The final months of the International Geophysical Year of 1957–1958 were a period when the political and scientific future of the Antarctic was being shaped, with many of the participating countries reassessing their policies regarding the South Polar region. This paper explores the thinking of both political and scientific figures in the USSR that helped mould Soviet Antarctic policy during this time and demonstrates that the two perspectives did not necessarily coincide. The political perspective is exemplified by the deputy chairman of the USSR council of ministers and member of the central committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Aleksei Kosygin, and the scientific perspective by the deputy director of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, Mikhail Somov. The fact that there was interplay between both viewpoints when planning the Soviet post IGY Antarctic programmes shows that political considerations did not always prevail over the scientific, with national prestige being an area in which their interests overlapped. Ultimately, Somov was instrumental in reducing to some extent the effects of the Soviet government's attempts to curtail Soviet Antarctic research operations when it was reassessing its policy in the light of new international initiatives regarding future collaboration in the Antarctic.

Australia has extensive interests in, and has taken a long term interest over, Antarctica. These interests include a territorial claim to the Australian Antarctic Territory (AAT) encompassing 42 per cent of the continent. In addition to its interests as a claimant state Australian participated in the negotiation of the Antarctic Treaty and has devoted itself to a major role in the Antarctic Treaty system (ATS), firmly committing to upholding the twin pillars of the Treaty: ‘peace’ and ‘science’.

Visiting the city of Lichfield, Staffordshire, recently, the author was surprised to discover a handsome statue of Captain Edward John Smith, master of Titanic in 1912 on her first and only voyage (Fig. 1). That the sculptress was none other than Captain Robert Falcon Scott's widow, Kathleen, added even greater interest. The statue stands in Beacon Park, facing in the distance and nearer to the road, a statue of King Edward VII.

In 1873, the British explorer Benjamin Leigh Smith concluded the private oceanographic and geographical explorations in the seas around Svalbard that he had begun in 1871 and continued in 1872. The logistics of the 1873 expedition, however, were far more complicated than those of the first two voyages. Rather than using a single ship as he had done with the sailing vessel Samson the previous summers, Leigh Smith chartered James Lamont's Arctic steamer Diana and employed Samson as a reserve supply tender. With the added supplies Samson afforded, Leigh Smith planned to round the northeast limit of Svalbard, which he had discovered in 1871, and survey Kong Karls Land. Among those invited to join to expedition was a twenty-three-year-old member of the Royal Engineers, Lieutenant Herbert C. Chermside, who would visit the Arctic for the first and last time in a long life of military service. It was to Chermside that Leigh Smith entrusted the keeping of the expedition's logbooks. These three unpublished journals, along with a log kept by Samson's captain, William Walker, provide details of an expedition that, while it failed in its primary objective to round Nordaustlandet, did succeed in relieving Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld's Swedish polar expedition beset near Mosselbukta. It also maintained an array of contacts with whalers and sealers, for example the Peterhead whaler David Gray and the Norwegian skipper Frederick Christian Mack, regarding local conditions around Svalbard. At Augustabukta, Chermside's observations of uplifted skeletons of remotely harvested whales give estimated death ranges of between 1569–1691 and 1764–1807. The expedition would end with a major island in Svalbard being named for Chermside.

Perhaps the most tragic story from the Franklin expedition of 1819–1822 was the murder of Robert Hood, a talented midshipman who left a number of watercolours of the trip and of the peoples and fauna encountered (Houston 1974; Franklin 2000). The story even became the basis for a novel that won the annual Governor General of Canada's prize for fiction in 1994 for the Alberta writer, Rudy Wiebe (Wiebe 1994). The expedition undertook a desperately difficult trek that saw only nine survivors of the original twenty members, but it resulted in the first map of 800 km (500 miles) of the northern central Arctic coast of Canada.

This study tries to show how the different modes of the fact of urban dwelling relate to the different forms and types of behaviour and representations of reality in relation to the present and future environmental problems, and their probable and desirable solutions, of Antarctica. On the basis of a theoretical socio-ecological and socio-existential discussion, together with a ‘rootedness’ approach, the results of a comparative study on young inhabitants (15–25 years old) of the Patagonian city of San Carlos de Bariloche, and the city of Buenos Aires, are analysed in order to ascertain their representations, perceptions, attitudes, and behaviours, in relation to Antarctica, its environmental problems, and possible solutions to them.

‘Rootedness’ is considered as a ‘total phenomenon’: multidimensional and interdependent among its different dimensions, spatial, social, and cultural, and also as an explanatory variable, together with anomie, (taken in this context as being an individual and/or structural situation that emerged when subjects do not feel that the current normative and axiological framework applies to them), participation, and consumerism. These variables were measured and related to different attitudes and behaviours of the young inhabitants in question.

Individuals with a high ‘rootedness’ level, and a low anomie level tend to identify environmental problems as dealing with immediate human action in terms of depredation and/or direct pollution. At the same time, this type of social actor (‘rooted’ and not anomic) tends to give priority as a solution to the socialisation and information processes. Perhaps a clear visualisation, coupled with a clear experience of the normative-axiological web of a given society could anchor individuals so that they could be in a better position to identify environmental problems, as well as possible causes and solutions thereof. A high grade of anomie causes subjects to envisage the future in a most pessimistic way.

