It has been suggested to me that I should take this opportunity to initiate discussion about the Antarctic Treaty: in particular to review how far the Treaty is meeting our present practical needs. During the forty years or more during which I have been associated with Antarctic affairs, I have seen some degree of international order evolved out of chaos; harmony has replaced discord; many apparently insoluble problems have been resolved one after another. I have seen that good co-operation and compromise can be and have been achieved repeatedly without any significant sacrifice of national autonomy and to the common advantage of all concerned.

In victory, there are no questions asked. After Roald Amundsen won the race for the South Pole on 14 December 1911 very few cared how he did it, least of all himself. As Fridtjof Nansen put it in his preface to Amundsen's book, The South Pole, ‘When the discoverer comes home in triumph, everybody cheers him. We are all proud of the accomplished deed…. We feel we have got a new feather in our cap, and got it cheaply’. Only the cognoscenti brood over the whys and wherefores, and the little question—how?

Many indigenous minorities throughout the Arctic are presently enduring severe social and economic adversity. Although residents of the Arctic are fewer in number than most other minority ethnic groups, their difficulties are not. This article is a review of one aspect of those difficulties, in one sector of the north: education among the native residents of rural Alaska.

It may be taken as axiomatic that the northern lands and seas—Alaska, the Canadian north, Greenland, Svalbard, the ‘northern cap’ of Scandinavia, the Soviet north, and the seas adjoining these areas, including the Arctic Ocean which lies between them—will not escape the process of ‘development’, whatever that may be taken to mean. The pressure of population alone, considered globally, is certain to ensure that the resources of these areas, if not, at least initially, their living space, will be explored and exploited. The fact that each of the land areas is, as it happens, the sovereign territory of an industrialized country, will facilitate this process. The option, if it is thought to exist at all, of total preservation of the Arctic and sub-Arctic as some kind of world nature reserve may have attraction to some but must be seen to be wholly unrealistic. Development will occur. But it is sensible, as well as possible, to try to influence the type and course of that development. The objection may be made that such an exercise is pointless, because we cannot see far enough or clearly enough into the future, when new considerations, unguessed at now, may revolutionize our priorities. This ground for objection is of course true; but it is not a reason for giving no thought at all to the question, for all decisions about the future have to be taken on a basis of imperfect knowledge.

It often appears as if circumpolar school administrators believe that the quality of education varies with the number of photocopiers purchased, the variety of textbooks available or the shape and novelty of their school buildings. The idea that a teacher might be the single most important factor in a child's education often escapes mention. Yet the failure of schools in northern Canada and Alaska to produce enough graduates to meet even the limited local demand for workers can be traced, almost certainly, to the absence of trained native teachers and to the total lack of continuity provided by southern teachers, who stay for only two or three years in the north, keeping their locus of existence firmly rooted in the south.

Investigations into conditions in Arctic and Antarctic seas were carried out during the late 18th and 19th centuries by private as well as government-sponsored expeditions. While the French occupied themselves with exploration mainly within tropical and temperate waters, Britishinterests lay in the Arctic regions, where a possible route through to the Pacific might be found, and as the location for whaling and sealing operations. It was to the advantage of these industries to discover how deep the polar seas were, to determine the water temperature and quality, and to understand the tides and currents flowing round their shores. But for a long time scientists failed to grasp that the key to water quality and movement lay in elucidating thetemperature profile from surface to sea bed. The instruments available before 1874 were not capable of resolving this profile and it was not until the end of the 19th century that measurements were made of sufficient accuracy to enable the various water masses and their consequent movements to be calculated theoretically from intensive temperature studies. By this time initiative for such work had passed into the hands of Norwegian scientists and Britain was represented only as a member of the International Commission for Exploration of the Sea (ICES), established in 1902.

Mankind's relationships with animals consist mainly of preying on them or selecting and controlling useful traits through domestication. The tradition of manipulating populations to conserve animals is ancient. Old laws in western Europe restricted hunting to the upper classes, and regulations have governed the killing of mammals and birds for food. Inhabitants of Britain's remote St Kilda Island, for example, lived off sea birds for 150 years, taking into account the breeding requirements and reproductive potential of several species. Marine birds provide good examples of how different patterns of animal exploitation and conservation have become established. The utilization of one such bird the Common Eider Somateria mollissima demonstrates a rare mutual dependence between man and animal.

