The Russian naval officer Faddej Faddeevich Bellingshausen began life with a slightly different surname, in his case ‘Billingshausen’. It is possible to work out roughly when the Russian surname ‘Bellinsgauzen’ was chosen. Considerations prompting the selection of that particular Russian version can also be suggested.

This essay serves as an introduction to the special issue recognising the 60th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty. It provides the geopolitical and scientific context informing the creation of the negotiations for a new treaty between October and December 1959. Thereafter, it identifies some of the challenges facing the contemporary Antarctic Treaty System. While none are thought to be threatening to the collaborative spirit that informs the legal and political status quo, there is no room for complacency either. Finally, the contributors and their essays are introduced for the reader. Taken together, it showcases the diversity of work being undertaken by scholars in the humanities and social sciences.

On 24 May 1847, Sir John Franklin’s third expedition reported “All well”, but less than a year later, on 22 April 1848, the 129 sailors who had set out from Britain on Erebus and Terror had been reduced to 105 survivors departing their frozen ships in a desperate attempt to escape the Arctic. At least 24 were so unhealthy that they would perish after having travelled little more than 100 km from the ships. By contrast, the small mortality rates on other contemporary Arctic expeditions, some of which stayed in the Arctic considerably longer, were consistent with the mortality rates in the Royal Navy worldwide. This paper explores the question of what difference caused so many of Franklin’s crew to die during their final months on-board the ships and in the initial stages of the escape attempt. From the perspective of cultural ecology, the most significant difference, and the ultimate cause of the catastrophe as it unfolded, was wintering in the ice pack. This distinguished the Franklin expedition from all of the other comparable overwintering expeditions, and precluded the Erebus and Terror crews from hunting or fishing. That in turn led to nutritional deficiencies due to much greater reliance on stored provisions than other expeditions.

The 2014 Arctic Human Development Report identified “Arctic settlements, cities, and communities” as one of the main gaps in knowledge of the region. This article looks at circumpolar urbanisation trends. It dissociates three historical waves of Arctic urbanisation: from the sixteenth century to the early twentieth century (the “colonial” wave), from the 1920s to the 1980s in the specific case of the Soviet urbanisation of the Arctic (the “Soviet” wave), and from the 1960s−70s to the present as a circumpolar trend (the “globalized” wave). It then discusses the three drivers of the latest urbanisation wave (resources, militarisation, and public services) and the prospects for Arctic cities’ sustainability in the near future.

Inspired by notions of interest of humankind and intergenerational equity, we explored Antarctic perceptions of a subset of future generations—university students. Students at three universities in Canada, the Netherlands, and the USA were surveyed to determine the relationships between nationality, academic major, opinions on values of Antarctica, and support for a range of human activities in Antarctica (n = 618). Logistic regression was used to model the relationship of these variables with support for designation of Antarctica as a wilderness reserve, construction of new research stations, and mining. Compared with business and economics majors, biological sciences and natural resources/conservation majors were more likely to support wilderness designation and less likely to support mineral resource development. Nationality was not significantly associated with support for construction of new research stations and mineral resource development. Opinions on the value of Antarctica and support for activities also exhibited significant influences on dependent variables. Consistent with earlier studies of Antarctic scientists, personnel, tourists, and other members of the general public, university students valued Antarctica as one of the world’s last great wildernesses (66%), an important component of the Earth’s climate system (66%), and a science laboratory for the benefit of mankind (62%).

Despite its numerous valuable contributions to Arctic governance, throughout its history the Arctic Council (AC) has been subject to criticism and reform proposals from academic, non-governmental and practitioner communities alike. In order to inform this ongoing debate, the paper evaluates the proposals that have been presented for the AC thus far. The proposals are grouped into three clusters: legal reforms, organisational reforms and functional reforms. Each of them is examined in terms of its applicability and usefulness to the case of the AC, and specifically its suitability given the prevailing conditions in the Arctic. What the conducted analysis reveals is that the ideas regarding means to enhance the AC’s effectiveness can be largely attributed to the assumptions their proponents make—oftentimes implicitly—about the nature of state actors and international relations more broadly, without attending to the particular conditions of the case study at hand. This is an important inference, given the unrelenting change happening in both Arctic and global socio-environmental settings that calls into question the usefulness of past modes of thinking and forms of international cooperation. Far from offering solutions, their continuous application in particular circumstances might even impede progress in addressing present and future challenges.

