During Charles Francis Hall's second Arctic expedition (1864–1869) to find survivors and/or documents of Sir John Franklin's 1845 Northwest Passage expedition, two separate Inuit testimonies were recorded of a potential burial vault of a high-ranking officer. The first testimony was provided by a Boothia Inuk named Su-pung-er. The second testimony was documented by Captain Peter Bayne who, at the time, was employed by Hall. To date the vault has not been found. Recently, both the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror have been located. The discovery of these vessels was made possible, in part, by Inuit testimony of encounters with and observations of the Franklin expedition. The findings of the Erebus and Terror have significantly bolstered the view that the Inuit accurately reported their observations and interactions with the Franklin crew. The purpose of this paper is to publish in their entirety Hall's notes from conversations with Su-pung-er focused on the vaults and to compare these observations to those reported in the Bayne testimony. It is our hope that in so doing the final major archaeological site of the Franklin expedition may be located.

The Ukraine crisis has led to tensions between Russia and the western states and the Arctic is one of the affected regions. Regional cooperation, institutions, and international law are essential for Arctic governance, and the crisis may thus have wide-ranging consequences for high north politics. The present article develops an interest-based model of Arctic conflict spill-over and examines its strength, based on a case-study of the first 18 months of the Ukraine crisis. Three hypotheses for Arctic conflict spill-over are developed: Arctic conflict spill-over will be less severe than spill-over in other regions, the western states will be more assertive than Russia, and the smaller Arctic states will be less assertive than the larger states. A review of the crisis confirms the bulk of these hypotheses with some exceptions, thus demonstrating that an interests-based model holds some merit, while also showing that a complete understanding of Arctic conflict spill-over necessitates a broader approach. The article concludes that conflict spillover is unlikely, but not impossible, in the Arctic.

The future is uncertain for Antarctica, with many possibilities – some more plausible, others more preferable. Indeed, the region and its governance regime may be reaching (or may have reached) a crossroads moment as a result of a series of challenges, including the changing Antarctic climate and environment, increasing human activity, shifting values among Antarctic states and a low-cost, somewhat benign governance regime (the Antarctic Treaty System). Within this context there are a number of interdependent drivers that are likely to influence Antarctica's future over, say, 25 years: global environmental and socio-economic developments; Antarctic governance; Antarctic research, including national Antarctic programme operations; and Antarctic tourism. The research presented here involved a thorough examination of Antarctic literature on current Antarctic developments and challenges, and an assessment of global trends. Scenarios were developed through a facilitated workshop process. From these, four future scenarios were developed based on interactions between these drivers. The resulting scenarios provide a dynamic, evolving possibility space to be explored as a means of understanding where Antarctic issues might evolve, depending on the growth or diminishing importance of drivers. In turn these suggest that more structured polar futures are needed based on formal quantitative and qualitative data.

The admission of China as an observer in the Arctic Council in 2013 was a significant step in the ongoing evolution of the country's Arctic policy, but Beijing is still concerned about being accepted as a regional player given its geography and arguably lack of an Arctic history. As the Arctic becomes more open to scientific and economic engagement, China wishes to develop the idea of the Arctic as more of an international space as opposed to strictly a regional one, and to allow non-Arctic states, such as China itself, to become accepted as Arctic actors. However, in order to avoid a backlash from the Arctic states and potential exclusion from the region's development, Beijing cannot effectively be a unilateral ‘norm-maker’ in the Arctic. Instead, China has sought to develop the identity of a regional ‘norm entrepreneur’, engaging the Arctic on many levels to promote the norm of partnerships between Arctic and non-Arctic actors to promote positive sum outcomes. Through engagement via several areas and governmental levels, Beijing hopes to succeed in being widely viewed as a ‘near-Arctic state’ which can contribute to new norms, and possibly new regimes, in an Arctic which shows many signs of becoming further internationalised.