Control and punishment as a means of remedying environmental problems tend to be emphasised predominantly among subjects within the 20–25 age range, and within a higher percentage of females. The same solution is also suggested by individuals suffering from a low actual, as well as potential, participation level.

Antarctica tends to be seen as the Terra Incognita. The high percentage of subjects that do not answer or say that they do not know the Antarctic issue can be summed up as a predominant ‘couldn't-care-less’, indifference many young people demonstrate with respect to the continent. The imaginary Antarctica, as a fruit of an aesthetic, poetic, and utopian vision is predominantly present among young people with a lower level of consumerism orientated life, a low anomie level and a high grade of potential participation, that is, individuals endowed with sufficient energy to experience and go ahead in concepts in which Antarctica rises as a metaphor of beauty, mystery, purity, virginity, and as the last shelter. Conversely, a more pragmatic and conflict aimed vision of Antarctica is to be found in a higher ratio among young people with the highest socio-economic level (SEL).

Since the Antarctic Treaty was negotiated in 1959, it has undergone major substantive legal transformations as it grew into a multifaceted regime known as the Antarctic Treaty system. Many of those transformations stemmed from actions by the principal decision makers, the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties (ATCPs), as they adopted new strategies and values alongside binding legal agreements for managing their activities in circumpolar southern waters. This essay examines the evolution of the modern law of the sea and seeks to explain how it embellished (has it at times challenged?) the character, significance and purposes of the Antarctic Treaty.

Joseph Elzéar Bernier's well known sector claim of 1 July 1909 was predated by a similar, but until now unknown, proclamation in 1907. Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier, although eager to assert Canadian sovereignty, was unwilling to countenance the first claim because he did not think that the right time for such a gesture had yet come. However, in 1909 Bernier's action was welcomed, but only as a convenient way to counter the widely publicised American claim made by Robert Peary. In the eyes of government officials, neither of Bernier's proclamations held any real importance for Canada's northern sovereignty which rested primarily on the 1880 transfer of ownership from Britain. Bernier believed that his achievements had never been sufficiently recognised, but in fact the problem was that he himself overrated their significance.

Sovereignty was and still remains one of the principal reasons for human endeavour in Antarctica. The ‘Heroic Era’ of Antarctic exploration was designed principally to seek out not only new lands including the South Pole, but also to assert territorial claims on behalf of the sovereign who sponsored these expeditions. The ‘planting of the flag’ was therefore just as much a crucial component of Antarctic discovery, as also was the conduct of science. Sovereignty and science remained twin pillars of Antarctic endeavour throughout the early part of the twentieth century, and whilst the region escaped the horrors of World War II, it did not take long after the war for Antarctic endeavours to resume on both fronts. In a decade of frantic diplomatic activity during the 1950s, which was highlighted by the 1957–1958 International Geophysical Year and the 1959 Washington Conference, there was also the prospect in 1956 of a case before the International Court of Justice between Argentina, Chile and the United Kingdom over the contested status of territorial claims on the Antarctic Peninsula. Notwithstanding that by this time all of the current claims to the continent had by then been asserted, there had also been moves made by India in 1956 and then again in 1958 to reconsider the management of the continent with a view to its internationalisation under a framework created by the United Nations General Assembly.

The article discusses the results of a three year research project studying international indigenous political activism using case studies from the Arctic. Drawing on two different disciplinary starting points, international relations and international law, the project addressed two interrelated questions. The first of these was how relations between states, international organisations and indigenous peoples have been and are currently constructed as legal and political practices; the second was how indigenous peoples construct their political agency through different strategies to further their political interests. These questions are addressed from the point of view of power relations. The power to act is the basic form of political agency. However, this power may take different forms of political action, for example, self-identification, participation, influence, and representation. The main conclusions of the article are: 1) indigenous political agency is based on multiple forms of power; 2) practices of power that enable and constrain indigenous political agency change over time; 3) power circulates and produces multiple sites of encounters for states, international organisations and indigenous people; 4) indigenous political agency is a question of acting; and 5) there are new challenges ahead for indigenous peoples in claiming a political voice, in particular in global climate politics.

Rosove (2001: 323) described James Clark Ross's Antarctic voyage as ‘one of mankind's greatest expeditions of geographical and scientific exploration’ and Captain Scott (1905 I: 22) wrote that it was ‘among the most famous and brilliant ever made.’ Ross himself published an account of the voyage (1847), which was followed by that of the surgeon on board Erebus, Robert McCormick (1884). J.E. Davis (1901), the second master of Terror wrote a long letter to his sister, and Cornelius Savage (Savage 1839–1843), the blacksmith in Erebus wrote notes for James Savage, seaman. There was also an article published by John Robertson (1843), the surgeon in Terror together with the scientific reports and papers, none of which contain a day by day account of the voyage. Indeed, apart from the first two the other accounts cover relatively short portions of the voyage. There is also a large number of modern volumes dealing with the voyage, among which Ross (1982) quotes quite extensively from the diary that is the present topic (Cunningham 1830–1843). This diary with full critical apparatus has been published in extenso by the Hakluyt Society on line and the purpose of this note is to draw this publication to the attention of readers of Polar Record.