There are at least four ways in which Antarctic colonialism was white: it was paradigmatically performed by white men; it consisted in the taking of vast, white expanses of land; it was carried out with a carte blanche (literally, “blank card”) attitude; and it was presented to the world as a white, innocent adventure. While the first, racial whiteness has been amply problematised, I suggest that the last three illuminate yet other moral wrongs of the Antarctic colonial project. Moreover, they might be constitutive of a larger class of “white” colonialisms beyond the White Continent.

This article updates Karen May’s earlier 2012 hypothesis (Could Captain Scott have been saved? Revisiting Scott’s last expedition). In this revised hypothesis, Cecil Meares, not Surgeon E. L. Atkinson, originated the unsubstantiated statement that “Strict injunctions had been given by Scott that the dogs should not be risked in any way.” This hypothesis incorporates new information uncovered since 2012, specifically Meares’ misrepresentations during the Terra Nova expedition; Atkinson’s 1911 journal entries; Atkinson’s 1919 allegation that Meares had “disobeyed orders”; and Tryggve Gran’s “The Race for the South Pole between Scott and Amundsen”, a 1945/post-1945 document that appears to have been Roland Huntford’s source for anecdotes in Huntford’s 1979 Scott–Amundsen biography. The article gives a proposed chronology for how Meares’ early misrepresentations and Gran’s later misunderstandings influenced the decisions, and later presentations, of the Terra Nova expedition.

Armand Tagoona (1926–1991) was born in Naujaat (Repulse Bay, Northwest Territories) in 1926, from an Inuk mother and a German father. Born as a Roman Catholic, he converted to Anglicanism. In 1969, he founded a new independent religious group affiliated to the Anglican Church in Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake, Northwest Territories): the Arctic Christian Fellowship (ACF). In this paper, we examine his life briefly as well as this very first “Inuit church” he created. We argue that Tagoona played the role of a mediator encompassing various religious traditions and various cultures at a time when solid boundaries separated all these institutions. In bridging them, Tagoona’s church turned to be very innovative and aimed at more religious autonomy, while being fundamentally guided by the words of God. Tagoona’s church carries conversionist, reformist and utopian aspects at the same time.

No one, not even those of us who sat at the center, can or will know the full outreach impact of IPY. If one remembers and trusts public reaction one can deduce that, for a short moment, IPY research and outreach worked together to put a good face on science.

PolarTREC-Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating (PolarTREC) has provided the opportunity for over 160 K-12 teachers and informal science educators from the USA to work directly with scientists in the Arctic and the Antarctic. As a Teacher Research Experience (TRE), PolarTREC has engaged teachers with a unique professional development opportunity to increase their teacher content knowledge and learn about the polar regions by partnering with academic polar scientists who are conducting scientific research in the field. Stimulated by the IPY 2007–2008, PolarTREC has sent teachers on field expeditions for over a decade, and during that time has witnessed teachers not only experiencing the polar regions and bringing that experience back into their classrooms but also seeing their students learn more about the polar regions and become more interested in polar science. It is this secondary effect that is truly inspiring. This article profiles the journey to the polar regions of four PolarTREC teachers through their own perspectives and how they translated that experience into educational outreach opportunities.

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (ITAE) 1914–1917, consisted of two parties – a Weddell Sea party led by Shackleton with Endurance, and a supporting Ross Sea depot-laying party, led by Captain Aeneas L.A. Mackintosh with Aurora. The purpose of this research paper is to consider why the Ross Sea party contracted scurvy and the Weddell Sea party did not. The authors suggest that for the Ross Sea shore party there was ineffectual leadership, insufficient medical care and sledging with excessive loads, and an inadequate diet for sledging, in both energy and vitamin C content. In their second season, depletion of vitamin C was again evident with one person dying. The Weddell Sea party, ably led by Shackleton, not only faced the arduous task of sledging heavy stores and moving camps in thick snow, but also had to haul three boats over pressure ridges, before reaching open water and rowing to Elephant Island. Here, the men lived almost exclusively on a fresh meat diet and were not affected by scurvy. This is the final paper for the trilogy commemorating the Ross Sea party centenary (the others are Harrowfield, 2013, 2015).

