The Arctic vessel Gjøa was the first ship that sailed through the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, a voyage captained by Roald Amundsen. Gjøa was launched in 1872 and for 10 years was captained by Asbjørn Sexe while transporting fish products from northern Norway to ports on the west coast. She was wrecked in 1882 and sold to Captain Hans Chr. Johannesen, under whose ownership she sailed for 18 years as a sealer in Arctic waters including voyages to the Kara Sea, Novaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land, Svalbard, and northeast Greenland. In 1892 she was the expedition ship for the Axel Hamberg expedition to Spitsbergen, and in 1900 she was a tender for the Svensksund expedition to Spitsbergen. The following year she was sold to Amundsen. On 17 June 1903, Amundsen and his companions sailed from Kristiania (present-day Oslo) and three years later they completed the transit of the Northwest Passage. In 1909 Gjøa was put ashore in the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. In 1972 — 100 years after Gjøa was launched — she returned to Oslo and was made a permanent exhibit outside the maritime museum (Norsk Sjøfartsmuseum), where she can be seen today.

The ship Veslekari was launched in 1918 from Christian Jensen's shipyard near Kristiania (present-day Oslo), where Roald Amundsen's ship Maud had been built. Although primarily a sealer, she was also used extensively for other expeditions to the Arctic. She participated in several relief expeditions, including one in 1936 to Jan Mayen to evacuate people during a series of earthquakes, and another in 1939 to northeast Greenland to evacuate Count Gaston Micard, who was seriously ill. In 1928 Veslekari participated in the search for Roald Amundsen and his plane in the waters off Bjørnøya. Tryggve Gran, a member of Robert Falcon Scott's last expedition, sailed with her at that time. She was chartered four times as expedition ship for the American Arctic explorer Miss Louise A. Boyd. In the summer of 1940 Veslekari sailed to northeast Greenland to relieve Norwegian hunters and the crew of the Norwegian weather station, but she was impounded by British and Norwegian forces and taken to Scotland on order of the Norwegian government in London. She was chartered by the Ministry of War Transport and was based in Scotland and Iceland. In 1943 she was renamed HMS Bransfield and was prepared for service in the Antarctic. After the war she resumed sealing under Norwegian ownership until in 1961, when she was wrecked in the ice in the sealing ground off Newfoundland.

This paper is concerned with Aotearoa/New Zealand's changing relationship to Antarctica, and the Ross Dependency in particular. Through a consideration of post-colonial theory in the Ross Dependency, it is argued that a productive dialogue about the cultural politics of mainland Aotearoa/New Zealand can be opened up. After some reflections on the post-1945 political and cultural trajectory of the country, attention is given to the place of the Maori and their involvement in the polar continent and Southern Ocean. The adoption of Maori place-names on New Zealand maps of the Ross Dependency is considered further because it helps to illuminate the country's awkward and incomplete post-colonial transformation. Arguably, such an adoption of Maori place-names in Antarctica contributes to a vision of bicultural harmony. However, this is not a view shared by all observers. Developments affecting the crown agency Antarctica New Zealand, alongside recent heritage projects, are scrutinised further in order to consider how Maori–Pakeha relations influence and define contemporary understandings of New Zealand's presence in Antarctica. Finally, the paper briefly contemplates how a trans-Tasman dialogue with Australian scholars might enable further analysis into how geographically proximate settler colonies engage with Antarctica and their associated territorial claims to the continent and surrounding ocean.

Joseph Shackleton, a member of the same family as Sir Ernest Shackleton, visited Iceland with two friends in 1861. They travelled in Arcturus, a Danish vessel that ran a scheduled service in summer. They visited the two main ‘attractions,’ namely Thingvellir and the geysers. Shackleton's manuscript account of the trip indicates that tourism was developed by such an early date and that the infrastructure for it was in place and efficient. His account also provides interesting information concerning contemporary Iceland.

In late February/early March 1874, the members of Eduard Dallman's German ‘Grönland’ Expedition erected a commemorative plaque at Potter Cover, King George Island, South Shetland Islands. This historic monument was previously noted by a four-man party in 1949.