What kind of Arctic actor will China be in 2050? China has entered the Arctic, and its future ambitions in the region are closely tied to its future trajectory in global politics. We conduct a scenario analysis of China’s ability to realise its Arctic ambitions in three scenarios: A continuation of the status quo (Ascendant China), Chinese economic stagnation (Stagnant China), and Chinese global hegemony (Triumphant China). We find that climate change will affect China differently in these scenarios. In Triumphant China, climate change can act as an enabler of Chinese ambitions, particularly regarding fishing and maritime transport. Even as a non-Arctic state, a Triumphant China will likely wield sufficient global power to realise its Arctic ambitions. In Ascendant China and Stagnant China, we find that climate change primarily acts as an obstacle to China’s Arctic ambitions. China would rely on its Russian partnership to a greater extent, limiting their ability to realise their ambitions. Without a strong Arctic foothold, climate change could cause regional changes too rapid and comprehensive for China to be able to adapt civilian and military capabilities to those changes. Finally, climate change may make Stagnant China more likely, as sea-level rise threatens China’s economic might.

During the early Cold War, Canada’s Northern Co-ordination and Research Centre (NCRC) employed anthropologists and other ethnographers to make Inuit legible to northern administrators. The government sought information that would demonstrate how well Inuit were adapting to life in the newly established and permanent government-administered settlements. Research in Iqaluit, then known as Frobisher Bay, was assigned to Toshio Yatsushiro, a Japanese-American anthropologist who had previously participated in anthropological studies of interned Japanese and Japanese-Americans. Yatsushiro spent two summers (1958 and 1959) in Iqaluit with the goal of documenting the extent to which Inuit were adopting the cultural norms, values, and lifestyles of Euro-Canadians. Although Yatsushiro never completed his intended project, his published and unpublished writings identify specific ways in which Canada’s post-war administration of Inuit communities and its efforts to acculturate Inuit to southern Canadian ways of living were failing Inuit. Archival documents, interviews with NCRC anthropologists, and Yatsushiro’s published and unpublished writings reveal his disillusionment with the authoritarian practices of government officials in the North. His ethnographic observations and recommendations, coloured by his own experiences of internment, were dismissed by government officials as inaccurate and irrelevant.

For over three decades, science diplomacy in the Arctic operated within a remarkably cooperative framework, often identified as “exceptionalism.” Circumarctic research was largely insulated from geopolitical tensions. This era was abruptly ended by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the international isolation of Russia. This article, informed by the author’s history of engagement in Russian Arctic research and in science diplomacy, examines the transition from a unified to a fragmented research environment. The current rupture in scientific relations has created a crisis by disconnecting a substantial part of the global system – including several of the planet’s climate “tipping elements” – from many of the networks configured to understand it. This epistemic gap is compounded by a severe weakening of “soft-power” communication between countries that are poorly aligned strategically. While the fourth International Conference on Arctic Research Planning has provided a strong blueprint for Arctic research over the next decade, and the fifth International Polar Year (2032–33) presents an exceptional opportunity to implement this plan, the future of collaborative research remains uncertain as the research community attempts to move towards a model of conditional engagement in a multipolar environment.

