Encyclopedia Of The Arctic: L, Mark

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE ARCTIC

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE ARCTIC Volume 1 A–F

Mark Nuttall, Editor

ROUTLEDGE NEW YORK AND LONDON

Published in 2005

Cover Photos Volume 1: Inuit hunters in kayaks return to shore towing a

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narwhal they have harpooned, Qaanaaq, Northwest Greenland. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

www.routledge-ny.com Volume 2: Polar bear mother and cubs on new sea ice, Published in Great Britain by Routledge

Cape Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. Copyright Bryan and

Cherry Alexander Photography

2 Park Square Milton Park, Abingdon,

Volume 3: Northern lights, aurora borealis, over a Nenets

Oxon OX14 4RN U.K.

reindeer herders camp, Yamal Peninsula, Western Siberia,

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Russia. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

Copyright © 2005 by Routledge. Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group.

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Encyclopedia of the Arctic / Mark Nuttall, editor. P. cm. ISBN 1-57958-436-5 (set: alk. paper) -- ISBN 1-57958-437-3 (volume 1 : alk. paper) -- ISBN 1-57958438-1 (volume 2 : alk. paper) -- ISBN 1-57958-439-X (volume 3 : alk. paper) 1. Arctic regions -Encyclopedias. I. Title: Arctic. II. Nuttall, Mark. G606. E49 2005 909’.0913’03--dc22

ISBN 0-203-99785-9 Master e-book ISBN

2004016694

BOARD OF ADVISERS Dr. David G. Anderson Department of Anthropology University of Aberdeen Scotland

Mads Fægteborg Arctic Information Copenhagen Denmark

Lawson Brigham Deputy Director, US Arctic Research Commission Arlington, Virginia

Prof. Peter Johnson Department of Geography University of Ottawa Ontario, Canada

Prof. Terry V. Callaghan Director, Abisko Scientific station Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Abisko, Sweden Dr. Torben R. Christensen Department of Plant Ecology Lund University Sweden

Dr. Igor Krupnik Arctic Studies Center National Museum of Natural History Smithsonian Institution Washington DC Dr. Molly Lee University of Alaska Museum University of Alaska Fairbanks

Dr. Liz Cruwys Scott Polar Research Institute University of Cambridge England

Dr. Hanne Petersen Director, Danish Polar Center Copenhagen, Denmark

Prof. Louis-Jacques Dorais Department of Anthropology Laval University Quebec, Canada

Dr. Beau Riffenburgh Scott Polar Research Institute University of Cambridge England

Prof. Julian Dowdeswell Director, Scott Polar Research Institute University of Cambridge England

Dr. David Scrivener Department of International Relations University of Keele Keele, England

Dr. Niels Einarsson Director Stefansson Arctic Institute Akureyri, Iceland

Dr. Frank Sejersen Department of Eskimology University of Copenhagen Denmark

Prof. Sergei Sutyrin Department of World Economy St. Petersburg University Russia Prof. Peter Wadhams Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics University of Cambridge England Prof. Gunter Weller Cooperative Institute for Arctic Research University of Alaska Fairbanks

Karla Jessen Williamson Executive Director Arctic Institute of North America University of Calgary Alberta Canada Prof. Robert G. Williamson Arctic Institute of North America University of Calgary Alberta Canada

Contents Entries A-Z ix Thematic List of Entries xxiii Foreword

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Preface xxxix Map of Arctic Populations xliii Map of Arctic Indigenous Peoples xliv Entries A-Z 1–2226 List of Contributors 2227 Index

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Entries A-Z Volume 1

Aleutian Range Aleutian Tradition Aleutian/Pribilof Islands Association Alootook Ipellie Alpha Ridge Alphabets and Writing, North America and Greenland Alphabets and Writing, Russia Alphabets and Writing, Scandinavia and Iceland Alta/Kautokeino Demonstrations Alutiit Amagoalik, John Amedeo, Luigi, Duke of Abruzzi American Paleo-Arctic Tradition Amphibians Amund Ringnes Island Amundsen Basin Amundsen, Roald Anadyr Anadyr River Anchorage Andrée, Salomon August Animal-rights movements and renewable resources Animals in the worldviews of indigenous peoples Anzhu, Petr Fedorovich Archaeology of the Arctic: Alaska and Beringia Archaeology of the Arctic: Canada and Greenland Archaeology of the Arctic: Scandinavian Settlement of the North Atlantic Archbishop Innocent (Ivan Veniaminov) Arctic Athabaskan Council Arctic Char Arctic Circle Arctic Council Arctic: Definitions and Boundaries Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy

A Aasiaat Aasivik Aboriginal Identities Adamson, Shirley Adaptation Adoption Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears Ainana, Lyudmila Ainu Air Routes Akureyri Alaska Alaska Beluga Whale Committee Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission (AEWC) Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) Alaska Highway Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) Alaska Native Language Center Alaska Native Review Commission Alaska Native Science Commission Alaska Peninsula Alaska Range Alaska Treaty (Convention for the Cession of the Russian Possessions in North America to the United States) Albedo Alert Aleut Aleut Corporation Aleut International Association Aleutian Islands

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ENTRIES A-Z Arctic Fox Arctic Ground Squirrel Arctic Hare Arctic Haze Arctic Leaders’ Summit Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge Arctic Ocean Arctic Ocean Hydrographical Expedition, 1909–1915 Arctic Peoples’ Conference Arctic Pilot Project Arctic Research Consortium of the United States (ARCUS) Arctic Research Policy Act Arctic Slope Regional Corporation (ASRC) Arctic Small Tool Tradition Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act (1971) Arctic Woodland Culture Arkhangel’sk Arkhangel’skaya Oblast’ Arms Control Armstrong, Terence Arnasson, Ingolfur Aron from Kangeq Art and Artists (Indigenous) Arutyunov, Sergei Association Inuksiutit Katimajiit Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies (ACUNS) Association of World Reindeer Herders Atassut Athapaskan Atlantic Layer Atlasov, Vladimir Auk Aurora Axel Heiberg Island

B Back River Back, Sir George Badigin, Konstantin Sergeyevich Baer, Karl von Baffin Bay Baffin Island Baffin, William Bang, Jette Banks Island Barents Council Barents Region Barents Regional Council Barents Sea Barents, Willem Barentsburg x

Barnacle Goose Barrow Barrow, Sir John Bartlett, Robert Bathurst Island Bathurst Mandate Bear Ceremonialism Bear Island Bearded Seal Bears Beaufort Gyre Beaufort Sea Beechey, Frederick Belcher, Sir Edward Bel’kachi Culture Bellot, Joseph-Réné Beluga (White) Whale Bennett, James Gordon Jr Bering Sea Bering Strait Bering, Vitus Beringia Bernier, Joseph-Elzéar Bilibino Bilibino Nuclear Power Plant Billings, Joseph Bioconcentration Biodiversity Biodiversity: Research Programmes Biogeochemistry Birch Forests Birket-Smith, Kaj Birnirk Culture Birthplace Criteria Bladder Ceremony Blue Whale Boas, Franz Bogoraz, Vladimir Germanovich Boothia Peninsula Boreal Forest Ecology Bourque, James W. Bowhead (Greenland Right) Whale Brent Geese British Arctic Expedition, 1875–1876 Brooks Range Bruce, W.S. Brun, Eske Bunge, Alexander von Buntings and Longspurs Bureau of Indian Affairs Bureau of Land Management Buryat Republic (Buryatiya) Button, Sir Thomas

ENTRIES A-Z Bylot Island Bylot, Robert Byrd, Richard Byrranga Mountains

C Canada Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913–1918 Canadian Arctic Resources Committee (CARC) Canadian Basin Canadian Polar Commission Capacity Building Capelin Carbon Cycling Caribou Caribou Hunting Cartography Cassiope Heaths Castrén, Alexandr Mathias Charcot, Jean-Baptiste Chelyuskin, Semyon Chemnitz, Lars Cherevichny, Ivan Ivanovich Chernetsov, Valery Cherskii, Ivan Chirikov, Alexei Choris Culture Chugach Mountains Chukchi Chukchi Autonomous Okrug (Chukotka) Chukchi Plateau Chukchi Sea Chukchi-Kamchadal languages Chukotskoya Range Churches in Greenland and the North American Arctic, Establishment of Churches in Iceland and the Scandinavian Arctic, Establishment of Churches in the Russian Arctic, Establishment of Churchill Chuvan Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Map Circumpolar Universities Association Clavering, Douglas C. Climate Climate Change Climate Oscillations Climate: Environmental Initiatives Climate: Research Programs Clothing Coal Mining Coastal Erosion Cod

Cod Wars Cold Halocline Collectivization Collins, Henry B. Collinson, Richard Colonization of the Arctic Colville River Comer, George Commander Islands Commission for Scientific Research in Greenland Committee for Original Peoples’ Entitlement (COPE) Committee of the North Common (Harbor) Seal Common Property Management Concentric Spheres and Polar Voids, Theory of Coniferous forests Conservation Contaminants Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR) Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) Cook, Frederick A. Cook, James Co-operatives Coppermine River Copse Cornwall Island Cornwallis Island Council of Yukon First Nations (CYFN) Council for Yukon Indians Umbrella Final Agreement Council of Tribal Athabascan Governments Cournoyea, Nellie Crantz, David Cree Crozier, Francis Curley, Tagak Czaplicka, Marie Antoinette

D Daavi Suvva festival Dall’s Sheep Dalton Highway DANCEA (Danish Cooperation for Environment in the Arctic) Daurkin, Nikolay Davis, John Davis Strait Dawson De Long, George Washington De Long Islands Declaration on the Protection of the Arctic Environment (1991)

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ENTRIES A-Z Demography and Population Dempster Highway Denbigh Flint Culture Dene Denmark Strait Department of Northern Affairs Act (1953) Devon Island Dezhnev, Semyon Diamond Mining Dikov, Nikolay Dikson Diomede Islands Disko Island Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line Divers or Loons Dog Sledge in Inuit Culture Dog Sledge in Northern Eurasia Dogrib (Tlicho) Dolgan Dolgikh, Boris Dolphins and Porpoises Dorset Culture Drifting Stations Dry tundra Dudinka Dwarf-Shrub Heaths Dyuktai Culture

E East Siberian Sea Ebierbing, Hannah (Tookoolito) and Joe Ecology and Environment Economic Development Economic Inventory of the (Soviet) Polar North, 1926/27 Economic Policy Education Eenoolooapik Egede, Hans Egede, Ingmar Egede, Poul Eider Eirík the Red Elders Ellef Ringnes Island Ellesmere Island Ellis, Henry Ellsworth, Lincoln Empetrum Heaths Encyclopaedia Arctica Energy Balance Enets Environmental History of the Arctic Environmental Problems

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Environmentalism Erasmus, Georges Eriksson, Leif Eskers Eskimo Eskimo-Aleut Languages Eskimology Ethnohistory Evenki Evenki Autonomous Okrug Evens Exploration of the Arctic Exxon Valdez Eyak

F Fairbanks Faroe Islands Fell-Fields Fens Fiala, Anthony Fifth Thule Expedition Fin Whale Finland Finnbogadottir, Vigdis Finnmark Fish Fish Farming Fisher, Alexander Fisheries (Commercial) Fjords Floe Edge Flora of the Tundra Food chains Food Use of Wild Species Food Webs, Marine Forests: Environmental Initiatives Fossil Periglacial Phenomena Fossils: Animal Species Fossils: Plant Species Foxe, Luke Fram Strait Franklin, Lady Jane Franklin, Sir John Franz Josef Land Freshwater Ecosystems Freshwater Hydrology Freuchen, Peter Frobisher, Sir Martin Frost and Frost Phenomena Fulmar Fur Trade Fur Trade, History in Russia

ENTRIES A-Z

Volume 2 G G-50 G-60 Gas Exploration Gas Hydrates Gelifluction Processes Gender General Circulation Modeling Geological History of the Arctic Geomorphology Geopolitics of the Arctic Gessain, Robert Giddings, Louis Gilder, William Henry Glacial Deposition Glacial Erosion Glacial Flow Glacial Geomorphology Glacier Growth and Decay Glacier Ice Glacier Mass Balance Glaciers Glaciology Glavsevmorput (Chief Office for the Northern Sea Route) Global Change Effects Global Warming Globalization and the Arctic Gold Mining Government of the Northwest Territories Legislation (1966–) Graah, Wilhelm A. Grand Council of the Cree Gray Seal Gray Whale Gray, David, Jr Gray, David, Sr Great Bear Lake Great Slave Lake Great Stalin Railway Grebe Greely, Adolphus W. Greenhouse Gas Emissions Greenland Greenland Halibut Greenland Home Rule Act Greenland Hunters and Fishers Association (KNAPK) Greenland Ice Sheet Greenland Inuit Greenland Sea Greenland Seafishery and Export Association

Greenland Shark Greenland Technical Organization (GTO) Grímsey Grinnell, Henry Grise Fjord Ground Ice Groupe d’études inuit et circumpolaires Guillemot Gulf of Alaska Gulf Stream Gulls Gwich’in Gwich’in Comprehensive Land Claims Agreement Gwich’in Council International Gwich’in Renewable Resources Board Gwich’in Settlement Area Gwich’in Tribal Council

H Habitat Loss Haida Hall, Charles F. Handicrafts/Tourist Art Happy Valley Harp Seal Hatt, Gudmund Haven, Edwin J. De Hayes, Isaac I. Hazen, Lake Health and Disease in the Arctic Health: Environmental Initiatives Health: Research Programmes Hearne, Samuel Heavy Metals Hendrik, Hans (Suersaq) Hensley, Willie Henson, Matthew Herb Slopes Herbert, Wally Herring Herschel Island Herzen Institute Hibernation High Arctic High North Alliance Høegh, Erling Hoel, Adolf Holm, Gustav Holocene Holtved, Erik Hooded Seal Hopson, Eben Housing

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ENTRIES A-Z HrdliJka, Aleš Hudson Bay Hudson, Henry Hudson’s Bay Company Human Dimensions: Research Programs Human Ecology Human Population Trends Humpback Whale Hunting, Subsistence Husavik Hydrocarbon contamination

I Ice Ages Ice Caps Ice Core Record Ice Islands Ice Jams Ice Sheets Ice Shelves Icebergs Icebreakers Iceland Icelanders Igarka Igloolik ILO Convention no. 107 ILO Convention no. 169 Ilulissat Images of Indigenous Peoples Images of the Arctic Impacts of Climate Change Independence Culture Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) Indigenous Knowledge Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations and Arctic Environmental Politics Indigenous Peoples’ Secretariat Indigenous Rights Indigenous Worldviews Indigirka River Industrial Development Information Technology Inglefield, Edward A. Ingstad, Helge Innu Insect Larvae Insects Institute for Northern Minorities’ Problems Institute of Peoples of the North Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) International Arctic Science Committee (IASC)

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International Arctic Social Sciences Association (IASSA) International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling International Council for Exploration of the Sea (ICES) International Polar Years International Union for Circumpolar Health International Whaling Commission (IWC) International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) Inuit Inuit Art Foundation Inuit Ataqatigiit Inuit Broadcasting Corporation Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) Inuit Circumpolar Youth Council (ICYC) Inuit Party Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami Iñupiat Inuvialuit Inuvialuit Comanagement Bodies Inuvialuit Final Agreement Inuvialuit Settlement Region Inuvik Invertebrates, Aquatic Invertebrates, Terrestrial Iokhel’son, Vladimir Il’ich Ipiutak Culture Iqaluit Itel’men Ittoqqortoormiit (Scoresbysund) Ivanov, Sergei Vasil’evich Ivittunt Ivory Carving Iyatayet

J Jackson, Frederick James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement James Bay Hydroelectric Project James, Thomas Jan Mayen Jenness, Diamond Jesup North Pacific Expedition Johansen, Lars Emil Jökulhlaups Josie, Edith

K Kamchatka Peninsula Kamchatka River Kamchatskaya Oblast’ Kames

ENTRIES A-Z Kane, Elisha Kent Kangerlussuaq Kara Sea Karelia Kativik Environmental Quality Commission Kativik Regional Government Kayak Kenai Peninsula Kennedy, William Kenojuak Ket Kettles Khanty Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug Khanty-Mansiisk Khatanga Khatanga River Khlobystin, Leonid Killer Whale King Crab King Eider King Island King William Island Kinship Kiruna Kittiwake Kleinschmidt, Samuel Klutschak, Henry Wenzel Knuth, Eigil Kobelev, Ivan Koch, Lauge Kodiak Island Kola Peninsula Kola Science Centre Kolchak, Alexander Koldeway, Karl Kolguyev Island Kolyma Highway Kolyma Range Kolyma River Komi Komi Republic Koryak Koryak Autonomous Okrug Kotzebue, Otto von Krasheninnikov, Stepan Krasnoyarsk Kray Krauss, Michael E. Kroeber, Alfred Kropotkin, Petr Kuchiev, Yuri Sergeevich Kuptana, Rosemarie

Kuskokwim Mountains Kuujjuaq

L Labor Camps Labrador Inuit Labrador Inuit Association Labrador Inuit Land Claims Agreement in Principle Labrador Sea Laguna, Frederica de Lancaster Sound Land bridges and the Arctic Continental Shelf Land Claims Land mammals: Research Programmes Languages of the Arctic Lapland Lappin lääni Laptev Sea Laptev, Dmitriy Laptev, Khariton Large Marine Ecosystems Larsen, Helge Laxness, Haldor Leadership Leads Leigh Smith, Benjamin Lena River Levin, Maxim Lichen Lincoln Sea Literature, Greenlandic Literature, North American Literature, Russian Litke, Fedor Little Ice Age Local and Transboundary Pollution Loess Lomonosov Ridge London, Jack Longyear, John Longyearbyen Lovozero Low Level Flight Training Low, Albert Peter Lynge, Aqqaluk Lynge, Augo Lynge, Finn Lyon, George Francis

M Maak, Rikhard Karlovich Maarmorilik

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ENTRIES A-Z Mackenzie Basin Mackenzie delta Mackenzie King Island Mackenzie River Mackenzie, Sir Alexander Mackenzie Valley pipeline MacLean, Edna Agheak MacMillan, Donald Baxter Magadan Magadanskaya Oblast Magga, Ole Henrik Makivik Corporation Mallot, Byron Mammoth Mansi Marine Biology Marine Mammal Hunting Marine Mammal Protection Act Marine mammals Marine mammals: Research programmes Markham, Sir Albert H. Markham, Sir Clements R. Marshes Mary-Rousseliere, Father Guy Masks Mathiassen, Therkel McClintock, Francis Leopold McClure, Sir Robert McLaughlin, Audrey Media Medical Science in the Arctic Melville Bay Melville Island Melville Peninsula Menovshchikov, Giorgyi Mesic Tundra Messenger Feast Meteorological Stations Métis Metis National Council Microbes Microbial Mats Microclimates Microtines (Lemmings, Voles) Middendorff, Alexander Middleton, Christopher Migration (Prehistory) Mikkelsen, Ejnar Militarization of the Arctic in Russia Militarization of the Arctic in the West Minik Mining Minke Whale

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Missionary Activity Mitaarneq Molloy Deep Molluscs Moose Moraines Moses, James Kivetoruk Mosquitoes Motzfeldt, Jonathan Mount McKinley (Denali) Mowat, Farley Munk, Jens Murdoch, John Murmansk Murmansk Speech (1987) Murmanskaya Oblast’ Music (Contemporary Indigenous, Canadian Arctic) Music (Traditional Indigenous) Muskox Mylius-Erichsen, Ludwig Mythology of the Inuit Mývatn Lake

N Nalukatak Naming Nanai Nanisivik Nanortalik Nansen Basin Nansen, Fridtjof Narwhal Naryan-Mar National Parks and Protected Areas: Alaska National Parks and Protected Areas: Canada National Parks and Protected Areas: Finland National Parks and Protected Areas: Greenland National Parks and Protected Areas: Iceland National Parks and Protected Areas: Norway National Parks and Protected Areas: Russia Native Corporations Navigation, indigenous Negidal Nelson, Edward Nelson Island Nenets Nenets Autonomous Okrug New Siberian Islands Newfoundland and Labrador Nganasan Nickul, Karl Nikolaev, Mikhail E. Nivkhi

ENTRIES A-Z Nobile, Umberto Noctilucent Cloud Formation Nomadism Nome Nordenskiöld, Adolf Erik Nordic Council of Ministers Nordic Saami Institute Nordland Noril’sk Nørlund, Poul Norman Wells Norrbotten Norse and Icelandic Sagas North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO) North Atlantic Drift North Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission (NAMMCO) North East Passage, Exploration of North Magnetic Pole North Pacific North Pacific Fur Seal Convention North Pole North Pole Air Expedition, 1937 North Slope North West Company North West Passage North West Passage, Exploration of Northern Altaic Languages Northern Archaic Period Northern Athapaskan Languages Northern Bottlenose Whale Northern Climate ExChange Northern Dimension (of the European Union) Northern Dimension of Canada’s Foreign Policy Northern Forum Northern fur Seal Northern Research Forum Northern Sea Route Northern Uralic Languages Northwest Alaska Regional Corporation (NRC) Northwest Territories Norton Culture Norway Norwegian Saami parliament Norwegian Sea Novaya Zemlya Novyi Urengoi Nuclear Testing Nunataks Nunavik Nunavik Political Accord Nunavut

Nunavut Final Agreement Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. Nunavut Wildlife Management Board Nunivak Island Nutrition and Food Nuuk Ny Herrnhut

Volume 3 O Ob’ River Ocean Dumping Ocean Fronts Oceanography Oceanography: Research Programs Oddsson, David Odulok, Tekki Office of Polar Programs, National Science Foundation Oil Exploration Okalik, Paul Okhotsk, Sea of Okladnikov, Alexei Old Bering Sea Culture Old Crow Flats Old Itel’men Culture Old Kerek Culture Old Koryak Culture Olearius, Adam Olenek River Olsen, Jørgen Olsen, Moses Open Polar Sea Orochi Orok Owl Ozone Depletion

P Palana Pancake Ice Papanin, Ivan Dmitrievich Parry, Sir William Edward Pastoralism Patterned and Polygonal Ground Payer, Julius Peary, Robert E. Peatlands and Bogs Pechora Basin Pechora Delta Pechora River Peck, Edmund James Penny, William

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ENTRIES A-Z Penzhina River Periglacial environments Permafrost Permafrost Hydrology Permafrost Retreat Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) Petermann, August Petersen, Robert Petitot, Father Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky Pevek Phipps, Constantine Physical Anthropology of the Arctic Pilot Whale Pilsudski, Bronislaw Piotr Pingos Pinkfooted Goose Pitseolak, Peter Piugaattuk, Noah Place Names Plankton Plant–Animal Interactions Plant Gathering Plant Reproduction and Pollination Pleistocene Megafauna Polar Bear Polar Continental Shelf Project (PCSP) Polar Desert Polar Fronts Polar Lows Polar Steppe Polar Stratospheric Clouds Polar Vortex Political Issues in Resource Management Pollock Pollution: Environmental Initiatives Pollution: Research Programs Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) Polynyas Pomor Pond Inlet Popov, Andrei Precipitation and Moisture Pre-Dorset Culture Pribilof Islands Primary Production Primary Production, Marine Prince Charles Island Prince of Wales Island Prince Patrick Island Project Chariot Protected Areas Provideniya

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Prudhoe Bay Pryde, Duncan Ptarmigan and Grouse Puffins Pullar, Gordon

Q Qaanaaq Qaqortoq Qeqertarsuaq Qilakitsoq mummies Qillarsuaq Quaternary Paleoclimatology Quaternary Paleogeography Quaternary Period Québec Queen Elizabeth Islands Qumaq, Taamusi

R Race to the North Pole Radio Greenland (KNR) Radioactivity Rae, John Ragland Mining Project Rainey, Froelich Raptors Rasmussen, Henriette Rasmussen, Knud Raven Razorbill Red Dog Mine Redfish Reindeer Reindeer Pastoralism Relocation Repatriation Reptiles Research Stations Resolute Base Resolute Bay Reykjavík Ribbon Seal Richardson, Sir John Ringed Seal Rink, Hinrich Johannes River and Lake Ice Rock glaciers Rosing, Hans Pavia Ross, Sir James Ross, Sir John Roussell, Aage

ENTRIES A-Z Rovaniemi Rowley, Graham Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Royal Geographical Society Royal Greenland Royal Greenland Trade Company (KGH) Rudenko, Sergei Russia Russian “Old Settlers” Russian American Company Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON) Russian Civil War Russian Federal Law Guaranteeing the Rights of Native Sparse Peoples of the Russian Federation Russian Federal Law on Clan Communes (Obshchinas) Russian Federal Law on Territories of Traditional Nature Use Russian Geographical Society Russian Polar Expedition, 1900–1901 Rytkheu, Yuri

S Saami Saami Council Saami Parliaments Sabine, Edward Sacheuse, John Sachs Harbour Sahtu Land Claims Agreement Sahtu Renewable Resouces Board Sahtu Settlement Area Sakha Republic (Yakutia) Sakhalin Island Salekhard Salinity Anomalies Salmon Sangi, Vladimir Saqqaq Culture Satellite Remote Sensing Scandinavian Languages Schneider, Lucien Schultz, Ed Schwatka, Frederick Scoresby, William Scrimshaw Sculpin Sea Ice Sea Otter Seabirds Seal Skin Directive Second Kamchatka Expedition Secondary Production

Sedge Meadows Sedna: The Sea Goddess Sedov, Georgiy Yakovlevich Sei Whale Sel’kup Self-Determination Self-Government Service, Robert Settlers (Labrador) Severnaya Dvina Severnaya Zemlya Seward Peninsula Shamanism Sharing Sheep Sheep Farming Shirokogorov, Sergey Mikhailovich Shmidt, Otto Yul’evich Shrimp Shrub Tundra Shternberg, Lev Yakovlevich Siberdik Culture Siberian (Chukotkan) Yupik Sibiryakov, Alexander Sieroszewski, Waclaw Leopoldovich Sikussak Simon, Mary Simpson, Thomas Sirius Patrol Sisimiut Siumut Skraeling Island Skuas and Jaegers Snow Snow House Snow Patches Snowshoe Hare Soil Respiration Soils Solovetski Islands Somerset Island Somov, Mikhail Mikhailovich Song Duel Soper, J. Dewey Southampton Island Space Weather Speranskii, Mikhail Sperm Whale Sporting and Cultural Events in Canada Spotted Seal St Lawrence Island Stefansson Island Stefansson, Vilhjalmur

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ENTRIES A-Z Steller, Georg Steller’s Sea Lion Stratus Cloud Sturluson, Snorri Subarctic Sublimation Submarines in Arctic Exploration Subpolar Gyres Substorms Sumnagin Culture Sustainable Development Sustainable Development and Human Dimensions: Environmental Initiatives Svalbard Svalbard Treaty Sverdrup, Otto Swaine, Charles Swan Sweden Syalakh Culture Syktyvkar

Transpolar Drift Transport Trans-Siberian Railway Trapping Treeline Treeline Dynamics Treshnikov, Aleksey Feodorovich Troms Tromsø Trophic Levels Tsimshian Tuktoyaktuk Tundra Tungus Tupilak Turner, Lucien M. Tussock Tundra Tutchone Tyrrell, Joseph Burr Tyumen Oblast Tyumen’

T

U

Taiga Tanner Crab Taqramiut Nipingat Tarya Culture Tasiilaq Tatshenshini/Alsek Tattooing Taymyr (Dolgan-Nenets) Autonomous Okrug Taymyr Lake Taymyr Peninsula Taz River Tein, Tasyan Telecommunications Tern Thalbitzer, William Thermohaline Circulation Thermokarst Thule Air Base Thule Culture Tides Tiksi Tlingit Tofalars Tokarev Culture Toll, Baron Edward von Torrell, Otto Tourism Trade Trans-Alaska Pipeline Trans-Arctic Air Route

Udege Ulchi Ultraviolet-B radiation Umiak UN Convention on the Law of the Sea United States of America Universities and Higher Education Establishments, North America and Greenland Universities and Higher Education Establishments, Russia University of the Arctic Upernavik Upper Atmosphere Physics and Chemistry Ural Mountains Urban Climates Urbanization Ushakov, Georgiy Uummannaq

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V Vaigach Van de Velde, Franz VanStone, James Vasilevich, Glafira Makar’evna Vdovin, Innokentiy Stepanovich Vegetation Distribution Verkhoyansk Range Vestmannaeyjar (Westman Islands) Vibe, Christian Victor, Paul-Emile

ENTRIES A-Z Victoria Island Vikings Vilkitskii Strait Vil’kitskii, Boris Andreevich Vinland Vize, Vladimir Vlamingh, Willem de Volcanoes and volcanic activity Vorkuta Voronin, Vladimir Ivanovich

W Waders Walrus Warfare, Historical Waste Management Watkins, Gino Watt, Charlie Watt-Cloutier, Sheila Weasel Weather Wegener, Alfred Wellman, Walter West Nordic Council Western Telegraph Expedition Wet Tundra Weymouth, George Weyprecht, Karl Whaling, Historical Whaling, Subsistence White Sea White-Fronted Goose Whitehorse

Wilderness Wildlife Management: Environmental Initiatives Windchill Wolf Wolverine Woodlands World Council of Whalers World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) International Arctic Programme Wrangel Island Wrangel Paleo-Eskimo Culture Wrangell, Baron Ferdinand Petrovich von

Y Yakuts Yakutsk Yamal Peninsula Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug Yana River Yasak Yellowknife Yenisey River Ymyakhtakh Culture Yukagir Yukon Native Language Centre Yukon River Yukon Territory Yupiit Yupik Eskimo Society of Chukotka

Z Zagoskin, Lavrentii Zagoskin

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Thematic List of Entries Acts and Treaties

Sahtu Land Claims Agreement Svalbard Treaty UN Convention on the Law of the Sea

Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) Alaska Treaty (Convention for the Cession of the Russian Possessions in North America to the United States) Arctic Research Policy Act Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act (1971) Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR) Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) Council for Yukon Indians Umbrella Final Agreement Declaration on the Protection of the Arctic Environment (1991) Department of Northern Affairs Act (1953) Government of the Northwest Territories Legislation (1966– ) Greenland Home Rule Act Gwich’in Comprehensive Land Claims Agreement ILO Convention No. 107 ILO Convention No. 169 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling Inuvialuit Final Agreement James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement Labrador Inuit Land Claims Agreement in Principle Marine Mammal Protection Act North Pacific Fur Seal Convention Nunavik Political Accord Nunavut Final Agreement Russian Federal Law Guaranteeing the Rights of Native Sparse Peoples of the Russian Federation Russian Federal Law on Clan Communes (Obshchinas) Russian Federal Law on Territories of Traditional Nature Use

