Documents are presented adding further insights into a survey of gravesite memorials on Beechey Island, as well as locating the additional sites of the Franklin expedition noted in the Franklin search literature. These are augmented with current photographs.

Surrounded by potted palm trees, the 12 delegations including the Soviet Union invited to participate by the United States government decided, over the course of six intense weeks, the legal, political and scientific future of the Antarctic continent and surrounding seas. Thanks in part to the neatly typed entries of Brian Roberts, the Foreign Office's polar advisor for many years; we have at least one source that vividly conveys (from the perspective of a British delegate of course) the febrile atmosphere surrounding the conference (see King and Savours 1995; Dodds 2008). Notwithstanding the achievements of the recently completed 1957–1958 International Geophysical Year and its extension the International Geophysical Co-operation (1959), there was no reason to presume that an Antarctic Treaty would be recognised as legitimate and sufficiently robust to accommodate all the parties concerned. Indeed, it is not uncommon to read in the reports prepared by the delegates for their domestic political leaders, a whole series of counter-factual possibilities if the negotiations failed to secure a modus vivendi for the polar region. We may not assume, therefore, that it was in any way inevitable that a treaty (lasting now for over fifty years) would have emerged when the delegates sat down to discuss the future of Antarctica in October 1959. The treaty was nearly not ratified in Argentina for example because of the anger felt by some political leaders about Article IV and what they considered the ‘giving away’ of Argentine sovereign rights.

This paper simultaneously analyses some objective and subjective living conditions in Nunavut (federal territory of Canada located in the Arctic) in 2001: population, housing, language, education, economic activities, health, social problems and geographic mobility. It examines original descriptive statistics from the Survey of living conditions in the Arctic and other sources. In some cases the results confirm the ordinary depressing picture of Inuit conditions, but in other cases statistics qualify or even contradict such a picture. The overall findings show that despite objective difficult conditions, Nunavummiut living in Nunavut (primarily the elites and the lower class) are generally satisfied with their communities so that the majority wishes to remain there. Certain modern social institutions and individual rationalities are contributing to this situation: wage earning, market economy, utilitarian and consumption oriented approach, democratic state based on law, formal knowledge, individualism and the capacity for self analysis. The concepts of aspiration and mastery of one's own destiny seem accurate to explain the importance of education and employment in people's satisfaction, and their dissatisfaction about the housing situation. The existence of family and neighbourhood networks appears to explain both a certain residential stability and out migration, through the social support functions of these networks, in which sharing and exchanging food play a major role. In general, if most of Nunavummiut continue to live in the Arctic despite unfavourable conditions, it is not only because they are able to ensure their material existence there, but also because they attach a meaning to and believe that that is where they have the best chance to exert the highest degree of control over their personal and domestic reality.

Historical sites in Antarctica and Svalbard contain the material remains of past activities of exploration and exploitation of these regions. These sites have been subject to transformation by cultural and non-cultural (natural) processes since their abandonment to the present. For research and management purposes it is important to monitor and explain these changes. This article focuses on the transformation of historic features in Antarctica and Svalbard as assessed through repeat photography. Seven historical features were selected representing a range of site types and past and present site functions. Data collection was based on the opportunistic reproduction of photographs of historic features taken up to 20+ years previously. Data analysis was performed using the concepts of site formation processes developed by M.B. Schiffer (1983, 1987). Time-serial changes were observed in the seven photo-couples examined in the present instance. No feature degraded significantly during the monitoring period; rather, several features were restored in different ways. Changes were interpreted to result from a range of cultural processes (including conservation, research, and tourism) and natural processes (mainly wind action). Local changes take place in the context of broader regional developments in Antarctica and Svalbard. Despite the ‘time capsule’ narratives about some sites, historical sites in the polar regions are dynamic entities that not only reflect the past as it once was but are also a window onto the present.