Since 2022, the Arctic region has entered a period of significant instability, which has placed considerable strain on the institutional frameworks established during the post-Cold War era. With the conclusion of that historical phase, the future of Arctic governance is being contested by Russia and the United States – two pivotal polar powers essential to defining the regional order. Following the return of Donald Trump to the White House in January 2025, both nations have exhibited signs of diplomatic rapprochement, despite deploying distinct strategic postures. These postures situate the Arctic within competing metanarratives, wherein the region becomes the subject of new political imaginaries that instrumentalise imperialism. While the United States has resumed an assertive rhetoric towards its northern neighbours, Russia is attempting to resolve its long-standing civilisational identity debate by positioning the Arctic as a new centre of geopolitical gravity. Confronted with the threat of a division into spheres of influence, this paper contends that the Nordic states and Canada face the challenge of addressing the fragmenting polar governance regime that is essential in the context of the planet’s rapidly changing climate regime and growing geo-economic competition for natural resources.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is exerting an increasing influence on Arctic governance, prompting Arctic states and the global community to develop AI technologies and engage in technological competition. This study examines Arctic governance in the AI era, analysing the opportunities and challenges posed by AI and proposing strategies for risk mitigation. We argue that AI offers important opportunities for enhancing predictive accuracy, optimising resource exploration, and facilitating cooperative governance in the Arctic. At the same time, AI presents multiple challenges: algorithmic bias may compromise the fairness of decision-making, technological dependence could contribute to governance imbalances, the black-box nature of many AI systems could undermine transparency, and ethical controversies and questions of public acceptance remain unresolved. Through transparent algorithm design, the establishment of technical standards and ethical guidelines, and the construction of multi-stakeholder governance frameworks, these risks could be mitigated to support more sustainable Arctic governance.

As Russia accelerated Arctic hydrocarbon development, year-round marine transport in ice-covered waters became a binding constraint. This article explores how South Korean shipbuilders – particularly Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME; now Hanwha Ocean) – became pivotal suppliers of icebreaking LNG carriers and ice-class tankers for Russian Arctic projects, especially the Yamal LNG Arc7 carrier program. Using a qualitative case-study design that combines document analysis with semi-structured interviews and secondary literature, it engages debates in Arctic political economy concerning the role of state–chaebol coordination in shaping industrial outcomes. The argument is made that Korea’s major commercial breakthroughs in Russian Arctic shipping were driven largely by firm-level technological innovation and industrial partnerships among multinational stakeholders – with particular analytical focus on Japanese and Chinese actors – which together enabled Russian Arctic projects to proceed despite sanctions, technical complexity, and environmental constraints. Throughout this process, state involvement remained limited in scope and largely followed, rather than preceded, these technological and commercial developments. The article thus highlights the limits of state-centric explanations and underscores the importance of firm-level agency and transnational industrial collaboration in Arctic energy development.

This article examines Captain Scott’s arrangement, announced on 3 January 1912, to add a fifth man to his Polar Party. Although it has been characterised as impulsive and ill-judged, primary expedition records suggest strategic and tactical rationales. Scott was deeply concerned about the physical hardship of prolonged travel on the Polar Plateau and sought to minimise exposure time. He also had a newly emerged tactical problem: the last support party could no longer keep up and might soon fail completely. Adding a fifth man would increase pulling power, allowing early release of the last support party; it would reduce time spent on the Polar Plateau, and it would provide a safety margin for worsening surface conditions. Secondary literature has focused on drawbacks such as tent crowding, increased cooking time, and ration redistribution. Such concerns are not strongly supported by primary sources, as many originate from the influential accounts of Apsley Cherry-Garrard and Roland Huntford, both of whom emphasised drawbacks while overlooking Scott’s underlying rationale. Drawing on diaries, letters, and contemporary records, this article argues that Scott’s fifth-man arrangement was a considered response to strategic and tactical issues at the time.

The group portrait The Arctic Council planning a search for Sir John Franklin (1851) by Stephen Pearce is one of the best-known images associated with the Franklin expedition. However, the painting’s meaning and purpose have often been misunderstood from the beginning. Although it was a private commission from John Barrow, the Admiralty’s Keeper of the Records, the painting took on a public role as soon as it was completed, serving as a propaganda tool to garner support for the search for the missing Franklin expedition, in which Barrow had a strong personal interest. This article provides an exhibition and reception history of The Arctic Council, illustrating that it served as a propaganda tool at key moments during the search for Franklin and again assumed a propaganda role in the late 19th century, when British interest shifted to Antarctic exploration.