Birds Auk Barnacle Goose Brent Geese Buntings and Longspurs Divers or Loons Eider Fulmar Grebe Guillemot Gulls King Eider Kittiwake Owl Pinkfooted Goose Ptarmigan and Grouse Puffins Raptors Raven Razorbill Seabirds Skuas and Jaegers Swan Tern Waders White-Fronted Goose

Climate and Weather Albedo Arctic Haze Climate Climate Change

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THEMATIC LIST OF ENTRIES Climate Oscillations Climate: Environmental Initiatives Climate: Research Programs Energy Balance General Circulation Modeling Global Warming Greenhouse Gas Emissions Impacts of Climate Change Meteorological Stations Microclimates Noctilucent Cloud Formation Ozone Depletion Polar Fronts Polar Lows Polar Stratospheric Clouds Polar Vortex Precipitation and Moisture Quaternary Paleoclimatology Snow Stratus Cloud Sublimation Substorms Upper Atmosphere Physics and Chemistry Urban Climates Weather Windchill

Countries and Political Subdivisions Alaska Arkhangel’skaya Oblast’ Barents Region Buryat Republic (Buryatiya) Canada Chukchi Autonomous Okrug (Chukotka) Evenki Autonomous Okrug Faroe Islands Finland Finnmark Greenland Gwich’in Settlement Area Iceland Inuvialuit Settlement Region Kamchatskaya Oblast’ Karelia Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug Komi Republic Koryak Autonomous Okrug Krasnoyarsk Kray Lapland Lappin lääni Magadanskaya Oblast’ Murmanskaya Oblast’ Nenets Autonomous Okrug

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Newfoundland and Labrador Nordland Norrbotten Northwest Territories Norway Nunavik Nunavut Québec Russia Sahtu Settlement Area Sakha Republic (Yakutia) Svalbard Sweden Taymyr (Dolgan-Nenets) Autonomous Okrug Troms Tyumen Oblast’ United States of America Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug Yukon Territory

Ecology and Environment Adaptation Animal-Rights Movements and Renewable Resources Bioconcentration Biodiversity Biodiversity: Research Programs Biogeochemistry Boreal Forest Ecology Capacity Building Carbon Cycling Climate Change Common Property Management Conservation Contaminants Ecology and Environment Environmental History of the Arctic Environmental Problems Environmentalism Exxon Valdez Food Chains Food Use of Wild Species Food Webs, Marine Freshwater Ecosystems Global Change Effects Habitat Loss Heavy Metals Hibernation Human Ecology Hydrocarbon Contamination Large Marine Ecosystems Local and Transboundary Pollution Marine Biology Microbes

THEMATIC LIST OF ENTRIES Microbial Mats Ocean Dumping Ozone Depletion Peatlands and Bogs Permafrost Retreat Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) Plant-Animal Interactions Plant Reproduction and Pollination Pollution: Environmental Initiatives Pollution: Research Programs Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) Primary Production Primary Production, Marine Protected Areas Radioactivity Secondary Production Soil Respiration Soils Treeline Treeline Dynamics Trophic Levels Ultraviolet-B Radiation Vegetation Distribution Waste Management

Economics Air Routes Alaska Highway Arctic Pilot Project Bilibino Nuclear Power Plant Coal Mining Co-operatives Dalton Highway Dempster Highway Diamond Mining Economic Development Economic Policy Exxon Valdez Fish Farming Fisheries (Commercial) Fur Trade Gas Exploration Gas Hydrates Globalization and the Arctic Gold Mining Handicrafts/Tourist Art Icebreakers Industrial Development James Bay Hydroelectric Project Kolyma Highway Maarmorilik Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Mining

Nanisivik Norman Wells North West Passage Northern Sea Route Oil Exploration Prudhoe Bay Ragland Mining Project Red Dog Mine Scrimshaw Sheep Farming Sustainable Development Telecommunications Tourism Trade Trans-Alaska Pipeline Trans-Arctic Air Route Transport Trans-Siberian Railway Trapping

Explorers and Exploration Amedeo, Luigi, Duke of Abruzzi Amundsen, Roald Andrée, Salomon August Anzhu, Petr Fedorovich Arctic Ocean Hydrographical Expedition, 1909–1915 Arnasson, Ingolfur Atlasov, Vladimir Back, Sir George Badigin, Konstantin Sergeyevich Baer, Karl von Baffin, William Barents, Willem Barrow, Sir John Bartlett, Robert Beechey, Frederick Belcher, Sir Edward Bellot, Joseph-Réné Bennett, James Gordon Jr. Bering, Vitus Bernier, Joseph-Elzear Billings, Joseph British Arctic Expedition, 1875–1876 Bunge, Alexander von Button, Sir Thomas Bylot, Robert Byrd, Richard Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913–1918 Charcot, Jean-Baptiste Chelyuskin, Semyon Cherevichny, Ivan Ivanovich Cherskii, Ivan Chirikov, Alexei

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THEMATIC LIST OF ENTRIES Clavering, Douglas C. Collinson, Richard Comer, George Cook, Frederick A. Cook, James Crozier, Francis Daurkin, Nikolay Davis, John De Long, George Washington Dezhnev, Semyon Ebierbing, Hannah (Tookoolito) and Joe Eenoolooapik Ellis, Henry Ellsworth, Lincoln Eriksson, Leif Exploration of the Arctic Fiala, Anthony Fifth Thule Expedition Fisher, Alexander Foxe, Luke Franklin, Lady Jane Franklin, Sir John Freuchen, Peter Frobisher, Sir Martin Gilder, William Henry Greely, Adolphus W. Grinnell, Henry Hall, Charles F. Haven, Edwin J. De Hayes, Isaac I. Hearne, Samuel Hendrik, Hans (Suersaq) Henson, Matthew Herbert, Wally Hudson, Henry Inglefield, Edward A. Jackson, Frederick James, Thomas Jesup North Pacific Expedition Kane, Elisha Kent Kennedy, William Kobelev, Ivan Koch, Lauge Kolchak, Alexander Koldeway, Karl Kotzebue, Otto von Kropotkin, Petr Kuchiev, Yuri Sergeevich Laptev, Dmitriy Laptev, Khariton Leigh Smith, Benjamin Litke, Fedor Lyon, George Francis

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Mackenzie, Sir Alexander MacMillan, Donald Baxter Markham, Sir Albert H. Markham, Sir Clements R. McClintock, Francis Leopold McClure, Sir Robert Middendorff, Alexander Middleton, Christopher Mikkelsen, Ejnar Munk, Jens Mylius-Erichsen, Ludwig Nansen, Fridtjof Nobile, Umberto Nordenskiöld, Adolf Erik North East Passage, Exploration of North Pole Air Expedition, 1937 North West Passage, Exploration of Papanin, Ivan Dmitrievich Parry, Sir William Edward Payer, Julius Peary, Robert E. Penny, William Petermann, August Phipps, Constantine Qillarsuaq Race to the North Pole Rae, John Rasmussen, Knud Richardson, Sir John Ross, Sir James Ross, Sir John Royal Geographical Society Russian Polar Expedition, 1900–1901 Sabine, Edward Sacheuse, John Schwatka, Frederick Scoresby, William Second Kamchatka Expedition Sedov, Georgiy Yakovlevich Shmidt, Otto Yul’evich Sibiryakov, Alexander Simpson, Thomas Stefansson, Vilhjalmur Steller, Georg Submarines in Arctic Exploration Sverdrup, Otto Swaine, Charles Toll, Baron Edward von Treshnikov, Aleksey Feodorovich Tyrrell, Joseph Burr Ushakov, Georgiy Vibe, Christian Victor, Paul-Emile

THEMATIC LIST OF ENTRIES Vil’kitskii, Boris Andreevich Vize, Vladimir Vlamingh, Willem de Voronin, Vladimir Ivanovich Watkins, Gino Wegener, Alfred Wellman, Walter Western Telegraph Expedition Weymouth, George Weyprecht, Karl Wrangell, Baron Ferdinand Petrovich von Zagoskin, Lavrentii Zagoskin

Fish Arctic Char Capelin Cod Fish Greenland Halibut Greenland Shark Herring King Crab Molluscs Pollock Redfish Salmon Sculpin Shrimp Tanner Crab

History and Archaeology See also Explorers and Exploration Aleutian Tradition American Paleo-Arctic Tradition Archaeology of the Arctic: Alaska and Beringia Archaeology of the Arctic: Canada and Greenland Archaeology of the Arctic: Scandinavian Settlement of the North Atlantic Archbishop Innocent (Ivan Veniaminov) Arctic Small Tool Tradition Arctic Woodland Culture Armstrong, Terence Arutyunov, Sergei Bel’kachi Culture Birnirk Culture Chernetsov, Valery Choris Culture Cod Wars Collectivization Collins, Henry B. Colonization of the Arctic Committee of the North Denbigh Flint Culture

Dikov, Nikolay Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line Dog sledge in Inuit Culture Dog sledge in Northern Eurasia Dorset Culture Drifting Stations Dyuktai Culture Ebierbing, Hannah (Tookoolito) and Joe Eenoolooapik Eirík the Red Eriksson, Leif Encyclopaedia Arctica Ethnohistory Fur Trade, History in Russia Giddings, Louis Glavsevmorput (Chief Office for the Northern Sea Route) Graah, Wilhelm A. Gray, David, Jr. Gray, David, Sr. Great Stalin Railway Hatt, Gudmund Holtved, Erik HrdliJka, Aleš Hudson’s Bay Company Independence Culture Ipiutak Culture Iyatayet Khlobystin, Leonid Knuth, Eigil Labor Camps Laguna, Frederica de Larsen, Helge Longyear, John Mary-Rousseliere, Father Guy Mathiassen, Therkel Migration (Prehistory) Minik Nørlund, Poul Norse and Icelandic Sagas North West Company Northern Archaic period Norton Culture Ny Herrnhut Okladnikov, Alexei Old Bering Sea Culture Old Crow Flats Old Itel’men Culture Old Kerek Culture Old Koryak Culture Petitot, Father Pre-Dorset Culture Qilakitsoq mummies

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THEMATIC LIST OF ENTRIES Rainey, Froelich Roussell, Aage Rowley, Graham Rudenko, Sergei Russian American Company Russian Civil War Saqqaq Culture Scrimshaw Siberdik Culture Sumnagin Culture Syalakh Culture Tarya Culture Tein, Tasyan Thalbitzer, William Thule Culture Tokarev Culture VanStone, James Vdovin, Innokentiy Stepanovich Vikings Vinland Warfare, Historical Whaling, Historical Wrangel Paleo-Eskimo Culture Yasak Ymyakhtakh Culture

Islands Aleutian Islands Amund Ringnes Island Axel Heiberg Island Baffin Island Banks Island Bathurst Island Bear Island Bylot Island Commander Islands Cornwall Island Cornwallis Island De Long Islands Devon Island Diomede Islands Disko Island Ellef Ringnes Island Ellesmere Island Franz Josef Land Grímsey Herschel Island Jan Mayen King Island King William Island Kodiak Island Kolguyev Island Mackenzie King Island

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Melville Island Nelson Island New Siberian Islands Novaya Zemlya Nunivak Island Pribilof Islands Prince Charles Island Prince of Wales Island Prince Patrick Island Queen Elizabeth Islands Sakhalin Island Severnaya Zemlya Skraeling Island Solovetski Islands Somerset Island Southampton Island St Lawrence Island Stefansson Island Vaigach Vestmannaeyjar (Westman Islands) Victoria Island Wrangel Island

Languages and Linguistics Alphabets and Writing, North America and Greenland Alphabets and Writing, Russia Alphabets and Writing, Scandinavia and Iceland Castrén, Alexandr Mathias Chukchi-Kamchadal Languages Eskimo-Aleut Languages Krauss, Michael E. Languages of the Arctic Literature, Greenlandic Literature, North American Literature, Russian Menovshchikov, Giorgyi Norse and Icelandic Sagas Northern Altaic languages Northern Athapaskan Languages Northern Uralic Languages Petersen, Robert Scandinavian Languages Schneider, Lucien Shternberg, Lev Yakovlevich Vasilevich, Glafira Makar’evna

Mammals and Other Land Animals Adaptation Amphibians Arctic Fox Arctic Ground Squirrel Arctic Hare Bears

THEMATIC LIST OF ENTRIES Caribou Caribou Hunting Dall’s Sheep Hibernation Hunting, Subsistence Insect Larvae Insects Invertebrates, Aquatic Invertebrates, Terrestrial Land mammals: Research Programs Mammoth Microbes Microtines (Lemmings, Voles) Moose Mosquitoes Muskox Plankton Pleistocene megafauna Reindeer Reptiles Sheep Snowshoe Hare Weasel Wolf Wolverine

Marine Mammals Bearded Seal Beluga (White) Whale Blue Whale Bowhead (Greenland Right) Whale Common (Harbor) Seal Dolphins and Porpoises Fin Whale Gray Whale Grey Seal Harp Seal Hooded Seal Humpback Whale Killer Whale Marine Mammal Hunting Marine Mammals Marine Mammals: Research Programs Minke Whale Narwhal Northern Bottlenose Whale Northern Fur Seal Pilot Whale Polar Bear Ribbon Seal Ringed Seal Sea Otter Sei Whale

Sperm Whale Spotted Seal Steller’s Sea Lion Walrus Whaling, Subsistence

National Parks and Protected Areas National Parks and Protected Areas: Alaska National Parks and Protected Areas: Canada National Parks and Protected Areas: Finland National Parks and Protected Areas: Greenland National Parks and Protected Areas: Iceland National Parks and Protected Areas: Norway National Parks and Protected Areas: Russia Protected Areas

Oceanography Atlantic Layer Beaufort Gyre Cold Halocline Floe Edge Gulf Stream Ice Islands Ice Shelves Icebergs Leads North Atlantic Drift Ocean Fronts Oceanography Oceanography: Research Programs Open Polar Sea Pancake Ice Polynyas Salinity Anomalies Sea Ice Sikussak Subpolar Gyres Thermohaline Circulation Tides Transpolar Drift

Oceans, Seas and Bathymetry Alpha Ridge Amundsen Basin Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge Arctic Ocean Baffin Bay Barents Sea Beaufort Sea Bering Sea Bering Strait Canadian Basin Chukchi Plateau

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THEMATIC LIST OF ENTRIES Chukchi Sea Davis Strait Denmark Strait East Siberian Sea Fram Strait Greenland Sea Gulf of Alaska Hudson Bay Kara Sea Labrador Sea Lancaster Sound Laptev Sea Lincoln Sea Lomonosov Ridge Melville Bay Molloy Deep Nansen Basin North Pacific Norwegian Sea Okhotsk, Sea of Vilkitskii Strait White Sea

Organizations Alaska Beluga Whale Committee Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission (AEWC) Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) Alaska Native Language Center Alaska Native Review Commission Alaska Native Science Commission Aleut Corporation Aleut International Association Aleutian/Pribilof Islands Association Arctic Athabaskan Council Arctic Council Arctic Leaders’ Summit Arctic Peoples’ Conference Arctic Research Consortium of the United States (ARCUS) Arctic Slope Regional Corporation (ASRC) Association Inuksiutit Katimajiit Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies (ACUNS) Association of World Reindeer Herders Barents Council Barents Regional Council Bureau of Indian Affairs Bureau of Land Management Canadian Arctic Resources Committee (CARC) Canadian Polar Commission Circumpolar Universities Association Commission for Scientific Research in Greenland Committee for Original Peoples’ Entitlement (COPE)

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Council for Yukon First Nations (CYFN ) Council of Tribal Athabascan Governments DANCEA (Danish Cooperation for Environment in the Arctic) Grand Council of the Cree Greenland Hunters and Fishers Association (KNAPK) Greenland Seafishery and Export Association Greenland Technical Organization (GTO) Groupe d’études inuit et circumpolaires Gwich’in Council International Gwich’in Renewable Resources Board Gwich’in Tribal Council Herzen Institute High North Alliance Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations and Arctic Environmental Politics Indigenous Peoples’ Secretariat Institute for Northern Minorities’ Problems Institute of Peoples of the North Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) International Arctic Social Sciences Association (IASSA) International Council for Exploration of the Sea (ICES) International Union for Circumpolar Health International Whaling Commission (IWC) International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) Inuit Art Foundation Inuit Broadcasting Corporation Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) Inuit Circumpolar Youth Council (ICYC) Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami Inuvialuit Comanagement Bodies Kativik Environmental Quality Commission Kativik Regional Government Kola Science Centre Labrador Inuit Association Makivik Corporation Métis National Council Native Corporations Nordic Council of Ministers Nordic Saami Institute North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO) North Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission (NAMMCO) Northern Climate ExChange Northern Dimension (of the European Union) Northern Forum Northern Research Forum Northwest Alaska Regional Corporation (NANA) Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.

THEMATIC LIST OF ENTRIES Nunavut Wildlife Management Board Office of Polar Programs, National Science Foundation Polar Continental Shelf Project (PCSP) Radio Greenland (KNR) Research Stations Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Royal Greenland Royal Greenland Trade Company (KGH) Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON) Russian Geographical Society Saami Council Sahtu Renewable Resouces Board Sirius Patrol Taqramiut Nipingat Universities and Higher Education Establishments, North America and Greenland Universities and Higher Education Establishments, Russia University of the Arctic West Nordic Council World Council of Whalers World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) International Arctic Programme Yukon Native Language Centre Yupik Eskimo Society of Chukotka

Peoples Ainu Aleut Alutiit Athapaskan Chukchi Chuvan Cree Dene Dogrib (Tlicho) Dolgan Enets Eskimo Evenki Evens Eyak Greenland Inuit Gwich’in Haida Icelanders Innu Inuit Iñupiat Inuvialuit Itel’men Ket

Khanty Komi Koryak Labrador Inuit Mansi Métis Nanai Negidal Nenets Nganasan Nivkhi Orochi Orok Pomor Russian “Old Settlers” Saami Sel’kup Settlers (Labrador) Siberian (Chukotkan) Yupik Tlingit Tofalars Tsimshian Tungus Tutchone Udege Ul’chi Yakuts Yukagir Yupiit

Physical Geography Arctic Circle Arctic: Definitions and Boundaries Aurora Biogeochemistry Coastal Erosion Concentric Spheres and Polar Voids, Theory of Eskers Fjords Fossil Periglacial Phenomena Fossils: Animal Species Fossils: Plant Species Freshwater Hydrology Frost and Frost Phenomena Gelifluction Processes Geological History of the Arctic Geomorphology Glacial Deposition Glacial Erosion Glacial Flow Glacial Geomorphology Glacier Growth and Decay Glacier Ice

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THEMATIC LIST OF ENTRIES Glacier Mass Balance Glaciers Glaciology Ground Ice High Arctic Holocene Ice Ages Ice Caps Ice Core Record Ice Jams Ice Sheets Jökulhlaups Kames Kettles Little Ice Age Loess Moraines North Magnetic Pole North Pole Nunataks Patterned and Polygonal Ground Periglacial Environments Permafrost Permafrost Hydrology Pingos Quaternary Paleogeography Quaternary Period Radioactivity River and Lake Ice Rock Glaciers Satellite Remote Sensing Space Weather Subarctic Thermokarst Ultraviolet-B Radiation Volcanoes and Volcanic Activity

Plants and Vegetation Birch Forests Cassiope Heaths Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Map Coniferous Forests Copse Dry Tundra Dwarf-Shrub Heaths Empetrum Heaths Fell-Fields Fens Flora of the Tundra Food use of Wild Species Forests: Environmental Initiatives Herb Slopes

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High Arctic Lichen Marshes Mesic Tundra Microbial Mats Plant Gathering Plant Reproduction and Pollination Polar Desert Polar Steppe Primary Production Primary Production, Marine Sedge Meadows Shrub Tundra Snow Patches Soils Subarctic Taiga Treeline Treeline Dynamics Tundra Tussock Tundra Vegetation Distribution Wet tundra Woodlands

Political and Cultural Figures Adamson, Shirley Ainana, Lyudmila Alootook Ipellie Amagoalik, John Archbishop Innocent (Ivan Veniaminov) Aron from Kangeq Bang, Jette Bourque, James W. Brun, Eske Chemnitz, Lars Cournoyea, Nellie Crantz, David Curley, Tagak Egede, Hans Egede, Ingmar Egede, Poul Erasmus, Georges Finnbogadottir, Vigdis Hensley, Willie Høegh, Erling Hopson, Eben Iokhel’son, Vladimir Il’ich Johansen, Lars Emil Josie, Edith Kenojuak Kleinschmidt, Samuel

THEMATIC LIST OF ENTRIES Klutschak, Henry Wenzel Kuptana, Rosemarie Laxness, Haldor London, Jack Lynge, Aqqaluk Lynge, Augo Lynge, Finn MacLean, Edna Agheak Magga, Ole Henrik Mallot, Byron McLaughlin, Audrey Moses, James Kivetoruk Motzfeldt, Jonathan Mowat, Farley Nickul, Karl Nikolaev, Mikhail E. Oddsson, David Odulok, Tekki Okalik, Paul Olearius, Adam Olsen, Jørgen Olsen, Moses Peck, Edmund James Pitseolak, Peter Piugaattuk, Noah Pryde, Duncan Pullar, Gordon Qumaq, Taamusi Rasmussen, Henriette Rink, Hinrich Johannes Rosing, Hans Pavia Rytkheu, Yuri Sangi, Vladimir Schultz, Ed Service, Robert Simon, Mary Somov, Mikhail Mikhailovich Speranskii, Mikhail Sturluson, Snorri Van de Velde, Franz Watt, Charlie Watt-Cloutier, Sheila

Politics Alta/Kautokeino Demonstrations Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy Arms Control Atassut Bathurst Mandate G-50 G-60 Geopolitics of the Arctic

Indigenous Rights Inuit Ataqatigiit Inuit Party Land Claims Low Level Flight Training Militarization of the Arctic in Russia Militarization of the Arctic in the West Murmansk Speech (1987) Northern Dimension of Canada’s Foreign Policy Norwegian Saami Parliament Nuclear Testing Political Issues in Resource Management Project Chariot Resolute Base Saami Parliaments Seal Skin Directive Self-Determination Self-Government Siumut Thule Air Base

Regions and Mountains Alaska Peninsula Alaska Range Aleutian Range Beringia Boothia Peninsula Brooks Range Byrranga Mountains Chugach Mountains Chukotskoya Range Greenland Ice Sheet High Arctic Kamchatka Peninsula Kenai Peninsula Kola Peninsula Kolyma Range Kuskokwim Mountains Land Bridges and the Arctic Continental Shelf Mackenzie Basin Mackenzie Delta Melville Peninsula Mount McKinley (Denali) North Slope Pechora Basin Pechora Delta Seward Peninsula Subarctic Taymyr Peninsula Ural Mountains Verkhoyansk Range Yamal Peninsula

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THEMATIC LIST OF ENTRIES

Research Programs and Environmental Initiatives Biodiversity: Research Programs Climate: Environmental Initiatives Climate: Research Programs Forests: Environmental Initiatives Health: Environmental Initiatives Health: Research Programs Human Dimensions: Research Programs International Polar Years Land Mammals: Research Programs Marine Mammals: Research Programs Oceanography: Research Programs Pollution: Environmental Initiatives Pollution: Research Programs Sustainable Development and Human Dimensions: Environmental Initiatives Wildlife Management: Environmental Initiatives

Rivers and Lakes Anadyr River Back River Colville River Coppermine River Great Bear Lake Great Slave Lake Hazen, Lake Indigirka River Kamchatka River Khatanga River Kolyma River Lena River Mackenzie River Mývatn Lake Ob’ River Olenek River Pechora River Penzhina River Severnaya Dvina Tatshenshini/Alsek Taymyr Lake Taz River Yana River Yenisey River Yukon River

Scientists, Archaeologists, and Ethnologists Arutyunov, Sergei Baer, Karl von Billings, Joseph Birket-Smith, Kaj Boas, Franz

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Bogoraz, Vladimir Germanovich Bruce, W.S. Bunge, Alexander von Castren, Alexandr Mathias Chernetsov, Valery Cherskii, Ivan Collins, Henry B. Comer, George Czaplicka, Marie Antoinette Dikov, Nikolay Dolgikh, Boris Gessain, Robert Giddings, Louis Graah, Wilhelm A. Hatt, Gudmund Hoel, Adolf Holm, Gustav Holtved, Erik HrdliJ ka, Aleš Ivanov, Sergei Vasil’evich Jenness, Diamond Kane, Elisha Kent Khlobystin, Leonid Knuth, Eigil Koch, Lauge Kroeber, Alfred Kropotkin, Petr Laguna, Frederica de Larsen, Helge Leigh Smith, Benjamin Levin, Maxim Litke, Fedor Longyear, John Low, Albert Peter Maak, Rikhard Karlovich MacMillan, Donald Baxter Mary-Rousseliere, Father Guy Mathiassen, Therkel Middendorff, Alexander Murdoch, John Nelson, Edward Nørlund, Poul Okladnikov, Alexei Papanin, Ivan Dmitrievich Petermann, August Petersen, Robert Pilsudski, Bronislaw Piotr Popov, Andrei Rainey, Froelich Rasmussen, Knud Roussell, Aage Rowley, Graham Rudenko, Sergei

THEMATIC LIST OF ENTRIES Sabine, Edward Scoresby, William Shirokogorov, Sergey Mikhailovich Shmidt, Otto Yul’evich Shternberg, Lev Yakovlevich Sieroszewski, Waclaw Leopoldovich Soper, J. Dewey Stefansson, Vilhjalmur Steller, Georg Tein, Tasyan Thalbitzer, William Toll, Baron Edward von Torrell, Otto Treshnikov, Aleksey Feodorovich Tyrrell, Joseph Burr Turner, Lucien M. VanStone, James Vasilevich, Glafira Makar’evna Vdovin, Innokentiy Stepanovich Vibe, Christian Victor, Paul-Emile Vize, Vladimir Wegener, Alfred Weyprecht, Karl

Sociology and Anthropology Aasivik Aboriginal Identities Adoption Animals in the worldviews of Indigenous Peoples Art and Artists (Indigenous) Bear Ceremonialism Birket-Smith, Kaj Birthplace Criteria Bladder Ceremony Boas, Franz Bogoraz, Vladimir Germanovich Caribou Hunting Cartography Castren, Alexandr Mathias Churches in Greenland and the North American Arctic, establishment of Churches in Iceland and the Scandinavian Arctic, establishment of Churches in the Russian Arctic, Establishment of Clothing Czaplicka, Marie Antoinette Daavi Suvva Festival Demography and Population Dolgikh, Boris Economic Inventory of the (Soviet) Polar North, 1926/27 Education Elders

Eskimology Gender Gessain, Robert Health and disease in the Arctic Holm, Gustav Housing Human Population Trends Hunting, Subsistence Images of Indigenous Peoples Images of the Arctic Indigenous Knowledge Indigenous Worldviews Information Technology Ingstad, Helge Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit Ivanov, Sergei Vasil’evich Ivory Carving Jenness, Diamond Kayak Kinship Krasheninnikov, Stepan Kroeber, Alfred Leadership Levin, Maxim Low, Albert Peter Maak, Rikhard Karlovich Marine Mammal Hunting Masks Media Medical Science in the Arctic Messenger Feast Migration (Prehistory) Missionary Activity Mitaarneq Murdoch, John Music (Contemporary Indigenous, Canadian Arctic) Music (Traditional Indigenous) Mythology of the Inuit Nalukatak Naming Navigation, Indigenous Nelson, Edward Nomadism Nutrition and Food Pastoralism Petersen, Robert Physical Anthropology of the Arctic Pilsudski, Bronislaw Piotr Place Names Plant Gathering Popov, Andrei Reindeer Pastoralism Relocation

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THEMATIC LIST OF ENTRIES Repatriation Sedna: The Sea Goddess Shamanism Sharing Shirokogorov, Sergey Mikhailovich Shternberg, Lev Yakovlevich Sieroszewski, Waclaw Leopoldovich Snow House Song Duel Sporting and Cultural Events in Canada Tattooing Tupilak Turner, Lucien M. Umiak Urbanization Vasilevich, Glafira Makar’evna Whaling, Subsistence Wilderness

Towns and Settlements Aasiaat Akureyri Alert Anadyr Anchorage Arkhangel’sk Barentsburg Barrow Bilibino Churchill Dawson Dikson Dudinka Fairbanks Grise Fiord Happy Valley Husavik Igarka Igloolik Ilulissat Inuvik Iqaluit Ittoqqortoormiit (Scoresbysund) Ivittut

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Kangerlussuaq Khanty-Mansiisk Khatanga Kiruna Kuujjuaq Longyearbyen Lovozero Maarmorilik Magadan Murmansk Nanisivik Nanortalik Naryan-Mar Nome Noril’sk Norman Wells Novyi Urengoi Nuuk Palana Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky Pevek Pond Inlet Provideniya Qaanaaq Qaqortoq Qeqertarsuaq Resolute Bay Reykjavík Rovaniemi Sachs Harbour Salekhard Sisimiut Syktyvkar Tasiilaq Tiksi Tromsø Tuktoyaktuk Tyumen’ Upernavik Uummannaq Vorkuta Whitehorse Yakutsk Yellowknife

Foreword The circumpolar Arctic is many things to many people. Artists seek to portray and convey its stark beauty. Multi-national corporations eye the region’s oil, gas, and minerals and view the Arctic as an industrial frontier in a world hungry for energy and natural resources. Environmental groups in western Europe and North America perceive the Arctic as “wilderness” to be preserved in parks. During the Cold War, the Arctic was a military zone in which East and West stationed huge arsenals. The Arctic is today characterized as a “barometer” of global environmental health. For example, speaking about climate change, the UK environment minister in 2002 noted, “what happens in the world happens first in the Arctic.” To Inuit and other indigenous peoples, the Arctic is, first and foremost, “home,” as it has been for millennia. Mercator map projections give a misleading impression—the Arctic is not “empty.” The landscape is known and named, as are the animals that live there. I grew up in Nunavik (northern Québec), and lived traditionally, traveling by dog team, for the first ten years of my life. Our elders and hunters passed down to us their environmental knowledge and understanding. They still do. The Arctic is no longer isolated from the rest of the world, and profound social, economic, and cultural change has taken place and continues to increase. But the “wisdom of the elders” and the hunting-based skills they teach remain important. Courage, tenacity, patience, focus—the skills and values of the hunter—are precisely the characteristics needed to navigate the modern world.