The ‘Tundra Conference’, held in Edmonton, Alberta, in 1969 focussed public attention on the need for strong conservation measures in northern regions at a time when the extent and potential impact of non-renewable resource exploration was becoming readily apparent. A number of contributions were concerned with ‘what has happened and what is happening to specific tundra areas and what should be done and what is being done to prevent further degradation of the land’ (Fuller and Kevan, 1970). The Canadian government responded by making what amounted to a major shift in its northern lands policy. To a system of land management concerned principally with the administration of surface and sub-surface rights, concomitant with vigorous economic development, the government added a managed use component—the protection of the land surface through the regulation of resource exploration activity (Naysmith, 1970). The ‘Tundra Conference’ marked the beginning of a decade of public debate on land management and the development of a strong, regulatory regime.

In 1974 the Norwegian government passed a Royal Decree entitled ‘Kongelig Resolusjon om forskrifter om fredning m.v. av kulturminner pa Svalbard og Jan Mayen’ (Royal Resolution on regulations concerning the protection of cultural monuments on Svalbard and Jan Mayen). Since the appointment of a government inspector in 1976 a systematic survey of the permanent cultural monuments on Svalbard has been carried out. The results have so far confirmed the previously held impression that Svalbard is indeed very rich in cultural monuments left by man's exploits in previous centuries. This article is concerned with some of the typical monuments up to the turn of the 20th century. In addition the regulations for the protection of cultural monuments passed in 1974 are discussed.

The importance of reducing friction between an icebreaker's hull and the ice or snow by hull lubrication has been known for a long time and bow screws have been used on ships designed for sub-Arctic conditions. These propellers, however, are at high risk in Arctic conditions and this prompted intensive research in the 1960's at the Oy Wärtsilä Ab Helsinki shipyard to try to find an alternative method for use on icebreakers venturing further north. The idea of using air bubbles to create a lubricating water stream arose from the investigations of the two phase propulsion system, in which the propulsive effect is obtained by mixing gas and liquid, carried out at the Helsinki University of Technology. Model testing and detailed design of the system started immediately, and the first installation was made in 1969 in the roll on roll off ferry MS Finncarrier (Fig 1).

This article attempts to locate and briefly describe all the main mining operations that are currently active within the Arctic. In addition, many smaller mining operations, where grouped into recognizable mining districts, are included, as well as some mines which are no longer active. It is beyond the scope of this work to review the potential mineral resources of the Arctic, but where deposits are large, and figure prominently in the literature or have been investigated in detail with a view to future exploitation, they have been included and located on the various maps.

The vast expanses of tundra and taiga stretching from Kol'skiy Poluostrov to Chukotka have long been utilized by small ethnic groups with a chiefly northern economy—reindeer husbandry, hunting, fishing, sea mammal hunting. At present, judging by the data of the all-Union census of 1970, their total number is a little over 150 000. The peoples of the north include the Nentsy, formerly Samoyed (28 705), Evenki, formerly Tungus (25 149), Khanty, formerly Ostyak (21 138), Chukchi (13 597), Eveny, formerly Lamut (12 029), Nanaytsy, formerly Gol'd (10 005), Mansi, formerly Vogul (7 710), Koryaki (7 487), Dolgany (4 877), Nivkhi, formerly Gilyak (4 420), Sel'kupy, formerly Ostyak Samoyed (4 282), Ul'chi or Ol'chi (2 448), Saamy or Lapps (1 884), Udegeytsy (1 469), Eskimosy (1 308), Itel'meny (1 301), Kety, formerly Yeniseians (1 182), Orochi (1 089), Nganasany (953), Yukagiry (615), Negidal'tsy (537), Aleuty (Itogi,1973, p 21–22) (441); and also some not accounted for in the census— Entsy (300), Oroki (400) and Chuvantsy (700) (Novaya zhizn', 1967, p 7–9)

During recent years there has been a steady increase in the total world fish catch (including shellfish) to a plateau, reached in the early 1970's, of around 70 million tonnes. Although much of the increase in the past decade has been due to the Anchoveta fishery, if that component is excluded the underlying trend is still upward (Gulland, 1976). This increasing pressure on the established fishery resources has meant that in recent years there has been a tendency for those nations with a distant water fishing capability to look further afield. Although much of this exploratory fishing has been in areas reasonably close to good harbour facilities, the recent trend by coastal states of establishing 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zones has meant that the Southern Ocean, an area of limited international control, has receiveda great deal of attention.