Roald Amundsen’s South Pole party is routinely depicted as an unusually harmonious and high-performing team. This article re-examines that assumption by returning to the only contemporary sources that intermittently record interpersonal strain during the Pole march: the diaries of Sverre Hassel and Olav Bjaaland. Using a deliberately narrow empirical base and a transparent inclusion procedure, the study restricts all claims about friction to what the diarists explicitly note. A minimal coding vocabulary—task, process/authority, and relationship/tone—serves as an organising device rather than an explanatory framework. Seventeen diary passages document irritation, disagreement, reprimand, sarcasm, or social sanction linked to identifiable expedition members. Read conservatively, the diaries neither support a counter-myth of dysfunction nor permit inferences about the prevalence or long-term significance of conflict. They do, however, make one conclusion difficult to avoid: the Pole march cannot responsibly be described as frictionless simply because it succeeded logistically or was later narrated smoothly. Instead, the diary evidence shows that operational excellence coexisted with domain-specific frictions—over judgement, rations, navigation, role allocation, and tent-life tone—and that authority and contradiction repeatedly appear as interactional fault lines. Cohesion, where it existed, was not the absence of strain but a condition under which strain could still be written down.

In the afternoon 20 May 1916, Ernest Shackleton with Frank Worsley and Tom Crean unexpectedly arrived at the whaling station in Stromness, South Georgia after completing one of the most extraordinary journeys in the history of Antarctic exploration. There are numerous versions of what actually happened on arriving at Stromness, whom they met and what was said during this first encounter between the whalers and the explorers. There has also at times been a confusion about which whaling station and at which building they arrived. Despite the discrepancies between several accounts dealing with the Stromness arrival, there has been little explicit analysis to try to separate fact from fiction. Despite some attempts to get the records straight, books and other publications on Shackleton still appear where details on the arrival are marred by fiction. This paper, therefore, continues the search for a “sober” narrative of what happened that afternoon in South Georgia more than a hundred years ago. A main reason to revisit the questions surrounding the arrival in Stromness now is the renewed focus on the Stromness Manager’s Villa that was finally repaired and stabilised during the Antarctic summer 2025/26.

We have used a modern, medium-sized hovercraft to further explore air cushion transport in Antarctica. Hovercraft travel over hard-blown snow at safe cruising speeds of 40–60 km/h requires about 50% of the fuel consumption for hovercraft travel over a flat ocean surface. The Griffon 2000TD craft used here has an endurance of >1000 km with a 1-tonne payload (personnel and equipment). However, this standard craft, designed for operations at sea level, is limited to altitudes below about 700 m elevation by the decrease in air density. The hovercraft provides accommodation, communication and first aid facilities for its crew in the event of any weather or operational issues. Two safety features of air cushion travel in Antarctica stand out: (1) low ground pressure per unit area (15% of a human), and (2) the ability to freely cross open ice cracks of dimensions of a metre or more. The total considerations of fuel economy, safety and environmental impact suggest the surface of hard-blown snow in Antarctica provides the optimum conditions for air cushion travel on planet Earth.

This article examines how the participation and designations of the shared delegation of Denmark, Greenland and the Faroe Islands to the Arctic Council have developed since the council’s establishment in 1996. Drawing on data from 223 meetings across all Arctic Council meeting types, we analyse participation patterns and delegation designations, linking them to shifting priorities and internal dynamics within the Kingdom. The delegation is unique for its frequent designation changes and documentation of nationality shifts. Our analysis shows that since 2013, designations have gradually standardised at ministerial and Senior Arctic Official (SAO) meetings, while at the working group level, designation practices are more fragmented. Denmark maintains the largest presence across all meeting types, but Greenland and the Faroe Islands have increased their engagement in specific groups in line with their foreign policy strategies. These developments highlight a broader rebalancing within the Kingdom, where Greenland and the Faroe Islands have strengthened their Arctic engagement and foreign policy agency.