In political terms the Arctic is a very exciting arena. New ways, means, and methods are addressing problems, both old and new. Although much remains to be achieved, indigenous peoples are acquiring land and self-government rights—key requirements for sustainable development in this fragile and vulnerable region. The 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, Home Rule in Greenland in 1979, Saami Parliaments in Norway, Sweden, and Finland, and creation of the Nunavut Territory in 1999 are of great interest as models and precedents to indigenous peoples in Russia, and to those throughout the world. Northerners have much in common, and modern communication technology enables Inuit, Saami, Athapaskans, Nenets—indeed, all residents of the Arctic—to better appreciate their similarities and shared concerns, and the advisability of learning from each other. A circumpolar consciousness is growing among and between residents of this huge area, which is emerging as a geopolitical region. Since 1990, circumpolar institutions have been established to address research, education, environmental protection, and economic, cultural, and political development. Many of these institutions are attracting worldwide attention and comment. The best known of these circumpolar institutions is the Arctic Council, established by the eight Arctic states in 1996 to promote environmental protection and sustainable development. That six indigenous peoples organizations, including the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, have “permanent participant” status in the council, enabling them to inter-

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vene essentially in the same manner as states, is unique in international and intergovernmental affairs. That the agenda of the Council will broaden and deepen seems certain. Perhaps the greatest challenge facing the Council is to convey to global audiences the importance and place of the Arctic in global affairs.

The Encyclopedia of the Arctic is an important initiative. It illustrates the growing importance of the circumpolar Arctic and testifies to the burgeoning international interest in our homeland. I congratulate the authors and editors of the encyclopedia and hope that all who use it will better understand this region and its peoples.

Sheila Watt-Cloutier Chair, Inuit Circumpolar Conference Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada

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Preface The Encyclopedia of the Arctic offers a rich and dynamic view of, and introduction to, an enormous, incredibly diverse, and rapidly changing part of the world. Its three volumes comprise overviews of hundreds of topics, events, places, people, human cultures, animals, and environments, ranging from geological history, exploration, the cultures and livelihoods of indigenous peoples, geopolitics, international environmental cooperation, natural history, physical processes, life sciences, and environmental change. This unique work is the result of over 375 international scholars and writers in all fields, many of whom live and work in Arctic countries. The Arctic is a vast area occupying the northern end of the Earth. Characterized by cold and seasonal extremes of light and darkness, it is a place where people, animals, and plants have survived and flourished, adapting to harsh environments and unforgiving conditions. It encompasses large regional variations in climate, geography, and ecology, as well as many cultures with different social, economic, and political systems. Arctic lands are found in eight countries: USA (Alaska), Canada, Greenland/ Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. Indigenous peoples have lived in this immense area for millennia, thriving in their homelands by hunting marine mammals and terrestrial animals, herding reindeer, and fishing the cold coastal waters. They possess a complex and detailed knowledge of Arctic animals and ecosystems, and their traditional activities link them inextricably to their histories, their contemporary cultural and economic settings, and provide a way forward for thinking about sustainable livelihoods in the future.

The Arctic is not an isolated, remote part of the world. The climate of the Arctic is influenced and governed by many complex interactions that are part of the global climate system; Arctic ecosystems are linked to the ecosystems of warmer southern regions; winds from the south bring warm air—and contaminants and pollutants—to northern regions; migratory mammals, birds, and fish move to the Arctic in summer to feed and breed before returning south for the winter; the headwaters of major rivers, such as the Ob’, Lena, and Mackenzie, are far to the south and provide a further connection between global and Arctic climates and ecosystems; and northern regions, societies, and economies are tightly tied to the mainstream of the nation states of which they are part. The Arctic has long been prized as a place containing rich resources, attracting explorers, whalers, sealers, fur traders, gold miners, and other adventurers in a steady stream from the 16th century onwards. Visits to the Arctic by these adventurers and sojourners, especially in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, resulted in more frequent contact between indigenous peoples and outsiders. Whalers, traders, explorers, missionaries, and other seasonal visitors brought diseases to which indigenous peoples had no immunity, as well as far-reaching social, economic, cultural, and religious changes. World War II brought increased activity in the Arctic as the region was militarized. During the Cold War, the region became a zone of hostile, tense military confrontation, with the Arctic divided into two sectors: the Soviet Arctic and the western Arctic. More recently, economic developers searching for oil, gas, xxxix

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gold, diamonds, and other marketable products view the Arctic as an economic and industrial frontier. Arctic lands and seas have played a significant role in the development of several nations, with colonization and settlement often taking place primarily with resource extraction in mind. Arctic resources will continue to be vital to the development of Arctic states for many decades to come, but other countries look increasingly to the northern regions for fisheries development, hydrocarbons, timber, and minerals. The Russian North, for example, has about 40% of the world’s coniferous forests, with some 20% of the world’s forested areas overall, the Bering Sea is one of the richest fisheries on Earth, and the Canadian Arctic contains vast reserves of oil, gas and diamonds. The United States eyes northern Canadian oil and gas, hungrily, while countries such as Japan, Korea, and the European Union (EU) member states constitute markets for valuable Arctic resources, such as deepwater shrimp from Greenland, Alaskan salmon, and timber from Canadian and Siberian forests. Arctic communities and regions are thus firmly tied to the global economy, while the effects and influences of globalization processes are increasingly being felt in all aspects of social, economic, and cultural life throughout the Arctic today. Such processes have their social and environmental impacts. The Arctic regions are under growing pressure from natural resource development, including that for gas, oil, timber, fish, and diamonds. The exploitation of northern resources and industrial activity both outside and within the Arctic has serious consequences for the environment, for traditional livelihoods, and for human health. Industry, resource development, pipeline construction, urbanization, changes in land use, and demographic transitions all pose threats by degrading ecosystems, destroying biodiversity and animal habitat, and infringing on indigenous lands, resource harvesting activities and traditional knowledge systems. Similarly, global environmental issues, including climate change, transboundary pollutants, and ozone depletion, have detrimental impacts on the peoples and environments of the Arctic. The indigenous peoples of the Arctic have strong views on the future of the circumpolar North and their place in it. Traditional practices of marine mammal hunting, trapping, fishing, reindeer herding, and gathering remain critically important to northern peoples, but they also wish to participate in and benefit from nonrenewable resource development. At the xl

same time, they are concerned with the loss of traditional livelihoods, cultures, and languages, the negative impacts of globalization, and the threat of irreversible changes that climate change may bring. Indigenous peoples have experienced tremendous rapid social and cultural change, especially in the last few decades, yet are reasserting cultural identity and their rights. Many indigenous peoples have achieved varying degrees of land claims settlements and significant forms of self-government, most notably the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) of 1971, the Inuvialuit Final Agreement of 1984, Home Rule in Greenland in 1979, and the creation of Nunavut Territory in 1999. These settlements and agreements have given indigenous peoples a significant base on which to build their political and cultural identity. Other peoples have considerably less control over their lands, resources, and their lives, although the establishment of Saami parliaments in Fennoscandia has allowed the Saami limited powers to decide on issues relating to language and culture. The most complex and unresolved issues relating to the autonomy and self-determination of the Arctic’s indigenous peoples are found in Siberia and the Russian Far East. Movements for land claims and self-government are embedded within indigenous discourses about the protection of indigenous political, cultural, and environmental interests, but they also center on rights to resources and access to the profits of resource development. The inhabitants, scientists, and researchers of the Arctic share a deep concern over unsustainable development, environmental change and loss of biodiversity, and the irreversible impacts on the future viability of northern ecosystems and peoples’ livelihoods and health. The increasing political salience of environmental and conservation issues, together with the increasing articulation of indigenous rights, has led to the emergence of the Arctic as an international political region and the design of several frameworks for collaboration on the environment and sustainable development in the Arctic. Since the mid-1980s, there have been major initiatives in international cooperation on Arctic environmental and sustainable development issues. The turning point is seen by many to have come in October 1987 when Mikhail Gorbachev, speaking in Murmansk, outlined proposals on how international cooperation in the Arctic could proceed. For many years, this speech was the most significant indication of how the Soviet Union viewed Arctic policy.

PREFACE

Among the most important points raised by Gorbachev was the need to establish the Arctic as a zone of peace, the utilization of the resources of the Arctic, scientific activity, and environmental protection. Gorbachev’s speech, which must be seen within a context of wider concern about environmental degradation and environmental security in the Soviet Union during an era of glasnost and perestroika, led to a series of Soviet proposals for international cooperation in the Arctic, and since 1987 there have been a number of bilateral and multilateral scientific and environmental agreements. A Finnish initiative in 1989 led to the so-called Rovaniemi Process between the eight Arctic states, which resulted in the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS) of 1991. In 1990, the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) was formed to identify, promote, and coordinate international scientific research priorities. Also in 1991, regional governments in the Arctic established the Northern Forum, which has a remit to focus on economic development, and the Canadian government announced plans to set up an Arctic Council that would draw its membership from the eight Arctic rim countries. In 1993 the foreign ministers of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, and the EU Commission signed the Kirkenes Declaration, which established the Barents Council and inaugurated the Barents Euro-Arctic Region (BEAR). The Arctic Council was inaugurated in Ottawa on September 19, 1996, a mandate to take cooperation on Arctic issues beyond the environment. The Arctic Council was established to provide a high-level regional forum for sustainable development, mandated to address all three of its main pillars: environmental, social, and economic. Its membership comprises the eight Arctic states, six indigenous peoples’ organizations as Permanent Participants, and Observers made up of non-Arctic states, international organizations, and NGOs. This is a unique forum for a unique region: from the beginning, Arctic governments and indigenous peoples joined together to make environmental monitoring and assessment a key element of the Arctic Council’s agenda. Major reports with policy recommendations have been produced, notably on the extent of Arctic pollution and the impact of climate change, drawing global attention to the state of the Arctic environment and the situations of its peoples. The Arctic Council allows for unprecedented dialogue and collaboration among scientists, policy

planners, Arctic residents, and political-level decision-makers. Out of this dialogue, and out of the Arctic, possibilities are emerging for a critical rethinking and reassessment of the concept of sustainability and the development of new approaches to biodiversity conservation, not only for the Arctic but for the entire globe.

The Arctic: A Region of Diversity There are many definitions of the Arctic, some of which are discussed in a separate entry in this encyclopedia (see Arctic: Definitions and Boundaries). No one way of defining the Arctic is satisfactory for all purposes, and more often than not a practical definition becomes necessary in research projects, reports, assessments, scientific monographs, and university and college courses in order to determine and delimit what physical, ecological, political, social, and cultural processes are to be covered. The Encyclopedia of the Arctic does not impose a single definition on contributors. To do so would detract from an understanding of the diversity of this complex, and a vast part of the globe, in all its environmental, cultural, political, historical, and economic aspects. Contributors to the encyclopedia have been encouraged to follow the conventions of their respective disciplines and perspectives. Various definitions illuminate the fact that understandings of the Arctic are, in part, based on particular scientific, political, and disciplinary concerns, and that specific definitional criteria are far too restrictive and cannot always be applied across disciplines. For example, while natural scientists most commonly draw boundaries based on climate, mean monthly temperature, the extent of sea ice, the dominance of tundra vegetation, the southern extent of permafrost, the northernmost treeline, or the Arctic Circle, social and political scientists may be thinking in terms of culture areas or geopolitical boundaries. The entries in the encyclopedia reveal that precise boundaries are not always possible to draw (whether between physical environments or between human cultures) and that there may be some variability in, for instance, the usage of such terms as the “Russian North” or “northern Scandinavia.” Many contributors also use “Arctic,” “circumpolar North” and “the North” as interchangeable terms. The extent of the Arctic is, in a sense, totally dependent on its definition. Whatever definition of the Arctic is used, it is xli

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clear that it is a large, multifaceted, and important area of the Earth’s surface, encompassing a range of landscapes and seascapes, climate differences, rich biodiversity, and vibrant cultural diversity. Rather than resulting in a confused definition of the Arctic, the material presented in the Encyclopedia of the Arctic demonstrates the beauty, power, and incredible diversity of the northern regions of the globe.

source to have yet been produced on this vast, complex, changing, and increasingly important part of the globe. The book is not only an up-to-date interdisciplinary work of reference for all those involved in teaching or researching Arctic issues, but a fascinating and comprehensive resource for residents of the Arctic, and all those concerned with global environmental issues, sustainability, science, and human interactions with the environment.

A Collaborative Project A project of this magnitude, dealing as it does with an enormous region, must have a starting point. This starting point was an initial A-Z headword list drawn up by the editors and the Advisory Board. We aimed to be as comprehensive and wide as possible, although we recognized that many gaps remained in the first list. We then sent out the headword list to hundreds of individuals and dozens of research institutes, university departments, and organizations that focus on Arctic issues, together with letters of invitation to contribute entries to the encyclopedia. The information and call for contributors was also posted on the project’s website and distributed widely. The hope was that people would not only respond with offers to write entries, but would also comment upon and criticize the A-Z list of entries. We received countless suggestions for improving the content, many from people who live and work in the Arctic as well as from people living in more southerly climes. As a result, the list of entries has been continuously revised, with new entries being added almost up to publication. The encyclopedia has thus taken shape as a result of this process. Yet, even in three volumes, it is impossible to cover every topic, or to include entries on every town and political figure, every aspect of ecology and environmental change, or every river, mountain range, or aspect of human culture. We have aimed to be as thorough as possible, yet we acknowledge that this is a beginning. No similar work exists. Our hope is that the Encyclopedia of the Arctic will be used as an indispensable, up-to-date, in-depth guide to a region that is changing dramatically—socially, economically, politically, and environmentally. Providing rich and detailed essays on the Arctic’s environment, wildlife, climate, history, exploration, resources, economics, politics, indigenous cultures and languages, conservation initiatives, and many other topics, the Encyclopedia of the Arctic is the only major work and comprehensive reference

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Entries and Structure The entries, over 1200, appear in alphabetical order and are of several kinds (for the complete Entry List, see page ix). Longer overview entries on major themes (such as Climate) have been split into shorter entries on specific areas of study (such as Climate Change, Climate: Environmental Inititatives, Impacts of Climate Change, and Weather). Although each entry is self-contained, the links between entries can be explored in a number of ways. The Thematic List on page xxiii groups the entries within broad and more specific categories and provides a useful summary of related entries. Almost all of the entries have cross references (“see also”) at the end of the entry, so the reader is encouraged to browse outwards from a starting node. Entries also have a Further Reading section, thus allowing the reader to pursue other scholarship on a particular topic. Finally, the Index provides a detailed listing of topics that do not have their own entry, but are discussed within the context of broader entries.

Acknowledgements I am grateful to Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, for providing the Foreword. I would like to express my thanks to the members of the Advisory Board for their unfailing guidance, advice, and criticism. All have drawn on their experiences and their extensive knowledge of the Arctic, its peoples and environments, histories, and politics. Their support has been crucial to the success of this enormous project. It has been a privilege to read and work with the material submitted by the hundreds of contributors whose writings fill these three volumes. I was especially pleased to receive opinions and suggestions from many of them as this project developed. At

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Routledge special thanks go to Acquisitions Editor Gillian Lindsey, Development Editor Lynn SomersDavis, and Editorial Assistant Mary Funchion for their professionalism, courtesy, and support. I have tremendous admiration for their commitment to this encyclopedia, especially their tenacity in maintaining momentum (and keeping the pressure on me) at a difficult time when both publisher and editor were in the throes of moving from the United Kingdom to North America. They kept track of the progress (and whereabouts) of more than 300 contributors, and have overseen the process of pulling together the several thousand pages of writing that moved between London, Aberdeen, New York, and Edmonton. I am especially grateful to the team of production assis-

tants, researchers, copy-editors, and cartographer at Taylor and Francis/Routledge who helped with the text, graphics, and illustrations. I am enormously grateful to Jonathan Dore, under whose supervision the Advisory Board and the initial headword list was formed, the first contributors were signed up, and the encyclopedia began to take shape. The project would not have been possible without him in the first place. During the editing process I was fortunate to have worked in two fine universities, the University of Aberdeen and the University of Alberta, and I am thankful for their institutional support. Last, but by no means least, I thank Anita and Rohan for being patient and encouraging, and for being there.

Mark Nuttall Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Alaska (UnitedStates) 481 054

Canada 92 985

Russia 1 999 711

Greenland 55 419 Iceland 266 783

Norway 379 461 Finland 200 677

Faeroe Islands 43 700

Number of inhabitants 2 000 000

300 000 50 000

500 000 150 000

Sweden 263 735 © AMAP 2003

Indigenous population Non-indigenous population AMAP boundary

Total and indigenous populations of the Arctic, by Arctic area of each country (the data from Russia are for the indigenous minority population). From AMAP Assessment Report: Arctic Pollution Issues, Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP), Oslo, Norway, 1998. Reproduced by permission from AMAP.

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A AASIAAT

in the settlement after World War II. The first fish processing plant was established on Transiten, a small island just outside the harbor in Aasiaat. In connection with modernization during the 20th century, Aasiaat’s factory was improved to include fillet production and a freezing plant in 1966. Moreover, the rich shrimp stock in Disko Bay turned out to be accessible from Aasiaat, and a shrimp processing plant was thus established in 1951. Due to the ice conditions in the area, shrimp processing had previously been impossible during the winter; hence in 1989, a new plant was built, which included a large freezing storage that enabled year-round processing. The processing plant was next expanded with facilities for processing snow crab. The value of landings from fisheries (1998) is 36 million Danish kroner (4.5 million US dollars), with shrimp covering almost 95% of the value. In addition, there are also small landings of cod, Greenland halibut, wolffish, salmon, and hunting products. Aasiaat is a modern town with all of the contemporary facilities and amenities, and similar to all towns in Greenland, fishing plays a vital role in the municipality’s economy. Only 5% of the labor force, however, is involved in fisheries and hunting and 10% in the processing industry, while the majority of the population is employed in public and private administration (30%), education and social services (22%), trade (21%), and other processing industries and craftspersons (12%) primarily active in building industries and the local shipyard. Aasiaat is one of the three towns in Greenland with a gymnasium (upper secondary school—the other two are in Nuuk and Qaqortoq) and a school for the handicapped. For several decades, Ulo—the largest record company and recording studio in Greenland—has operated in Aasiaat. RASMUS OLE RASMUSSEN

The town of Aasiaat is the municipal center of Aasiaat municipality, the most southern of the municipalities in the Disko Bay region in West Greenland. It is situated between two productive marine areas: the Disko Bay and the banks along the west coast of Greenland in the open water district. The Greenlandic name Aasiaat means “the spiders.” Historically, abundant sea mammals gave a productive basis for Greenlanders in the area, and the region was also a major attraction for Danish colonists. Consequently, a colony was established in 1763 and was given the name Egedesminde after its founder, Niels Egede. The site was chosen due to resource availability and the fact that its harbor was well protected by an archipelago. The ice conditions in Aasiaat enable sailing from mid-April until the beginning of December. As the settlement is situated north of the Arctic Circle, there is winter darkness from December 1 until January 12 and there is midnight sun from May 27 until July 18. The land area of the municipality is the second smallest in Greenland, with a total area of only 400 km2. The adjacent sea area, however, covers a total area of 3600 km2, and the municipality’s population is the fifth largest in Greenland. The total population of Aasiaat is 3446 (as of January 1, 2000). Within the municipality there are three settlements: the town of Aasiaat with 3234 persons, the settlement Kitsissuarsuit (Hunde Ejland) with 110 persons, and the settlement Akunnaaq with 102 persons. Only 174 persons in the municipality were born outside of Greenland, and so the vast majority of the population comprise native Greenlanders. The population has been stable during the last 40 years. Although historically the sea mammals first attracted the colonists, it was the rich fishing grounds on the banks and in Disko Bay that generated major interest

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AASIVIK See also Arctic Circle; Disko Bay; Greenland Further Reading Berthelsen, Christian, Inger H. Mortensen & Ebbe Mortensen (editors), Kalaallit Nunaat Atlas, Nuuk, Greenland: Atuakkiorfik, 1992 Nielsen, Niels, Peter Skautrup & Christian Vibe (editors), J.P. Trap Danmark, Volume XIV, Grønland, København: G.E.C. Gads Forlag, 1970 Rasmussen, Rasmus Ole, “Formal economy, renewable resources and structural changes in West Greenland.” Etudes/Inuit/Studies, 24(1) (2000): 48–78 Statistics Greenland, Greenland 2000–2001. Statistical Yearbook, Nuuk: Statistics Greenland, 2001 www.aasiaat.gl

AASIVIK Aasivik (plural aasiviit) was traditionally an Inuit camp where families from different areas gathered annually during the summer hunting seasons. In Greenlandic, aasivik is translated as “the place where one stays in summer” (Grønnow et al., 1983: 89). Aasiviit were usually located at desirable hunting grounds where resources were plentiful, such as the migration routes of caribou or seals, at abundant fishing and bird nesting areas, or at places where a combination of these wildlife resources was available. Aasiviit can be classified according to the number of people gathered and their geographic origins. Traditionally, the summer months were favorable for traveling by umiak (a large, open transport boat covered with sealskin) or qajaq (a one-person hunting vessel completely covered with sealskin). Families left scattered and isolated winter settlements and often undertook long and dangerous journeys to reach a certain aasivik. While some aasiviit were regionally or even interregionally significant, because people from larger areas used to meet there, the majority of aasiviit were primarily of local importance. Some aasiviit were little more than assembly camps for hunting parties or base camps from which hunting excursions were made. In Inuit society, the aasiviit played a vital socioeconomic role. Life within the aasiviit strengthened social bonds among people from distant places. People exchanged news and experiences and settled disputes, for instance, by holding drum duels. Trade and partnerships were formed within aasivitt. An aasivik offered the fruitful opportunity of sharing ancestral knowledge and wisdom through the narrating of myths, stories, and legends. Aasiviit were located throughout the Inuit world, both inland and along the coastline or on islands. In Northern Alaska, Nerleq, at the mouth of the Colville River, was a well-known aasivik site during the sum-

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mer months. Here, Inuit from the coast met with Inuit living inland to exchange whale blubber, baleen, seal furs, walrus skins, wolf skins, caribou furs, and snowshoes. In Northern Canada, Akilineq, at the mouth of the Thelon River, was one of the most vital aasiviit sites. Here, Caribou Inuit met with Copper and Netsilik Inuit during midsummer months to barter bows and arrows, muskox skins, fox furs, and items made from copper and soapstone. Similar to other Inuit areas, many traditional aasiviit places of minor or local importance have been found all over Greenland, where families and local people met for longer or shorter periods during the summer seasons. An example of a recognized and important aasivik site is Taseralik (“the place with small lakes”), a small island at the mouth of the Nassuttooq (Nordre Strømfjord) on Greenland’s west coast. Over the centuries, Inuit from as far north as Qeqertarsuup Tunua (Disko Bay) met with Inuit from as far south as Qaqortoq during July and August to fish Greenland halibut and to trade narwhal tusks and baleen with kryolith and soapstone items. From Qaqortoq, the journey to Taseralik was undertaken by umiak and could take up to a year, as people often had to overwinter on their return. During the colonial era, the aasiviit gradually lessened in significance in the annual hunting cycle. Trading posts and missionary stations contributed to a stationary lifestyle, and arduous journeys by umiak became obsolete as desirable trade goods became more easily accessible. Akilineq, for example, waned in vitality as an aasivik when the trading post at Baker Lake was established in 1914. Similarly, Taseralik diminished in social and economic importance at the end of the 19th century, even though it was used as a meeting place during the summer until 1930. In the mid-1970s, aasiviit began to reemerge alongside a heightened political and ethnic awareness among Greenlanders, who sought to create means to express Inuit identity and culture. Greenland’s first modern aasivik was established in 1976 in Narssap ilua, next to an area polluted by uranium, and was organized by Narsami Inuusuttut Ataqatigiit (Narsaq’s Youth Organization) and Kalaallit Inuusuttut Ataqatigiit (The Council of Young Greenlanders). Originally planned as a music festival for young people, Narssap developed into an important forum where a vast array of political and cultural issues were collectively discussed. These issues included Danish colonialism and neocolonialism, private and collective property rights to resources, land rights, a possible Home Rule Government in Greenland, mass media, the educational system, women’s roles, and the ongoing importance of Inuit culture and tradition in modern-day Greenland.

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Location of Arctic indigenous peoples. From AMAP Assessment Report: Arctic Pollution Issues, Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP), Oslo, Norway, 1998. Reproduced with permission from AMAP.

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ABORIGINAL IDENTITIES In July 1977, the second modern-day aasivik was held in Qullissat, an abandoned settlement of coal miners on Qeqertarsuaq (Disko Island) in the northern part of West Greenland. The aasivik was organized by the pro-independence group Inuit Brotherhood (Inuit Ataqatigiit), an organization formed in 1971 that later became one of Greenland’s most important political parties. National and international political issues were raised at Qullissat, and artists (musicians, actors, poets, painters, and sculptors) exhibited their work to the several hundred participants. In the decades since the 1970s, greater numbers of annual aasiviit helped to combat political apathy in Greenland. During an Inuit Brotherhood meeting in November 1978, the aasivik was described as “a cultural, political, and scientific forum for the Greenlandic people, the Kalaallit, to defend their indigenous and historical rights …” (Rasmussen, 1979: 371). But while the aasiviit of the 1970s and 1980s played a key role in Greenland’s nation building, the aasiviit of the 1990s gradually lost immediate political importance and served more as cultural summer festivals, where all kinds of Greenlandic musical styles, from ethnic drum dance to folk, rock, pop, beat, reggae, and rap, were performed. While the aasiviit’s political dimension may have diminished, they remain strong life signs of a dynamic Greenlandic culture and identity. VERENA TRAEGER See also Greenland; Inuit Ataqatigiit; Music (Traditional Indigenous); Umiak Further Reading Grønnow, Bjarne, Morten Meldgaard & Jørn Berglund Nielsen, “Aasivissuit—The Great Summer Camp. Archaeological, Ethnographical and Zoo-Archaeological Studies of a Caribou-Hunting Site in West Greenland.” Meddelelser om Grønland. Man and Society, Copenhagen: Ny Nordisk Forlag—Arnold Busck, No. 50, 1983 Kramer, Finn Erik, “Om at udleede sig blandt saa mange skiønheder en brud: Aasiviit-sammenkomsterne på Taseralik i Sismiut-distriktet.” Grønland, Charlottenlund: Det Grønlandske Selskab, 1992, No. 3, pp. 77–97 Rasmussen, Hans-Erik, “Aasiviit: de kulturelle og politiske sommerstaevner i Grønland.” Jordens Folk, Etnografisk Revy, 1979, No. 4, pp. 361–372

ABORIGINAL IDENTITIES Indigenous people are experiencing rapid and extensive political, economic, and cultural change in the 21st century. Individually and in communities, regions, nations, and international or interregional organizations, they are finding ways to continue, restore, or revive their cultures and maintain their

identities while adapting to and influencing a changing world. In parts of Greenland, Arctic Canada, Siberia, and Fennoscandia, they continue to lead at least partly nomadic lives—gathering, hunting, and camping seasonally in largely traditional ways. However faithfully people may follow the old ways, they often combine traditional approaches with current technology: for instance, the use of snowmobiles in lieu of dog sleds in places where the machines are more effective (in some locations, such as sea-ice-bound parts of Greenland, dog teams are safer and more effective). A strong sense of aboriginal identity persists regardless of the particularities of adaptation and change. Many indigenous people are wage earners and some have no memory of nomadic life. Yet Saami, Siberian peoples, Alaska Natives, Dene and Tlingit of northern Canada and Yukon, and others follow the pattern that Mark Nuttall and Louis-Jacques Dorais have identified with regard to Inuit in Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat) and Canada (in Nunavut—the eastern Arctic homeland and Nunavik—Inuit northern Québec): despite social and cultural changes, Inuit still identify themselves as Inuit (Nuttall, 1992; Dorais, 1997). They have found ways to adopt and adapt without losing their sense of cultural continuity and identity and are creating newly shared identities as well. As Nuttall points out, the construction of “national” identities (e.g., of Greenland and Nunavut) relies upon combining fact with fiction. There are shared cultural practices and experiences, but the construction of a nationalist identity would seem to require a fictional universality that obscures or obliterates difference. Cultural, social, and political identities are flexible and dynamic. With heterogeneous societies, individuals maintain multiple identities. Indigenous people interpret this multiplicity and heterogeneity in different ways. Some Saami consider themselves Saami first and Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, or Russian second; some cite nationality first and Saami identity second. Still others consider religion to be paramount. Comparable identity clusters are found among indigenous peoples in Siberia, Alaska, Greenland and Canada. The international movement of indigenous peoples has fostered important social, political, and technological innovations and produced organizations such as the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) and the World Council of Indigenous Peoples. Although culturally distinct, there are experiences common to these communities. A primary concern is to find ways to balance respect for cultural specificity and continuity within the context of broader regional cultural communities, pan-Arctic and international organizations. Language is an important part of identity formation, but its particular uses in the development and

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ABORIGINAL IDENTITIES maintenance of cultural identity vary widely. In many parts of the Arctic, revival of indigenous languages has signaled or accompanied political and cultural revival. Elsewhere, as Harjo and Bird (1998) claim in the title of their co-edited collection, postcolonial peoples are “reinventing the enemy’s language.” Speaking one’s traditional language is part of the picture, but is not essential, they argue, to identity maintenance. Written language presents altogether different problems. In addition to religion, missionaries brought writing systems, education, and health care that often complemented, rather than replaced, traditional ways of learning and promoting health. Within the ICC there has been a protracted debate over whether to adopt a universal writing system. Siberian peoples use the Cyrillic (Russian) alphabet, Greenlanders use roman orthography, and Inuit in Nunavik and Nunavut use a syllabic system originally developed for Cree and adapted for Inuktitut. This syllabic system has been in place for several generations, and many people now consider it “traditional” and are deeply attached to it (an example of “tradition” applied to what outsiders would call “inauthentic” practice). An opposing prevalent opinion holds that all Inuit should adopt the system used in Greenland, because it is more widely accessible and has enabled Greenland to produce a substantial body of published work. Greenland’s private publisher, Atuakkiorfik, has published more than 100 books. Naming is one aspect of language use that most strongly reflects and affects cultural continuity. Throughout northern Greenland there are places named after kings, queens, and explorers; names indicate ownership by a person or group and, more importantly, they establish power and territorial claim (Nuttall, 1992: 50). According to Harold Issacs, Recent political change has brought name changes to many places … the Russians have begun to erase Chinese names from the territory of eastern Siberia ... Nine cities and towns and two hundred and fifty rivers and mountains that had retained their Chinese names for more than a century suddenly acquired brand-new Russian names in 1973 … altered history has led to much renaming. (Isaacs, 1989: 74)

In 1987, the official name of Frobisher Bay was changed to Iqaluit. The change reasserted Inuit sovereignty and removed the name of a visitor (the 16thcentury explorer Martin Frobisher) from the map and, metaphorically speaking, the mental landscape. It heralded a greater change to come, that is, the creation of the Canadian territory named for the Inuit homeland, Nunavut (meaning “our land”). As this 1987 letter to the editor of the Globe and Mail (Canada’s national newspaper) from a retired Navy Captain illustrates,