Lloyd's Register of Shipping has published losses of all ocean-going merchant ships over 100 tonnes since 1890, including those resulting from encounters with ice. The list presented here gives details of where and how a loss due to ice occurred and provides the nationality of the ship and, where known, its route and cargo. Some place-names have changed since the ship loss, and where these have been found the present-day names follow in square brackets; place-names which have not been located are given in quotes. Changes have also occurred with respect to countries and flags, but in order to avoid confusion the entries in the flag column have been left as recorded at the time of the loss.

It is now 60 years since the Swedish Lapps held their first national assembly (landsmöte) in Östersund in 1918. One year later the first issue appeared of Samefolkets Egen Tidning [The Lappish People's Own Newspaper], which, under the title Samefolket [The Lappish People], is still published, and thus provides a continuous record of organizational developments among the Swedish Lapps. In this article I shall survey political organization among this particular ethnic group during the period 1918 to 1937. Although Lappish debates now transcend the national frontiers of Fennoscandia, in the early years of ethnic politics there were separate developments in Norway, Sweden and Finland, with rather rare organizational contacts between the Lapps of the different countries. It is to be hoped that the record will later be completed by discussions of events in Norway and Finland; Sweden, however, provides a useful starting point, both because of the continuous publication of an ethnic newspaper, and the sustained interest of the Swedish state authorities, which permitted the publication of the proceedings of national meetings at a time when the other two countries were tardy in encouraging such ethnic awareness.

Shipping on the Kara Sea section of the Soviet Northern Sea Route—to and from the mouth of the Yenisey river from the west—had been established on a regular, indeed routine, basis by the 1931 navigation season, when 16 freighters took part (Belov, 1959, p 379). At the other end of the sea route, however, the situation was radically different. Between 1923 and 1931 the mouth of the Kolyma had been served each season by only one, occasionally two, of the freighters Stavropol', Kolyma and Leytenant Shmidt; without icebreaker escort, these vessels would fight their way through the ice of the Chukchi Sea and Proliv Longa to the mouth of the Kolyma (Belov, 1959, p 216–56, p 385–403). The 1932 season saw a dramatic change.

The Southern Ocean has unique features that have aroused the interest of the scientific community. As the site of the only circumpolar current, it is the principal region where waters from the major ocean basins may be mixed and/or interchanged. It is also the formation region for Antarctic Bottom Water and Antarctic Intermediate Water, which penetrate far northward into the major ocean basins.

Prior to the summer of 1932 only three ships had succeeded in traversing the Northern Sea Route: Nordenskiöld's Vega in 1878–79 from Atlantic to Pacific (Nordenskiold, 1881) and the Imperial Navy icebreakers Taymyr and Vaygach from Pacific to Atlantic in 1914–15 (Starokadomskiy, 1976, p 180–262). Both of these expeditions were unable to complete the passage in one season, but were forced by ice conditions to winter in the Arctic.

The Arctic Ocean covers an area of roughly 10 million km2. The terrain, in reality an ocean of ice, varies in altitude from sea level to pressure ridges and floes up to 60 m high, in which extensive leads of open water may well be encountered. In the short summer period the temperature can rise significantly above freezing point but during winter the air temperature will drop to levels well below —48°C. During the winter, high winds will buffet radio antenna installations and ice storms render an aerial array virtually useless. In the Arctic basin, periods of mist and fog frequently occur, and during these it will be impossible to determine bearing or position by conventional navigation methods. During any extended journey beyond the land mass surrounding the Arctic Ocean it is important, therefore, to establish communication with base headquarters at an early stage and at regular intervals thereafter to ensure adequate re-supply, provide a homing aid for the re-supply aircraft and to call for assistance or instructions in the event of an emergency.