A bowhead whale mother and calf pair was recorded off the northeast Greenland coast in July 2009. This is apparently the first calf observed in the Spitsbergen stock of the bowhead whale since 1981.

Edward Adrian Wilson was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England on 23 July 1872. He attended Cheltenham College and then proceeded to Cambridge where he read natural sciences and to St George's Hospital, London where he trained in medicine. His name is best known because of his participation in Robert Falcon Scott's Antarctic expeditions of. 1901–1904 and 1910–1913. He reached the South Pole with Scott on 17 January 1912 and died with him on the return journey on or after 29 March 1912.

Louis-Philippe-Robert, Duc d'Orléans (1869–1926), the Orléans claimant to the French throne, mounted four private expeditions to the Arctic, in 1904, 1905, 1907, and 1909. During the first of these, on board his private yacht, Maroussia, and accompanied by his wife, Marie Dorothée, he visited Svalbard where he hunted reindeer while his wife, an accomplished amateur artist, executed a number of delightful paintings. In 1905 he chartered the ice strengthened Belgica and employed Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery as her captain; he also recruited an impressive group of scientists. He again visited Svalbard then pushed west through the pack ice to east Greenland. He was able to penetrate further north along that coast than his predecessors, the Germans under Koldewey in Germania, had in 1869–1870, and discovered and named Île-de-France and the Belgica Bank. He shot large numbers of polar bears. In 1907, again on board Belgica, and again with de Gerlache in command of the ship, and again with a contingent of scientists on board, Orléans headed out into the Kara Sea from Matochkin Shar. Belgica soon became beset in the pack ice and drifted slowly south with the ice to emerge through Karskie Vorota after a very frustrating month. Thereafter an attempt to reach Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa was foiled by heavy ice. Finally, in 1909, again on board Belgica under de Gerlache's command, Orléans visited Jan Mayen, east Greenland, Svalbard and Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa, with hunting as his primary aim. From all four expeditions Orléans brought back substantial numbers of skins of birds and mammals that were mounted and displayed in his private museums. On his death they were bequeathed to the French people and exhibited in the specially built Musée du Duc d'Orléans in Paris and later in the Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle. The scientific data and specimens collected by the scientists on the 1905 and 1907 expeditions resulted in a substantial number of scientific reports in their various fields.

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) of the United Kingdom will fund, from January 2010 onwards, a series of four seminars on the theme of ‘Knowledges, resources and legal regimes: the new geopolitics of the polar regions’. Details are provided of the seminars and the outputs including the creation of a database outlining British based expertise in the humanities and social sciences. In the aftermath of the International Polar Year, the series should not only be timely but also strategic in the sense of clarifying the disciplinary and geographical range and extent of that expertise.

This article summarises the history of the discovery of emperor penguin Aptenodytes forsteri colonies. Emperor penguins were probably first seen on James Cook's second voyage (1773–1775) but were not recorded as a separate species until 1844. The first breeding colony of these birds was found in 1902 and a further 32 were sighted over the next century. The total number of colonies is still unknown but today satellite technology is aiding the process of discovery.

Research following the discovery of a picture of William Edward Parry painted onto wooden boards in the stairwell of a house in Cumbria, has resulted in the identification of the probable artist. It has also been possible to show that this painting was a copy of an engraving of Parry that was published in The European Magazine and London Review, and which was based on a portrait by Samuel Drummond. It is suggested that the new picture was probably painted between 1821 and 1823, and the fact that it was painted in a small provincial community reflects the reach of the early nineteenth century media and the significance of the search for the northwest passage for the country at large.

This article is an exploration and description of the inter-subjective character of human and non-human relationships. Recent research into animism shows that at present there is emerging a new ontology that breaks down barriers between human beings and animals, culture and nature. This new animism predominantly discusses how human persons relate to the world. The culture of many indigenous groups is animistic meaning that nature is alive and there is a social space for humans and non-humans to interrelate to each other. In this article, an attempt is made to describe in detail how Sami reindeer herders perceive their environment and how the interplay and dialogue with nature is integrated in the overall activities of Sami within this relationship.

A living being co-exists within certain environmental conditions and is dependent on all other beings with which she/he is in relationship. In this sense one can speak about ‘inter-subjectivity’ meaning direct subject-to-subject sharing of presence. It will be shown that the relationship between humans and non-humans is highly context-bound. Furthermore, the relationship between humans and non-humans within the Sami cultural circles is based on the mutual caretaking, respect and conditioning within different groups. For instance, the reindeer give themselves to humans and humans give shelter to them. According to the Sami world view, there are many different kinds of persons, such as humans, animals and spirits. To be a person in an animistic sense is a very flexible way of existence and one has to learn to know what the different personhoods are about. In this context, it is important to understand the role and function of the landscape and certain places and features within the landscape in specific areas. This is because within these places, communication, and what will be referred to as mythic discourse, takes place between humans and non-humans, and this dialogue is known to be of benefit to human beings in their daily lives and activities.