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name changes such as that of the Nunavut homeland can be particularly destabilizing to nations and the institutions that govern them: The threat to change thousands of northern place names is disturbing … So also is the news that responsibility for naming geographic features in the Northwest Territories has been surrendered by Ottawa. I am dismayed at the sanctioning of this assault on the history of the Arctic, our collective Northern heritage. (Pullen, 1987)

The author’s choice of the words “surrendered” and “assault” implies a sort of (imagined) military victory. The phrase “our collective Northern heritage” implies that indigenous and European northerners are equal inheritors of the northern land- and “namescape”—the identity map of a region’s personal and place names. But in the region to which he refers, Inuit represent an 85% majority and have been settled for thousands of years, while European visitors and settlers are scant, culturally diverse, and historically only recently arrived. Nonindigenous visitors have named and renamed both land and people, as this narrative from writer Alice French illustrates: In the spring of 1937 when I was seven years old my father told my brother and me that our mother had tuberculosis. We would have to go from Cambridge Bay to the hospital in Aklavik … When we landed at Aklavik my mother went to the hospital and my brother and I were told we would be going to a boarding school … [At school] an Eskimo girl … introduced me to the other girls by my Christian name—Alice. My Eskimo name was not mentioned and I did not hear my name Masak again until I went home. (French, 1988: 204)

In Inuit tradition, a child is not considered to be a complete person until they receive an atiq or “soulname,” usually given at birth. The construction of a subject’s identity therefore is a complex process involving the historical customs of “naming,” kinship practices, as well as spiritual beliefs. The subject’s identity is thus composed of multiple layers, as the following narrative suggests: No child is only a child. If I give my grandfather’s atiq to my baby daughter, she is my grandfather. I will call her ataatassiaq, grandfather. She is entitled to call me grandson. (Brody, 1987: 139)

Long after the introduction of Christian baptism, Greenlanders continued to give their children, along with a Christian name, a Greenlandic name (Kleivan, 1984: 612). In Canada, a series of interventions threatened the traditions governing Inuit identity. These included missionary-given baptismal (Christian) names and

ABORIGINAL IDENTITIES government-administered fingerprinting—a method previously restricted to identifying criminals, but proposed in the 1930s for all Inuit (when many Qallunaat—non-Inuit—and Inuit objected, the project was abandoned). In 1941, the Northwest Territories council approved “identification disks for Eskimos” after proposals to issue identity cards were rejected (Alia, 1994). During this period, Inuit began receiving government subsidies in the form of family allowances, and the Department of National Health and Welfare decided to define the categories “Eskimos” and “Nomads.” These tautological definitions were taken to the point of bureaucratic absurdity. Inuit identities were further affected by the beginning of northern census-taking. It followed official standards for “the Canadian family,” with no consideration for Inuit family structures or traditions. Children who were full family members were suddenly relabeled “step-children” or “adoptees,” and distinctions were made between “real” and “common-law” spouses—terms that had meaning only for Qallunaat. Then came Project Surname, in which Inuit were given surnames that threatened to undermine their deeply imbedded naming traditions. Young people went away to residential schools and returned home to find they were “somebody else,” having been renamed in their absence. Canada was not the first country to impose surnames on indigenous people. In Siberia in the 1930s, the Soviet government gave surnames to Yuit. Like their Iñupiat relatives in Alaska and Inuit throughout Canada and Greenland, Yuit had clusters of single names and no concept of surnaming. In the 1960s, the Danish Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs gave surnames to Polar Inuit. In traditional Inuit society, land and person are almost inseparable; the world is divided not between persons and places but between named and unnamed things. The particular band or dialect group is defined by a prefix followed by a common suffix, -miut (“the people of” or “the inhabitants of”). Old boundaries are shifting or are contained within larger frameworks of regional, national, or pan-Arctic groupings. In 1973, Denmark hosted the Arctic Peoples’ Conference with participants including Saami organizations from Norway, Sweden and Finland, organizations from Greenland, and Inuit and Dene organizations from the Yukon and Northwest Territories in Canada (in the midst of land claims negotiations, the Alaska Federation of Natives was unable to participate). This led to the 1977 founding of the ICC. Dedicated to a pan-Arctic identity, ICC declared itself under four flags: United States, Canadian, Greenlandic, and Russian—although at the time, indigenous Siberians could not attend. At each assembly an empty chair and Soviet flag were placed

at the head of the room. In 1989, the chair was finally occupied when Siberians were permitted to attend the assembly at Sisimiut, Greenland, as unofficial delegates; in 1992, Siberian Inuit became full ICC members. Transcultural and international projects and structures do not replace culturally specific ones, or obliterate the need to maintain and strengthen particular languages and cultures. In a now-famous and muchquoted speech, the Inuk journalist and political leader Rosemarie Kuptana said that indigenous people needed their own broadcasting outlets, which she considered essential to maintaining aboriginal identities. She said existing programming was inappropriate and inadequate, and compared nonindigenous television to a neutron bomb that destroys the soul of a people but leaves the physical bodies standing, with a superficial impression that they are still intact (Alia, 1999). Kuptana was one of the visionaries who lobbied for— and helped create—aboriginal broadcasting in Canada and throughout the Arctic and Subarctic regions. Among the other projects that help to strengthen and communicate aboriginal identities are various museum, education, and public information projects. The Saami museum in Inari, Finland, was originally an open-air exhibit in the 1960s. In 1998, it was expanded to a permanent structure serving both the indigenous community and visiting tourists. Its development was directed by Saami, who named it Siida, or village. It features exhibitions on life ways, history, geology, economy, and culture with texts in Saami, Finnish, English, and German. The complex includes a theater, library, restaurant, and craft shop, which sells only crafts marked by the label “Saami duodji,” guaranteeing that they are made by Saami. This labeling system parallels the “Eskimo” (now Inuit) igloo label developed in Canada along with the marketing of Inuit art. Such labels, intended to guarantee “authenticity,” raise further questions of the nature of authenticity but help to curtail the rampant appropriation and sale of pseudo-indigenous products. The Canadian “igloo” was originally government supervised; it guarantees authentic Inuit construction but not quality, price, or artist’s percentage—artists selling through galleries lose substantially compared to those selling directly. The “Saami duodji” label is a Saami-controlled way of establishing identification, but like the Canadian label cannot guarantee quality or price. In both cases, the crafts are almost exclusively created for, and sold to, nonindigenous people.For this reason alone, one may question their authenticity, since many items are copies of utilitarian objects used in people’s daily lives (e.g., the Inuit woman’s knife or ulu sold widely as a tourist item).

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ABORIGINAL IDENTITIES Karasjok, Norway, is host to the Sápmi theme park, which encompasses the Stálubákti Spirit Rock Theatre, a “Saami village,” an underground turf restaurant, two hotels, and the ubiquitous craft shop. The restaurant serves traditional foods to diners seated on reindeer-skin-covered benches at communal log tables, and the ambience is enhanced by an open fire and recorded Joik (traditional music). The theater offers a multimedia show that uses new technologies to tell old stories. Saami set the agenda and control the communication of their identity for a tourist market. Nevertheless, it is an agenda for conveying Saami-ness to outsiders more than a way of continuing Saami culture for Saami (George, “Sami cash in without selling out,” p. 13). It can be argued that such projects enrich the community as well—not just economically— because they require the gathering, preserving, and communicating of stories, artifacts, and practices. At the very least, they provide an opportunity to change old touristic patterns. As Loretta Todd remarked in her film The Learning Path, “It is time for … society to view us not as dying cultures, but dynamic cultures. Despite policies of assimilation, we have survived” (Todd, 1991). A successful ethnopolitical movement needs a “language of signs, symbols and categorizations which have a bearing on identity management,” which Harald Eidheim calls idioms (Eidheim, 1971: 71). The idioms that the Saami chose to establish a new ethnic border between Norwegian and Saami societies included language, national dress, folk music, and traditional industries such as reindeer herding, fishing, and small-scale farming. These were supported by two Kautokeino institutions, the Saami Regional (teachers’) College and the Saami Institute, which fosters its own research and collaborative projects with several universities on Saami history, language, and law. The cultural revival also led to the creation of Samediggi (Saami Parliament)—actually an advisory body linked to the Norwegian Parliament, and a separate administrative area with two official languages, Norwegian and Saami. There are also Saami parliaments in Finland and Sweden. In Finland in 1993, the University of Helsinki inaugurated a Saami studies program. In 1995, the University of Uppsala, Sweden, opened a Department of Reindeer Herding. Without disputing the importance of this program, Saami are also trying to educate the public about the fact that, despite the nearly universal association of Sápmi with reindeer herding, a much higher proportion of Saami are engaged in fishing and other activities. Changes in speaking and thinking about identity and its terminology accompany the other developments. Anthropologists, including this author, have

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noted the shift from Eskimo to Inuit and from Greenlander to Kalaallit. The current preference for Saami (the people) and Sápmi (the region) replaces the earlier designations of “Laplanders,” “Lapps,” and “Lapland,” “Lapp” being a derogatory term meaning “a patch of fabric used in mending.” In Chukotka, in northeastern Siberia (across the Bering Strait from Alaska), an indigenous cultural revival has emerged over the past few decades, beginning in the late 1970s. Ironically, it was Stalin’s policy of bringing enlightenment to the peoples of the north that encouraged the first generation of university-educated indigenous Siberians. They included the first Nanai novelist Grigori Khodzher (born in 1929), the first Nivkh writer, the poet Vladimir Sangi (born in 1935), and the “founder of modern-day Chukchi literature” Yuri Rytkheu (born in 1930) (Barker, 1993: 216–217). Rytkheu has said that Chukchi traditions have no place in contemporary literature or life, yet he writes in both Chukchi and in Russian and has—especially in later works—done much to contribute to the preservation of Chukchi identity and culture. Others, such as the poet Antonina Kymytval, write only in indigenous languages. Since the 1960s, Greenlandic writers and musicians have recorded and published their works in their own language. As in Russia, this has meant narrowing the audiences for literary works, but an international audience for indigenous-language music has grown remarkably since the 1980s. Greenland’s highly developed recording industry, Canada’s aboriginal broadcasting program, and the burgeoning World Music movement have all contributed to this phenomenon. Albums and concerts by the Canadian duo Kashtin have been internationally successful despite the fact that nearly all of their songs are in the Innu language, which has only a small number of speakers. The award-winning Northern Tutchone singer Jerry Alfred has taken the traditional songs and themes of his home—Pelly Crossing, Yukon (population: about 500)—to the world, although he sings almost exclusively in his own language. Like many other indigenous musicians, he uses a mix of instruments, including European ones (guitar, violin or fiddle, bass, and an array of traditional and other percussions). The Saami songwriter-singer Mari Boine has also attracted a broadly multicultural, international audience, although most of her songs are in Saami. While using this medium to express and celebrate her Saami identity, she has, at the same time, experimented across cultural and musical boundaries (e.g., in her work with the jazz musician Jan Garbarek). Canadian Inuit such as William Tagoona say that they were influenced to write in Inuktitut instead of in French or English by the pioneering work of such

ABORIGINAL IDENTITIES Kalaallit (Greenlandic) songwriters as Rasmus Lyberth. The award-winning Cree playwright Tomson Highway includes some Cree dialogue in each of his predominantly English-language plays. He has said that his purpose is to show outsiders the beauty of the language, and also to make a political point. This simultaneous reaching out to outsiders and the celebration of one’s specific cultural roots characterizes much of today’s indigenous art-making. By communicating both inward and outward, indigenous artists are strengthening the affirmation of their communities’ and peoples’ identities while increasing others’ respect for, and understanding of, those identities. Such projects are not problem free or universally appreciated. Writers, singers, and visual artists are sometimes criticized by members of their own communities for “stealing” stories or publicizing private or inappropriate material. The much-acclaimed Alaska Native writer Velma Wallis was accused of making private stories public by the very act of publishing them, which allowed a broader public to appreciate her writing. Some elders told her that the stories belonged in the oral tradition and were not for outsiders. Indigenous singers have been taken to task for “selling” or “giving away” songs that belonged to particular families (sometimes their own). Salish peoples of the United States and Canadian northwest coast keep certain songs within particular families, and only members of those families are permitted to learn and sing them; within that tradition, any effort to make the songs available for strangers to learn is seen as a risk to the cultural maintenance, identity, and integrity of the community. Indigenous people living in urban areas are changing their sense of identity in the overall climate of cultural revitalization. A 2001 study of Canadian Inuit living in Montreal found that despite various levels of language loss and loss of culture, “urban Inuit still identify as Inuit,” and the Montreal Inuit Association helps maintain cultural continuity. In Yakutia, a 2001 study found indigenous identities to be fluid and flexible, with people changing ethnic identities based on political or social advantage. The result is that some people self-identify, for example, as Evenki or Chukchi, although they may speak other languages (George, “How do you know you’re an Inuk?,” p. 25). Similarly, Labrador Inuit of mixed parentage have identified as Inuit and as EuroCanadian, depending on the social conditions. Norwegian Saami of mixed parentage may identify themselves as Saami or Norwegian, depending on the circumstances. It is presumptuous to advocate preserving an archaic culture in a vacuum, apart from the changing realities of the modern world. The image of the tourist’s “aboriginal” in sealskin or fur, singing

traditional songs, bears little relevance to the ways most indigenous people identify themselves. In much of northern Canada, Alaska, and Greenland, “country” music is far more prevalent than the more “authentic” drumming and throat singing that is invariably imported to southern festivals (with singers suffering the discomfort of caribou parkas and sealskin mukluks in southern heat!). The old “whaler dances” found in Greenland and Nunavut derive from a marriage of British and Inuit cultures. In the writing of outsiders, indigenous identities are often misunderstood as feathers, furs, and fantasy. But indigenous traditionalism as Gail Guthrie Valaskakis has described it is not these; nor is it lost in transformation or revived as a privileged expression of resistance. It is an instrumental code to action knitted into the fabric of everyday life. … (Valaskakis, 1988: 268)

And according to Joy Harjo and Gloria Bird, Many of us at the end of the [20th] century are using the “enemy language” with which to tell our truths, to sing, to remember ourselves during these troubled times … . These colonizers’ languages, which often usurped our own tribal languages or diminished them, now hand back emblems of our cultures … We’ve transformed these enemy languages. (Harjo and Bird, 1998: 21–22)

Identities and cultures are complex and ever-changing. We need to rethink the idea that missionaries and governments “conquered” indigenous peoples. Religious and social customs of the colonizers did not necessarily subsume or subordinate those of aboriginal people—there is far more mutual accommodation and mutual learning than is often acknowledged. Referring to Greenland, the anthropologist Mark Nuttall observed that aspects of the existing traditional cosmology, such as name beliefs … still lie beneath the surface, having been glossed over with the veneer of European Christianity. During the time of the early missionaries the two belief systems probably existed side by side. … (Nuttall, 1992: 60)

And finally the Inuit leader John Amagoalik wrote: It may be true that the physical part of our culture has been eroded to the point where it can never return to its full potential. But the non-physical part of our culture— our attitude towards life, our respect for nature, our realization that others will follow who deserve the respect and concern of present generations—[is] deeply entrenched … . (Amagoalik, 1988: 210)

VALERIE ALIA

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ADAMSON, SHIRLEY See also Education; Images of Indigenous Peoples; Inuit Broadcasting Corporation; Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC); Kinship; Media; Music (Traditional Indigenous); Naming; Place-Names

Further Reading Alia, Valerie, Names, Numbers and Northern Policy: Inuit, Project Surname, and the Politics of Identity, Halifax: Fernwood, 1994 ———, Un/covering the North: News, Media, and Aboriginal People, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1999 Amagoalik, John, “Will the Inuit Disappear from the Face of This Earth?.” In Northern Voices: Inuit Writing in English, edited by Penny Petrone, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988 Barker, Adele, “The Divided Self: Yuri Rytkheu and Contemporary Chukchi Literature.” In Between Heaven and Hell: The Myth of Siberia in Russian Culture, edited by Galya Diment and Yuri Slezkine, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1993 Brody, Hugh, Living Arctic, London: Faber & Faber, 1997 Burgess, Marilyn & Gail Guthrie Valaskakis, Indian Princesses and Cowgirls: Stereotypes from the Frontier, Montreal: OBORO, 1995 Crowe, Keith, A History of the Original Peoples of Northern Canada (revised edition), Montreal/Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1991 Dorais, Louis-Jacques, Quaqtaq: Modernity and Identity in an Inuit Community, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997 Eidheim, Harald, Aspects of the Lappish Minority Situation, Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1971 Freeman, Minnie Aodla, Life Among the Qallunaat, Edmonton: Hurtig, 1978 French, Alice, “My Name is Masak.” In Petrone, op. cit., 1988, p. 203 Gaski, Harald (editor), Sami Culture in a New Era: The Norwegian Sami Experience, Karasjok, Norway: Davvi Girgi OS, 1997 George, Jane, “How do you know you’re an Inuk?.” Nunatsiaq News, June 15, 2001, p. 25 ———, “Sami cash in without selling out.” Nunatsiaq News, June 29, 2001, p. 13 Gilberg, Rolf, “Polar Eskimo.” In Damas, op. cit., 1984, pp. 577–594 Harjo, Joy & Gloria Bird (editors), Reinventing the Enemy’s Language: Contemporary Native Women’s Writings of North America, New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1998 Isaacs, Harold, Idols of the Tribe: Group Identity and Political Change, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1989 Kleivan, Inge, “West Greenland Before 1950” (translated from Danish by Charles Jones). In Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 5, Arctic, edited by David Damas, Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1984 Nuttall, Mark, Arctic Homeland: Kinship, Community and Development in Northwest Greenland, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992 Pullen, Thomas C., Letter to the Editor of the Globe and Mail, in Curwin, Kelly, Editorial, Nunatsiaq News, January 26, 1987

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Stordahl, Vigdis, “How to be a real Sámi: ethnic identity in a context of (inter)national integration.” Études/Inuit/Studies, 17(1) (1993): 127–130 Todd, Loretta, The Learning Path (film), Canada: National Film Board and TV Ontario, Tamarack Productions, 1991 Tunnuq, Martha, “Recollections and Comments,” Inuktitut (Ottawa: ITC) #75, 1992 Valaskakis, Gail Guthrie, “The Chippewa and the other: living the heritage of Lac du Flambeau.” Cultural Studies, 2(3) (October 1988)

ADAMSON, SHIRLEY Shirley Adamson has fought to give nonstatus Indians a political voice since the 1970s. Born into the Ta’an Kwatchan First Nation in the Yukon Territory in 1952, Adamson’s goal as a young woman was to be the matriarch of a large family and live in the bush (forest) on her traditional territory. The federal government’s White Paper of 1969 changed the trajectory of her life. Yukon aboriginal people began to organize against this assimilation policy and Adamson found herself elected to the Executive Council of the Yukon Association of nonstatus Indians in 1975. Adamson was responsible for administering the program dollars allocated to nonstatus Indians for health, education, and housing. Adamson then moved into the national field as a board member on the Native Council of Canada. In the 1980s, Adamson worked as a journalist for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in the Yukon, a job that enabled her to tell the story of Yukon First Nation people. With her connections she was able to attend community meetings and gather information not available to nonnative journalists. During her tenure with CBC, Adamson demanded, and got, more airtime for aboriginal issues, which she felt had previously been ghettoized into a small time slot. She also resisted the demands by her superiors to broadcast in her own language. Adamson wanted First Nation issues to be heard by nonnative Yukoners as well. During her nine years with CBC, Adamson spent four years on the negotiating team for the union that represented employees. She was the first aboriginal, and first woman, to hold that position from the north. Adamson won better health and dental benefits for status Indians from the Northwest Territories under their union’s collective agreement. In the late 1980s, she worked for the Council of Yukon Indians to translate the Umbrella Final Agreement (UFA) into a layperson’s language. The UFA is the framework within which all of the Yukon’s 14 First Nations will conclude a final claim settlement. Adamson became the Communications Adviser for the Council of Yukon Indians, with the responsibility of briefing Members of Parliament in Ottawa and

ADAPTATION the national media about the UFA to facilitate its passage. Members of her First Nation then asked Adamson to become the chair, which is similar to the role of chief. At the time, the Ta’an Kwatchan were not recognized by the federal government as an Indian Act band and had little funding to operate. Once again, Adamson went to Canada’s capital city to ask parliamentarians for a special clause in the final agreements that would allow Ta’an to negotiate self-government agreements. She established Ta’an Kwatchan Council financially and negotiated a land-swap with the city of Whitehorse that affords habitat protection to a lake that had previously been slated for a sewage lagoon. Adamson also secured some prime real estate within the city of Whitehorse limits for her First Nation. In the mid-1990s, Adamson was elected as the vicechief of the Assembly of First Nations, becoming the only nonstatus Indian in that organization. She was responsible for intergovernmental affairs and veterans affairs. Adamson fought for compensation for aboriginal war veterans who were denied benefits that nonnative veterans received. From 1996 to 1999, Adamson served as the Grand Chief of the Council of Yukon First Nations (formerly known as the Council of Yukon Indians). In this capacity Adamson also fought against federal gun control legislation and dealt with a crisis in the relationship between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the First Nation peoples of the Yukon. Since 2000, Adamson has been the general manager of Northern Native Broadcasting Yukon. She is currently lobbying the federal government to recognize her organization as the aboriginal equivalent of CBC. Adamson is also a director with the Canadian Race Relations Foundation and is a governor of the University of the Arctic. All aspects of her work have involved telling the stories of her people, and fighting for their rights and recognition.

Biography Shirley Adamson was born in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada, in 1952. Her mother Irene Adamson is Ta’an Kwatchan and her father John Adamson is coastal Tlingit and nonnative. She was raised in a traditional lifestyle by her grandparents Celia and Frankie Jim at Lake Laberge. ROXANNE LIVINGSTONE Further Reading www.ammsa.com/windspeaker www.yukonweb.com/community/yukon-news

ADAPTATION In ecological terms, adaptation is an acquired trait (anatomical, physiological, or behavioral) of a species that improves its survival in a particular environment, or the evolutionary process by which a species acquires such traits in order to increase the possibility of survival and reproduction in those conditions. The Arctic’s extreme physical environment with low temperatures, deep and persistent snow, a short growing season, and food scarcity in winter means that Arctic organisms must become adapted to sparse and/or periodic food supplies. For example, birds and mammals are superbly insulated against the cold, thereby reducing their metabolic and hence food requirements.

Mechanisms Mechanisms for acquiring adaptations represent one of the most important problems in biology. The origin and evolution of adaptations has been explained as an immanent feature of living beings, and by material factors operating in evolution, such as direct heritable change of acquired features (Lamarckism) and the selection of the best-adapted genotypes. According to the latter theory, based on Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection, the material for selection of adaptive characteristics is supplied by the chance inheritable variability of genetic material (mutations). Those mutations that improve the adaptability of individuals to a particular environment (e.g., giving it more resources in competition with others) are favored by natural selection, and individuals with such genotypes survive to pass on their genes to the next generation. Although natural selection is not a cause of variability of organisms, it influences the frequency of certain genotypes, operating not only at the level of individuals but also at various levels of groups of organisms, such as populations and species. This theory faces serious difficulties in explaining the origin and evolution of complex adaptations, such as eyes of vertebrates, and wings. Some adaptive features of organisms may be explained within the concept of preadaptation, when an adaptive trait is acquired in an environment without selective pressures before it becomes adaptive in other conditions. The concept of preadaptation is very important in explaining the history of Arctic fauna and flora. For example, a high tolerance of lower plants and fungi to external factors and their ability to enter inactive or active conditions is very important for their existence in the Arctic. Nevertheless, groups with these features originated beyond the Arctic and beyond the cold climate. Most probably, they were preadapted for penetration into the Arctic and dispersal there. 9

ADAPTATION The tundras and Arctic deserts contain a relatively high diversity of the groups that are relatively primitive within corresponding higher taxa: for example, Rosaceae and Cruciferae from Dicotyledones; Collembola from Insecta; as well as fungi, mosses, and lichens. These relatively primitive or simple groups displayed wide adaptive radiation in the Arctic due to wide ecological plasticity and best adaptability there.

Classification Adaptations are specific not only for species but also for ecological morphs and ontogenetic stages or phases (coenogenetic adaptations, that is, specific embryonic and larval adaptations). There are general adaptations, that is, adaptations to habitat (e.g., fins in aquatic animals or extremities of terrestrial vertebrates), and particular adaptations, that is, adaptations operating in a specific environment (e.g., extremities of burrowing animals and structures allowing the flight of seeds in some plants). Although adaptation concerns individual organisms, it may be expressed not only at the level of the individual but also at the level of various spatial groups of individuals, for example, species, population, shoal, or herd. There are ontogenetic adaptations (acquiring the adaptive features based on the existing norm of reaction during individual life) and phylogenetic adaptations (by genotypic transformation and acquiring a new norm of reaction). Various biological parameters of organisms may have adaptive value in particular conditions: biochemistry and physiology of an organism, morphology, reproductive behavior, and other behaviors such as seasonal cycle, migrations, habitat distribution, feeding, etc.

Biochemistry and Physiology Specific biochemical and physiological adaptations may play a very important role for organisms living in cold environments. In animals, hibernation corresponds to a significant decrease in metabolism, retardation of neural reactions, and a decrease in breathing, heart activity, and temperature. Hibernation, typical for some mammals, or winter diapause in insects, may have periodic awakenings, especially if some conditions are changed (e.g., increase in environmental temperature, flooding). Some poikilothermic (i.e., organisms whose body temperature is similar to environmental temperature) terrestrial animals living in the Arctic and Subarctic conditions are capable of relatively fast accumulation of cryoprotectants (special substances preventing fast freezing and formation of

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ice crystals destroying cells). They are able to survive extracellular freezing, an important adaptation during cold winters. For example, the Siberian newt (Salamandrella keyserlingii) seems to be the most cold-tolerant amphibian in the world: adult individuals are able to survive freezing to −35°C to −40°C. Biochemical analysis has revealed seasonal changes in concentrations of the cryoprotectant glycerol related to its use during hibernation. After the cryoprotectant has been reallocated by tissues, the animal may hibernate at very low temperatures without freezing of tissues. Glycogen, the source of glycerol, must be stored during the active period, but seasonal preparation of the organism for hibernation is also important: the animal will die of freezing in experimental conditions outside the prehibernation and hibernation seasons. Siberian newts, as well as frogs occurring in the Arctic, lose their locomotory activity at lower temperatures than amphibian species living in more southerly latitudes: they can move even at +0.5°C to +1°C. This peculiarity is especially important at the end of hibernation, when the animals have to undertake breeding migrations in unstable weather conditions when frosts may recur unpredictably. When Siberian newts are quickly unfrozen, ice crystals thaw and fill their organisms with excessive water, which is dangerous. However, when the body temperature rises gradually, the animals become active without harmful consequences. Studies on brown frogs from different latitudes revealed that Subarctic populations have much higher enzyme activity, which decreases less with falling temperature than related Subarctic populations. The adaptive value of maintaining appropriate enzyme activity at lower temperatures is clear. Chemical and physical thermoregulation is very important for mammals and birds, which have to maintain a relatively constant body temperature in cold environments. However, even homeothermic animals are able to change their body temperatures slightly as an adaptation to specific conditions. For example, some birds may reduce their body temperature by 1–2°C below the mean temperature during the inactive period of egg incubation, which is related to reduced energy requisites in this time. On the other hand, the temperature may increase by about 1°C during migration. Arctic fish have also developed cryoprotectants, possibly independently of fish in the Antarctic Ocean who have nearly identical antifreeze proteins. It is however debated whether Arctic and Antarctic fish display higher metabolic rates as a metabolic cold adaptation. Arctic plants also display some biochemical peculiarities. Arctic bacteria and fungi have higher enzyme activity as an adaptation to cold. The plants have increased respiration ability, increased expenses to

ADAPTATION maintenance, and an environmentally dependent shift of heat tolerance of respiration. Local Leguminosae have a higher rate of accumulation of low-molecularweight carbohydrates and nitrogen from the soil and an earlier start to prepare for winter. These peculiarities increase their resistance to cold.