A group of 17 Norwegian sealers died in Svenskhuset, the Swedish House at Kapp Thordsen, Spitsbergen during the winter and spring of 1872–1873. The Swedish House was built by a mining company, but was left deserted as there were poor prospects for mining in the area. The house was well stocked with food, fuel and hunting gear. The death of these men has been a mystery for 135 years although the usual interpretation has been that they died from scurvy. In an effort to challenge this historical diagnosis, the authors applied for permission to open the graves to sample the bone for lead analysis, and, if possible, to examine the skeletons for evidence of scurvy. This was granted. No objective signs of scurvy were found. The level of lead in bone, however, was very high, indicating that lead poisoning very probably played a part in the tragedy. This article reveals the historical facts behind the tragedy, the excavation of the sealers’ graves in 2008, and presents a discussion of the medical evidence.

This article considers the legal and policy issues surrounding the establishment of continental shelves beyond 200 nautical miles (nm) from sub-Antarctic islands. Under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) a coastal state may establish a continental shelf that extends seawards beyond 200 nm where the continental shelf continues, normally to a total distance of no more than 350 nm. To establish such an extended continental shelf (ECS) a coastal state must file a submission of delineation data with the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), a technical body established by UNCLOS.

The rights of coastal states present particular difficulties in the Antarctic Treaty area (ATA), due to the general non-recognition of the seven territorial claims and the provisions of article IV of the Antarctic Treaty. Accordingly, Antarctic claimant states are generally adopting a restrained approach to the issue of ECS as appertaining to claimed territories in Antarctica in their submissions to the CLCS. These states appear to recognise that they cannot secure the normal prerogatives of a coastal state from territorial sea baselines within the ATA, at least for the duration of the present Antarctic Treaty system (ATS). A different approach is being taken with respect of sub-Antarctic islands lying north of the ATA. Sovereignty over sub-Antarctic territory north of the ATA is, with the exception of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, not contested. Accordingly, rights in relation to any continental shelf attaching to sub-Antarctic islands may be realised, apparently without challenging the Antarctic modus vivendi.

However, the ECS of several sub-Antarctic islands penetrate the ATA. In 2008, the CLCS largely endorsed the 2004 Australian submission that included data on ECS from Australia's sub-Antarctic islands of Macquarie Island and the Heard and McDonald group. The ECS from both groups penetrates south of 60°S into the ATA, in the case of Heard and McDonald covering a huge area. Although the wider dispute regarding sovereignty between the United Kingdom and Argentina adds complexity to the case, the South Sandwich Islands are sufficiently close to the ATA that their continental shelf also penetrates the area. In the event that the CLCS were ever able to make a recommendation on a submission of data relating to the South Sandwich Islands (something that could only occur with the consent of Argentina and the United Kingdom) the result would be a situation similar to that pertaining to the Australian sub-Antarctic islands.

The consequence of these developments is that rights to seabed areas within the ATA have been assigned to individual states. On the face of it, this appears to be in conflict with the norm of collective responsibility that was established by the Antarctic Treaty 50 years ago precisely to constrain sovereignty issues in the region. What is suggested by this practice is a difference in the attitude of Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties (ATCPs) to rights generated from territory within the ATA and rights generated from external territory. Nonetheless, there may be significant implications flowing from the latter for resource issues within the ATA. Minerals exploitation on sub-Antarctic extended continental shelf within the ATA is precluded in the near-term because of cost, the formal prohibition under article 7 of the 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, and the fact that all sub-Antarctic coastal states are ATCPs. However the situation in regard to other resource activities is less clear. Bioprospecting could proceed subject to coastal state approval pursuant to the provisions of UNCLOS relating to marine scientific research, and there is no mandatory regulation under the ATS. The possibility that a coastal state may seek to realise rights on the ECS in relation to genetic resources may complicate collective ATS approaches and pose wider geopolitical challenges. In the longer term, the fact that some Antarctic states are presently seeking to secure rights that are essentially about ensuring their preclusive access to resources may have significant implications for strategic interests in the greater Antarctic region.

