The Global Arctic

The term “global Arctic” has gained traction in recent years as a shorthand term for a region in transition. We have spoken at length about climate change and resource speculation and their cumulative effects are part of this accounting for change. Another aspect of all...

Arctic Homelands

The Arctic, if defined by land and sea (and ice) lying north of the Arctic Circle, is home to 4 million people. The majority of residents are found in the Russian North, and overwhelmingly non-indigenous. Development policy and population movement in the 1930s onward in...

Land, Sea, and Ice

Humans and non-humans make their homes in many Arctic places. Cultures, societies, and ecologies have formed in relation to northern surroundings over millennia, over centuries, or mere decades. Environmental biologists warn of a new generation of invasive species entering northern terrestrial, freshwater, and marine environments,...

Introduction

Every week, stories about the Arctic, usually addressing the state of sea ice extent and thickness, diminishing glaciers, rapidly thawing permafrost, acidification of the Arctic Ocean, the resource potential of the region, the opening of new shipping routes, and possible geopolitical tensions, appear in the...

Warming Arctic

Climate change and its effects on Arctic societies, wildlife, and environments has been a recurring theme of this book. And for good reason. In many parts of the Arctic, these effects are inescapable, and, given that Arctic temperatures are rising faster than anywhere else on...

From Colonization to Cooperation

The Arctic has undergone profound human and natural change over millennia. When we record that the Arctic is home to some 4 million people, it is a mere fraction of a world population currently approaching 8 billion people. Apart from the Antarctic, the Arctic remains...

Locating True North

It is common to point to the Arctic Circle (66°N) as indicative of the start of the Arctic and “true north.” If you land at Rovaniemi airport in Finnish Lapland, you are told you have arrived at the home of Santa Claus. The town lies...

Resourceful Arctic

While awareness of the effects of climate change on the Arctic is growing and provoking anxiety over ecosystem thresholds and tipping points, circumpolar places are also increasingly presented to global audiences as dynamic, emerging, global regions that are “open for business.” Depending on whom you...