Morphology Some adaptations of organisms to Arctic conditions are displayed in their morphology (external appearance or internal structure). It is well known that Arctic birds and mammals have a thicker fat layer and denser fuzz or fur than related temperate species. Small downy feathers are positioned below the contour feathers. The stem of down feathers is thin and the barbules are absent, which results in the lack of a close plate constructed by the vein of the feather. In many cases, the stem of the downy feather is so short that the barbules starting from it form a single beam. Such a feather is called true down. Its main function is to minimize heat loss and to maintain constant body temperature in cold conditions. True down is most developed in birds living in cold regions, and especially in the Arctic. The needlelike feathers are positioned among the down. These feathers represent the down feather without barbules. The feather cover is subject to regular change (molting). As a rule, only part of the cover is molted. Molting has different functions in different habitats and geographic regions, and the change from summer to winter plumage is one aspect. Summer and winter feathers have different lengths and densities; there are also some structural variations. For example, the length of contour feathers on the back of the willow grouse (Lagopus lagopus) averaged 5.4 cm in winter and 3.8 cm in summer, while the down part is 1.8 and 1.4 cm, respectively. Molting birds sometimes form very large and dense aggregations in the Arctic regions as elsewhere. For example, some ducks, geese, and swans concentrate in groups of several thousand individuals in poorly accessible areas of rivers, lakes, and sea coasts for molting. This is conditioned by a scarcity of places where they can stay while molting, when their vulnerability to potential predators is increased. The eider (Somatheria mollissima) is a typical Arctic bird well adapted to life in cold climates. It is connected with coasts only at the time of nesting, spending the whole of the resting time in the sea. Its light and dense down is well known for its insulating features. The down is concentrated on the bird’s belly, the area most in contact with the cold environment (sea water, coastal rocks, snow, and soil). In addition to the down, a thick fat layer and a system of air sacs surrounding the body prevent the overcooling of this

bird. The sacs also act like a hydrostatic apparatus, which increases the buoyancy after submersion of the bird into water. The down of these birds is widely used for stuffing clothes and bedding. Mammals display a variation of hair cover in relation to environmental conditions. Many Arctic mammals have denser low fur, or an undercoat, which decreases heat loss during winter. Another adaptation represents, in contrast, a significant reduction of the undercoat with a significant development of the main hairs. This is connected usually with a more pronounced development of the fat layer (e.g., in marine mammals) or dense hair cover on the skin in terrestrial and semiaquatic mammals that, together with other mechanisms, allow them to avoid significant heat loss at very low air and/or water temperatures. For example, the Arctic fox (Alopex lagopus) is able to withstand exposures to −80°C for 1 h with no fall in internal temperature. As with the birds, molting also occurs in Arctic mammals in relation to season change. However, the mechanisms are different, and the vulnerability of molting individuals is decreased in mammals because they tend not to concentrate in particular habitats during molting. Some skeletal structures may also serve as adaptations to Arctic conditions. The males of the narwhal (Monodon monoceros) use their tusks for breaking holes in the ice to allow the pod access to atmospheric air. Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) feed on plants not only in snowless but also in snowy seasons. In the latter case, it is difficult to dig up plants from the snow, sometimes from depths of 70–80 cm, when only the back of the foraging animal is visible. To alleviate the digging of snow, the foreleg hoofs are grown to the winter period, with an acute edge and concave surface. Such a hoof shape is an important adaptation for digging up food. Female reindeer do not lose their antlers in winter, and this allows them to defend the food in the hole in snow from other individuals. When the female is grazing, her head is directed downwards and the antlers close the dig hole. This is important under conditions of low food availability in winter. Geographical races of homeothermic animals (i.e., warm-blooded birds and mammals) living in areas with a colder climate are larger in body size (Bergmann’s rule). Protruding parts of the body (tails, ears, limbs, etc.) in this group of animals tend to be shorter in the northern species (Allen’s rule). Both these rules reflect adaptation to minimize heat loss under cold climatic conditions. The larger the volume/surface ratio, the lower the losses of heat, and hence the higher the advantages for life in a cold climate. In the south, in warm climate, this ratio should be minimized to increase heat losses and to prevent overheating of the organism. Some species of birds

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ADAPTATION and mammals do not conform to these rules because some of their morphological, ecological, and ethological features play a more important role than physical proportions in their thermoregulation. For example, the yak (Bos grunniens), acclimatized in Yakutia, uses its long and hairy tail as a “mattress” when lying on the snow. Similarly the sousliks are the most “longtailed”: they use their tails as a “blanket” during hibernation. Nevertheless, both the rules describe a general tendency, which cannot be a matter of chance. These trends have evolved independently in different taxonomic groups as an adaptation to similar environmental conditions. White coloration is a typical cryptic (i.e., hiding) coloration of northern animals (e.g., polar owls, polar bears, etc.). It makes the predator poorly visible to its prey and vice versa. In contrast to homeothermic animals, poikilothermic animals of the Arctic have poor self-thermoregulation. Hence, a better use of the external environment has higher value for these species. In many cases, individuals from northern populations of amphibians, reptiles, and insects are more dark-colored than those from the south. This concerns, for example, some reptiles that display a more frequent occurrence of melanism, that is, black coloration of the epidermis due to higher concentrations of dark pigment-containing cells, the melanophores (see Reptiles). A dark color ensures better heating of the organism by sunrays, which allows the animal to spend a shorter time basking for maintenance of its activity. The higher occurrence of melanism is also evident in highland populations of reptiles, where the environmental situation is somewhat similar to that in the Arctic. At the same time, other closely related vertebrates, fishes and amphibians, do not display a higher occurrence of melanism in the north. These animals are more connected to water bodies and/or a relatively high moisture of the terrestrial environment, and quick heating under direct sun may be rather harmful for them. Arctic plants also display parallel evolution of morphological adaptive features. Their cells have increased volume of the cytoplasm, more mitochondria, and better developed endoplasmatic reticulum. Arctic plants often contain increased amounts of carotenoid pigments. Probably, these substances of lipid character with unsaturated double bonds increase the flexibility of chloroplast membranes, which is very important at low temperatures. In severe cold, individual plants become smaller, and straight forms are transformed into creeping, prostrate, and cushionlike forms. Such stunted forms keep plants below the snow level in winter to avoid strong winds and desiccation, and in summer keep plants to a thin boundary layer where temperatures are warmest due to heat radiated

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from the soil. Pubescence (hairiness) is another adaptation that many Arctic plants use to maintain warm temperatures near the plants. The rosette form of many Arctic flowers (such as Dryas integrifolia and Papaver radicatum) and herbaceous leaves is thought to act as a solar reflector, to concentrate heat to the pollen and seed, aiding floral metabolism and the reproductive process.

Reproduction and Development The growing season is relatively short in the Arctic. Much of the biological activity is confined to one to two months in the High Arctic and three to four months in the Low Arctic. This causes the necessity of quick reproduction and development in most species during a short summer. Developmental peculiarities of plants are adapted to these severe conditions. Due to the short growing season, the full life cycle of a plant is extended through two to three seasons. Although the mass flowering of tundra plants, as well as the relatively short period from flowering to fruiting, creates an impression that the plants may perform their full life cycle during the short summer, these flowers originate from generative buds formed in the previous season. In addition, the formation of fruit in many species continues under snow. Nevertheless, when measured in active periods, this cycle takes only about five months, that is, about the same time as in the temperate belt. Amphibian embryos and larvae develop faster in the north than in the south. This allows them to finish transformation from the embryo to the terrestrial animal during a short activity period. The growth rate usually does not exceed that in the southern populations. In addition, embryos and larvae in northern amphibian populations seem to be more tolerant to cold and, in particular, to temporary freezing in the ice. This is important because of a frequent return of frosts in northern conditions. Adult animals grow slowly due to the short active season. The latter is conditioned by a relatively long hibernation, which results in increasing longevity (expressed in years) in northern poikilothermic terrestrial vertebrates. However, the life span expressed in activity seasons should be similar to that in more southern populations. A relatively long life cycle, late maturation, and slow growth are also typical for many freshwater fishes in the Arctic. Thus, we can see that the extension of life or its certain periods in some poikilothermic species in the Arctic is a result of only the extension of hibernation. There is also a tendency toward increasing fecundity in the northern populations of some vertebrates. A larger number of eggs in the clutch serve as “insurance” for unfavorable climatic conditions.

ADAPTATION The reproductive cycle of the above-mentioned eiders is highly adapted to the seasonality of Arctic nature. Pairs are formed even on the way to nesting sites. The female spends a large amount of fat, stored earlier, for nesting. The nestlings appear in late spring, and about two months later begin independent life. Probably, the broods that have not developed to autumn frosts die due to severe storms or early snow. The polar bear (Ursus Maritimus) tends to stay in the area of largest ice-holes and numerous marine mammals. Reproduction in this species corresponds to the migration of females to hibernacula. A pregnant female makes a den in the form of a large hole in thick snow mounds near an island coast. Probably the most suitable places are limited, because in some places dozens of dens exist every year. The female enters the den only in mid-November, when the latent stage is finished and the fertilized ovules start to develop. The process of embryonic development is adapted to the polar winter: the juveniles appear in the middle or at the end of winter. Reproductive migrations to special habitats are typical mainly for animals with a relatively low reproductive potential, requiring relatively narrow living conditions, that is, tending to k-strategy (i.e., low reproduction rate, investing energy in a few large offspring). Species tending to r-strategy (i.e., high birth rate, rapid population turnover) are not so dependent on their habitat in their reproductive mode. For example, common lemmings have low habitat requirements for reproduction and much higher fecundity, from three to nine juveniles per brood. Each female brings not less than three to four broods per year, and the juveniles attain sexual maturity probably by the beginning of their third month. At such an intensity of reproduction, the number of individuals may reach very high values during a short time, and the population density becomes very high. In this situation, the animals undergo distant migrations, caused by stress and directed to avoid significant competition. The animals try to cross rivers, lakes, etc., and mass mortality occurs in these migrations. Hence, the periodic peaks in population numbers take place. These different types of strategies, k-strategy and rstrategy, are directed to the same goal—species survival. They are typical for organisms in different environments, including those in the Arctic.

Feeding Feeding behavior within the same species may be different in the Arctic and elsewhere. However, these differences do not always reflect real adaptations of animals to Arctic conditions. For example, amphibians consume more aquatic prey in the north, but this

reflects only their spatial distribution (life near water bodies). On the other hand, tipulid mosquitoes in the Arctic display adaptive traits in feeding: an increase in energetic content of the food. Nonspecialized fishes with wide trophic spectra prevail at the extreme North, which may reflect the necessity of rapid changes from prey to prey under conditions of a low diversity of food resources (see Food Chains).

Spatial Distribution and Behavior The high seasonality of the Arctic environment causes two main pathways of seasonality in adaptations: hibernation and activity throughout the year. Hibernation is well developed not only in Arctic organisms but also in organisms in regions with a moderately severe winter. Hibernation is an adaptation to the scarcity of food and other resources. Some biochemical, cytological, ecological, and other changes occur in the organism before hibernation (see above). The lack of hibernation represents an alternative adaptation to the cold conditions. It may be subdivided into seasonal migrations, when animals avoid unfavorable conditions by moving to regions with better conditions, and activity in the same area. Migrations are very typical: the majority of Arctic birds migrate southwards in winter and then move back to the Arctic. These migrations are aimed at avoiding mainly the unfavorable conditions of feeding, temperature, and breeding. Many animals remain active in the Arctic winter. These are homeothermic animals (birds and mammals), which are capable of feeding and breeding in winter due to adaptations in biochemistry, physiology, morphology, and behavior as described above. Some adaptations are displayed in peculiarities of spatial distribution and behavior of species. For example, fattening and fattening-spawning migrations into floodplain systems of lower reaches of rivers, spawning migrations into upper reaches of rivers, etc. are typical for freshwater fishes. Migrations are also typical for marine fishes, a majority of Arctic birds, and many mammal species. They are conditioned mainly by the necessity of reproduction or fattening in appropriate seasons of the year. Sharp seasonality and scarcity of suitable habitats cause complicated behavioral patterns in some species. For example, male sandpipers Calidris melanotos, after their arrival, occupy certain territories and defend them from individuals of the same species, which confines the size of nesting groups. The size of defending territories corresponds to the amount and spatial distribution of food resources necessary for the growth and development of nestlings. In spring, the males of C. melanotos form pairs at certain times (about five days) with two,

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ADOPTION sometimes three, females. The broods appear in the same sequence. Imaginal stages of the mosquitoes from the family Chironomidae represent the main food of the nestlings. The mass appearance of these mosquitoes usually takes not less than three weeks. At the time of the second brood, nestlings from the first brood transfer to the “adult” food spectrum. This sequence allows birds to maximize the use of nestling food resources and use the breeding season most efficiently. In addition, parents lead their nestlings to places with a maximum concentration of food, which is necessary for the rapid growth of the nestlings. Another adaptation to maximize food resource use is the ability of birds from the family Alcidae (auks) to form large breeding aggregations on maritime rocks. Such colonies sometimes number millions of individuals. They are formed by several species in the zone of formation of polar ocean fronts, where cool Arctic waters meet warmer southern currents. Plankton and fish are very abundant there, and bird feces fertilize the sea, increasing its biological productivity and in turn enhancing the food resources of the birds. Polar foxes and predatory birds follow the large aggregations of lemmings, and their fecundity increases in years of a high concentration of prey, which causes corresponding peaks of the population number of predatory animals (however, somewhat shifted in time from those of the prey). Short migrations are typical for the muskox (Ovibos moschatus). In wintertime it stays on plateaus, where the snow is blown off by wind, and scarce vegetation constitutes available food. In summer, the animals prefer areas with richer plants, that is, river valleys and maritime terraces covered with tundra. Some adaptive traits are also evident in the spatial distribution of the Arctic plant cover. Productivity of tundras and swamps is less dependent on the intensity of illumination than that of meadows, and the carbon turnover there is more closed. This is connected with a wider distribution of tundras in the Arctic. SERGIUS L. KUZMIN See also Hibernation Further Reading Bliss, L.C., G.M. Courtin, D.L. Pattie, R.R. Riewe, D.W.A. Whitfield & P. Widden, “Arctic tundra ecosystems.” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 4 (1973): 359–399 Chen, L., A.L. DeVries & C.-H.C. Cheng, “Convergent evolution of antifreeze glycoproteins in Antarctic notothenioid fish and Arctic cod.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 94 (1997): 3817–3822 Danks, H.V., “Insect cold hardiness: a Canadian perspective.” CryoLetters, 21 (2000): 297–308 Grant, V., The Origin of Adaptations, New York: Columbia University Press, 1963

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Krupnik, I.L., Arctic Adaptations, Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1993 Martin, Yu.L., N.V. Matveeva, T.H. Piin, V.E. Semenova & Yu.I. Chernov (editors), Adaptation of Organisms to the Arctic Environments, Tallinn: Academy of Sciences of the Estonian SSR and Academy of Sciences of the USSR Publ., 1984 (in Russian) Römisch, K. & T. Matheson, “Cell biology in the Antarctic: studying life in the freezer.” Nature Cell Biology, 4 (2003): 3–6 Shvarts, S.S. & V.G. Ishchenko, Puti Prisposobleniya Nazemnykh Pozvonochnykh Zhivotnykh k Usloviyam Sushchestvovaniya v Subarktike 3 Zemnovodnye [The Ways of Adaptation of Terrestrial Vertebrate Animals to the Subarctic Conditions 3 Amphibians], Sverdlovsk: Inst. Plant and Anim. Ecol. Uralian Sci. Center of USSR Acad. Sci. Publ., 1971 (in Russian) Solomonov, N.G. (editor), Adaptatsiya Zhivotnykh k Kholodu [Adaptation of Animals to Cold], Novosibirsk, 1990 (in Russian) Vorobyeva, E.I. (editor), The Siberian Newt (Salamandrella keyserlingii Dybowski, 1870): Ecology, Behaviour, Conservation, Moscow: Nauka, 1995 (in Russian)

ADOPTION Child adoption is a central element of the customary social organization of a number of Arctic peoples, including Canadian, Alaskan and Greenlandic Inuit, and Yupiit. This appears to have been so when the first written accounts of northern peoples were produced. While absolute frequencies are unavailable in the historical record, and variable across space, time, and ethnicity, it would seem that between 20% and 40% of children were not primarily socialized by their biological parents. This is not to say that they did not have contact with them; in many cases they lived with them, rather they were raised by and were socially recognized as being the children of other people. Almost all families participate in adoption by giving and/or receiving children. Adoption then is a fundamental feature of exchange in these societies. In Canada, where most of the material on the subject has appeared, the frequency and uniqueness of adoption practices have been reported in almost all major ethnographies since the late 19th century. As a characteristic feature of Inuit family structure, adoption has generally been explained as an adaptive strategy to create and maintain broad, situationally available networks of allies through fictive and quasibiological kinship ties. In more recent decades, adoption practices have come under the purview of health and social services organizations, in some cases under indigenous control. The tendency in these instances has been to see the frequency of adoption as a structural response to high reproductive success, particularly among young women, and as a general indicator of other kinds of social problems. There are important

ADOPTION repercussions of these views on the persistence of customary adoption, on how parents giving a child in adoption interpret their decisions, and on how adoptees view themselves within their family networks. Of course, there are other factors reshaping the meaning of adoption in the contemporary Arctic. Today in Nunavik and Nunavut, roughly one-third of children are categorized as adopted in official statistics. A large proportion of this group is accounted for in intergenerational adoption arrangements, where the mother of the birth mother or the biological father will assume responsibility for the child. People who are infertile also have regular access to children through adoption during their life span. Adults of any age may adopt children, and many families include a mixture of adopted and biological children. An emphasis in these cases is balancing the gender ratio of children within the family. Adoptive parents are generally older than the biological parents and in many cases are “elders” who are in their postreproductive years. Adoption between alternate generations ensures that the knowledge and life experience of older people are passed on to the young, thereby providing a backbone of cultural continuity in a rapidly changing society. This is particularly important in contemporary communities where young adults and middle-aged people may have less time to spend in traditional activities with children because of employment and other obligations. Men are generally less involved than women in child rearing and, hence, decision making around adoption. Both adoptive mothers and fathers consider adopted children as equal to biological progeny. In some cases, they may think of them as “special,” particularly when the child demonstrates happiness with the adoptive parents. The identity of the birth parents is general knowledge in community life and not considered as privileged or stigmatizing information. Children learn of their adoption through everyday conversation with family members. Adoption practices are grounded in a culturally modulated understanding of child development. In this view, personality is carried through the name given a child, almost always that of an extant or recently deceased community member. Through physical maturation, the social persona of the namesake reemerges in the child. Kinship terms appropriate to the namesake are often employed when talking or referring to the child. The behavior of an infant indicates the child’s acceptance of the arrangement made between the biological and adoptive parents. An important element of this process is the first time a child calls the adoptive parents “anaana” and “ataata” (mother and father, respectively). These are clear indications that the child consents to being adopted

and is happy with the arrangement. In some cases, a child may return to the biological parents or another family. In Inuit society, kinship is figured bilaterally with no systematic locality preference. Adoption arrangements involving biological kin tend to favor the matrilineal, although this is by no means exclusive. Social kinship networks are broad and forged in a number of cultural practices that create special bonds among individuals and between groups. Adoption arrangements strongly favor preexisting networks of social kinship. The distinction between biological and social kin, while recognized, is not particularly important in Inuit social organization, a factor that also accommodates adoption. A basic difficulty in understanding Inuit adoption comes from the categorical distinctions the term carries in Western society. Consequently, it is necessary to distinguish customary from bureaucratically defined adoption. A concise definition of the former has not been determined, and would likely vary across the Arctic. Regardless, important distinctions are made between fosterage, temporary or semipermanent residency with senior family members, situational requirements for relatively long-term residency (i.e., illness of the biological parent or parents), and true adoption. In some cases, children living in one of the alternate forms of residency would become adopted gradually over time yet maintain close relations with the biological parents. Thus, in its cultural context, adoption may be seen as part of a continuum of residency and kinship relationships. Bureaucratically defined adoption is grounded in child welfare and youth protection legislation dictated by the legal and social norms of the state. These classify kinship in a discrete system of categories that require the involvement of unrelated people, frequently from a different cultural background, to formalize. A basic feature of this system is the abrogation of the rights of biological parents when an adoption occurs. In practical terms, Inuit adoptees and their families find some advantage in formalizing customary kinship relations through the legal system. Without such definition, they face difficulties in gaining family benefits, passports, and access to other rights of citizenship. The customary adoption process is consequently subject to conflicting norms of what constitutes appropriate care for children. CHRISTOPHER FLETCHER See also Elders; Kinship; Naming Further Reading Fienup-Riordan, Ann, Hunting Tradition in a Changing World, New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London: Rutgers University Press, 2000

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AGREEMENT ON THE CONSERVATION OF POLAR BEARS Guemple, Lee, Inuit Adoption, National Museum of Man Mercury Series No. 47, Canadian Ethnology Service, 1979 Morrow, Phyllis & Mary C. Pete, “Cultural adoption on trial: cases from Southwestern Alaska.” Law and Anthropology, 8 (1996): 243–259 Rasmussen, Knud, The Netsilik Eskimos: Social Life and Spiritual Culture, Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921–1924, Volume VIII, No. 1–2, Gyldendalske Boghandel: Nordisk Forlag, 1931 ———, Intellectual Culture of the Copper Eskimos, Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921–1924, Volume IX, Gyldendalske Boghandel: Nordisk Forlag, 1932 Rousseau, Jerome, L’Adoption Chez les Esquimaux Tununermiut, Travaux Divers 28, Québec: Centre d’Études Nordiques, Université Laval, 1970 Saladin d’Anglure, Bernard, “Enfants Nomades au Pays des Inuit Iglulik.” Anthropologie et Sociétés, 12(2) (1988): 125–166

AGREEMENT ON THE CONSERVATION OF POLAR BEARS In response to the decline of polar bear populations due to overharvesting worldwide, representatives from five nations (Canada, Denmark, Norway, the Soviet Union, and the United States) met in Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1965 at the First International Scientific Meeting on the Polar Bear. Representatives from the five countries reviewed existing data on polar bears and determined that the harvest levels were high and likely increasing. Between 1965 and 1973, extensive negotiations were conducted to ensure international cooperation on the conservation of polar bears. Worldwide awareness and attention to environmental conservation was especially conducive to the implementation of strict conservation measures during the 1970s. In 1973, the five contracting parties (countries) wrote the Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears. The Agreement came into effect on May 26, 1976, after the third nation ratified it. All parties had ratified the Agreement by 1978. It was unanimously reaffirmed in 1981 and remains in effect today. The Agreement is nonbinding and consists of ten articles that outline conservation and management directions for polar bears in general terms. The Agreement represented one of the first international initiatives to include ecological principles by calling for the protection of the ecosystems upon which polar bears depend, and specifically the protection of special habitat components. The Agreement allowed for the taking (i.e., hunting, killing, and capturing) of polar bears for scientific and conservation purposes, in order to protect other resources, for harvest by local people using traditional methods, or where people had a tradition of hunting polar bears. The Agreement was designed not to alienate any particular jurisdiction. All signatories recog-

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nized that they may want to harvest polar bears, but all agreed that it should be done with conservation as a priority. Interpretations of the Agreement pertaining to the meaning of the language (“taking”) varied among nations. Norway interpreted the Agreement in the strictest sense, and decided they had no local people in their Arctic areas and stopped all harvesting in 1973 with no resumption to date. Canada and the United States have continued hunting polar bears within the context of largely restricting harvests to indigenous people. The Soviet Union (today Russia), in response to concerns of declining populations, had already halted hunting almost two decades earlier in 1956. The Agreement further restricted harvest methods by encouraging nations to prohibit the use of aircraft and large motorized vessels. These guidelines were largely aimed at ending the use of aeroplanes for polar bear sports hunts in Alaska and the ship-based sports hunting in Norway. The Canadian interpretation of the Agreement allowed guided sports hunting as a token proportion of the total harvest. Guided sports hunts are led by indigenous people and are based from dog sledges. The Agreement included measures to protect denning areas, feeding sites, and migration areas. However, a number of the conservation procedures outlined in the Agreement were already well in place long before 1973. The high-density denning area on Kong Karls Land Polar Bear Reserve in Svalbard, Norway, was established in 1939. Further, in 1949, the Government of the Northwest Territories, Canada, restricted the hunting of polar bears to predominantly indigenous peoples who held general hunting licenses. In the United States, the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 had resulted in the prohibition of all marine mammal takes, including polar bears, with some exceptions for native harvest. Thus, many of the key tenants of the Agreement were in place by 1973. The Agreement benefited from the existing conservation measures and meant that implementation created less disruption; it has been useful in supporting conservation measures such as the protection of new denning areas (e.g., Wapusk National Park, Canada). However, in other areas, the intent of the Agreement has been neglected. The issue of feeding sites and migration patterns have largely been ignored in most jurisdictions. Almost 30 years after the creation of the Agreement, little evidence of concrete action in the protection of marine habitats for polar bears exists. The lack of action in marine-protected areas in part stems from difficulties associated with delineating special sites because the bears range over vast geographical areas. The Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears states that the contracting parties shall conduct

AINANA, LYUDMILA national research programs to aid conservation and management; Article VII of the Agreement states that each nation is to manage polar bears based on the “best available scientific data” and nations have striven to achieve this goal. The most vigorous polar bear research has arisen as a result of the Agreement and includes data regarding population estimates, harvest monitoring, and sustainable harvest levels. However, in some situations, no data are the best data available, and some populations are managed and harvested without an adequate understanding of population size. In some jurisdictions, even the level of harvest remains unknown, but efforts are continuously ongoing to ameliorate the situation. In 1968, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a body under the jurisdiction of the United Nations, established the Polar Bear Specialist Group, which meets every three to four years. Each participating party contributes up to three specialists to the group. The Polar Bear Specialist Group consists of government scientists and managers with input from specialists from universities and elsewhere. The Group serves no regulatory function for the Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears but fulfills the intent of Articles VII and VIII, which state that research shall be coordinated among parties, consultation shall occur for the management of migrating populations, and research and management results shall be exchanged with the objective of providing further protection to polar bears. The Agreement has been effective because resource users and those involved in research and management were committed to finding a solution to improve polar bear conservation. Liberal interpretation of the Agreement by each nation has permitted flexibility in application and ease of compliance, which has resulted in the Agreement being one of the oldest conservation treaties in existence. ANDREW E. DEROCHER See also Marine Mammal Hunting; Marine Mammal Protection Act; Polar Bear

Further Reading Baur, D.C., “Reconciling polar bear protection under United States laws and the International Agreement for the Conservation of Polar Bears.” Animal Law, 2 (1996): 9–99 Fikkan, A., “Polar bears—hot topic in cold climate.” International Challenges, 10 (1990): 32–38 Fikkan, A., G. Osherenko & A. Arikainen, “Polar Bears: The Importance of Simplicity.” In Polar Politics: Creating International Environmental Regimes, edited by Oran R. Young & Gail Osherenko, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993 Freeman, M.R., “Polar Bears and Whales: Contrasts in International Wildlife Regimes.” In Issues in the North, edit-

ed by J. Oakes, Riewe R Occasional Publication No. 40, Edmonton, Alberta: Canadian Circumpolar Institute, 1996 Lentfer, J., “Agreement on conservation of polar bears.” Polar Record, 17 (1974): 327–330 Prestrud, P.& I. Stirling, “The International Polar Bear Agreement and the current status of polar bear conservation.” Aquatic Mammals, 20(3) (1994): 113–124

AINANA, LYUDMILA Lyudmila Ainana (Aynganga) is a leader of the Asian Eskimos, chairperson of Yupik (the Eskimo organization of Yupiget in Chukotka), and a member of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) executive committee. Ainana belongs to the Ungazigmit tribe. Ainana is one of the few modern representatives of Asian Eskimos who has a perfect command of her native language and a deep and rich knowledge of the traditional lifestyle of her people. During the 1990s, Ainana headed the campaign of Eskimos for the conservation of their language, cultural traditions, and the environment of the indigenous people of Chukotka. In 1994—2000, she served as director of one of the Russian-American programs for the investigation of indigenous whaling in Chukotka. In her activities, Ainana relies on long-term collaboration with scholars, biologists, linguists, and social anthropologists. Ainana has authored and coauthored a number of scientific publications on marine mammals of the Bering Strait, and also textbooks on the Eskimo language (Chaplino dialect). She currently resides in the town of Provideniya.

Biography Lyudmila Ainana (Aynganga) was born in 1934 in the old whaling center Ungazik (Old Chaplino) in southeastern Chukotka Peninsula. Ainana graduated from the Pedagogical Institute in Leningrad. She then returned to Chukotka and taught the Russian language and literature and the Eskimo language to schoolchildren. LYUDMILA BOGOSLOVSKAYA TRANSLATED BY PETR ALEINIKOV See also Eskimo; Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC); Yupik Eskimo Society of Chukotka Further Reading Bogoslovskaya, L.S., Okhotniki Beringova proliva. Jour. Vokrug Sveta, # 6, 1989, s. 36–42 [The Hunters of the Bering Strait. In Around the World, # 6, pp. 36–42] Krupnik, I.I., Pust govoryat nashi stariki. Rasskazy aziatskikh eskimosov-yupik. Zapisi 1975–1987, Moscow: Institut Naslediya, 2000, 528 s [Let Our Old People Speak. The Stories by Asiatic Yupik Eskimos. Records of 1975–1987, Moscow: Institute of Heritage, 528pp.]