2009 brings not only the 50th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty but also the end of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) and of its extension into the period of International Geophysical Cooperation (IGC 1959). It is also the 133rd anniversary of K. Weyprecht's suggestion that initiated the impetus. As he noted, ‘if Polar Expeditions are looked upon merely as a sort of international steeple-chase . . . and their main object is to exceed by a few miles the latitude reached by a predecessor these mysteries (of Meteorology and Geomagnetism) will remain unsolved’ (Weyprecht 1875). Although he stressed the importance of observations in both the Arctic and Antarctic during the first International Polar Year (IPY) in 1882–1883 only two stations in the sub-Antarctic region, at Cap Horn and South Georgia, made such scientific recordings. In spite of the fact that several expeditions to the Antarctic had been made in the period between the first and the second IPY 1932–1933, no stations were created in Antarctica during that IPY. The major increase in scientific studies in Antarctica came with the third IPY, which became the IGY of 1957–1958.

In 1950–1958 Ahiarmiut were relocated, in three stages from Ennadai Lake to Nueltin Lake, from Ennadai Lake to Henik Lake and from Henik Lake to Arviat (Eskimo Point). This paper presents the results of a workshop conducted with elders and youths in Arviat, in May 2006, on these events. The participants in the workshop were Job and Eva Muqyunnik, Mary Anautalik, John Aulatjut, Silas Ilungijajuk, Geena Aulatjut from Arviat, Andrew Alikashuak, from Whale Cove, and Mary Whitmore from Churchill. The workshop was set up from an anthropological perspective and focused on Ahiarmiut perspectives of the first three relocations. Comparing archival and oral materials, the paper confronts the strategies, choices and decisions of the administration of the Canadian federal government with the experiences and views of the Ahiarmiut participants. The paper explores the causes of the failure of the relocations, notably the discrepancies between the values of the administration and those of the Ahiarmiut as well as the lack of communication between those parties. The paper concludes that there is no convincing evidence of any agreement between the Ahiarmiut and the administration so the relocation effectively became a deportation causing great economic and cultural distress as well as loss of life to the Ahiarmiut.

Water related activities result in a large number of fatalities annually throughout Canada, especially in the Canadian north, where drowning rates are up to ten times the national average. This study used participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and archival research to understand why residents of Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories (NWT) rarely wear lifejackets. Three themes emerged. Firstly residents largely perceive lifejackets to be inaccessible, secondly drownings are attributed to factors other than failing to wear a lifejacket and thirdly lifejacket use is not encouraged by important individuals in the community. It is suggested that successful lifejacket promotion for this population requires drowning prevention programmes that move away from simplistic approaches that encourage people to wear lifejackets and instead must utilise an approach that addresses each component of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB).

Caves of marine origin occur in tectonically uplifted stacks on the coastal terrace and in plateau edge cliffs at a number of locations around Macquarie Island. Some of the caves have been located and their distributions mapped. Four of the best known caves are mapped in detail. Aspects of their geology, structure and biology, including speleothem development, clastic deposits, faunal remains and subfossil deposits are explored. Many of these caves contain deposits, which may have the potential to be investigated, as beach and peat deposits have been, for dating key time periods in the island's evolution. The palaeoenvironmental research potential of the sea caves on Macquarie Island has yet to be exploited. Further knowledge about these caves will assist in the understanding of the processes that have acted on Macquarie Island and other polar and sub-polar islands.

Deception Island in the South Shetland Islands was the site of some of the earliest commercial activity to be carried out in the Antarctic with the early 19th century hunting of Antarctic fur seals. Nearly a century later it was the site of the most extensive anchorage for the reconstructed ships and ocean liners used as non-pelagic whale processing factories. Deception was also the site of what is the only successful land based commercial activity in Antarctic history. The Hektor whaling station operated in Whalers Bay from 1912 until 1931. Most of the remains of the station have now been obliterated by the volcanic activity that occurred in the late 1960s and 1970. By the later part of the twentieth century Deception Island had become a regular stop for the growing Antarctic tourist cruise industry. No other place in Antarctica has been so thoroughly identified with commercial activity.

