Among students of the history of reindeer domestication the Tuva occupy a special position. Their homeland, the Sayan mountains and the basin of the upper Yenisey, to the south-west of lake Baykal and to the north of the present-day frontier between the USSR and Mongolia, has frequently been suggested as the region where reindeer were first domesticated. This attribution rests on two types of evidence: the first archaeological, and largely consisting of rock carvings depicting reindeer; and the second ethnographic, comprising observations of the techniques of reindeer management employed by the Tuva, chiefly made by two western travellers, the Englishman Douglas Carruthers in 1910, and the Norwegian Ørjan Olsen in 1914. The fieldwork of Olsen has only been published in Norwegian (Olsen, 1915a; 1915b), and therefore has not been widely used by scientists. Yet of the two travellers he was perhaps better equipped to make technical ethnographic observations. In this article I shall analyse the descriptions of reindeer husbandry made by both men, but with especial attention to Olsen. I shall then assess the contribution that observations of the Tuva might make to the debate between ethnologists on where reindeer (Rangifer tarandus L) were first domesticated.

The World has become the largest passenger ship to transit the northwest passage, from Nome, Alaska, to Nuuk, Greenland, 17 August to 12 September 2012. 183 vessels have transited the passage to date, following that of the first transit by Roald Amundsen in 1903–1906. The itinerary included most of the usual stops and routes of previous transits of other vessels, with a major exception. There was no ice in the western part of the itinerary to Cambridge Bay, and open pack after that for the remainder of the route in Canada. Approaching Ilulissat, Greenland, ice in the form of bergs, bergy bits and growlers was encountered, a common feature of ice exiting the adjacent fjord. A few polar bears were sighted in Canada, and very few whales.

The period 1877–1878 was one of tension between Britain and Russia caused by the Russo-Turkish War and the consequent threat to the route to India. The Royal Navy was deployed to deter the Russians in seas adjacent to the Balkans, but also undertook intelligence gathering missions further afield. Two of these were to Petropavlovsk in sub-Arctic Kamchatka and were undertaken by Commander A.L. Douglas in HMS Egeria. The British, with their French allies, had sustained a serious defeat there during the Crimean War and wished to ascertain the state of Russian defences should there be fresh hostilities. In the event, Douglas discovered that the Russians had abandoned Petropavlovsk as a fortified post and that there was no garrison. His reports were, therefore, negative, but included interesting information concerning Petropavlovsk in this era.

For a long period the Northern Sea Route was considered by the Soviet Union as a national seaway closed to foreign shipping. In 1987 Mikhail Gorbachev announced his intention to open the Northern Sea Route for international navigation. In the following years a number of acts were adopted to realise this idea. These documents clarified to a great extent the attitude of the USSR to the sector concept, historic waters, and other aspects of the northern seas. Nevertheless, some uncertainties in the legal status of the Northern Sea Route remain. This article focuses on the doctrinal views, state practice of the USSR and Russia, and prospects of internationalisation of the Northern Sea Route on the basis of international convention.

The 1979 Cambridge Spitsbergen expedition consisted of 13 members and was in the field from mid-June to late August. An advance party of seven left England on 18 June, arrived in Longyearbyen by scheduled flight, and then continued to the base building ‘Mexico’ in Ny-Alesund by chartered Cessna 185. The members were: W. B. Harland (expedition leader, geologist), P. Waddams (geologist), M. F.Chantrey (boat captain), S. G. Chandler (engineer), A. S. D. McCracken, T. D. Parker and J. H. Nebelsick (geological assistants)

In May 1956, an article in this Journal described the mapping of the Falkland Islands Dependencies up to that date (Leay, 1956). In March 1962, that part of the Dependencies lying south of 60° S was re-named British Antarctic Territory. This is an account of the maps of both the Dependencies and the Territory that have been published by the Directorate of Overseas Surveys* since 1956 and of the methods that have been used in their production.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the facilities that have been developed forconducting biological studies through the permanent, or nearly permanent, sea ice cover ofMcMurdo Sound, Antarctica.

The earliest Antarctic expeditions into inshore areas casually observed and collectedbiota either from shipboard and small boats on rareoccasions when ice conditions were favourable, or from holes or cracks in the ice when temperatures were high enough to preventrapid refreezing. The facilities and techniques described here have evolved since 1958 from similar crude and time-consuming techniques to sophisticated, efficient operations that can now be carried out continuously through ice cover of less than 1 m to over 4 m.

Spekk finger is the Norwegian name for a condition which is confined to people engaged in Arctic sealing. The word indicates that the disease has its origin from the blubber of seals and other mammals.

No officers, apart from those who actually served in the Franklin expedition, were so closely connected with it, both before and after its departure, as Sir Edward Parry and Sir James Clark Ross. Parry, after his last Arctic expedition (1827), was consulted as a matter of course by the Admiralty on all Arctic problems; he assisted in organising the Franklin Expedition; and was one of the Admiralty's principal advisers during the search.

On 5 October 1851 a balloon was found near Gloucester, England, bearing a message from one of Sir John Franklin's two ships, last seen by Europeans six years before. The Admiralty responded swiftly and investigated the circumstances for several days before announcing that the message was a fake. During their inquiries no news appeared in the press. When newspapers at last published the story, most of them called the episode a hoax, although their accounts differed from each other and from the facts in many details. The Admiralty's brief announcement late in the day on 11 October gave the impression that the incident had been trivial, but in fact they had taken it very seriously. The author suggests that the hoax was carried out with an authentic balloon made for Admiralty expeditions to the Arctic, inflated with hydrogen or coal gas.