The term ‘polar research’ in this note refers to research that takes place in the polar regions or research for which the polar regions have had vital importance. The polar regions are defined here as the Arctic and Antarctica. The Arctic includes areas where the average temperature in July is 10°C or lower, which means that nearly the entire mainland of Norway falls outside of this. Antarctica constitutes the area south of the Antarctic convergence, where warm ocean currents from lower latitudes meet cold polar waters, somewhere between 53° and 62° S.
There has always been a close connection between science and politics in the polar regions. This pertains not only to research sponsored by individual nation-states, but also to international research cooperation in this area. With regard to Norway, these two main lines of research can be illustrated by the reception Nansen and his men received after the Fram expedition, when they returned home in 1896.
King Oscar sought to internationalise the expedition. According to a report by Dagbladet (Oslo), during a dinner party in the castle a few days prior to the national celebration in the public square by Akershus Festning, the King concluded his speech by emphasising that Nansen's polar journey belonged to ‘the entire world and humanity in general; that is, not exclusively to any one country. Leiv Ericson, Vasco da Gama, Columbus, Cook, Peary, Stanley, Nordenskiöld, and now, Fridtjof Nansen, are victorious bearers of a cultural work that is of significance to the entire World’ (Dagbladet (Oslo) 10 September 1896. (All translations from Norwegian in this note are the author's own).
However, at the national celebration for Nansen in the square, the well known author Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson did everything he could to nationalise the Fram expedition. In his speech, which was cited in its entirety in Dagbladet, he turned the Fram expedition into a symbol of Norway (Dagbladet (Oslo) 14 September 1896). The characteristics this expedition represented, according to Bjørnson, were national characteristics, and the practical and theoretical knowledge that had made the expedition possible came from Norway. His objective was basically, to make the Fram expedition Norwegian (Drivenes Reference Drivenes2003: 173).
The expedition had an educational effect on Norwegian youth about the values of self-control, endurance and the courage to set high goals. In this way, according to the speaker, Fram was a rallying point for the nation and an inspiration to maintain good Norwegian virtues. Yet the expedition was also the result of Norwegian traits. Knowledge, loyalty and self-control were developed through the quiet efforts of the Norwegian people, and suddenly they all emerged through one great feat. Nansen's meticulous planning was an expression of a particular conscientiousness that again was the result of the work of generations upon generations: ‘the people's finest and most noble heirloom’. Bjørnson found Nansen's courage in the Norwegian people. With regard to loyalty, he said: ‘you can easily go into the houses out by the skerries or up under the mountain, and you will find the same thing everywhere’ (Dagbladet (Oslo) 14 September 1896.
During the interwar period, there is no hiding the fact that this national rhetoric was used by nationalist activists. In the 1930s, segments of Norwegian polar research were accompanied by an undercurrent of imperialism in the Arctic Ocean, where the goal was a greater Norway. This pertained especially to the research that Norway's Svalbard and Arctic Ocean Research Survey (NSIU) sponsored. The leader and founder of the institution, the geologist Adolf Hoel, was ardently engaged, if not an activist, in Norwegian interests in the polar regions (Drivenes Reference Drivenes, Drivenes and Jølle2004: 175). During the Spitsbergen (Svalbard) case, ending in the treaty, he emphasised the connections between Norwegian political interests and scientific expeditions in the Arctic. The expedition was a part of the Norwegianisation of Spitsbergen according to Hoel (Drivenes and Jølle Reference Drivenes and Jølle2006: 287). He did not devote a great deal of time or ink to explaining to politicians the purely scientific benefits that this work could yield.
Yet this is not the entire story. During the glory days of Norwegian polar research, which includes the entire period from 1880 until 1940, important areas within polar research were internationally orientated and focused on cooperation over national borders. This pertains especially to the theoretical research disciplines within geophysics, such as northern lights research, oceanography, meteorology, and fishery research (Bones Reference Bones2007: 5).
It might perhaps be believed that the more interest-based and applied research that focused on mapping the natural resources in the Arctic, which was run by the NSIU during the period before 1945, was more politicised than theoretical polar research. However, the postwar period reveals that this distinction is not valid.
In the first years after the war, the reorganisation of NSIU was key. The institution was stigmatised by the fact that its head, Adolf Hoel, had been a member of the NS (the Norwegian Nazi Party) since 1933. During the war, he was the rector of the University of Oslo, appointed by the Quisling government. The purpose of reorganising NSIU was to bolster both the scope and quality of research at the institution. And there was nothing lacking in its ambition: NSIU was to become a central institute for Europe and a leader in European polar research. The internationally recognised oceanographer and polar researcher Harald Ulrik Sverdrup was called home from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California to head it. The reorganisation of NSIU was carried out in 1948 and it was renamed the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI).