Recent media coverage of the threatened collapse of the vast Wilkins ice shelf highlights the manner in which the established focus on global warming and the ozone hole has led Antarctica to be well and truly accepted as playing an integral role in global environmental systems. By contrast, histories of the 1950 and 1960s continue still to treat Antarctica largely as, to quote Philip Quigg (1983), ‘a Pole Apart’, that is a marginal region struggling for inclusion on most world maps. Despite the occasional newsworthy item, like the 1952 Anglo-Argentine clash at Hope Bay (Beck 1987: 18–21) or the 1955–1958 British Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Fuchs and Hillary 1958), Antarctic affairs have not been regarded, except perhaps in Argentina, Australia, Chile and New Zealand, as sufficiently mainstream during the 1950s and 1960s to warrant inclusion in national or global histories covering that period. As a result, it remains easy still to gloss over the 1959 Antarctic Treaty as possessing rather limited contemporary significance, and hence to dismiss it as a limited purpose agreement confined to a relatively marginal area. Indeed, for some commentators, the treaty was even interpreted as a lost opportunity in terms of failing either to internationalise the region or to resolve the longstanding Antarctic sovereignty problem.

The Antarctic Treaty was adopted by twelve nations in Washington, DC on 1 December 1959 with the interests of science and the progress of all mankind. Seven of these nations asserted territorial claims, including the overlapping claims of Argentina, Chile and the United Kingdom in the Antarctic Peninsula. The five other nations were non-claimants, including the United States and Soviet Union (now Russian Federation), which reserved rights to press claims in the future.

With global warming, the clearance of the Northwest Passage and the rising demands for new energy resources, the sovereignty of Canadian and other national land claims in the Arctic north is coming into question by those wishing to control access to this region. The present paper examines issues involving emerging landmasses, maritime rights, strategic control and navigation, perhaps the most important variable, and the consequences in terms of commercial economies and geopolitical impacts. We consider many variables such as the 1982 Falkland Islands war as a demonstrative example that may have translatable impact in future years. Our purpose in this paper is to raise awareness of impending geopolitical activities that are inevitable during the 21st century as the Arctic pack ice retreats.

In a very short time, discussions on Arctic governance have moved from being a topic of scholarly attention and NGO advocacy onto the agendas of states and of the European Union (EU). Increasingly, the various alternatives propounded by a diverse set of actors over what Arctic governance should look like appear as pre-negotiation tactics, a type of testing period before a regime change. The article examines whether the still predominant inter governmental forum, the Arctic Council, is facing a threat of being supplanted by other forms of governance. It will study how resistant the Arctic Council, and its predecessor the 1991 Arctic environmental protection strategy, are to change in order to understand whether the council could renew itself to meet future challenges. It will also examine the various proposals for Arctic governance set out by states, the EU and the region's indigenous peoples. All this will permit conclusions to be drawn on where the Arctic Council stands amid all these proposals and whether, and in what way, it should change to support more sustainable governance in the Arctic.

Some Arctic scholars believe that modern reindeer herding on the Kola Peninsula has cultural continuity with the traditional period of such activity in the late 19th century. Others believe that by World War II, Soviet repression of Saami leaders, collectivisation of herding villages, and relocation of families had eliminated many traditional behaviours, especially in the Lake Imandra watershed. This study utilises informant interviews with survivors of the Babinski and Ekostrovski Saami reindeer herding villages and archival materials to understand how their families used land and water to fish, hunt, and obtain other resources including cash labour. As part of the United States National Science Foundation's human dimensions of the Arctic system (HARC) programme to examine how humans are both shaped by, and shape, the Arctic environment, the authors document how lands and waters formed traditional resource territories for Saami herding families. The results reveal that prior to their destruction, western Kola reindeer herding villages were integrated along family lines, with villages sharing mates, resource territories, and economic activities. This paper argues that there was, in fact, no cultural continuity between traditional Saami reindeer herding villages and modern herding structures such as the post-Soviet brigade on the western Kola Peninsula.