A 23-foot cutter lies adjacent to the wreck of HMS Terror (Franklin Expedition, 1845–1848). Historical accounts of the 28-foot boat found in 1859 at site NgLj-3 in Erebus Bay (“Boat Place”) describe extensive field modification, including lightened upperworks, an altered rail arrangement, and a 9-inch weather-cloth supported by iron stanchions that also served as thowells. This paper uses reproducible image-processing methods to test whether the cutter preserves visible features consistent and convergent with elements of the NgLj-3 modification suite. Using still imagery, contrast-limited adaptive histogram equalisation, colour-index segmentation, and gradient-based seam detection, we assess three markers: anomalous rail height relative to the stemhead, preferential loss of upper planking, and a rail-mounted upright compatible with a stanchion. The imagery shows a pronounced mismatch between rail height and stemhead elevation relative to Admiralty cutter plans. A sub-gunwale void consistent with missing upperworks, which is notably similar to the strake replacement described, and a small upright feature of approximately the same order of magnitude as the reported weather-cloth height. These observations are suggestive rather than diagnostic, but taken together, they support a hypothesis that the Terror cutter may preserve traces of field modification comparable to those described at NgLj-3.

Since 1859, attempts to resolve the question of the identity of a sailor from the 1845 Franklin expedition whose body was found that year on the south shore of King William Island have been complicated by contradictory evidence found with the skeleton. Documents found with the body implied the man was Harry Peglar, Captain of the Foretop, but the clothing indicated the man held a domestic rating, a steward or officer’s servant. This paper examines the question of the sailor’s identity through a review of the investigative framework of past attempts to ascertain the man’s identity. It then presents results of comparative DNA analyses conducted on the skeleton and on samples provided by descendants of Harry Peglar and six of the eight stewards. Comparison of DNA profiles obtained from the skeleton with those of descendants of the stewards yielded no matches, but comparison of the mtDNA profile obtained from the skeleton with a presumed descendant of Harry Peglar yielded a match with a genetic distance of 0. We conclude that the DNA and genealogical evidence confirm that the identity of the sailor whose skeleton was discovered in 1859 was that of Henry Peter (“Harry”) Peglar, Captain of the Foretop, HMS Terror.

During 1864–1869, Charles Hall led an expedition seeking answers to what happened to the 1845 Northwest Passage Expedition of Sir John Franklin. Hall recovered relics from the expedition and their history from the Inuit. This analysis correlates Hall’s records with the relics now housed at the Smithsonian Institution and those that Hall gave to others. Forty-six of the 83 relics catalogued in Hall’s “Part of List Sir John Franklin Relics” notebook were identified. Many of these were correlated with a 1869 contemporary illustration appearing in Harper’s Weekly magazine. We learn that the collection likely represented what was of value to the Inuit as Hall traded for the majority of the relics. Among these, Hall gave away nearly all relics connected to individuals participating in the Franklin Expedition, except for some cutlery belonging to Sir John Franklin. Hall’s efforts provided the first evidence of materials scavenged from the expedition ships themselves. It remains unclear why Hall donated as many relics as he did to the Smithsonian for similar materials were used for fundraising in the past. This suggests he did not plan to return to the Arctic to seek the Franklin Expedition or he had additional relics not yet located.

High-latitude environments subject residents to extreme seasonal variations in light. This qualitative study examined how civilians living at high northern latitudes experience and manage sleep, mood and time across winter darkness and summer light. Twenty-eight adults residing in Scandinavia, Estonia and Canada completed an in-depth online, open-ended survey. Using reflexive thematic analysis, we identified a lived ecology of seasonal strain spanning physiology, emotion and temporal experience. Participants described winter as heavier sleep with difficult awakenings, inertia and flatter affect and summer as shallow, fractured sleep and a “wired” restlessness. Evening-type (“night-owl”) individuals reported greater strain across both seasons: winter mornings felt biologically unworkable, whereas summer nights never properly “started.” Crucially, people also reported changes in how they experienced time itself. Under unstable photoperiods, “day” and “night” became things to make rather than to feel: weeks “blurred” without deliberate anchors, prompting intentional “temporal scaffolds” such as fixed wake times and mealtimes, blackout in summer, morning light in winter, seasonal rituals, scheduled outdoor exposure, and, for some, temporary relocation. We interpret these accounts within circadian alignment and social zeitgeber frameworks and extend them by specifying temporal experience, not just sleep or mood, as a key outcome of environmental light. Implications include chronotype-aware screening in primary care, normalising circadian and temporal hygiene in public messaging, and embedding light scheduling and routine-based supports within fatigue-risk management for isolated, confined and extreme operations. The findings provide an ecological description of civilian adaptation at high latitude and generate testable predictions for future quantitative and operational studies.

