For centuries the Arctic has served as a stage of imagination and has inspired countless artists in different ways. Also the music genre of heavy metal frequently utilises the ‘north’ and the Arctic. This paper briefly explores how two heavy metal subgenres, black metal and Viking metal, approach and utilise narratives associated with the ‘north’. By using lyrics of black and Viking metal bands, different forms of utilisation come to the fore, ranging from narratives of death to the raging Northman. Also polar exploration finds musical expression and is a source for generating extreme conceptual settings.

The Arctic is commonly perceived as a pristine wilderness, yet more than four centuries of human industry have not left Svalbard untouched. This paper explores the historical dimension of human-induced ecosystem change using human presence as a proxy. Its aims are fourfold: to reconstruct and quantify historical human presence, to ascertain if human presence is a suitable indicator of long-term anthropogenic pressure, to deduce trends in anthropogenic pressure on five selected species of game animal, and to postulate trends in their subpopulation sizes. Published sources give rise to 57 datasets dealing with the annual voyages to Svalbard as well as the participants in them. All known archaeological sites are visualised in a distribution map. Despite the large amount of data, the quantification of historical human presence remains biased and partial. Only with the aid of a timeline of known milestones is it possible to make hypotheses about changes in anthropogenic pressure and animal subpopulations over time. The exercise is nonetheless a necessary and instructive one: it confirms that the erroneous view of Svalbard as a pristine ecosystem hinders timely historical-ecological research. Future work must aim at the systematic quantification of past human impact in a holistic approach to environmental conservation and restoration.

This note addresses the recent announcement regarding Argentina's submission to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. While the commission considered much of Argentina's submitted materials regarding the outer continental shelf (and sovereign rights that accrue to the seabed), it deliberately excluded areas of controversy including the Falkland Islands and Antarctica. What should be of interest to Polar Record readers is how consistently international media, including British journalists, misunderstand international maritime law and ‘stoke’ the fires of Argentine and British nationalisms. The Argentine government, however, was not an innocent party and its own press releases were ambiguous on the matter concerned, even if the commission had recognised the merit of much of their scientific-technical submission.

The preambles of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty and the 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic state that Antarctica is to be managed in the interest of all mankind. However, key phrases such as ‘interest of all mankind’ and ‘wilderness and aesthetic values’ are subject to interpretation. The objective of this study is to gain a better understanding of public perceptions of the Antarctic wilderness, proceeding from the assumption that public views should be incorporated into the consultative parties’ decision making process. The study expands on previous research by exploring whether perceptions of the Antarctic environment varied between students at two comparably sized public universities in Spain and the United States. Four hundred undergraduate students were asked about their values, beliefs and attitudes with respect to environmental management practices in Antarctica. After controlling for course type, responses showed little variation based on nationality. A large proportion of students valued Antarctica as a science laboratory for the benefit of mankind, as one of the world's last great wildernesses, and an important component of the climate system. Students did not support an increase in the number of people going to Antarctica, and favoured limitations on infrastructure development.

28 individual poems, notes, or drawings found and photographed under the bunks at Borchgrevink's hut at Cape Adare, Antarctica during two short visits on 1 February and 19 February 2015, are catalogued, translated and in many cases a source is identified. It has been possible to read and translate 24 of 28 markings. The relevance of a number of quotations, which express unhappiness with the leadership of the expedition and the emotional reaction of expedition members, are examined and placed in the context of the first over-wintering. Further targeted investigation, requiring specific permission, is suggested.

In this article we survey descriptions of Christmas celebrations contained in the diaries and narratives of polar explorers (mostly British) from 1818 to 1912. We find that Christmas was a time almost universally associated with the display of positive emotions, although this was in the context of increased amounts of stress associated with the challenges of over-wintering at high latitudes. Firstly, we argue that Christmas was crucial to the well-being of expedition participants because it opened emotional channels that enabled them to cope with stress. Secondly, we argue that Christmas revealed a play space in which certain types of normally deviant behaviour were welcomed. Thirdly, we argue that Christmas was a major nutritional event for over-wintering crew members, satisfying a need for calories that was rarely met in the everyday rations.

The existence of an icy continent around the South Pole is known to everybody today. But it is common to ascribe this kind of modern knowledge to navigators sailing in southern polar waters in the 19th century. A good illustration of this is the Russian Antarctic expedition (1819–1821) under the conduct of Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen (Russian version Faddej Faddeevich Bellinsgauzen), the reception of which in Russian society of the 19th and 20th centuries is analysed in this article. During the cold war, beginning at the end of the 1940s, the question of who discovered Antarctica turned from being a scientific problem into a subject of political struggle between the United States of America, Great Britain and the Soviet Union. This article provides an analysis of the Russian discovery in the area, while at the same time, attempting to give an answer to the main question of the history of Antarctic exploration which is: is it well-justified to establish the first discoverer of Antarctica? All the dates in the text are according to the Gregorian calendar.

This note studies the addendum to the Arctic Council (AC)'s 2013 Observer Manual adopted at the Senior Arctic Officials’ (SAO) meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, in October 2015. The amendment means another essential step to systematise further and improve the council's working relations with currently 32 entities that hold observer status in the forum. Compared to the initial manual that sketched out the role observers should play in the council's subsidiary bodies, the latest revisions delineate a framework for enhancing observer participation and commitment in working group, task force and expert group meetings. After reviewing the content and practical implications of the addendum in the context of larger reform efforts to adapt the council to the age of a global(ising) Arctic, the article further discusses a number of signals the Anchorage decision sends to observers. These comprise the council's willingness and ability to quick, unified and purposeful action towards institutional adaptation and procedural reform as considered necessary to address organisational deficiencies, strengthened top-down steering of the reform processes by SAOs as related to the work conducted in subsidiary bodies and the overall functioning of the council, and higher expectations on observers to contribute to the AC system and deliver on the new provisions.

Readers of Polar Record with an extremely long memory or who possess a complete run of the journal, might refer to a paper published as long ago as 1932 on the topic of von Gronau's flight from Germany and over Greenland to the USA in the preceding year.

Sir Clements Markham, of honourable memory, died in London, one hundred years ago on 29 January 2016. Not long before, towards the end of a very full life, he had been walking his godson, little Peter Scott, in the garden.