Like many great institutions, the Antarctic Treaty system has its own creation myth, according to which it was brought into being by the Antarctic science programme of the 1957–1958 International Geophysical Year (IGY). As myths are prone to do, this one combines both an important truth and a good deal of misinformation. After fifty years in which it has shamelessly flattered the earth scientists, who are understandably rather fond of it, and undervalued the many non-scientists who advocated the internationalisation of Antarctica from 1910 onwards, it is time to lay it to rest. But before summarising the intermeshing contributions of private citizens, diplomats and other officials, and scientists, we should first take note of a different factor altogether, political geography.

Prior to the discovery in 1999 of an archaeological site near Cape Southwest, on southern Axel Heiberg Island, little was known about the movements of the ill fated 1930 German Arctic Expedition, led by Hans K.E. Krüger. What was known was based on the content of three cairn documents that spanned a period of just thirteen days. This paper presents new information that expands our knowledge of the expedition's route using catalogue labels found with geological specimens collected by Krüger and recovered from the site. The movements of the expedition over a period of 43 days are reconstructed, ten additions are made to the known itinerary, and an approximate date of the group's arrival at Cape Southwest is presented. The data show that despite concerns about the health of both Krüger and his Danish assistant, and about the weight of equipment being transported, the expedition had made good progress prior to reaching Cape Southwest.

Climate change is already being experienced in the Arctic with implications for ecosystems and the communities that depend on them. This paper argues that an assessment of community vulnerability to climate change requires knowledge of past experience with climate conditions, responses to climatic variations, future climate change projections, and non-climate factors that influence people's susceptibility and adaptive capacity. The paper documents and describes exposure sensitivities to climate change experienced in the community of Ulukhaktok, Northwest Territories and the adaptive strategies employed. It is based on collaborative research involving semi-structured interviews, secondary sources of information, and participant observations. In the context of subsistence hunting, changes in temperature, seasonal patterns (for example timing and nature of the spring melt), sea ice and wind dynamics, and weather variability have affected the health and availability of some species of wildlife important for subsistence and have exacerbated risks associated with hunting and travel. Inuit in Ulukhaktok are coping with these changes by taking extra precautions when travelling, shifting modes of transportation, travel routes and hunting areas to deal with changing trail conditions, switching species harvested, and supplementing their diet with store bought foods. Limited access to capital resources, changing levels of traditional knowledge and land skills, and substance abuse were identified as key constraints to adaptation. The research demonstrates the need to consider the perspectives and experiences of local people for climate change research to have practical relevance to Arctic communities such as for the development and promotion of adaptive strategies.

Recent analyses of anthropogenic impacts on marine systems have shown that the Ross Sea is the least affected stretch of ocean on Earth, although historical effects were not included in those studies. Herein the literature is reviewed in order to quantify the extent of extraction of biological resources from the Ross Sea continental shelf and slope from the start of the 20th century. There was none before that time. An intense extraction of Weddell seals Leptonychotes weddellii by the expeditions of the ‘heroic’ period and then by New Zealand to feed sled dogs in the 1950–1980s caused the McMurdo Sound population to decrease permanently. Otherwise no other sealing occurred. Blue whales Balaenoptera musculus intermedia were extirpated from waters of the shelf break front during the 1920s, and have not reappeared. Minke whales B. bonaerensis probably expanded into the blue whale vacated habitat, but were then hunted during the 1970–1980s; their population has since recovered. Some minke whales are now taken in ‘scientific whaling’, twice more from the slope compared to the shelf. Other hunted cetaceans never occurred over the shelf and very few ever occurred in slope waters, and therefore their demise from whaling does not apply to the Ross Sea. No industrial fishing occurred in the Ross Sea until the 1996–1997 summer, when a fishery for Antarctic toothfish Dissostichus mawsoni was initiated, especially along the slope. This fishery has grown since then with effects on the ecosystem recently becoming evident. There is probably no other ocean area where the details of biological exploitation can be so elucidated. It appears that the Ross Sea continental shelf remains the least affected of any on the globe. However the same cannot be said of the slope.