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AINU

AINU The Ainu are the indigenous people of Japan. Ainu means both “human” and “us.” The predecessors of the Ainu have lived in the Ezo (present-day Hokkaido) region, the Kuril Islands, and Sakhalin Island for thousands of years. Archaeological finds suggest that the Ainu likely developed from interaction with four significant cultures over a wide span of time: Epi-Jomon (250 BCE– 700 CE), Okhotsk (600–1000 CE), Satsumon (700–1200 CE), and Japanese (Walker, 2001). As early as the 12th century, Japanese accounts categorized the Ainu as Emishi, another people living on Ezo whom the Japanese considered uncultured and coarse outcasts. The first Japanese census of the Ainu people in the early 19th century described them based upon the place from where they came. The Japanese named them the Hokkaido, Kuril, and Sakhalin Ainu. The Ainu population estimates from 1807 to 1931 indicated a steady decline. In 1807, the population count was 26,256; in 1822, 23,563; in 1854, 17,810; in 1873, 16,272; in 1903, 17,873; and in 1931, 15,969 (Walker, 2001). The marked decrease from 1822 to 1931 was attributed primarily to diseases such as smallpox, measles, and influenza. Kinship was sex determined, with males belonging to the father’s clan and females belonging to the mother’s clan. Therefore, brothers and sisters belonged to different clans with different designated obligations and allegiances. Clan membership was granted at the age of puberty, signified by a tattoo and a ceremonial belt. Land was inherited by the first son based upon one’s male ancestor or forefather. The Ainu possess an animist spirituality, believing that everything, even inanimate objects, contains life and spirit. These spirits are known as kamuy, or gods visiting the earthly world. The Ainu believe in nature, animal, plant, and object gods that exist in symbiosis with humans. They trust that the gods will assist humans and therefore must be appreciated in return. For the Ainu, it is appropriate to send kamuy back to their world through prayer and gift-giving. Some argue that the sending ceremony (iyomante) for bears represents the crux of Ainu spirituality and celebrates the return of the bear’s spirit to the spirit world. Death is perceived as a separation of body and soul. The tangible body remains in this world, and the transcendent soul goes to the other world where it is met by ancestors and lives a life similar to this world. The other world exists underground, as a reflection, with the same characteristics except in reversed space and time. Traditionally, the Ainu hunted, fished, gathered, and engaged in subsistence farming. They also vigorously traded and forged alliances with their neighbors. Fishing and hunting were the Ainu’s main sources of

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subsistence. The Ainu built villages by the sea or by rivers for convenient access to salmon and trout. Each village or individual had designated river-fishing territory where no outsiders could fish. The Ainu engaged in sea fishing for tuna and swordfish, and hunting marine mammals using 3–4 m boats. They hunted between late autumn and early summer for bear, Ezo deer, fox, rabbit, and wild birds such as white-tailed sea eagles. The Ainu practiced subsistence agriculture, supplementing other economic activities. Women usually planted crops such as wheat, buckwheat, and Chinese and foxtail millet. Crops such as Japanese radish, cucumber, leek, and pumpkin were introduced in the Tokugawa era (1603–1868). Potatoes were introduced to Ainu agriculture in 1798 with Japanese influence. Until the 17th century, the Ainu boasted a robust trading relationship with the Russians and held their own against Japanese incursions into Ezo. Under the Tokugawa government, however, the Matsumae dynasty (1599–1868) exerted monopoly over trade with the Ainu. The Matsumae partitioned Hokkaido in order to increase its control of trade, which proved extremely disadvantageous for the Ainu. They were forced to trade exclusively with the Matsumae, at the dynasty’s behest, eliminating any opportunity for the Ainu to trade freely. Hokkaido was further subdivided as followers of the dynasty were granted monopoly over trade. The Ainu relationship with the Wajin (the Ainu designation for the Japanese) intensified. Realizing trade was a limited resource, the Matsumae hired merchants to develop fishing grounds. They, in turn, hired Ainu as cheap labor. The Ainu people lost control of their trading economy and territory and sacrificed much of their freedom as they were forced to labor for their livelihood. Some women were forced into sexual slavery. The Ainu were important intermediaries among Japanese, Dutch, Chinese, Russian, Manchurian, and Korean markets. As these states developed through trade, especially Japan, the Ainu became redundant trading partners, eventually becoming indentured workers in the coastal fishing towns of Hokkaido. The situation worsened in 1868 when the Japanese government undertook modernization and expansion policies, encouraged Japanese farmers to settle in Hokkaido, and prevented the Ainu from observing their traditional customs. The Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act, a Japanese parliamentary legislation enacted in 1899, aimed to assimilate the Ainu. The Japanese had been colonizing Hokkaido since modernization began in 1868. Ainu traditional economies, and the land and waterways they utilized were transformed into agricultural land for colonial settlers. By the 1880s, the

AIR ROUTES Japanese settler population outnumbered the Ainu population. Hastening economic assimilation, Ainu were granted small plots of land. If they refused to cultivate the land, it would be taken away from them, resulting in further Japanese economic control. Even before the Tokugawa period, the Japanese differentiated themselves from the Ainu, considering them barbaric. During the 19th century, Europeaninfluenced Darwinism, revolving around concepts of race and racial inferiority of the Ainu, influenced this discourse, reinforcing the denigration of Ainu according to racial and cultural stereotypes. Changing policies led the Japanese to assimilate the Ainu into Japanese hegemony. By the late 20th century, the Japanese considered the Ainu assimilated. Since the 1960s, similar to other indigenous groups around the world, the Ainu have denied assimilation and fought for recognition as indigenous peoples for rights to resources and political power (Siddle, 1996). The Japanese government recognized the Ainu as a minority group under UN Article 27 in 1991 but denied them status as aboriginal people. In March 1997, the Sapporo District Court awarded the Ainu recognition as an indigenous people of Japan and granted them protection for their aboriginal culture. This cleared the way for the Japanese Diet to pass the Act on the Encouragement of Ainu Culture and the Diffusion and Enlightenment of Knowledge on Ainu Tradition on May 8, 1997. The Ainu continue to fight for political recognition, and for the ability to control their social, cultural, economic, and political development. AILEEN A. ESPIRITU See also Bear Ceremonialism Further Reading The Ainu Museum website: http://www.ainu-museum.or.jp/ english/english.html Fitzhugh, William W. & Chisato O. Dubreil (editors), Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999 Siddle, Richard, Race, Resistance and the Ainu of Japan, London: Routledge, 1996 Walker, Brett L., The Conquest of Ainu Lands, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001

AIR ROUTES Early attempts to fly nonstop across the North Atlantic are described in the entry Trans-Arctic Air Route. By the start of World War II, most flights across the Atlantic were military, but these were of enormous importance for the mapping of the Arctic. The flying, especially in Greenland, and the establishment of weather stations revolutionized the reliability of weather forecasts over the Arctic seas. The idea of a

northern air route remained vivid, but in 1939 it was concluded that it would be some years before there could be a realistic passenger service connecting Europe and central USA. However, the loss of shipping to submarines in World War II increased pressure to develop trans-Atlantic trials into a more reliable route for supplies. In 1941, airports were constructed in Greenland by the Americans. Among them, especially Kangerlussuaq (Søndre Strømfjord) and Narsarsuaq were important. An air bridge between America and Europe on the Great Circle route was thereby established, and the military infrastructure could subsequently be used for civilian flights. After the war new Arctic air routes were discussed. The controversy between the United States and Denmark over sovereignty of Greenland and the continuing presence of US air bases meant that Denmark wanted flights from Copenhagen to Greenland but had no interest in air routes linking Greenland to New York. The Greenlandic air route system became disconnected, a one-way stretch. The North Atlantic Great Circle air route continued, but via Keflavik in Iceland and direct from England to Gander in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. These routes provided a growth source in both Iceland and Newfoundland. The routes are still in use but, since technology has improved so that planes could carry more fuel and the polar route became possible, their importance has diminished. Iceland managed to change business focus to link the capitals of the European continent primarily to New York, which has proven to be profitable, while Gander in Canada lost importance. The major technical breakthrough in passenger transport that changed the market took place in 1952 when SAS (Scandinavian Airlines System) started to fly passengers to California via Thule in Greenland. It was, at that time, a 24-h flight, with a 2-h stopover at Thule. In 1956, SAS set a new distance record for commercial airlines by flying 6005 miles nonstop from Los Angeles to Stockholm, Sweden, again following the Great Circle route over Greenland. Transport by air via Thule in Greenland could save distance and fuel in future and give the Arctic a more central role in the air route system. However, the recent powerful ideas on a new American military defense system will be a hindrance for plans of that nature. For Alaska it was the proximity to Japan that counted. Fort Richardson was established in Anchorage in 1940, and the construction of the Elmendorf Air Base started the same year. With the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Alaska obtained a key position in the American military defense system. The AlaskaCanada Highway was constructed in eight months in 1942, and additional army and navy bases were built. During the war the US federal government spent more than one billion dollars in Alaska and the size of the

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AKUREYRI population doubled. The infrastructure built during the war was an asset after the war. The systems were interconnected and reliable and became a solid base both for economic development and for Anchorage achieving the position as the only real transport hub in the Arctic. Air routes within the Soviet Arctic developed with Moscow as a hub, a one-dimensional approach as between Copenhagen and Greenland. This was also the case for Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Canada. Only Iceland manages really to escape the one-dimensional approach, by building on the North Atlantic air route idea and combining it with big European cities. Cross-border Arctic air routes are few. From Anchorage in Alaska there are routes to Russia and Canada. From Greenland to Canada there is the route from Nuuk to Iqaluit (Frobisher Bay) in Nunavut. The route from Reykjavík to Halifax, although further south, is important as Halifax has a hub position. Present-day air routes have, by and large, the structure as developed during World War II and the first years after the war. The Cold War further limited potential development of circumpolar air routes, as the Russian Arctic was closed to international aircraft and there were no flights between the United States and Russia across the Bering Strait. From 1998, Russia began to allow over-the-pole flights to test east-west circumpolar air routes. From 2002, it opened up these polar air routes to commercial flights. The shorter route between North America and Asia offers significant time savings, and the polar Siberian route is now the key to cost-efficient air routes between North America and the Far East such as Chicago to Hong Kong or Beijing. Future air freight carriers would need a refueling stop in Russia. It is possible today to go to most Arctic places by air, either by ordinary air routes or by charter (“bush plane”). Helicopters also play an important role in air transport. The Sikorsky S-61 has almost had a legendary position, and some are still in use in Greenland for passenger transport. The drawback is that air routes are costly. This is, to a large degree, the result of a structure where most destinations are spokes, thus the lack of being able to reengineer and redesign the logistic system in the Arctic. Air routes are served by international airlines. Most of the destinations fly one major national airline plus a few minor ones. The competitive level in air transport is low in most destinations. LISE LYCK See also Trans-Arctic Air Route; Transport Further Reading Hanson Jr., Edward R. & David Jensen, “Over the top: flying the polar routes.” Aviation Today, April 2002

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AKUREYRI The town of Akureyri is situated in northeast Iceland, on the longest fjord in the country, Eyjafjörður. It is surrounded by mountains reaching a height of 1000–1500 m. The mountain closest to the town is called Hlíðarfjall, where there is a ski resort. The river Glerá runs through the town, and by its mouth there is a sandbank, Oddeyri. The northerly position of Akureyri has had considerable influence on the community that has sprung up there. Akureyri is about 40 km south of the Arctic Circle, but on summer days the temperature can reach 25°C. Winters, however, bring heavy snowfall and cold weather, with calm and still weather also common. Despite the geographical isolation, there has always been contact with the outside world, initially through trade and then through export, chiefly of seafood products. The natural harbor at Akureyri is one of the best in Iceland. The first permanent inhabitants of Eyjafjörður were Helgi magri (Helgi the Lean) and his wife Þórunn, who settled there around 900. A polytheist, Helgi lived at the farm of Kristnes (Christ’s peninsula) but also worshipped pagan deities. The history of the town is very closely linked to trade and services. Trade began in Akureyri in the 16th century, but it was not until 1777 that merchants began living there all year round. At the end of the 18th century, the town had ten inhabitants, all Danish traders. In 1862, Akureyri was granted municipal rights. By then, the population had risen to around 300. Gránufélagið, an Icelandic trading company, was established at the Oddeyri harbor. A more durable trading company was the KEA (Kaupfélag Eyfirðinga Akureyri) cooperative society, which is still a stronghold of trade there. Presently, Akureyri is the largest community outside the capital area of Reykjavík, with around 15,000 inhabitants. Akureyri is the center of trade and services in northern Iceland and its economic life is varied. Two of the most powerful fishing companies in Iceland, Útgerðarfélag Akureyringa and Samherji, have their headquarters in Akureyri. Herring salting used to be the town’s main industry, but now the emphasis has shifted to trawling, canning, and freezing larger fish. Akureyri received its own printing press in 1852, and since then many newspapers and journals have been published there. In the 1990s, attempts were made to run a national daily, Dagur, from Akureyri, but failed. A college was founded in the town in 1928, and in 1987 Akureyri acquired its own university, which has steadily expanded since then. Also located in Akureyri is the Stefansson Arctic Institute (SAI), which was established in 1998 and operates under the

ALASKA auspices of the Icelandic Ministry for the Environment. It bears the name of explorer and anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who studied Inuit culture in Canada and Alaska. Some of the roles of the SAI are to promote sustainable development in northern areas, strengthen Icelandic participation in international endeavors in this field, and facilitate and coordinate Arctic research in Iceland. Two of the Arctic Council’s secretariats are located in Akureyri— CAFF (Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna) and PAME (Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment)—and the town has a growing reputation for hosting workshops, conferences, and lectures on Arctic issues. There are museums devoted to the wellknown author of children’s books, Nonni (Jón Sveinsson, 1857–1944), and the poets Matthías Jochumsson (1835–1920) and Davíð Stefánsson (1895–1964). Akureyri is also known for its beautiful botanical garden. The most northerly golf course in the world is located in Akureyri. Every June there is an international competition—the Arctic Open—which attracts overseas players. The competition has gained attention overseas because competitors play through the night in the midnight sun. SVERRIR JAKOBSSON See also Arctic Council Further Reading Einarsson, Hallgrímur, Akureyri 1895–1930. Ljósmyndir, Reykjavík, 1982 Guðmundsson, Pálmi & Rafn Kjartansson, Akureyri. The Town by the Fjord, Reykjavík, 1992 Hjaltason, Jón, Saga Akureyrar, 3 volumes, Akureyri, 1990–2000 Jónsson, Klemens, Saga Akureyrar, Akureyri, 1948 Schmid, Max & Tómas Ingi Olrich, Akureyri. A Northern Haven, Reykjavík: Iceland Review, 1984 Steindórsson, Steindór, Akureyri. Höfu›borg hins bjarta nor›urs, Reykjavík, 1993

ALASKA Land and Resources Alaska is the only state of the United States that is situated in the North Polar Region. Located in the extreme northwest of North America, Alaska occupies the continent’s largest peninsula and is subcontinental in size. As befits its vast extent, Alaska is a land of great diversity, with climate zones ranging from tundra to temperate rainforest. About one-third of the landmass is situated within the Arctic Circle. Alaska’s area is 1,530,700 sq km (591,004 sq mi), or about 16% of

the United States’ total land area, and the state has 10,686 km (6640 mi) of coastline. The maximum N-S distance is 2285 km (1420 mi) and that for E-W is 3639 km (2261 mi). Alaska’s only land borders are with British Columbia and the Yukon Territory in Canada; the state is separated from the 48 conterminous United States by Canadian territory. Alaska’s coast is bounded by the Arctic Ocean, Bering Strait, Bering Sea, Pacific Ocean, and Gulf of Alaska as well as smaller bodies such as Bristol Bay, Cook Inlet, Norton Sound, and Kotzebue Sound. Much of the state is mountainous, and major mountain ranges include the Alaska Range, Brooks Range, St Elias Mountains, Boundary Range, Wrangell Mountains, and Chugach Mountains. The highest peak, Denali (Mt McKinley) (6194 m/20,320 ft), is located in the Alaska Range near the center of the state and is the highest point in North America. Alaska contains the 11 highest peaks in the United States. Alaska’s islands and island groups include the Alexander Archipelago, with over 1000 islands in the southeast of the state; Kodiak Island; the Aleutian chain, which spans 1100 mi and consists of 14 large islands (of which Unimak, Unalaska, and Umnak are the largest) and numerous smaller islands and islets as well as active volcanoes; and the Bering Sea islands including St Lawrence, St Matthew, Nunivak, the Pribilofs, and Little Diomede Island. Alaska’s major rivers include the Yukon, Kuskowim, Porcupine, Tanana, Koyukuk, Copper, Colville, Susitna, and Matanuska. Alaska is subject to large earthquakes, the largest of which took place in 1964, destroying parts of the city of Anchorage and other towns and measuring 8.4 on the Richter scale. Alaska contains abundant natural resources, the presence of which has prompted much recent settlement and exploitation. Important fish resources include salmon, cod, pollock, herring, halibut, and crab. Forest resources are also important and are concentrated in the southeast part of the state. Agricultural resources and agricultural potential are more limited, but some cooler growing vegetables as well as dairy cattle are produced in some areas, especially those adjacent to the larger cities of Anchorage and Fairbanks. Alaska has a wide variety of mineral resources, including zinc, lead, silver, gold, copper, molybdenum, and coal, as well as sand and gravel. Petroleum resources, including oil and natural gas, are especially significant. Alaska is the nation’s largest oil producer, primarily from oilfields around Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope. Hydropower potential is enormous but is largely untapped at present. Most power generation in the state is from the burning of diesel and coal to generate electric power.

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ALASKA

Main cities, rivers, mountains ranges, and islands in Alaska.

Climate Alaska may be divided into six basic climate regions. The south coastal and southeast Alaska region and the Aleutian Islands have a wet and temperate climate, with rainfall between 1525 and 4065 mm (60–160 in) per year and temperatures between 4°C and 16°C (40–60°F) during summer and −7°C and 4°C (20–40°F) during winter. In south and southeast Alaska this climate supports temperate rainforest, whereas the Aleutian Islands are mainly grassland. The Bering Sea coast is slightly cooler, with temperatures between 4°C and 16°C (40–60°F) during summer and −23°C and −7°C (−10°F to 20°F) during winter. The southern part of this region is modified by the Pacific Ocean while the northern part shows an Arctic Ocean influence. The Interior Basin of Alaska, around the Anchorage area, has a relatively moderate climate similar to that of the south and southeast coast, only drier, with a normal rainfall in Anchorage of around 380 mm (15 in) per year. The Central Plains of Alaska experience a continental climate, with wide seasonal extremes of

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temperature, from 7°C to 24°C (45–75°F) in summer and −34°C to −23°C (−30°F to −10°F) in winter. Summer temperatures can often reach 32°C (90°F) in this region. Rainfall is similar to that of the Interior Basin. Alaska’s remaining climates are those of mountain areas, where conditions vary greatly, and the North Slope on the Arctic Ocean, where summer temperatures can range from 2°C to 13°C (35–55°F) during summer and from −29°C to −21°C (−20°F to −5°F) during winter. The North Slope receives only about 130 mm (5 in) of precipitation per year and most of it remains on the ground as snow for up to eight months.

Flora and Fauna Alaska’s many bioregions contain a wide variety of animal and plant species. The evergreen forests of south coastal and southeast Alaska contain Western hemlock, Sitka spruce, red cedar, Alaska yellow cedar, lodgepole pine, mountain hemlock, black cottonwood, and alder. Bush alder, wild currants, salmonberry, huckleberry, skunk cabbage, bog laurel, Labrador tea, and various

ALASKA

Indigenous peoples of Alaska.

kinds of grasses, mosses, horsetails, lichens, fungi, and wildflowers are also common. In the Aleutians and west coastal regions, there are a few trees and the vegetation consists mainly of dwarf willows and grasses. In the interior regions of the state, white and black spruce, birch, cottonwood, tamarack, aspen, and willow are all found. Vegetation in the tundra regions of north Alaska is limited to grasses, mosses, lichens, berries, and some dwarf birches and willows. Mammals are common throughout Alaska and include brown, black, grizzly, and polar bears. The Alaskan brown bear found on Kodiak Island is the world’s largest type of bear. Moose, wolves, caribou, various kinds of deer and related species, Dall’s sheep, coyotes and foxes, wolverines and martens, mink, beaver, land otters, weasels, muskrats, and hares are also found. Bison, muskox, and wapiti (elk) have been introduced to the state from outside. Marine mammals include bowhead whales, sperm whales, belugas, orcas, porpoises, sea otters, walruses, seals, and sea lions. Alaska is home to many kinds of birds, including ducks, geese, swans, cranes, loons, grebes, shearwaters, petrels, gulls, auklets, puffins, bald and golden

eagles, ravens, magpies, crows, jays, ptarmigan, grouse, and snowy owls. Alaska contains at least 480 species of fish, 386 of birds, 105 of mammals, seven of amphibians, and three of reptiles.

Population and Government Alaska’s population numbered 629,932 in the 2000 census, a 14.0% increase from 1990 (compared with a 13.1% increase nationwide). The population is young, with 30.4% under the age of 18 and only 5.7% over the age of 65. The US census gathers information on the population’s race and ethnicity. In 2000, 67.6% was classified as white non-Hispanic, 4.1% as Hispanic, 3.5% as Black, 15.6% as Alaska Native (compared with 0.9% Native American nationwide), 4.0% as Asian, 0.5% as Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 1.6% as other, and 5.4% as of two or more races. Alaska is sparsely populated, with only 1.1 persons per sq mi (compared with 79.6 per sq mi nationwide). The population is unevenly distributed throughout the state, with the largest city, Anchorage, accounting for nearly half the state’s population. Other population

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ALASKA concentrations are in the Fairbanks region and in southeast Alaska.

Government Alaska is one of the 50 states of the United States and participates in the American federal system equally with other states. There are three levels of government: federal, state, and municipal (there is no county level of government). At the federal level, Alaska is represented in the US Congress by two senators and one member of the House of Representatives. There is one federal district court that sits in Juneau, Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Nome. At the state level, the governor and lieutenant governor are the executive officers and are elected for four-year terms. Since statehood in 1959, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents have all held the office of governor. Alaska has a bicameral legislature with 40 members in the House of Representatives serving twoyear terms and 20 members of the Senate serving fouryear terms. Alaska has a state Supreme Court with a chief justice and four associate justices. There is a threemember court of appeals and four court districts. Alaska’s state constitution was adopted in 1956 and has been amended many times since. The state has municipal governments (called boroughs) but no county governments. Alaska state revenues derive from taxation and royalties on state resources. Taxes include property taxes, various business taxes, municipal sales taxes, and petroleum severance taxes; there is no state personal income tax or state sales tax. Residents are subject to all federal taxes including federal personal income tax. The state receives royalties from resources extracted from state lands (especially petroleum resources) and also receives a share of revenues from royalties on federal lands (historically 90% of these royalties). A portion of the state’s royalties are deposited into the Alaska Permanent Fund, a state-controlled trust fund established in 1976. The fund invests a share of Alaska’s resource revenues and distributes a share of its earnings to Alaskan residents in the form of dividends, while using a portion of the earnings to maintain its real value. Alaska’s lands are largely in government hands. About 64% of Alaska is federal land, about 24% belongs to the state, about 12% is private land belonging to Alaska Natives as part of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), and the remaining 1% is in non-Native private hands. This latter figure is tiny compared to other American states.

Settlements and Towns Alaska is divided into municipalities or boroughs and not into counties as in the rest of the United States. In the 2000 census, Anchorage municipality had a popu-

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lation of 260,283, making it by far the largest city in the state and accounting for nearly half the state’s total population. The Fairbanks-North Star Borough had a population of 82,840 in 2000 and is the second largest urban region in the state. Other population concentrations are in Matanuska-Susitna Borough north of Anchorage with 59,322 people, Kenai Peninsula Borough with 49,691, and Juneau City and Borough with 30,711. In addition to Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau (the state capital), other important towns include Ketchikan, Sitka, and Bethel.

Religion Alaska’s Native peoples historically practiced their own religions and some continue to do so. The Russian Orthodox Church was introduced into Alaska during the Russian colonial period. Much of this church’s missionary work was done among the Aleut as well as the Tlingit of the southeast region. The first archdiocese for Kamchatka and America was headquartered in New Archangel (later called Sitka) in 1858. The first American church to begin missionary work in Alaska was the Presbyterian Church. The Presbyterian missionary Sheldon Jackson arrived in 1877, and in addition to the work of conversion also began to address the economic problems of Alaska Natives. The Church of England missionary William Duncan moved from British Columbia, Canada, into southeast Alaska along with a group of 1000 Tsimshian people, establishing a community at Metlakatla on Annette Island. Other missionary groups of historical importance in Alaska include the American Episcopal Church, the Society of Friends (Quakers), and the Methodist Church. Today all branches of Christianity are present, with a Protestant majority, although the Roman Catholic Church has the largest number of adherents of any single denomination. Small numbers of adherents to other religions are also present.

Languages Native Alaskan languages can be divided into two families: Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Dene. The EskimoAleut family has two branches, Eskimo and Aleut, spoken in southwest, west, and north coastal Alaska. Alaskan Eskimo languages, closely related to Inuktitut in Canada as well as Greenlandic, are further divided into two subfamilies: Iñupiaq is spoken in the eastern region while Yup’ik is spoken in the west. The Aleut language is spoken in the Aleutian Islands and in the Pribilof Islands. Alaskan Athapaskan languages of the Na-Dene family, related to Navajo and Apache of the American southwest, include Gwich’in, Ahtna, Koyukon, and Tanaina. Tlingit, spoken in southeast

ALASKA Alaska, is a non-Athapaskan Na-Dene language. Many Native Alaskans still speak their own languages, although language learning among the younger people has been declining and poses the issue of the continued viability of these languages. Today English is by far the predominant language of Alaska, spoken by virtually everyone. About 90% of Alaskans speak English as the language of communication at home.

Education During both the Russian and American colonial periods, education was largely provided by church institutions. Beginning in 1900, the US Congress established schools in towns and rural areas. The Alaska territorial government later assumed control over non-Native education, while the federal government continued to hold responsibility for the education of Alaska Natives. Today primary and secondary schools are distributed throughout the state. Alaska’s higher education system encompasses the state-supported University of Alaska, with the Fairbanks campus founded in 1913 and later campuses added at Anchorage and Juneau. The University of Alaska also supports a number of rural education centers in remote parts of the state as well as a distance education program. The state has a network of community colleges and two private universities: Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage (affiliated with the United Methodist Church) and Sheldon Jackson College in Sitka (affiliated with the Presbyterian Church), the latter being the oldest institution of higher learning in Alaska.

Economy In many respects Alaska still has a frontier economy, little changed from colonial and territorial days. The nonNative Alaska economy has historically been characterized by a series of resource booms. Earliest among these was Russian colonial exploitation of sea otter furs. Extraction of this resource led to limited settlement only in coastal Alaska near regions of sea otter habitat. Alaska’s second major resource boom was the series of gold rushes from the 1880s to the 1900s, some of which were associated with those in the Klondike region of the Yukon Territory in Canada. The gold rushes brought a series of settlers to the state, many of whom left Alaska after these rushes ended. By the time of statehood in 1959, the Alaska economy was dominated by government spending, especially connected to the large military complex that had developed after World War II, when the strategic position of Alaska in the North Pacific became apparent. Alaska’s economy remains dominated by government, though now the state government is perhaps more important economi-

cally. The Alaska Permanent Fund, which saves and invests a portion of the state’s share of resource revenues, has assets of approximately $25 billion and generates an annual income of between $1 billion and $2.5 billion, depending on investment performance. Revenue from Permanent Fund investments is a major source of state income and has allowed the state to abolish the state income tax. Since the Prudhoe Bay discovery of 1968, petroleum has become the economically most important resource in modern Alaska, continuing the frontier tradition of extractive industries with fluctuating prices and fluctuating demand conditions. Oil began to flow in 1977, but shipments have been marred by an oil spill from the tanker Exxon Valdez in 1989 and concerns about the environmental safety of petroleum development. Alaska’s resource booms—fur, gold, military spending, and oil—have produced substantial revenues during periods of extraction but also have the potential to collapse quickly. Alaska’s economy is therefore subject to wide swings. More moderating influences on the state’s economy include the fishing and tourism industries. Tourism especially is a sector of increasing importance. Manufacturing in Alaska is of minor importance and is limited to some processing of the state’s petroleum, timber, and fish resources. In general, Alaska is plagued by distance from world markets and the associated high transportation costs. Alaska’s distance from the rest of the United States has required that much transport take place by air. Ocean shipping is, however, still important, especially for bulk goods such as petroleum. Trade with Asia is increasing (subject to Asian economic conditions) and transport links with Asian countries are well developed. Surface transport is limited to the Alaska Highway and the Stewart-Cassiar Highway, both of which pass through Canada and are of limited commercial use. Anchorage formerly had excellent direct air connections to many world cities, but has largely lost those connections due to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ability of commercial aircraft to now fly over Russian airspace. Nevertheless, Anchorage still has direct air connections to many cities in the United States, especially those on the West Coast, as well as to Asian countries. Alaska has about 800 airfields, emergency landing strips, and seaplane bases and has the highest rate of private aircraft ownership in the United States. Internal air connections are generally good and are crucial to communities that have no road connections to the remainder of the state. Larger communities, notably Anchorage and Fairbanks, have fine paved road links, but the state capital in Juneau has no road connection to any other city. Alaska also has a passenger ferry system that serves mainly the southern and southeastern parts of the state and has connections to British Columbian ports as well as Seattle. It has a

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ALASKA government-owned railroad of about 800 km (500 mi) linking Seward, Anchorage, and Fairbanks. The TransAlaska Pipeline from the North Slope to the port of Valdez in south Central Alaska is essential for the shipment of the state’s oil. Many aspects of Alaska’s economy, such as fishing, agriculture, and tourism, are characterized by seasonal employment, a factor that has further added to the economy’s frontier characteristics. Today Alaska’s economy depends on state government spending, federal military spending, Permanent Fund earnings, the petroleum industry, fishing, and tourism.

History Although population movement across the Bering Sea from Asia to North America took place as early as 40,000 years ago, archaeological evidence suggests that the first settlements in Alaska began around 12,000 years ago. These early settlers brought with them a Siberian culture that gradually merged into the distinct and varied cultures of precontact Alaska. Among these were the people who became the Eskimo; about 4000 years ago they moved into the Arctic region of the continent. Others became the Aleut and the various Na-Dene or Athapaskan peoples. Each of these peoples adapted to their own environment and exploited local resources. European settlement of Alaska began with a series of Russian expeditions led by the Danish commander Vitus Bering. On his 1728 expedition he sailed through the Bering Sea, proving that North America was not connected to Asia. On Bering’s second expedition in 1841, he landed in Alaska and found the sea otters that would serve as the basis for Russian colonization. At the time of European contact, researchers estimate that about 75,000 people lived in Alaska. The first Russian settlement was at Three Saints Bay on Kodiak Island, which became the Alaskan colonial capital. Other settlements were established along the coast, of which the most important was New Archangel (later called Sitka). New Archangel became the Alaskan colonial capital in 1806 when the RussianAmerican Company, which was founded in 1799 to exploit the resources of the colony, moved its headquarters there. Colonization, especially under the leadership of the autocratic Aleksandr Baranov, the chief manager or governor of the colony, brought the Russians into conflict with the indigenous population. The southeastern Alaskan settlement at New Archangel was especially prone to conflict, and in the 1800s a series of wars were fought between the Russians and the indigenous Tlingit people. The Russian settler population was never more than about 550 people, but by the end of the Russian colonial era

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the Native Alaskan population had declined to around 33,000, largely due to introduced diseases. The Russians sold their Alaska colony to the United States in 1867 for $7.2 million. The Russians were as eager to sell the colony as the Americans were reluctant to buy it. Russian Alaska was a drain on the Russian economy as it was not self-supporting, the colony was extremely distant from the capital at St Petersburg, and the sea otter population—the most important resource to the Russians—had substantially declined. The Russians wanted to sell the colony specifically to the United States to block British expansion in northwest North America. The US Congress, influenced largely by Secretary of State William H. Seward, finally agreed to purchase Alaska. The purchase was not widely popular and Alaska was often depicted in the media as a worthless Arctic wasteland and called such names as “Seward’s Folly,” “Seward’s Icebox,” and “Walrussia.” American perceptions of Alaska changed in the late 19th century with a series of gold rushes beginning in 1880 in Juneau and followed by similar discoveries in other parts of the territory. The largest and most influential of these rushes took place on the Yukon River in and after 1896, concurrent with the Klondike discoveries further upstream in Canada. This gold rush increased the state’s population, and Alaska now came to be portrayed as a land of wealth and opportunity. Gold production declined after 1914 and the territory’s population declined with it. The next major event in Alaska’s history was World War II (1939–1945) and its impact on the American government’s recognition of Alaska’s strategic global position. The Japanese invasion and occupation of some of the Aleutian Islands during the war prompted increased militarization of the territory in the postwar years, along with increased federal spending on infrastructure such as port facilities, highways, and airstrips. The Alaska Highway was built connecting the territory with the 48 conterminous states (through Canada) and the US government gave greater attention to Alaska’s position just across the Bering Sea from the Soviet Union. After several earlier failed attempts, Alaska became the 49th state of the United States in 1959. Under the statehood act, Alaska was allowed to select federal lands that would be conveyed to the new state and become state lands. The state government selected lands based largely on their location and economic importance, and among the selected lands were the oilfields of Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope. In 1968, oil was discovered at Prudhoe Bay, prompting the resolution of unsettled Alaska Native claims to land. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), passed by the US Congress in 1971, granted about

ALASKA BELUGA WHALE COMMITTEE 12% of Alaska, along with monetary compensation, to Alaska Natives in exchange for extinguishment of their Native title. ANCSA had a major impact on the Native peoples of the state, giving them exclusive and fee simple title to land as well as capital for business investment. The discovery of oil on the North Slope also prompted the discussion of how oil was to be transported from its Arctic location to markets in the United States. The accepted proposal was to construct an overland pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to the ice-free port of Valdez in south central Alaska. Completion of this pipeline in 1977 allowed oil to flow south, where it was shipped to the lower 48 ports by oil tanker. The Exxon Valdez disaster, previously mentioned, prompted a reassessment of the costs of oil to the Alaskan environment. Exxon Corporation was forced to pay over $1 billion in settlement, but the cost of restoring the habitat in Prince William Sound was at least twice that. Today, the prevailing concerns in Alaska include conflicts over how much of state and federal lands, including lands established as wilderness preserves, to open to development and resource extraction, especially given the US government’s desire for domestic sources of oil. Conflicts over subsistence rights and resources, over environmental issues, and over taxation, the Permanent Fund, and the generation of new revenues in the postoil era are emerging issues in contemporary Alaska. MICHAEL PRETES See also Alaska Highway; Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA); Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA); Alaska Range; Alaska Treaty (Convention for the Cession of the Russian Possessions in North America to the United States); Aleut; Anchorage; Athapaskan; Bering Sea; Bering, Vitus; Brooks Range; Eskimo-Aleut Languages; Exxon Valdez; Gold Mining; Mount McKinley (Denali); National Parks and Protected Areas: Alaska; Russian-American Company; Tlingit; Trans-Alaska Pipeline Further Reading Borneman, Walter R., Alaska: Saga of a Bold Land, New York: HarperCollins, 2003 Hammond, Jay, Tales of Alaska’s Bush Rat Governor, Seattle: Epicenter Press, 1994 Lester, Jean, Faces of Alaska: Voices Across the State, Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2003 McBeath, Gerald A. & Thomas A. Morehouse, Alaska Politics and Government, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994 McPhee, John, Coming into the Country, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977 Naske, Claus-M. & Herman E. Slotnick, Alaska: A History of the 49th State (2nd edition), Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987