The University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS) is a unique institution with a history that is closely related to Norwegian policy regarding Svalbard, and to clever development of a highly specialised Arctic university institution by all the Norwegian universities. In practical terms, Norwegian sovereignty on the archipelago as confirmed by the Treaty of Svalbard of 1920 and regulated by the Svalbard Law of 1925, is maintained by the presence of Norwegian civil authorities and communities. Today, the “capital” Longyearbyen with its 2100 inhabitants is a modern hub for industry, education, research, logistics and tourism. Founded in 1993, UNIS has become a main contributor to this community, generating some 20% of the total economic activity. A prime motivation for establishing UNIS was to provide a supplement and alternative to the unprofitable, heavily subsidized coal mining industry, by using the location for research based education. In 2015, the mining company Store Norske Spitsbergen Kullkompani (SNSK) met with deep crisis again and significantly downscaled its coal production and work force. Thus, UNIS may play an even more important role as a cornerstone of the local community in the future. This paper discusses the establishment and development of UNIS, its organisation, capacity, and academic production in terms of student graduation and its scientific output, just as its future potential for growth is evaluated. Finally, we discuss the increasingly important role of science and education in Norwegian Svalbard policy.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, are used in scientific research and a diverse range of other applications across the globe. They are also being used increasingly for scientific research in Antarctica and to a lesser extent by tourists visiting the world's last great frontier tourist destination. Their use in scientific research in Antarctica offers many benefits to science and if used responsibly may be less invasive than other research techniques, offering a rich source of new scientific data. For tourists, UAVs also offer unique aerial photographic perspectives on Antarctica — the ultimate holiday snap shot. Concerns have been raised about the safety of drone use in the harsh and unpredictable Antarctic conditions, as well as possible environmental impacts. This paper considers these issues and the emerging regulatory response to drone use in Antarctica focusing on the Antarctic Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Operator's Handbook, which provides guidelines to national Antarctic programmes on the use of UAVs in the Antarctic Treaty area, and the temporary ban on use of drones by tourists imposed by the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO). Both measures arguably constitute a good first response to this emerging issue, although more still needs to be done.

Understanding the benefits and outcomes of Canada's public investment in Arctic science and associated community–researcher partnerships represents a significant challenge for government. This paper presents a capital assets-based approach to conceptualising northern research partnership development processes and assessing the potential outcomes. By more explicitly considering the pre- and post-partnership asset levels (that is, social, human, physical, financial and natural assets) for different collaborators, the potential benefits and challenges associated with community–researcher partnerships can be collaboratively assessed. In order to help refine this approach, we conducted a survey of those involved in developing and maintaining community–researcher partnerships across Arctic Canada. Results indicate that the proposed approach could be useful for research funding agencies seeking to better understand partnership outcomes and promote more effective community–researcher interactions. Challenges include adequately capturing the qualitative nature of different capital assets, pointing to future research and policy needs. Better understanding the role of research in northern development has the potential to improve northern research, policy and practice.

Russia has dropped rocket stages fuelled with unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) into the Barents Sea and the North Water Polynya—areas of considerable ecological importance—on ten occasions since 2002. The stages come from SS-19 intercontinental missiles that have been re-purposed for launching satellites. UDMH is a highly toxic chemical that has caused widespread health and environmental damage in Kazakhstan and Russia as a result of its extensive use there as a rocket fuel. Not all of the fuel on-board is consumed during a launch and the residual fuel tends to escape the incoming stages and form aerosol clouds that drift over large areas. This dropping of the rocket stages is of considerable concern to the Inuit of Canada and Greenland, who only learned about the practice in 2016. It is also a violation of several treaties as well as customary international law. At least two more launches of UDMH-fuelled rockets on the same trajectory are currently planned—even though alternative non-toxic rocket systems exist.

Norway will soon celebrate that 100 years ago, the former ‘no-man's land’ of the Svalbard archipelago was placed under its sovereignty. However, this paper focuses on another important and often omitted element also brought about by the 1920 Svalbard Treaty regarding its demilitarisation and neutralisation. We ask how has the Svalbard security regime been able to meet the various challenges it has faced over almost 100 years of existence? Also, given that the treaty was drafted at the beginning of the 20th century, are the security provisions of this regime already obsolete or are they seen still as valid, and more importantly functional against the backdrop of rapidly changing security realities? This paper then goes further and while it uses Svalbard as a case study, it tries to assess the role of demilitarisation and neutralisation in the modern context by trying to infer possible lessons from two similar regimes, which apply to Antarctica and the Åland Islands.