This process had both domestic and foreign aspects, with Norwegian political interests in the Arctic and Antarctica being the most important ones. In this way, not much was new compared to the interwar period. This is not a remarkable fact. The institution was not merely a research institution, but also a state administrative organ for the polar areas. The NSIU/NPI has never been under the jurisdiction of the ministry that has been responsible for research in Norway (Ministry of Education and Research). The institution was first accountable to the Ministry of Commerce, then to the Ministry of Industry for a while, and then, from 1979, the Ministry of the Environment.
Nevertheless, what is most interesting is that Norwegian polar research during the postwar period was greatly influenced by superpower politics and the cold war. This pertains to both the theoretical polar research linked to purely research institutions like universities, and the research sponsored by the NPI. Robert Marc Friedman presents an interesting example of how superpower politics influenced Norwegian polar research during the initial years after the war (Friedman Reference Friedman, Drivenes and Jolle2006: 319–361) He calls attention to an initiative introduced by the Swedish glaciologist Hans Ahlmann for the Norwegian authorities to vitalise and reorganise Norwegian polar research during that period. Ahlmann's interest was particularly an expression of his concern about the Soviet Union's efforts to intensify their research in the Arctic. He was afraid that the west was going to fall behind. In Norway, this concern was shared by leading politicians, especially after the Soviet Union expressed a desire to change the Svalbard Treaty towards the end of the war.
At the same time, Ahlmann eventually became convinced that, for both economic and scientific reasons, polar research had to be organised through cooperation with several countries. Thus, he was a keen advocate for getting an international authority, such as Sverdrup, to take on the leadership of the NPI. The most important task Sverdrup received when he took over as director was to organise and secure money for an international expedition to Antarctica, the Norwegian-British-Swedish expedition of 1949–1952 (the NBS or Maudheim expedition). Part of the expedition's scientific purpose was, among other things, to test Ahlmann's theories about global warming.
Yet the expedition did not just have idealistic scientific objectives. It was also important for demonstrating British and Norwegian claims of sovereignty after the United States had heavily invested in research in Antarctica and at the same time proposed to internationalise the area. The heavy investment by the United States was the direct result of a growing fear of Soviet expansion in the Arctic. Antarctica was a perfect place to secure more information about how people and equipment could manage in polar areas.
However, the influence superpower politics had on Norwegian priorities during preparations for the International Geophysical Year (IGY) in 1957 was even greater. Friedman demonstrates how the polar scientific community in Norway, including the NPI, initially believed that the country's limited research funds with regard to participation in the IGY could not be used for an expensive expedition to the Antarctic, but had to be concentrated in the Arctic. After the Soviet Union surprisingly had shown interest in participating in the IGY, and as there was uncertainty linked to Soviet involvement in Antarctica, the United States Embassy in Norway directly contacted the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After a great deal of back and forth, the result of the American pressure was a Norwegian expedition to Antarctica (the Norway Station expedition) of 1957–1958.
The period of the 1960s well into the 1970s became a period of lull for the NPI, even though the renowned director from 1960, the geologist Tore Gjelsvik, managed to accomplish a certain expansion of the staff and grants. He also used foreign policy arguments, but this did not seem to have much support concerning Svalbard. On the contrary, it seems that Norwegian authorities were very careful with research installations that might seem provocative to the Russians. This particularly pertained to research that was financed by United States funds or could indirectly have military relevance, like, for example, space research. On the other hand, Gjelsvik seemed to have greater success with acquiring funds that had direct economic relevance.
From the middle of the 1970s, Norwegian politics in Svalbard entered into a new and more active phase. The most visible sign of the new politics was the construction of an airport, which led to a communication revolution for the Svalbard community. This also had great significance for the NPI, and for polar research in general. Up until this point, all of the research in this area had been completely dominated by the NPI, even with regard to logistical services for external researchers. Now the researchers could get themselves to Svalbard more easily. This especially pertained to the newly established University of Tromsø, which must be viewed as an important part of the increased investment in polar research after 1970. In 2006 the University was the leading university in Norway with regard to the use of research funds for polar research (Forskningsrådet 2009: 37) and in 2009 that university was the largest contributor in Norway (Nordområdeforskningen 2009: 38) of scientific publications about ‘the high north’ (which in this context includes the Barents Region and the circumpolar Arctic, that is, all land and sea territory north of the Arctic Circle).
