of parts of Svalbard and of Novaya Zemlya based on sealers’ sketches, notes and ship's journals.

The beauty of nature in Greenland and the selling point of Greenlandic tourism ‘Our ice is melting, yet it is still here’ have been attracting more tourists in recent years. Therefore, demand for tourist accommodation is expected to grow in the future. Staying overnight in small huts is a traditional way for nomadic Greenlanders and for tourists. However, the austere condition of the existing huts cannot meet requirements nowadays. Meanwhile, climate change is causing retreat of ice, so tourist attractions might change in the future. Therefore the contradiction of ‘improved lodging’, ‘environmental friendliness’ and ‘flexibility of location’ raise the problem for the future development of tourist accommodation. The aim of this work is to explore a desirable solution by developing stand-alone mobile tourist huts with light and heating based on renewable energy supply, and sustainable black waste water management. The cabin can be disassembled into pieces and transported to new areas by trucks, snow scooters, boats or dog-sledges with almost no disturbance to the environment of the original location. In addition, cultural sustainability is also taken into account.

In the summers of 1858 and 1859, the Scot Sir James Lamont of Knockdow embarked on two cruises to Svalbard (referred to by Lamont as Spitzbergen [sic]) to hunt, make geographical surveys, and collect geological and biological specimens. Lamont's return from these voyages coincided with the publication of the joint Charles Darwin-Alfred Russel Wallace paper, ‘On the tendency of species to form varieties; on the perpetuation of varieties and species by natural means of selection’ by the Linnean Society in August 1858 and, a year later, the publication of Darwin's On the origin of species (Darwin 1958). Profoundly influenced by Darwin's ideas, Lamont initiated a correspondence with the naturalist, relating examples of what he considered to be natural selection, observed during his hunting expeditions. In his Svalbard travelogue, Seasons with the sea-horses (1861), Lamont expounded specifically upon walrus and polar bear evolution, ideas inspired by sporadic yet encouraging letters from the renowned naturalist.

Polar history has historically been white history, nowhere more so than in South Africa, The recent attempt to imagine a post-apartheid deep south through the public recovery of a black boatman who drowned in the annexation of the Prince Edward Islands in 1948 has ironically left the white history largely intact. Re-reading the annexation not as ceremony and survey, but as labour calls the central claims of this white history into question; that the annexation was a triumph of white seamanship not black stevedoring; that Daniels’ death was a tragic accident not a result of racism; and that black labour was merely the manual appendage to white intellects. It reveals that the landing of 300 tons of cargo by black boatmen. was what enabled the ‘effective occupation’ of the islands. Daniels death was the avoidable result of an institutional racism that discounted the lives of black labour and exposed them at Marion Island to the dangerous work conditions of long hours in open boats in rough sea without adequate safety provisions; and that Daniels was a boatman, not an ‘unskilled labourer’, with a tradition of co-adventuring that valued an individual for their strength, skill and courage, not the colour of their skin and in which the individual was defined by their contribution to the group

Arctic missionaries have been studied extensively as agents of change but the role of Inuit women in the adoption of Christianity has been largely overlooked. In this paper we discuss Inuit women who played an important role in the processes of evangelisation and conversion. We focus on the first converts in South Baffin Island as well as the cases of Teresikuluk, a young woman who tried to turn her relatives from shamanism to Christianity, and of Pelagie, the first Inuit nun, in the Kivalliq. The missionaries often presented these women as role models choosing the right path in contrast to other individuals who kept their ‘pagan’ that is shamanic traditions. For these Inuit women, Christianity was attractive as it freed them from many ritual restrictions, providing them with more freedom and power. Many women were among the first converts, but in most areas men took the leading roles as preachers and evangelists. It proved to be hard for women to pursue a religious career and here the constraints of their social roles played an important part.

Following an initiative taken by the Russian Ministry of Natural resources and Ecology and by the Federal Agency of Mineral Resources (Rosnedra) in 2003 international cooperation on compiling a new generation of circum-Arctic geological and geophysical maps (in scale 1: 5 000 000) was undertaken by a consortium of national agencies from Canada, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the USA. The polar stereographic maps include onshore and offshore geological coverage to 60° N. The bedrock map and database was first published in 2008, the geophysical maps were completed in 2010, while a tectonic map is currently in press. The new circum-Arctic maps are formally published under the Comission for the Geological Map of the World (CGMW/CCGM). A metallogenic map and database of the main occurrences of onshore and offshore metal deposits is scheduled to be completed in 2016.

Academic discussions around Inuit identity once focused on acculturation. These have mainly been replaced by concepts of adaptation to new living conditions. Yet, Inuit in the eastern Canadian Arctic still frame identity concerns around their land activities and are wary of becoming too much like ‘Qallunaat’ or southerners. This paper examines what material and non-material goods (for example psychological goods) Inuit seek from the land today in order to understand what traditional aspects of their relationships with the land persist and what new ones might have emerged recently. It then discusses the implications these have for Inuit identity. The study found a decrease in the procurement and use of material goods from the land compared with previous generations. Concomitantly, the acquisition of non-material goods has become more formalised and distinctly identified in discussions of land excursions. The non-material goods are clearly linked to Inuit ideology and traditions, rather than to southern ideas. The desire for, and acquisition of, non-material goods is developing both from a top-down or group consensus and bottom-up or individual decision, illustrating an interplay between the construction of group and individual identities in relation to the land. Inuit in the eastern Canadian Arctic are transforming their relationship with the land in a way that demonstrates an emerging identity as community Inuit who are rooted in their own local history and geography and also consciously subscribe to a larger Inuit culture that is premised on values such as sharing and building harmonious relationships.

Climate change has been identified as compromising food security in many case studies with Inuit communities in Canada. Largely neglected in the scholarship however, is research focusing on the gendered dimensions of Inuit food security in a changing climate. This paper reports on a community based participatory research project involving semi-structured interviews with Inuit women (n = 42), 10 focus groups (n = 40), key informant interviews (n = 8), and participant observation, to identify and characterise the determinants of food security among Inuit females in the community of Arviat, and examine the role played by climate and climate change. Results indicate that significant changes in climate being observed are not currently affecting female food security, with socio-economic-cultural factors primary determinants of food security. The nature of the traditional food system in Arviat based on harvesting land mammals reduces sensitivity to changing sea ice conditions which have been problematic in other Inuit communities. However, dependence on a limited number of animals for diet (primarily caribou, arctic char) increases sensitivity to potential future disruptions caused by climate change to these species and reduces response diversity as a coping mechanism.

Richard Byrd claimed to have reached the North Pole in his 1926 flight, based mostly on his dead reckoning navigation. His technique of finding distance traveled from observations with a drift indicator can ideally be quite accurate, as shown by simulations of his dead reckoning with a navigation log. But under real-world conditions, especially those of Byrd's flight, significant errors can easily occur. Since we do not have a copy of Byrd's navigation log from the flight, we cannot assess such errors, and there is some evidence that Byrd did not keep a navigation log. However, that would not necessarily lead to less accurate dead reckoning.