Vaughan, Richard, The Arctic: A History, Stroud, England: Alan Sutton, 1994 Weeden, Robert B., Alaska: Promises to Keep, Boston: Little Brown, 1978

ALASKA BELUGA WHALE COMMITTEE The Alaska Beluga Whale Committee (ABWC) was founded in 1988 to ensure that beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas) stocks in Alaska remained healthy and to forestall involvement of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in the management of belugas. The North Slope Borough (Alaska) Department of Wildlife Management contacted indigenous beluga-hunting communities throughout Alaska, as well as federal and state agencies, emphasizing the need to take action before a management crisis occurred. The IWC action to stop subsistence whaling of the bowhead whale in Alaska in 1977 was a vivid example of the consequences of being unprepared. Thus, the emphasis of the ABWC was to gather accurate harvest data, determine stock identities of belugas around Alaska, and develop a management plan to protect belugas and subsistence hunting. Beluga whales—small, toothed whales that are white as adults and are distributed throughout the Arctic—are found in five stocks in the waters around Alaska: Cook Inlet, Bristol Bay, the Eastern Bering Sea, the Eastern Chukchi Sea, and the Beaufort Sea, of which the latter is shared with Canada and Russia. The migratory habits of the other stocks are currently under investigation. All stocks are hunted by Alaska Natives for subsistence purposes. The Cook Inlet stock is the only one known to remain in Alaska waters year round. In recent years, the Cook Inlet stock has declined sharply, leading to regulation of the subsistence harvest under the terms of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which permits limiting the hunt only if a stock is considered to be depleted. The other four stocks are considered healthy, the current harvests being biologically sustainable. The ABWC had included representatives from the Inuvialuit region of the Yukon and Northwest Territories, Canada, for several years, and was then called the Alaska and Inuvialuit Beluga Whale Committee. Eventually, representatives of both Alaska and the Inuvialuit region agreed that in the absence of pressing management needs, the expense of a joint committee was too high. Since then, the ABWC and the Inuvialuit Game Council have continued to communicate and to cooperate on various research and management issues. Formal cooperation with the Russian Federation has not been pursued, partly

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ALASKA ESKIMO WHALING COMMISSION (AEWC) because of the cost and partly because hunting in Russia is minimal. As with the Inuvialuit, the ABWC communicates with Russian hunters and government agencies on matters of research. Since its inception, the ABWC has been highly successful in gathering harvest data and in promoting research on population levels, migratory behavior, and stock identity. In recent years, it has prepared a management plan and completed a formal co-management agreement with the US Federal Government. Members of the committee include tribally appointed representatives of the hunting communities, and representatives of the state and federal governments and the North Slope Borough. Due to a disagreement over the commercial sale of beluga products, the ABWC no longer includes representatives from the Cook Inlet area, although it has attempted to help resolve the management problems with that stock. The ABWC has held two science conferences, in addition to its annual meetings, and its members participate in the IWC, providing harvest and population information while continuing to resist IWC management of beluga hunting. HENRY P. HUNTINGTON See also Beluga (White) Whale; International Whaling Commission (IWC) Further Reading Adams, Marie, Kathryn Frost & Lois Harwood, “Alaska and Inuvialuit Beluga Whale Committee—an initiative in athome management.” Arctic, 46 (1993): 134–137 Frost, Kathryn J. & Lloyd F. Lowry, “Distribution, abundance, and movements of beluga whales, Delphinapterus leucas, in coastal waters of western Alaska.” Canadian Bulletin of Fisheries and Aquatic Science, 224 (1990): 39–57 Huntington, Henry P., Wildlife Management and Subsistence Hunting in Alaska, London: Belhaven Press, 1992 O’Corry Crowe, G.M., R.S. Suydam, A. Rosenberg, K.J. Frost & A.E. Dizon, “Phylogeography, population structure and dispersal patterns of the beluga whale Delphinapterus leucas in the western Nearctic revealed by mitochondral DNA.” Molecular Ecology, 6 (1997): 955–970 Suydam, Robert, Kathryn Frost, Lloyd Lowry, Doug DeMaster & Marie Adams Carroll, Proceedings of the Alaska Beluga Whale Committee First Conference on the Biology of Beluga Whales, April 5–7, 1995, Anchorage, Alaska, Barrow, Alaska: North Slope Borough and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 1996

ALASKA ESKIMO WHALING COMMISSION (AEWC) The increased number of bowhead whales struck and taken by the Iñupiat of the North Slope of Alaska in the 1970s generated enough concern within the International Whaling Commission (IWC) so as to include aboriginal whaling into their regulating

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authority for the first time since its establishment in 1946. In 1977, the IWC placed a moratorium on Alaska Eskimo bowhead whaling. Prior to 1977, Eskimo whaling had been allowed due to its subsistence nature and the immense cultural, social, and nutritional value that the bowhead provided for many Inuit groups in Alaska. The Iñupiat, indignant with the decision that they considered a violation of the Arctic peoples’ basic human rights, quickly acted to overturn the moratorium. The Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission (AEWC) emerged from this struggle for whale-hunting rights. Scientists reported to the IWC that the Western Arctic bowhead herd ranged between 600 and 1800 animals. Iñupiaq hunters believed this estimate to be too low, but could not convince the IWC otherwise; therefore, in 1977, 70 whaling captains came from nine North Slope villages to Barrow to form the AEWC. A nonprofit organization that drew upon financial resources of the North Slope borough, the AEWC brought their fight to IWC meetings around the world; eventually the Iñupiaq hunters were given a small quota for that year. Nonetheless, the herd population remained a dispute, and so the AEWC cooperated with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in which both groups entered into a decade-long census study to prove that the bowhead population ranged in the thousands. Likewise, the IWC and AEWC established an agreement: the Iñupiat would adhere to the IWC’s quotas and regulate their own members. In return, the IWC would reconsider the size of the bowhead quota if the data warranted. AEWC scientists implemented an acoustic program in which microphones were placed in the open channels under water to record passing bowheads. Researchers counted many more bowheads than were verified by ice-based counters. Thus, North Slope borough scientists convinced the IWC that the bowhead population was substantially larger than reported numbers to the IWC, and the herd was increasing. Through AEWC studies and reports, the IWC finally accepted numbers suggesting that the western Arctic bowhead population was 8000 in 1999 and increasing at a rate of 3.1% annually. The Alaska Eskimo bowhead quota subsequently increased to 255 whales over a five-year period. Today, the AEWC is recognized as an Alaska Inuitrun organization that manages indigenous whaling and determines policy for the ten whaling villages: Gambell, Point Hope, Savoonga, Kaktovik, Nuiqsut, Barrow, Wainwright, Little Diomede, Wales, and Kivalina. The AEWC works to preserve and protect bowhead whales and their habitat, as well as Inuit whaling and culture through a program of regulation, scientific research, and education. Presently, the

ALASKA FEDERATION OF NATIVES (AFN) AEWC uses its influence and resources to increase whaling opportunities for other Arctic people, including Canadian Inuit and Chukotkan Natives in Russia. AMBER A. LINCOLN See also Alaska Beluga Whale Committee; Bowhead (Greenland Right) Whale; International Whaling Commission (IWC); Whaling, Subsistence Further Reading Hess, Bill, Taking Control: The North Slope Borough, The Story of Self Determination in the Arctic, Barrow: North Slope Borough, 1993 ———, Gift of the Whale: Iñupiat Bowhead Whale Hunt, A Sacred Tradition, Seattle: Sasquash Books, 1999

ALASKA FEDERATION OF NATIVES (AFN) The mission of the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN), founded in October 1966, is to enhance and promote the cultural, economic, and political voice of the entire Alaska Native community. It was founded in Anchorage, Alaska, as a means to unite Alaska Native peoples in response to several threats of land expropriation in the absence of any native land claims settlement. Several pressures galvanized Alaska Natives to unite and protect their land, namely, looming state of Alaska land selections stemming from the Alaska Statehood Act of 1959; the Bureau of Indian Affairs initiatives to solve the conflicting federal, state, and native land use problems in Alaska; and Project Chariot, an Atomic Energy Commission plan to use nuclear explosions to create a harbor south of the Iñupiat village of Point Hope, Alaska. Howard Rock, a native of Point Hope and a direct descendant of a bowhead whale hunting family, emerged as one of the leaders of the opposition to Project Chariot; his work led him to founding and editing of the Alaska weekly paper Tundra Times. Rock’s work and the Tundra Times contributed to the essential growth of native unity and helped achieve the Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) in 1971. In 1966, Rock publicized a native meeting set to discuss the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ plans. Eight native associations, each formed to protect rights to their regional lands, met to form the AFN. After the initial meeting, representatives organized and informed people in native villages who were not represented in the first meetings. United States Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall froze public domain lands in Alaska until native claims and issues could be addressed. By 1967, AFN had filed native title claims to 370 million acres of land (the state of Alaska comprises 375 million acres.)

In 1968, the discovery of extensive oil reserves under the Arctic slope of Alaska, followed by the US oil shortage of the early 1970s, sped the passage of ANCSA through the US Congress. Since its inception, AFN has grown to hold a broad mandate as the major, united voice of Alaska Natives. The organization’s fundamental principle holds that Alaska Natives began as members of sovereign nations and continue to enjoy a unique relationship with the US government. Although the ANCSA recognizes 13 native regions that work independently on many matters, AFN continues to lead initiatives on matters of interest to all natives within Alaska. It works closely with the Alaska Intertribal Council, the Rural Alaska Community Action Program, regional and village corporations, and native nonprofit foundations. AFN’s major goals are: to advocate for Alaska Native people, their governments and organizations with respect to federal, state, and local laws; to foster and encourage preservation of Alaska Native cultures; to promote an understanding of the economic needs of Alaska Natives and encourage development consistent with those needs; to protect, retain, and enhance all lands owned by Alaska Natives and their organizations; and to support programs that instill pride and confidence in individual Alaska Natives. To these ends, AFN meets annually in Anchorage for the largest gathering of native people statewide each year for a week of business and cultural festivities. AFN holds an Elders and Youth Conference for three days prior to its convention. ELLEN BIELAWSKI See also Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA); Bureau of Indian Affairs; Project Chariot

Further Reading Arnold, Robert, D., Alaska Native Land Claims, Anchorage: Alaska Native Foundation, 1978 Burch Jr., Ernest S., “The Land Claims Era in Alaska.” In Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 5, Arctic, edited by David Damas, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution, 1984 Mitchell, Don, Sold American: The Story of Alaska Natives and Their Land, 1867–1959, The Army to Statehood, Hanover, New Hampshire: The University Press of New England, 1997 Morgan, Lael (editor), “Alaska’s native people.” Anchorage: Alaska Geographic, 6 (3) 1979 ———, Art and Eskimo Power: The Life and Times of Alaskan Howard Rock, Fairbanks: Epicenter Press, 1988 Petrivelli, Patricia J., “Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and Native Corporations.” In Native Peoples of Alaska, edited by Jan Halliday, Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 1998, pp. 266–268 ———, “Subsistence Hunting, Fishing and Gathering: A Complex Issue.” In Native Peoples of Alaska, edited by Jan Halliday, Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 1998, pp. 269–274

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ALASKA HIGHWAY

ALASKA HIGHWAY The first effort to build an overland route toward Alaska came in 1897, when the Northwest Mounted Police completed a route survey from Dawson Creek to Fort Selkirk on the Yukon River. The survey party eventually traversed the 2600 km to Fort Selkirk, and reported that an overland route into the Yukon Territory from northern British Columbia was not feasible. The Klondike Gold Rush of 1898 presented Canada with the dilemma of maintaining sovereignty over the Yukon. To counter the construction of the White Pass and Yukon Railway, which favored American access, the Northwest Mounted Police started to blaze an overland trail to the Klondike gold fields in 1905; however, only 600 km of a horse trail was completed. The territory of Alaska was unsuccessful in its own efforts to lobby for a road to the south until 1939, when the argument for an overland route to Alaska was presented in relation to the national security for both the United States and Canada. Soon after the start of World War II, Nazi Germany developed battle plans to invade and conquer Russia for its resources, and then shift its focus on the conquest of the British Isles. With this knowledge, Britain and the United States knew that support to Russia was an absolute military necessity in order to eventually defeat Nazi Germany. In June 1941, after Russia was invaded, the Allied forces initiated action to support the defense of Russia. The supply of materials and equipment to defend Russia included a sea route west to Vladivostok in Russia’s far east. This route was shorter than the eastern route and less vulnerable to attack because of the Japanese preoccupation with the South Pacific; Vladivostok was linked to the Russian west through the Trans-Siberian Railway. What Russia needed the most for its defense was equipment such as aircraft delivered from North America ready for use. The shortest and fastest route for delivery of these planes was a “great circle” polar route from the United States, through Canada, Alaska, and Siberia. Upon the invasion of Russia by Nazi Germany, the work began to upgrade an established supply route in the northwest into the Northwest Staging Route. The Northwest Staging Route had two major functions during World War II. Firstly, it was a significant factor in the route location for the Alaska Highway and it was very useful in the highway construction. Secondly, the airfields along the highway were used to ferry planes to Fairbanks to be picked up by Russian crews for lend-lease to Russia. In mid-1942, Americans were in northern British Columbia readying for the eventual activity associated with the Alaska Highway. Very shortly after Pearl

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Harbor, support of a road to Alaska was accepted by the American people as a necessity for the defense of Alaska against the Imperial Japanese invading forces. In March 1942, the first train carrying troops arrived in Dawson Creek to begin construction. The help of local trappers, prospectors, and First Nation members was enlisted to help locate the road, and local packers with their mule teams were used to help supply the advance survey parties. US military personnel were mobilized through to Dawson Creek, British Columbia, by rail to begin work northward toward Alaska, through to Whitehorse by rail to begin work northward, and southward, and through the Alaska coast to construct southward toward the Yukon from Alaska. In April 1942, route location personnel were at work along the entire road alignment, with heavy equipment following close behind. Five to six kilometers of road could be built in a day because construction could proceed 24 h a day with the long summer daylight hours. The most difficult problem for the construction was the inexperience of military engineers in building a highway on permafrost. In many areas along the route where the top layer of ground was removed, the underlying ground thawed and produced a quagmire that was difficult to build on. The best strategy in these areas was to leave the permafrost intact and build the road on top of it by spreading a layer of insulating gravel. The next significant problem was bridging the many small streams and major rivers along the route. Over the entire length of the highway, a total of 133 bridges and 8000 culverts were constructed. Another significant problem was maintaining the flow of supplies to the construction activity. This problem was compounded by adverse weather conditions, remoteness of the area, and the lack of enough ships to mobilize supplies to the coastal supply points. The pioneer road was completed in eight months and twelve days. An opening ceremony was held at Soldiers Summit on Kluane Lake on November 20, 1942 to officially celebrate the completion of the overland link. The pioneer road constructed in 1942 was a singlelane, rough road that would have to be upgraded in order to be usable by the increasing military and civilian traffic. In early 1943, the job of upgrading the road to an all-weather structure became a civilian exercise. The upgrading included reducing road grades, straightening road alignments, and constructing permanent bridges. The road, when completed, traversed over 2500 km (1500 miles) from Dawson Creek to Fairbanks, Alaska. The total cost of the road was over $138 million 1941 dollars.

ALASKA NATIONAL INTEREST LANDS CONSERVATION ACT (ANILCA) The Alaska Highway (also known as the Alcan or Alaska-Canadian Highway) has remained an important and essential overland link to, and between, the communities of Alaska, the communities of northern British Columbia, the Yukon Territory, and the northern portion of the Northwest Territories via the Dempster Highway. The road provides a route for commercial traffic, and a route for tourist traffic that number in the hundreds of thousands. The highway has been steadily upgraded over the years to improve its alignment and grade, and its width and driving surface. The unpredictable and potential treacherous nature of the original Alaska Highway has essentially become history as well. KENNETH R. JOHNSON See also Alaska; Dempster Highway; Transport Further Reading Coates, Kenneth (editor), The Alaska Highway: Papers of the 40th Anniversary Symposium, Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1985 Coates, Kenneth & W.R. Morrison, The Alaska Highway in World War II: The US Army of Occupation in Canada’s Northwest, Toronto: University of Toronto, 1990 Twichell, Heath, Northwest Epic: The Building of the Alaska Highway, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1992

ALASKA NATIONAL INTEREST LANDS CONSERVATION ACT (ANILCA) The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), passed into US law in 1980, sets aside land for national parks and wildlife refuges, while making Alaska-specific provisions for traditional use. While the environmental protection afforded to the lands from timber, mineral, and hydrocarbons development was groundbreaking, controversy over restricted economic development and use by sports enthusiasts, subsistence hunters, and fishers has continued. US expansion into Alaska was initially propelled by an interest in fur and gold. On October 18, 1867, the Treaty of Cession was signed, which transferred jurisdiction over Alaska from Russia to the United States. Further, the Treaty provided that “Uncivilized tribes will be subject to such laws and regulations as the United States may, from time to time, adopt in regard to aboriginal tribes in that country.” Congress recognized this obligation in 1884 when it passed the first Organic Act extending the civil and criminal laws of Oregon to Alaska: “Indians or other persons in said district shall not be disturbed in the possession of any lands actually in their use or occupation or now claimed by them under which such persons may acquire title to such lands are reserved for future legislation by Congress.”

Despite this disclaimer in the Organic Act, land was usually available for the economic and conservation interests that needed it. The first fish canneries were built in 1878, and within six years dotted the shores of southern Alaska. Gold claims and camps soon followed. Legislation in 1891, 1898, and 1900 permitted trade and manufacturing sites, town sites, homesteading, rights of way for a railroad, and timber harvests. Millions of acres were also withdrawn for national forests, parks, and wildlife refuges. In 1959, The Alaska Statehood Act granted the state 104 million acres of land. As public officials began selecting land, imposing rules, and applying laws, Alaska Native opposition arose. Within six years, 12 regional associations were formed to pursue their respective land claims. Early in 1967, regional leaders formed the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) to secure their rights, inform the public of their positions, preserve the cultural values of Native peoples, and gain an equitable settlement. The first major bill to settle the claims of Alaska Natives was introduced in June 1967. The key to a Congressional settlement was oil. In the late 1960s, large quantities of oil were discovered in Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic coast of Alaska. A plan was devised to extract and transport the crude oil to refineries and markets in the continental United States. Land claims, however, prevented the construction of a pipeline to Valdez on Prince William Sound. Thereafter, an unusual coalition of energy companies, Native lobbyists, Alaskan public officials, executives from the Nixon administration, and environmental groups convinced Congress to pass the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) in 1971. Despite the title of ANCSA, Alaska Natives were not the only or primary beneficiaries of the legislation. Under the terms of the settlement, Alaska Native regional and village corporations received approximately 962 million dollars and 44 million acres of land. In exchange, claims over the remaining 330 million acres of land and aboriginal rights to hunt and fish were extinguished. A consortium of oil companies was permitted to build the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which led to the development of the largest oil fields in the United States, enormous profits for the industry, and substantial revenues and royalties for the state of Alaska. The President and Congress were able to achieve what they wanted most—a domestic source of oil that would counter earlier price increases for fuel and heating oil. Finally, the dreams of environmental groups for protected public lands were realized through the requirement that the Secretary of the Interior withdraw up to 80 million acres for inclusion into the “National Park, Forest, Wildlife Refuge, and Wild and Scenic Rivers Systems.”

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ALASKA NATIONAL INTEREST LANDS CONSERVATION ACT (ANILCA)

The Struggle Over National Interest Lands: 1972–1980 Soon after the passage of the Settlement Act, the Interior Department began hearing from State officials, Native leaders, environmentalists, and representatives from different agencies (e.g., the National Park and Forest Services, Fish and Wildlife, US Geological Survey, Bureau of Mines, Bureau of Indian Affairs) about the withdrawal and classification of public lands in Alaska. In March 1972, the Secretary of Interior Rogers C.B. Morton made a preliminary recommendation to Congress for the withdrawal of 127,100,000 acres. Secretary Morton’s legislative proposals satisfied no one. It was clear there were sharp disagreements over what federal agencies would have responsibility for administering the settlement (see Buck, 1977). Environmental organizations wanted to protect the natural and recreational values of the land and therefore preferred national park and wildlife preserve designations. These areas would then be administered by the protective authority of the National Park and the US Fish and Wildlife Services. Fearing that the Interior Department was giving away too much, an alliance was formed—the Emergency Wildlife and Wilderness Coalition for Alaska (The Alaska Coalition)—to build public support for their legislation (Williss, 1980). The state and other proponents of development favored a “multiple-use” approach, one that permitted timber harvesting, mining, and oil and gas exploration. Here the dominion of the Bureau of Land Management and the National Forest Service would be more appropriate. Alaska senator Ted Stevens and congressman Don Young submitted the Alaska National Public Land Conservation Act that called for multiple-use designations, transportation corridors to mineral-rich resource areas, and joint state-federal management of national interest lands. The elections in 1976 significantly changed the balance of forces surrounding the lands controversy in Alaska. The new president Jimmy Carter was committed to passing a lands bill with strong conservation provisions. In the Congress, Morris Udall took over as chair of the House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, and John Seiberling headed the subcommittee on General Oversight and Alaska Lands. In January 1977, Udall and 75 cosponsors submitted the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (H.R. 39) that set aside 115,300,000 acres primarily for national parks (64,100,000) and wildlife refuges (46,400,000). After years of contentious debates, public hearings, jurisdictional battles, and lengthy markup sessions, the ANILCA passed the House of Representatives in May 1978.

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The opposition to H.R. 39 in the Senate was intense. Representatives of the AFN were concerned about land rights, restrictions on economic development, and subsistence. Resource and recreational groups, chambers of commerce, and the state railed against federal protectionism and the extensive withdrawal of lands for parks and refuges. All were part of the Citizens for Management of Alaska Lands (CMAL), which had been formed in opposition to Udall-friendlier legislation. Henry Jackson (D-WA), the chair of The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, reported a bill more sympathetic to Alaskan interests in October. The Carter administration and the sponsors of H.R. 39 strongly opposed the Senate version, which they felt weakened the federal protection of Alaska lands. With little time left to find agreement between the House and the Senate, Congress adjourned without passing a national lands bill for Alaska. In November, Alaska officials, in supposed violation of an agreement with the Secretary of Interior Andrus, selected 41 million acres of land, including 9.5 million acres in proposed conservation areas. Fearing that commercial interests would begin exploring possible park and wilderness lands, Andrus used his emergency powers to withdraw over 110 million acres from state selection and development. Then President Carter, using the Antiquities Act, established 17 national monuments in Alaska that totaled over 56 million acres. The administration felt these actions were necessary to safeguard federal conservation areas until Congress passed an Alaska lands act. Alaska’s congressional delegation and coalition supporters were infuriated over this unilateral, what some called dictatorial, action by the administration. In the next legislative session, debates continued over federal restrictions, transportation corridors, gun control, and the use and classification of Alaska lands. In May, the Udall-Anderson bill (H.R. 39) passed again by a 6 to 1 margin. Then in August, the Senate finally approved their version of ANILCA. In negotiations over the differences between the two chambers, House leaders had hoped to strengthen the Senate bill through checking resource development and expanding wilderness areas. However, faced with intransigence of key senators, the election of a more pro-development president, and a new Republican Senate, Udall, John Anderson, John Sieberling, and others called for an acceptance of the legislation endorsed by the Senate. The ANILCA was signed into law by President Carter on December 2, 1980. The authors of ANILCA felt they had provided “sufficient protection for the national interest in the scenic, natural, cultural, and environmental values on public lands in Alaska, and at the same time provide(d)

ALASKA NATIONAL INTEREST LANDS CONSERVATION ACT (ANILCA) adequate opportunity for satisfaction of the economic and social needs of the State of Alaska and its people.” In reality, neither side was happy with the result. Environmentalists wanted more wilderness lands restrictions. On the other hand, state representatives felt that Alaska’s valuable resources were “locked up” in a conservation regime that stymied private and local initiative. These perspectives aside, the act does preserve more lands than any other act of Congress in the history of the United States. Over 53 million acres were added to the National Wildlife Refuges, 25 rivers were brought into the Wild and Scenic Rivers system, and Wilderness lands increased by 56,400,000 acres. Ten new parks were created and three existing parks were enlarged (for a total of 43,600,000 acres). When the land transfers from the public domain are completed, the federal government will own approximately 60% (222 million acres) of Alaska’s 374 million acres, the state will have title to 28% (104 million acres), and the remainder will be privately owned by Alaska Native corporations (12% or 44 million acres) and individuals (see the summary in Hull and Leask, 2000).

The Aftermath: 1980–2003 The struggle between business corporations, sports enthusiasts, preservationists, hunters, and fishers has continued unabated since 1980. Conservation groups have challenged resource projects, oil and gas lease sales, decisions by the Interior Secretary, land transfers, and commercial fishing interests; Native individuals and villages have fought development activities, agency reorganizations, timber harvests, and violations of environmental protections; and the state of Alaska and a variety of business and private associations have attacked federal regulations, land use restrictions, and rural preferences. Continued conflicts over subsistence and resource development have been the most divisive. The 8th section of ANILCA states that the taking of fish and wildlife on public lands in Alaska “for nonwasteful subsistence uses shall be given preference . . . over other consumptive uses.” Here subsistence is defined as the “customary and traditional” use of wild resources by rural residents for direct personal and family consumption. This rural priority is a partial fulfillment of Congress’s promise to protect Alaska Native village economies, and a response to Alaskan concerns over group or racial discrimination. ANILCA permits the state to regulate fish and game on national lands as long as Alaska law recognized a rural preference. However, in 1989 the Alaska Supreme Court ruled in McDowell v. Alaska that residency as a criterion for subsistence violated the equal rights and com-

mon use provisions of the Alaska Constitution, and therefore was unconstitutional. With the state no longer in compliance with federal law, the national government reluctantly took over the management of public lands in Alaska. Since 1990, the courts, Congress, the state, and various Alaska Native organizations have tried to devise a compromise that would both protect subsistence and insure individual equity. Thus far, there is no solution in sight. The debate over the development of the coastal range of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) derives from a clause in ANILCA that calls for “… an analysis of the impacts of oil and gas exploration, development, and production, and to authorize exploratory activity within the coastal plain in a manner that avoids significant adverse effects on the fish and wildlife and other resources” (Section 1001 (a) Purpose). The Arctic National Wildlife Range was originally established by the Eisenhower administration in 1960. In 1980, Congress increased the size of the refuge to 19 million acres and set aside the “1002 area” for future study for its oil and gas potential. To date, there have been eight independent assessments, with widely divergent results. Alaska’s Governor Frank Murkowski estimates that there are 16 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the area. The most recent study by the US Geological Survey estimates there are 5 to 7 billion barrels depending on the price of oil when production begins. Developmental interests, including the Bush Administration, the Teamsters union, Alaska representatives, the AFN, and many others, claim that opening the refuge will offer employment to thousands and lessen the dependence of the United States on Middle Eastern suppliers. Opponents worry about possible damage to the ecology of the Arctic and threats to the wildlife, and people like the Gwich’in and the Iñupiat who depend on them. The ANILCA is testament to the fluidity of legislative compromise and the difficulty of finding lasting solutions to deep-seated social, cultural, and political differences. It represents what a former president described “as one of the most important pieces of conservation legislation ever passed in this nation … Never before have we seized the opportunity to preserve so much of America’s natural and cultural heritage on so grand a scale.” (remarks by Jimmy Carter at the White House upon signing H.R. 39 into law (December 2, 1980)). It also reveals another, less commendable historical impulse. As one leader testified a generation ago: “It really seems ironic to us that we should sit here and beg for the privilege to continue to use these lands … in which we have always used them. Our life and our independence and our happiness in large part depends on our continued activity to provide for ourselves and our families in the traditional

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ALASKA NATIVE CLAIMS SETTLEMENT ACT (ANCSA) manner of our people from the resources of our land” (statement of Rachael Craig in Kotzebue, Alaska, at the Hearings Before the Subcommittee on General Oversight and Alaska Lands of the US House of Representatives (August 17, 1977)). DAVID C. MAAS See also Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA); Alaska Treaty (Convention for the Cession of the Russian Possessions in North America to the United States); National Parks and Protected Areas: Alaska Further Reading Buck, Eugene, “Alaska National Interest Lands (d-2) Legislation: Issue Brief,” Washington, District of Columbia: Library of Congress, October 13, 1977 Hull, T. & L. Leask, “Dividing Alaska, 1867–2000: changing land ownership and management.” Alaska Review of Social and Economic Conditions, 32(1) (2000): 1–12 Williss, Frank, Administrative History: The National Park Service and ANILCA, Washington, District of Columbia: National Park Service, 1980

ALASKA NATIVE CLAIMS SETTLEMENT ACT (ANCSA) The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, commonly known as ANCSA, was a piece of historic legislation passed by the United States Congress in 1971. The Act settled all outstanding Native land claims in the state of Alaska by extinguishing Native title and granting selected lands, as well as providing cash compensation to indigenous Alaskans. ANCSA was the first “modern treaty” in North America, providing a model and inspiration for future settlements, especially in Canada. The Act created 12 regional corporations, still functioning today, that sharply changed life for Native Alaskans. ANCSA also created problems that linger to the present.