This paper explores ‘awkward Antarctic nationalism’ and builds on the critical scholarship that explores the contours and contradictions of everyday, mundane, banal and even hot polar nationalisms. The emphasis on ‘awkward’ is designed to draw attention to the resonances and affordances that are associated with Australian polar nationalism in and beyond the Australian Antarctic Territory/East Antarctica. Using the 2016 Australian Antarctic strategy: 20 year action plan as a starting point, it considers how bodies, ice cores and gateways are put to work in order to address a fundamental pressure facing all claimant states. That is how to reassure domestic audiences that claims to territory and access are safe, sovereign and secure without alienating others with whom one wishes to do business within a particular area of Antarctica. More broadly, the paper concludes that both claimant states and non-claimant states are rubbing up against one another in areas such as custodianship, environmental stewardship and polar science and logistics. This has implications for how we interrogate the ideals and practices of the Antarctic Treaty.

Visual documenters made a major contribution to the recording of the Heroic Era of Antarctic exploration. By far the best known were the professional photographers, Herbert Ponting and Frank Hurley, hired to photograph British and Australasian expeditions. But a great number of images – photographs and artworks – were also produced by amateurs on lesser known European expeditions and a Japanese one. These amateurs were sometimes designated official illustrators, often scientists recording their research. This paper offers a discursive examination of illustrations from the Belgian Antarctic Expedition (1897–1899), German Deep Sea Expedition (1898–1899), German South Polar Expedition (1901–1903), Swedish South Polar Expedition (1901–1903), French Antarctic Expedition (1903–1905) and Japanese Antarctic Expedition (1910–1912), assessing their representations of exploration in Antarctica in terms of the tension between emotive/aesthetic and systematic analytic/scientific motifs. Their depictions were influenced by their illustrative skills and their ‘ways of seeing’, produced from their backgrounds and the sponsorship needs of the expedition.

This paper describes the first Polish expedition to Greenland in 1937. The fieldwork was carried out in western Greenland at the eastern edge of Arfersiorfik Fjord between Disko Bay in the north and Nordre Strömfjord in the south. The main goal was to undertake a comprehensive study of a fragment of the Greenland ice sheet edge and its foreland focusing on a cartographic survey. The first ever map of this region entitled The Polish expedition to give new names. In the post-war history, expedition members exerted great influence on the development of Polish polar research.

Research partnerships with northern communities hold promise for capacity and resilience against environmental changes. Given their historical ecological and cultural relationship with and, thus, ongoing concern for polar bears, Inuit communities are keen to participate in monitoring programmes. In spite of this, northern communities continue to meet polar bear research and collaborations with some resistance. Here, we summarise and report interviews with Nunavummiut from four communities on Inuit experiences with polar bears and research perspectives. Research interactions reveal ongoing cultural, socio-ecological and ethical barriers to polar bear research projects. Research licenses and standardised ethics procedures do not always guarantee collaborations. Adaptable research methods, mutual understanding and open dialogue are essential to form strong research partnerships with northern communities.

In a context of rapid climatic change in the Arctic, the fast melting of permafrost, the decline of glaciers and the melting of sea ice created perceived strategic and economic opportunities for the littoral states. The attention of states beyond the region was also attracted. For example China, without direct access to the Arctic, displays an interest in Arctic research, natural resources, and shipping potential. However, its diplomatic, economic, political and scientific efforts in this region arouse negative reactions among western media. They often draw up a portrait of an ambitious and arrogant China, ready to push aside the sovereignty of the Arctic countries to defend its own interests in the Arctic. From this perspective, it seems relevant to analyse China's activities in the region and to try to assess Beijing's strategy, which seems more driven by opportunism than by a long-term desire to challenge the littoral states’ sovereignty.

How does a state that is not a ‘natural’ Arctic or Antarctic state perceive the polar regions, interpret their roles in its foreign policy and translate this into actual polar policy? This paper seeks to answer these questions by comparing the Arctic and Antarctic policies of Japan. The paper shows that Japan's national image of the polar regions as a combined region began before World War II due to its imperial past of joining the race to the Antarctic and the Arctic. However, from a policy point of view, the polar regions for Japan long meant primarily Antarctica. Japan, as a defeated power and a late-comer to the international system established after World War II, takes a liberal position in the governance of Antarctica. Having and maintaining a capability to conduct scientific research in the Antarctic via international decision-making institutions has been considered an important status marker associated with great power identity. Regarding the Arctic, Japan attempts to replicate the general success of its Antarctic policy, backed by tools of science and technological diplomacy, the purpose of which is to revive its domestic economy. Japan's scientific whaling in the Antarctic is primarily a domestic, identity-based political conflict between a nostalgia for Japan's imperial past and its more modern, liberal identity of today.