In 1978, a small island was discovered north of Kaffeklubben Ø, until then considered the most northern island on Earth. This island was named Oodaaq Ø. It was visited again in 1979, and in 1980 it was seen from Kaffeklubben Ø by members of the Sirius sledge patrol. Sirius searched for Oodaaq Ø again from 1981 to 1984 but did not find it. During the period from 1996 to 2008, the region was visited regularly and a number of new islets were discovered: the 1996 ATOW Island, KMS Island, 2001 RTOW Island, 83-42 Island, Stray Dog West Island and the 2008 Island. The islets are composed of gravel. We believe the area with islets is shallow, being a continuation of a coastal plain to the south. We suggest that the sea floor in the area is irregular and that the islets form by floes of sea ice that bulldoze material from the sea floor up above sea level. In some cases, perhaps all, the islets disappear when sea ice floes bulldoze sediment back below sea level. Alternatively, the so-called islets are just accumulations of gravel on sea ice.

The indirect cause of death of the three members of the Andrée balloon expedition on White Island in early October 1897 was the ice drift during their attempted retreat after the forced landing at 82°56′N 29°52′E. They initially tried to reach Cape Flora to the southeast of their current position in the Arctic pack ice even though they could deduce from prior explorers’ experience that the expected long-term direction of the ice drift in the area would be to the southwest. However, when they finally turned towards the Seven Islands in the southwest, the ice unexpectedly began to drift in a southeasterly direction. In this paper, trigonometrical methods are used to derive more precise measures of the ice drift the expedition members actually experienced, based on their own position fixes and their own descriptions of their marches. The results confirm that they were exposed to a southwesterly ice drift, on average, during the weeks they were trying to head southeast, and to a southeasterly ice drift, on average, during the weeks they were trying to head southwest. Hence, the disastrous ending of the expedition was, at least to some extent, a result of bad luck.

We used fossil Chironomidae assemblages and the transfer function approach to reconstruct summer air temperatures over the past 300 years from a High Arctic lake in Hornsund, Svalbard. Our aims were to compare reconstructed summer temperatures with observed (last 100 years) seasonal temperatures, to determine a potential climate warming break point in the temperature series and to assess the significance and rate of the climate warming trend at the study site. The reconstructed temperatures were consistent with a previous proxy record from Svalbard and showed good correlation with the meteorological observations from Bjørnøya and Longyearbyen. From the current palaeoclimate record, we found a significant climate warming threshold in the 1930s, after which the temperatures rapidly increased. We also found that the climate warming trend was strong and statistically significant. Compared with the reconstructed Little Ice Age temperatures in late eighteenth century cooling culmination, the present day summer temperatures are >4°C higher and the temperature increase since the 1930s has been 0.5°C per decade. These results highlight the exceptionally rapid recent warming of southern Svalbard and add invaluable information on the seasonality of High Arctic climate change and Arctic amplification.

In 1940, a PhD was published in Germany about the claiming behaviour of several countries and the whaling industry in Antarctica. It shows already at this time that a need for regulation on that issue was required. The intertwined relationships between the claiming nations demanded an overarching framework where these complex issues could be managed. This paper elaborates on the state of the claiming parties before the 1940s and will demonstrate that the development for a comprehensive regulation was the only way to avoid a global conflict. The doctoral thesis from 1940 will be the focal point of the discussion.

There has been some uncertainty as to which of the two southerly probes, during which Bellingshausen passed latitude 69°S in early 1820, achieved the first sighting of an ice coast of Dronning Maud Land in Eastern Antarctica. The author criticizes Frank Debenham’s English translation of Bellingshausen’s narrative before presenting and discussing new translations of Bellingshausen’s descriptions of those events, with relevant sections of his track chart, plus a third passage from the book which interpreted what was seen. He concludes that the Russians first sighted an ice coast in mid-February, rather than late January as has been widely claimed.

Reporting on scientific research from Antarctica faces familiar tensions between journalism and science. Among the particular obstacles are the mainstream media’s focus on novelty and the constant need for new angles and new voices. While science journalism has been gaining recognition, many media organisations continue to view it as secondary to more traditional areas of reporting such as politics, business and sports. At a time when we face several environmental crises, that is arguably no longer representative of reality. Coverage of Antarctic issues, including science, could improve if editorial teams were more cross-disciplinary to extend beyond each individual’s boundaries of expertise.