During August and September of 2016 the global media discovered Camp Century, a United States military research facility established beneath the ice of north-west Greenland in 1959 and abandoned in 1967. Receding ice levels threatened to bring toxic waste from the camp and its associated facilities into the open – a ghost from the Cold War brought back by global warming. But Camp Century was more than a James Bond-style oddity. Rather, it was part of a broader project to know and control Greenland's environment. Exploring Greenland demonstrates that the history of scientific research in Greenland after 1945 is one of complex and often surprising interactions between actors from Denmark, the United States and beyond. It will be essential reading for historians with interests in the politics of Cold War science and environmental knowledge, especially in the Arctic, but valuable also for historians of the modern physical sciences more generally.

Exploring Greenland begins with an introduction (by Doel, Harper and Heymann) and two chapters presenting a more general contextualization of science in Greenland (respectively by Doel and Kristian Hvidtfelt Nielsen). The introduction makes three claims: Greenland played a key part in United States military-strategic thinking during the early Cold War, which created a demand for knowledge of the Greenlandic environment, but which also involved Denmark as a small state grappling to assert itself politically and scientifically against a superpower. These strands run throughout the volume and the elaboration of the second and third constitutes its strongest achievement. Building on his earlier works on the military and the physical sciences during the early Cold War, Doel convincingly argues that the successful operation of military systems depended upon detailed knowledge of northern Greenland. This in turn opened space for new research agendas with long and fruitful afterlives; indeed, Doel notes that ice cores collected at Camp Century ‘were among the first to reveal rapid, unexpected variations in Earth's past climate, key evidence for interpreting climate change’ (p. 41). Kristian Hvidtfelt Nielsen shifts focus to Greenland after 1945 as a space for high-modernist development programmes that sought to concentrate Greenland's population and rationalize its economic sectors, within the context of debates that eventually led to home rule in 1979. At the same time, both the Danish public and its political establishment wrestled with how to manage its relationship with the United States, which potentially challenged Danish sovereignty even as it guaranteed Danish security.

The heart of the volume is the set of five chapters exploring specific dimensions of science in Greenland through the early 1960s. Heymann argues that the United States succeeded in establishing the weather stations it needed in Greenland (and Arctic Canada) in large part by downplaying the military character of the stations, thus reducing the appearance of American control. Janet Martin-Nielsen contrasts the glaciological programmes of the United States and France in Greenland. Whereas the American programme was predicated on the need to understand and control a strategically important space, Paul-Emile Victor's French programme grew out of a different geopolitical imperative – to shore up France's Antarctic territorial claim – that used Greenlandic glaciology as a means of building polar expertise and know-how. Martin-Nielsen argues convincingly that this burst of activity helped drive advances in glaciology more generally. Christopher Jacob Ries examines how the Military Geology Branch of the United States Geological Survey zeroed in on Greenland after 1945, pioneering a multidisciplinary approach born from the need to understand Greenland as a complex set of environmental systems. In contrast, Ries argues, past trends loomed larger – symbolized by the enduring presence of the controversial geologist Lauge Koch. Henrik Knudsen argues that when the United States prioritized the collection of ionospheric data (including from Greenland), Danish scientists seized the opportunity to develop their own professional interests, their subordinate roles within a larger framework reflecting the wider political relationship between Denmark and the United States. Anne Lif Lund Jacobsen concludes the section with a study of seismology, a field that obtained strategic significance thanks to its relevance for detecting nuclear tests. Jacobsen argues that the United States obtained data directly from its new facilities in Greenland, but also from exchanges based on older international linkages between institutions, which in turn allowed the Danish seismologist Inge Lehman to advance her own research through access to the resources of the powerful Lamont Geological Observatory.

The book concludes with three chapters that focus on science politics more broadly. Henry Nielsen and Kristian Hvidtfelt Nielsen discuss Camp Century as a site of contestation between Denmark and the United States, linking its rise and fall to the top-secret Project Iceworm, which would have housed nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles beneath the Greenlandic icecap. Henrik Knudsen considers the politics of international scientific collaboration in Greenland during detente, emphasizing the agency of Denmark in determining what activities would (or would not) take place. Knudsen and Henry Nielsen provide the final chapter, a fascinating exploration of how Greenlandic uranium waxed and waned as a strategic resource during the Cold War thanks to factors ranging from Denmark's abortive nuclear power programme to the rise of indigenous political movements. A postscript brings the chapter's story into the present, where uranium mining continues to echo through Greenlandic politics. The volume as a whole lacks a concluding chapter, something that might have been useful in emphasizing the continued relevance of its themes.

The current trend toward collaborative research projects likely means that volumes of this type will only become more common. Exploring Greenland suggests that this trend may be a positive one. The text bears the marks of a steady editorial hand in addition to a well-defined project frame, leading to a commonality of voice in the narrative that enhances the book's thematic coherence. The whole feels greater than the sum of its parts – a comment that is not always true for edited collections.