In 2010, after many interviews by the Qikiqtani Truth Commission (QTC), the Qikiqtani Inuit Association released a report to help the public understand the impact of tuberculosis on the Inuit and thereby promote reconciliation, a goal shared by this study. In this paper, I discuss a corpus of about 28 letters by an Inuit patient named Genevieve Aupidlak who was treated at the Brandon Sanatorium from 1954 to 1957. The letters have been transcribed from old syllabics and translated. Aupidlak's story shows not only the suffering of Inuit in southern sanatoria but also the role of Christianity and that of some missionaries—such as Father Thibert—in supporting Inuit resilience. Aupidlak's letters illustrate how Inuit used their Christian faith to survive and how they ascribed healing power to Christian prayer and confession, in keeping with a much older shamanic pattern.

The western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) is a hotspot of rapid recent regional ‘climate change’. This has resulted in a 0.4°C rise in sea temperature in the last 50 years, five days of sea ice lost per decade and increased ice scouring in the shallows. The WAP shallows are ideal for studying the biological response to physical change because most known Antarctic species are benthic, physical change occurs mainly in the shallows and most research stations are coastal. Studies at Rothera Station have found increased benthic disturbance with losses of winter sea ice and assemblage-level changes coincident with this ice scouring. Such studies are difficult to scale up as they depend on SCUBA diving – a very spatially limited technique. Here we report attempts to broaden the understanding of benthic ecosystem responses to physical change by replicating the Rothera experimental grids at Carlini Station through collaboration between the UK, Argentina and Germany across Signy, Rothera and Carlini stations. We argue that such collaborations are the way forward towards understanding the big picture of biota responses to physical climate changes at a regional scale.

The early explorer and scientist Otto Nordenskjöld, leader of the Swedish South Polar Expedition of 1901–1903, was the first to collect Antarctic penguin fossils. The site is situated in the northeastern region of Seymour Island and constitutes one of the most important localities in the study of fossilised penguins. The task of describing these specimens together with fossilised whale remains was given to Professor Carl Wiman (1867–1944) at Uppsala University, Sweden. Although the paradigm for the systematic study of penguins has changed considerably over recent years, Wiman's contributions are still remarkable. His establishment of grouping by size as a basis for classification was a novel approach that allowed them to deal with an unexpectedly high morphological diversity and limited knowledge of penguin skeletal anatomy. In the past, it was useful to provide a basic framework for the group that today could be used as ‘taxon free’ categories. First, it was important to define new species, and then to establish a classification based on size and robustness. This laid the foundation for the first attempts to use morphometric parameters for the classification of isolated penguin bones. The Nordenskjöld materials constitute an invaluable collection for comparative purposes, and every year researchers from different countries visit this collection.

Sagediopsis bayozturkii, a lichenicolous fungus growing on Antarctic endemic species Acarospora macrocyclos, is described as new to science from three collections made at 65° south in the Argentine Islands (Graham Land, maritime Antarctica). The fungus has a distinct internal apical beak in the ascus and ellipsoid three-septate ascospores; therefore, it is the member of Sagediopsis subgenus Hawksworthiella. Morphologically and anatomically S. bayozturkii is most similar to S. campsteriana and S. pertusariicola, which are confined to the lichen hosts Ochrolechia spp. and Pertusaria spp., respectively. In addition to having different hosts, S. bayozturkii differs from these two species by having smaller ascomata and shorter ascospores. Its similarities to other species of the genus are discussed, and an artificial key based on the published descriptions of the ten species now known in the genus Sagediopsis is presented.

In 2016, we marked the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Protocol on the Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, or the Madrid Protocol. The Protocol signalled a commitment to address issues of climate change and the protection of the Antarctic resources. Russia exerted appropriate efforts pursuant to scientific research programmes, tourism and all other governmental and non-governmental activities. In the light of the commemoration of the anniversary, this paper highlights major steps of the Russian Federation toward the implementation of the international agreement and application of scientific principles for environmental protection and management in Antarctica.