This article revisits the Finnish contribution to the First International Polar Year (IPY) (1882–1883) by examining a largely overlooked primary source: “On the Finnish Research Expedition to Sodankylä and Kultala in 1882–1884, with Sketches from Lapland” (Helsinki, 1885). Contrary to claims in recent scholarship that no detailed accounts of daily life at the Finnish polar station have survived, this volume offers rich descriptions of the expedition’s routines, challenges, and social interactions. Drawing on these narratives, the article reconstructs the everyday realities of scientific work in Sodankylä, including the arduous journey north, the setting up of observation facilities, the strict schedule of meteorological and magnetic observations, and the experimental studies on auroral phenomena led by Professor Selim Lemström. The analysis highlights why these accounts were forgotten – due to linguistic barriers and limited popular dissemination – and argues for their significance in understanding both the material culture of polar science and Finland’s role in the First IPY. By bringing this evidence into the historiography of Arctic research, the article challenges prevailing assumptions and calls for renewed attention to local perspectives in global scientific enterprises.

This article examines recruitment practices in Swedish polar expeditions during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, focusing on A.G. Nathorst’s Arctic voyages 1898 and 1899, the Swedish-Russian Arc-of-Meridian surveys 1898–1901, and the 1903 Antarctic rescue expedition. Drawing on preserved correspondence, this article explores who conducted recruitment, how it was done, and what competencies were sought. The expedition leader recruited other scientists on his own, relying on recommendations from fellow academics. Hiring of sailors involved several persons; the leader, the ship’s captain, other seamen and semi-professional commissioners. The default mode was to re-hire old shipmates. When that was not possible, new recruits were evaluated through acquaintances or based on their reputation. Experience of travel in icy waters was considered valuable. Sailors with references from scientific expeditions were especially sought after, and could use this to attain higher wages than was the norm in ordinary work at sea.

This article explores how young people in Norilsk – Russia’s largest Arctic city and a global exemplar of industrial monotown development – negotiate their futures amid extreme environmental challenges, social isolation, and economic uncertainty. Drawing on 31 in-depth interviews with vocational students of industrial specialisations, the paper examines the ways in which youth navigate a unique “here” (Norilsk) versus “on the mainland” (the rest of Russia) divide that shapes both lived experience and imagined mobility. The analysis reveals that youth typically approach life in Norilsk as a temporary, but agentic strategy: they seek financial security and work experience locally before considering uncertain migration elsewhere. This calculated “staying,” termed “permanent temporality,” is influenced by limited educational and career opportunities, strong vocational pipelines, and family narratives that valorise the accumulation of a “safety cushion” prior to moving. While Norilsk offers predictability and stability, it is rarely seen as a place for long-term residence or generational settlement. The findings challenge assumptions of Arctic youth passivity or inevitable depopulation, highlighting instead the adaptive agency young people display in a context of structural constraint. The study situates these strategies between broader transformations in Russian education, shifting value attached to vocational and university pathways, and the specific vulnerabilities of Arctic urban environments. The article concludes by discussing the implications for regional policy, urban sustainability, and broader understandings of youth transition and mobility under conditions of global peripherality and rapid socioeconomic change.