In 1979, the NPI was transferred from the Ministry of Industry to the Ministry of the Environment, which signified both a symbolic and a real shift from economic to environmental research. While the institution initially concentrated on geosciences and glaciology, with the mapping of resources as its primary focus, a shift had occurred toward environmental research in general, and biology in particular. The research profile changed focus then from the use and exploitation of polar resources to environmental conservation. At the same time, the NPI provided new positions of employment. In 1960, the institute had 22 permanent positions; in 1975, it had 34; in 1993, following the move to Tromsø, it had 63; and in 2010, 159 people worked there, of which 49 were employees not having permanent contracts.
While the new period for the institute with regard to its research profile happened at the end of the 1970s, its move to Tromsø in 1993 was the most fundamental change in the institute's history after 1948. At about the same time, the polar research and education that the four mainland-based universities at that period had conducted from a base in Svalbard became institutionalised in the cooperative project UNIS (The University Centre in Svalbard) (Arlov Reference Arlov1996: 463). With the relocation of the NPI, the Ministry of the Environment emphasised that the institute's primary task should still be management-oriented research. Investment in research increased after the move was completed in 1998, including in theoretical research. In addition, the environmental profile was strengthened through the prioritisation of three main areas: polar climate, environmental toxins and biodiversity (Hessen Reference Hessen, Drivenes and Jølle2004: 421).
In this way, the 1990s introduced a pronounced increase of Norwegian polar research with a great deal of political support. The motives for this increased investment are explicitly stated in the 1993 White Paper about Norwegian polar research (Stortingsmelding nr. 42 1992–1993; see also Barr Reference Barr2003: 520), in which the move of the NPI was also introduced. The report is thoroughly explicit with regard to both the goals of, and justifications for, the government's increased investment. The increase was necessary in order to strengthen Norway's position as an Arctic nation at a time when several large nations showed increased interest in the polar regions. It is pointed out that polar research is an important means for protecting national interests linked to sovereignty and jurisdiction, resource-related questions and environmental conservation.
According to the White Paper, polar research was a precondition for achieving several political objectives. Yet this vigorous effort was also necessary in relation to theoretical research. The politics of national interest clearly emerge in the document. In this report, it is strongly emphasised that Norway must actively participate in international research cooperation, not only to retain its role as a polar nation, but also because this research is demanding on resources and expenses. One condition for active Norwegian participation in this type of research cooperation across national borders was that Norwegian polar research be of high international quality. During the cold war, this research cooperation took place within the two power blocs. One exception from this is the Antarctic Treaty from 1961, in which the signing powers, including the Soviet Union, together accept responsibility for the management of the area.
After the fall of the Berlin wall, new possibilities for cooperation opened up. One of the important factors behind the relocation of the NPI to Tromsø, and the establishment of university studies on Svalbard, was the establishment of the Barents Region in 1993, following an initiative by the foreign minister at the time, Thorvald Stoltenberg. It then became necessary to establish several national research institutions within the region. Thus, it is no accident that a scholar within Norwegian polar history has used the term ‘Et polart felleskap’ (a polar community) to refer to the postwar period, followed by a question mark (Drivenes and Jølle Reference Drivenes and Jølle2004: 358).
The next notable date in Norwegian polar research was 2006, when the new government introduced its strategy on the northern region (Utenriksdepartementet 2006). Here, the production of knowledge and research, including polar research, was a key element. It was ‘the hub’ itself, as it is called (Utenriksdepartementet 2006) of the entire investment in the northern region. This was characterised in the following way in the government's strategy on the northern region: ‘As a part of knowledge development, we are going to further develop foreign policy to have a greater capacity to raise Norwegian interests in the northern region’. Here, national interests clearly emerge in the way they did in the 1993 White Paper on Norwegian polar research.
What research profile has the investment in the northern region resulted in? The statistics that are available from the Norwegian Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education (Nordområdeforskningen 2009), show that natural sciences and technological sciences in 2009 constituted 75% of the research in the northern region, while social sciences and humanities constituted about 10%, measured in number of person hours. The overview provided by the Research Council of Norway from the same year shows that oil-related research alone constituted 28% of the funds the Research Council granted to research in the northern region in that year.
Even though it is too early to say, there is every reason to question whether investment in the northern territory has resulted in a research profile that points to a return to more economically oriented research in the region, including polar research. There is less doubt that Norwegian activity and research, even today, is controlled by national interests. There are many similarities between current policies on the northern region and the political ambitions Adolf Hoel had on behalf of Norway during the period of imperialism in the Arctic Ocean before the last world war. Attempts to theoretically annexe the polar regions in the north through scientific activity are not at all sensational or particularly Norwegian. This is part of a long tradition throughout the west. History tells us that research was a main pillar of western cultural conquest from pole to pole. However, in the postwar period, these interest-based policies have to a much greater degree been balanced with the recognition that the polar regions must be managed within international legal regimes and through international research cooperation.