Origins ANCSA was the last Native land claim settlement in the continental United States. The long delay in settling Alaskan claims stems from Alaska’s colonial history and its remote and marginal position with respect to the rest of the country. Colonial incursions by Russians did not begin until the 18th century, and these contacts were largely limited to the exploitation of coastal resources. Russian settlement was not a desired goal, and only 550 Russians lived in Alaska when it was sold to the United States in 1867. The Alaska Treaty of Cession, which transferred Alaska from Russia to the United States, acknowledged Native title. The Organic Act of 1884, which outlined

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the governance structure for the territory, contained even stronger language protecting Native rights. Growing encroachment by Americans, stemming from the gold and salmon rushes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, brought Native Alaskans into conflict with the recent arrivals. The Tlingit and Haida peoples in the southeast part of the territory were especially affected and initiated a lawsuit in 1936. This suit sought compensation for millions of acres of lands withdrawn by the federal government for the Tongass National Forest. While the Tlingit-Haida claim was being adjudicated, the Alaska Statehood Act of 1958 further renewed the claim of continuing respect for Native rights established by use and occupancy. But far more important was the Act’s direct assignment of more than 100 million acres of previously federal land to the new state. The Statehood Act required the state of Alaska to select, survey, and patent fully one-third of the land base. This imminent hardening of property rights signaled a major and rapid foreclosure of possible Native rights to these lands. Shortly after statehood the Court of Claims finally decided the Tlingit-Haida case. The court held that the land withdrawal did in fact constitute acquiring formerly occupied lands and required compensation. However, the compensation was finally established (eight years later) at only 50 cents per acre based on nominal values as of the purchase from Russia in 1867. The decision shocked many Native Alaskans into the realization that established judicial channels would not bring meaningful amounts of land or even cash assets into indigenous hands. Yet it also provided an important legal precedent by accepting the link between traditional subsistence use and occupancy of vast land areas and the lawful claim to that land. By this standard, Native Alaskans had a valid claim to all of Alaska. During the early 1960s, the encroachments on traditional Native lands accelerated, often involving grand development schemes and increased enforcement of federal hunting restrictions. In 1961, the Atomic Energy Commission proposed using atomic weapons to blast a harbor out of the bluffs at Cape Krusenstern on the Northwest coast. Shortly thereafter, the Bureau of Reclamation and Army Corps of Engineers developed plans to build a huge dam on the Yukon River that would have flooded many villages and subsistence habitats. These regional conflicts might have remained isolated pockets of ineffective complaints in a vast territory, but for three significant factors. The first factor was a dramatic increase in the human capital and communications technology available to Native Alaskans. During the mid-1960s, a new

ALASKA NATIVE CLAIMS SETTLEMENT ACT (ANCSA)

Alaska Native Regional Corporation boundaries. Published in The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, 1991, and Tribal Government, ISER Occasional Papers No. 19, Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of Alaska Anchorage.

generation of college-educated leaders was emerging from school, creating an instant and unprecedented leadership class and a statewide network of personal relationships among these leaders. Equally important, these leaders found a sympathetic source of private funding to support a statewide, Native-controlled newspaper, the Tundra Times. This newspaper was the first means of mass communication available to Alaska Natives, since at the time there was essentially no television reception, radio was dominated by localized commercial broadcasters, and telephone connections were tenuous or nonexistent. The second factor was an administrative legal action taken in 1966 by US Secretary of the Interior Stuart Udall. Concerned that the 1884 Organic Act had sidestepped the legitimate rights of Native Alaskans, Udall placed a freeze on all transfers of disputed land. This action effectively halted all transfers to the state of Alaska and created immediate pressure for Congress to resolve the Native land claims issue. Although an administrative action, the freeze was extended past 1968 when Senator Henry Jackson agreed to give the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) veto power over President Nixon’s appointment of Walter Hickel as the new Interior Secretary. Hickel extended the land freeze as the price of his approval by AFN. The third factor was the discovery of the supergiant oil field at Prudhoe Bay. Located on land owned by the state of Alaska, the field was immediately estimated to contain more than 10 billion barrels of recoverable

reserves, producible at a rate equal to about 20% of existing US oil production. This discovery dramatically raised the stakes of the bargaining game for all parties. Although Native Alaskans never asserted title to the oil field itself, the oil required transportation across 700 miles of contested federal lands to reach the icefree port of Valdez. With a daily production of two million barrels at stake, the discovery would produce revenues of about $6 million per day. Because the field was located on state land, it promised billions of dollars in royalties as well as oil company profits. Equally important, the Prudhoe Bay discovery changed the perceptions of what a claims settlement could accomplish. Alaska, which had been poor, would now be rich. If there were additional sources of such huge rents lurking in everyone’s backyard, then the economic development problem was reduced to distributing endowments. Native Alaskans could get rich too. Seeing the coming speculative boom fueled by such a huge discovery, many prescient businesspeople realized that putting land into Native hands was a far faster route to exploitation than leaving it in federal public domain or even passing it to the state. Business opposition to a settlement began to soften. Most important, it was the oil discovery that allowed the Native land claims movement to be merged, in the eyes of Congress, with the Native economic development problem. Alaska Native underdevelopment in 1968 was severe by any standard. In the socially tumultuous climate of the late 1960s, the Alaska Native land claims issue presented Congress

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ALASKA NATIVE CLAIMS SETTLEMENT ACT (ANCSA) and the nation with a chance to make more enlightened, or at least more compassionate, Indian policy than had been imposed on the tribes of the lower 48 states.

Provisions of the Act ANCSA transferred 44 million acres of land and $962.5 million in cash to business corporations owned exclusively by Alaska Natives. The Act established 12 regional corporations (plus one additional corporation for nonresident Native Alaskans) and approximately 200 village corporations. The regional corporations are Ahtna, Aleut, Arctic Slope, Bering Straits, Bristol Bay, Calista, Chugach Natives, Cook Inlet (CIRI), Doyon, Koniag, Nana, and Sealaska. Each Alaska Native (of at least one-quarter Native blood or recognized by a Native community) alive at the time of the Act (December 17, 1971) was allowed to enroll in a village corporation, which automatically enrolled them in the corresponding regional corporation (see Map). The Act also abolished the few existing Indian reservations in the state, with the exception of the one at Metlakatla. The corporations were given substantial freedom in choosing and using their new endowments, consistent with Alaska corporation law. However, the Native shareholders could not immediately sell their shares and the regional corporations had to share a portion of their natural resource rents with all other Native corporations on an equal per capita basis. The land transfer was straightforward. Village corporations received selection rights to 26 million acres of proximate lands. The intent was to formally convey ancestral heritage and subsistence lands. It was widely recognized that 26 million acres was not enough land to provide for subsistence needs and that no fishing rights were included in the deal (although a later act, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) of 1980, gave preference for subsistence use of federal lands to rural residents). Regional corporations received all of the subsurface rights under village lands plus an additional 16 million acres in fee simple (surface and subsurface) lands. The Tlingit-Haida decision had established the principle of money compensation for lands acquired. Secretary Udall came up with the idea of tying the money settlement to future federal petroleum leasing revenues from outer continental shelf (OCS) lands off the Alaska coast as a way of making the compensation politically palatable. The Prudhoe Bay discovery probably made this tapping of prospective new revenues seem like a painless proposition. The final figure of $962.5 million was a last-minute compromise; the basic amount of $1 billion appears to have been pulled

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out of thin air and was not based on a review of the earning potential or value of land or on corporate capital needs. All parties nevertheless recognized that working capital would be needed for functioning business corporations. The regional corporations were required to incorporate as for-profits, while the village corporations had the option of incorporating as nonprofits. Almost none did. The regional and village corporations each received 45% of the money settlement. The remaining 10% went to each individual enrolled Native Alaskan. The use of the corporation as the settlement vehicle was a direct recommendation of the state of Alaska’s Land Claims Task Force. The corporation concept was adopted based on a widespread distaste for other alternatives—especially IRA corporations (Indian Reorganization Act (1934)) and other entities controlled by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs—and for the formally egalitarian structure of shareholders’ rights. But the deliberate vagueness that the corporate form offered was clearly a reason as to why it was embraced by all sides. Assimilationists saw in corporations business dealings and modern capitalism. Tribalists saw more real autonomy and, in any event, an improvement over the reservation system. New Native political leaders saw the opportunity for economic and political self-determination, not to mention the promise of management positions for themselves. The corporation offered a beguilingly simple vehicle for settling the thorny land claims issue. It allowed all parties to feel comfortable with their vision of the legislation. Although the overall corporation concept was adopted early, there was significant debate about how the corporations would be structured. Many early versions of the claims bill called for a statewide investment corporation to own subsurface rights and control much of the working capital. The AFN opposed this concept and fought vigorously for regional corporations. They had learned from bitter experience how hard it was to hold together a statewide political coalition among disparate Native groups.

Impacts of the Act In many ways the ANCSA settlement was quite straightforward. However, three special features of ANCSA were highly unconventional, with potentially serious implications for the success of the regional corporations. First, shareholders could not sell their stock for at least 20 years. This prohibition removed the threat of takeover as a powerful discipline mechanism and eliminated the actual takeover as a corrective mechanism. With no takeover threat and no information feedback from a market in shares, there was little

ALASKA NATIVE CLAIMS SETTLEMENT ACT (ANCSA) monitoring of corporate activities and little information about their performance made available to the general public. This provision was partially ameliorated and partially strengthened by a 1988 Congressional amendment to ANCSA, which allowed corporations to restrict their sale of stock and also granted them the ability to enroll Native Alaskans born after the settlement date. Second, the requirement that regional corporations share 70% of the “net revenue” from subsurface and timber resource sales with all other corporations, both regional and village, created incentives to shelter resource revenues. The provision was also poorly drafted and invited costly litigation during implementation. Third, corporate management, as opposed to individual shareholders, was given complete control over the land. This tied the security of the land base to the control of the Board of Directors and ultimately to the voting power of the stock. Under this structure, allowing stock sales would increase the incentives for individual Native Alaskans to sell out. Fearing this outcome, few would vote to allow stock sales. ANCSA specified that the settlement was to address the “real social and economic needs” of Native Alaskans. Yet several factors militated against corporate success and the alleviation of these needs. First, most Native Alaskans were poor and had few liquid assets, creating pressure for early dividends. Second, the lack of human capital meant that internal management talent was scarce and the corporate boards’ monitoring ability was low. Third, most Native Alaskans lived on the economic periphery of a peripheral state and there were few apparent opportunities for business development in the regions. And fourth, corporations were caught between the obligation to be financially profitable and the need to create jobs and other social benefits for their shareholders. Often a particular investment or business enterprise could not do both. Countering these pessimistic conditions was Alaska’s new-found oil wealth. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) was finally approved in 1973 after the first OPEC oil shock. The resulting increase in oil prices fueled a speculative resource exploration boom throughout the state just as the Native corporations began to select their lands. Also of great importance was the continuing flow of federal money from the rest of the United States. Alaska Natives retained their specific eligibility for federal Indian programs, and their status as US citizens gave them access to all the social programs and infrastructure subsidies of the nation. This favorable economic climate allowed the ANCSA corporations substantial freedom to concentrate on profitable investments without facing overwhelming pressure for immediate distribution of wealth.

Economic performance of the regional corporations has been mixed. The first two decades of the settlement were financially hard on most, but not all, of the regional corporations, especially those in more remote and rural parts of the state. During this period, many corporations were losing money rapidly and some came close to bankruptcy. Part of the difficulty was that corporations were obliged to meet both the social and economic needs of their shareholders. Some corporations claimed to provide employment for their shareholders in lieu of corporate profits, while some corporations only survived financially in the mid1980s by selling their net operating losses to other, non-Alaskan corporations, under a special federal provision. In the past decade, ANSCA corporations have performed more successfully, with total corporate assets (all corporations as a whole) exceeding $2.5 billion. Total corporate profits have fluctuated widely, ranging between $50 million and $450 million in recent years, though much of this income is accounted for by just one corporation, CIRI, in the Anchorage area. Return on equity for corporations overall averaged 11% in the past decade. Two issues related to ANCSA remain unresolved. The first is subsistence, as Native Alaskans must decide on whether they prefer federal or state management of subsistence lands beyond their own settlement lands. The second is sovereignty, a potentially more complex issue as tribal council governments seek control over ANCSA corporation lands. Overall, ANCSA substantially changed the lives of Native Alaskans. The Act extinguished existing indigenous title to land, transferred 44 million acres of fee simple lands to Native Alaskans (about 12% of Alaska lands), and provided initial investment capital for 12 regional corporations. The Act also helped to bring Native Alaskans into the American mainstream and provided a model and inspiration for other indigenous land claim settlements. STEPHEN G. COLT AND MICHAEL PRETES See also Alaska; Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN); Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA); Alaska Treaty (Convention for the Cession of the Russian Possessions in North America to the United States); Land Claims; Prudhoe Bay; Trans-Alaska Pipeline

Further Reading Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act Resource Center website: http://www.lbblawyers.com/ancsa.htm ANCSA at 30 website: http://litsite.alaska.edu/uaa/aktraditions/ancsa/ Berardi, Gigi, “Natural resource policy, unforgiving geographies, and persistent poverty in Alaska Native villages.” Natural Resources Journal, 38(4) (1998): 85–108

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ALASKA NATIVE LANGUAGE CENTER Flanders, Nicholas E., “The ANCSA amendments of 1987 and land management in Alaska.” Polar Record, 25(155) (1989): 315–322 McNabb, Steven, “Native claims in Alaska: a twenty-year review.” Etudes/Inuit/Studies, 16(1–2) (1992): 85–95 Morehouse, Thomas A., The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, 1991, and Tribal Government, ISER Occasional Papers No. 19, Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of Alaska Anchorage, Anchorage, AK, 1988 Robinson, Michael, Michael Pretes & Wanda Wuttunee, “Investment strategies for Northern cash windfalls: learning from the Alaskan experience.” Arctic, 42(3) (1989): 265–276

ALASKA NATIVE LANGUAGE CENTER The Alaska Native Language Center (ANLC) was established in 1972 by the state of Alaska “to study native Alaskan languages, develop literacy materials, assist in the translation of important documents, provide for the development and dissemination of Alaska Native literature, and train Alaska Native language speakers to work as teachers and aides in bilingual classrooms” (AS 14.40.117). The Language Center has since become the preeminent institution for the study of the 20 Athapaskan, Eskimo, Aleut, Eyak, Tlingit, Tsimshian, and Haida languages in Alaska. Michael Krauss was instrumental in the founding of ANLC, and acted as its director from its inception in 1972 until his retirement in 2000, when the current director, Lawrence Kaplan, took over. Prominent linguists have worked in association with ANLC over the past 29 years. Many Alaska Natives have contributed greatly by authoring texts and narratives, and through various teaching roles. ANLC houses an exhaustive archival collection of original source material and other documents in or relating to Native Alaskan languages. The archives contain over 12,000 documents and 4000 recordings, ranging from 18th-century exploration documents, 19th-century ethnohistorical works, to modern teaching texts. Plans are underway to make a catalog of these works available on the Internet. Language preservation and maintenance are major concerns of ANLC; Alaskan Native language vitality currently ranges from Central Yup’ik with c.10,000 speakers to Eyak with one native speaker remaining. ANLC has striven to document many languages in danger of extinction in order to promote public awareness of language loss. Patrick Marlow currently directs a program to train Athapaskan language teachers. Publishing is an important aspect of ANLC’s operation, and their output includes Native language dictionaries, grammars, texts, and teaching materials. Publications include the Koyukon Athabaskan Dictionary (2000) by Eliza Jones and Jules Jetté, and the Yup’ik Eskimo Dictionary (1984) compiled by S.A.

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Jacobson. Other publications include traditional stories, literacy workbooks, reading and writing drills, coloring books, historical accounts by Native elders, Native language novels, and conversation lessons. An important facet of dissemination includes an extensive collection of oral narratives and oral literature in tape formats. ANLC is part of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, which offers a Baccalaureate Degree in Yup’ik and Iñupiaq, and an Associate Degree in Native Language Education for Athapaskan and Iñupiaq. Many graduates have gone on to take leadership roles in the state of Alaska. A number of influential linguistic scholars have been associated with ANLC. Michael Krauss and James Kari are professors emeriti with long distinguished careers in linguistics. Anna Berge, Gary Holton, Steven Jacobson, Lawrence Kaplan, Jeff Leer, and Patrick Marlow are current faculty at the center. Native language specialists, including Native Elders, and researchers who are or who have been associated with ANLC include Lillian Garnett, Eliza Jones, Peter Kalifornsky, Shem Pete, Katherine Peter, Kathy Sikorski, and Lorena Williams. Other prominent ANLC researchers from outside institutions include the late Knut Bergsland from the University of Oslo and John Ritter, Director of the Yukon Native Language Centre. BEN A. POTTER See also Athapaskan; Eskimo-Aleut Languages; Iñupiat; Northern Athapaskan Languages; Yukon Native Language Centre Further Reading Alaska Native Language Center website: http://www.uaf.edu/ anlc/ Damas, David (editor), Handbook of the North American Indians, Volume 5, Arctic, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution, 1984 Fortescue, Michael, Steven Jacobson & Lawrence Kaplan, Comparative Eskimo Dictionary with Aleut Cognates, Fairbanks: Alaska Native Language Center, 1994 Goddard, Ives, Handbook of the North American Indians, Volume 17, Languages, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution, 1996 Helm, June (editor), Handbook of the North American Indians, Volume 6, Subarctic, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution, 1981 Jones, Eliza & Jules Jetté, Koyukon Athabaskan Dictionary, Fairbanks: Alaska Native Language Center, 2000 Krauss, Michael, Alaska Native Languages: Past, Present, and Future, Fairbanks: Alaska Native Language Center, 1980

ALASKA NATIVE REVIEW COMMISSION The Alaska Native Review Commission was established at a meeting of the Inuit Circumpolar

ALASKA NATIVE SCIENCE COMMISSION Conference in July 1983. The Commission was asked to analyze and report on five broad areas: the social and economic conditions of Alaska Natives; the history and intentions of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA); the place of ANCSA in the history of claims agreements by the US government; the capability and performance of the regional and village corporations in carrying out the spirit of the settlement act; and the overall significance of ANCSA to indigenous people around the world. The Commission was chaired by the Honorable Thomas R. Berger, a former chief justice of the Supreme Court in British Columbia. Berger and his staff began the study in September 1983. For the next two years, they visited 61 villages and listened to the testimony of more than 1400 Alaska Natives. The Commission also organized two “Overview Roundtable Discussions” in Anchorage that considered Native views of the past and present, the effects of changes in land tenure and land use, the history of US policies toward Native Americans, and the relevance of ANSCA to other states and nations. The Commission finished its work in June 1985 and published Village Journey (Berger, 1985), a summary of its findings and recommendations, several months later. The Commission concluded that ANCSA was not only an act of assimilation but, ultimately, an instrument of destruction, for it separated people from the land and from each other. In Berger’s view, this was the intent of Congress in constructing the settlement, to eradicate communal patterns of leadership and decision-making, customs of sharing, aboriginal rights to hunt and fish, and traditional notions of land use and ownership. What gives meaning and nourishment to Native communities, the Commission found, is subsistence, or what Alaska Natives refer to as their way of life. It is through participation in the village subsistence economy that people acquire needed skills, learn their traditions, understand their environment, and join with others (including those who have lived in the past) to work, share, and celebrate. According to one witness: “The culture and life of my Native people are the subsistence way of life. And that’s what we always used, the subsistence way of life. It goes hand in hand with our culture, our own language, and all our activities” (Berger, 1985: p. 52). Consistent with their conclusions about the settlement act and Native societies, the Commission proposed three general recommendations: (i) provision should be made for the transfer of land from ANCSA corporations to tribal governments, which they could then hold in fee simple title or in federal trusteeship; (ii) village tribal governments should reassert their sovereign powers and seek state and, more important,

federal recognition; and (iii) tribal governments should be given exclusive jurisdiction over fish and wildlife on Native lands. The effects of the work of the Alaska Native Review Commission are mixed. Certainly the Berger report lent urgency and legitimacy to the “sovereignty movement” in Alaska, which sought to develop and strengthen tribal governments. Their efforts led to federal recognition in 1993, the organization of tribal courts, and increased tribal contracting for health and social services. Nevertheless, the powers of tribal organizations remain circumscribed by state opposition, federal rules, limited resources, and the 1998 US Supreme Court ruling that Indian country does not exist on Native lands in Alaska. DAVID C. MAAS See also Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA); Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) Further Reading Berger, Thomas, R., Village Journey, New York: Hill and Wang, 1985

ALASKA NATIVE SCIENCE COMMISSION In spring 1993, Anchorage, Alaska, hosted a conference on contamination of the Arctic, which opened with a keynote address by United States Senator (now Governor) Frank Murkowski, entitled “The Environmental Legacy of the Cold War.” In the days that followed, delegates listened to accounts of Arctic lands and peoples used as testing ground for Cold War-related scientific research. A number of revelations about research activities undertaken during the 1950s that only became public knowledge in the early 1990s comprised the discussions. These governmental activities included the deliberate seeding of the Snowbank and Ogotoruk catchments (adjacent to the Iñupiat Eskimo village of Point Hope) with Nevada test site radioactive material, as well as US Air Force experiments conducted in the 1950s on 121 residents of Iñupiat Inuit and Athapaskan Indian villages. Natives were given radioactive iodine (without their knowledge) to study the effects on the thyroid gland. The discovery of hitherto secretive and exploitative activities marked a turning point in the use of Arctic ecosystems and peoples for scientific research, especially to the indigenous people represented at the meeting. The conference resulted in the belief and commitment that the native community needed to become involved in scientific research in the Arctic, to become fully engaged with the way in which science

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ALASKA PENINSULA investigated their environment and lives, and ensure that research was conducted in Alaska in a form that had the full knowledge, cooperation, understanding, and support of local communities. As a result, a position statement was drafted, and the Alaskan Federation of Natives (AFN) passed a unanimous resolution at their annual convention in 1993, pledging support for the creation of the Alaskan Native Science Commission. The following year, a series of workshops brought together community leaders and elders with Arctic scientists to develop recommendations for the structure and function of the fledgling Science Commission. Participants obtained funds from the National Science Foundation to establish this vital link between the scientific world and the Alaskan native community. The mission of the Alaskan Native Science Commission is to “endorse and support scientific research that enhances and perpetuates Alaska native cultures, and ensures the protection of indigenous cultures and intellectual property.” Moreover, the Commission agreed at an inaugural meeting in 1994 that it would foster a number of specific objectives. These included incorporation of local and traditional knowledge into research and science; all too often, researchers conducted scientific investigations without recourse to existing native knowledge. The Commission decided that it ought to influence the process by which research priorities were established, since a number of key scientific questions relating to Alaskan native people (such as environmental health and diseases relevant to Alaskan native peoples) had not received priority in the greater scientific community. Alaskan natives needed to be involved at all levels of scientific research. The latter necessitated promotion of science among all native peoples, especially within youth populations who could benefit from scientific education and related opportunities. The Commission also agreed that feedback mechanisms would enable the dissemination of scientific results and involve communities in discussions related to local research, again in a manner that ensured scientific endeavor assimilate with local community life. Particular emphasis was placed upon the creation of an archive of native knowledge and scientific research results to safeguard such information for future generations. Finally, it was determined that Alaskan native peoples share in the economic benefits derived from their intellectual property. The Alaska Native Science Commission invited nominations from the native community to serve on a board of commissioners to oversee the work of the Commission, comprising seven native Alaskans and ex-officio members representing the scientific community in the state. The Commission presently has an

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executive director (as of 2003, Patricia Cochran, an Iñupiat native born and raised in Nome, Alaska) and a secretariat to coordinate activities. The Commission established “Principles for the Conduct of Research in the Arctic” as well as active working groups and task forces to tackle key issues (such as contaminants in the human food chain). The Commission organized a second highly successful summit with the theme of “Building Bridges with Traditional Knowledge” in May/June 2001. The number of scientific institutions and agencies listing the Commission as an integral partner to major research projects remains testament to the enormous success of the organization since its inception. TONY FOX See also Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) Further Reading Alaska Native Science Commission: Partnerships in Science and Research website: http://www.nativescience.org/index.html Alaska Native Science Commission: Partnerships in Science and Research website: http://www.ankn.uaf.edu/ansc.html

ALASKA PENINSULA The 450-mile (724-km)-long Alaska Peninsula projects southwestwardly off the Alaskan mainland. Just off the tip of the peninsula lies 60-mile (97-km)-long Unimak Island. Technically a part of the Aleutian Island chain, Unimak is closely allied with the peninsula by politics and economics. Volcanic activity, both past and present, has been observed along the length of the peninsula. The Aleutian Trench, lying deep in the Pacific Ocean where the Pacific Plate is subducted under the North American Plate, forms a great arc that parallels the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian Islands. The energy generated by the collision of these two plates catalyzes the intense seismic and volcanic activity on the Alaska Peninsula. The Aleutian Range, a part of the Pacific Ring of Fire and composed almost entirely of volcanoes, forms the mountainous backbone of the entire length of the Alaska Peninsula and continues to the end of the Aleutian Islands chain. The westerly expression of the Alaska Range—the Revelation Mountains—and the easterly expression of the Aleutian Range—Redoubt Volcano (10,197 ft/3108 m)—are both found in Lake Clark National Park and Preserve. The next westward volcano in the row, Mt Iliamna (10,016 ft/3053 m), overlooks Lake Iliamna, Alaska’s largest lake (1150 sq mi/2978 sq km) at the base of the Alaska Peninsula. The Bering Sea with its Bristol Bay lies on the north side of the peninsula, and the Pacific Ocean with its Shelikof Strait lies to the south.

ALASKA RANGE Much of the peninsula is treeless, but scattered, small stands of deciduous and coniferous trees exist, especially on south-facing slopes and valleys. The surrounding seas greatly influence the climate of Alaska Peninsula. The weather is typically cloudy, windy, and rainy; total precipitation ranges from 20 to 33 inches (51–84 cm) per year, including about 50 inches (127 cm) of snow. Winter temperatures average in the 6–30°F (−14 to −1°C) range, and summer temperatures in the 40–65°F (4–18°C) range. The greater part of the Alaska Peninsula is under either state or federal protection; these lands include Katmai National Park and Preserve, Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve, Becharof, Izembek, and Alaska Peninsula National Wildlife Refuges, Izembek State Game Refuge, and McNeil River State Game Sanctuary (famous for its great concentration of brown bears during the salmon runs). Aniakchak Volcano (4398 ft/1341 m) last erupted in 1931, but some 3700 years earlier, 3000 feet (914 m) of its top blew off, leaving behind a 6-mile (10-km)-wide caldera (a volcanic crater) measuring 2000 ft/610 m deep. Designated a National Natural Landmark, the 8223 ft/2507 m Mt Veniaminof is a massive volcano that rises from a base 30 miles (48 km) in diameter. The broad, conical Veniaminof Volcano, one of the highest and largest volcanoes on the peninsula, is truncated by a steep-walled, glacier-filled caldera that formed nearly 3700 years ago. Since no roads connect the peninsula to other parts of the state, the area is served only by air and sea transportation. The human population swells markedly during the summer, but the year-round population numbers about 5000, with Alaska Natives (Aleut and Koniag Alutiiq) comprising about half the total. Commercial fishing, fish processing, sport fishing, sport hunting, tourism, and government and transportation services form the economic base of Alaska Peninsula. Brown bears, moose, caribou, wolves, many other kinds of smaller mammals, and many kinds of birds are commonly observed on the peninsula. The surrounding marine waters are highly favorable to crabs, fish, and marine mammals. J. RICHARD GORHAM See also Alaska; Aleut; Aleutian Islands; National Parks and Protected Areas: Alaska; Volcanoes and Volcanic Activity Further Reading Barnett, J., “Chignik summers.” Alaska Geographic, 21(1) (1994): 50–53 Bodeau, Jean, Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska, Anchorage: Alaska Natural History Association and Greatland Graphics, 1992

Plafker, George & Henry C. Berg (editors), The Geology of Alaska, Boulder: The Geological Society of America, 1994 Rennick, Penny (editor), “Backcountry Alaska.” Alaska Geographic, 13(2) (1986): 1–224 ——— (editor), “Nushagak River.” Alaska Geographic, 17(1) (1990): 1–96 ——— (editor), “The Alaska Peninsula.” Alaska Geographic, 21(1) (1994): 1–96 ——— (editor), “Russian America.” Alaska Geographic, 26(4) (1999): 1–96 ——— (editor), “Seals, sea lions and sea otters.” Alaska Geographic, 27(2) (2000): 1–96 Sherwonit, B., “Aniakchak caldera.” Alaska Geographic, 21(1) (1994): 16–19

ALASKA RANGE The 600 mile (1000 km) Alaska Range in southern Alaska is crowned by the highest mountain in North America, Mt McKinley (Denali), which soars dramatically some 17,000 ft (5182 m) above a vast stretch of taiga, the characteristic ecosystem of interior Alaska. From Denali’s double peaks (20,320 ft, 19,470 ft), the Alaska Range merges in the west with the Aleutian Range at the base of the Alaska Peninsula and in the east with the mountains of the Yukon Territory of Canada. The Alaska Range is in general higher and more continuous than the Coast Range, although it is split in three by two highways, the Parks Highway and the Richardson Highway. Both the Mentasta Mountains and the Nutzotin Mountains, at the eastern end of the arc, lie partially within the Wrangell-St Elias National Park and Preserve. At the western end of the arc, the Tordrillo Mountains and Revelation Mountains are close to, but mostly outside of, Lake Clark National Park and Preserve. Denali and the surrounding mountains form the centerpiece of the six million acre (2,430,000 hectares) Denali National Park and Preserve. The Alaska Range was heavily glaciated during the Ice Ages, and several glaciers remain today. The largest glaciers are clustered around Mt McKinley, especially on the south-facing slopes, which intercept moist air from the Gulf of Alaska and gather greater amounts of snow. Other glaciers occur in the Mentasta Mountains and the Tordrillo Mountains. The climate of the Alaska Range is typically continental—very cold winters and moderately warm summers. The Revelation and Tordrillo Mountains tend to receive more rain and snow than the other parts of the range because of their closer proximity to the Gulf of Alaska. Since the Mentasta and Nutzotin Mountains lie in the shadow of the Wrangell and St Elias Mountains, they receive less precipitation than other parts of the range. In general, the south-facing slopes, because they are warmer and wetter, have taller and more diverse kinds of both woody and herbaceous vegetation than the north slopes, where alpine tundra is more common.

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ALASKA TREATY

Denali National Park, Mt McKinley (Denali) and the Alaska Range. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

The origin of the Alaska Range is related to subduction of the north Pacific plate below southern Alaska. Parts of the Alaska Range (notably south of the Denali Fault, a prominent linear valley that follows the range for much of its length) have been traced far back in time to terranes that at one time were equatorial volcanic islands. As a result of tectonic plate movements, these Pacific terranes eventually collided with and accreted to the Alaskan mainland (which at that time consisted only of what is now interior Alaska). Several of the larger peaks, including Mt McKinley, are remnants of volcanic intrusions that cooled and hardened to become granite. Major uplift of the Alaska Range began in the early Pliocene, c.4–5 million years ago. Mt McKinley has reached such great heights because it is composed of rocks that are relatively lighter than the surrounding rocks and because it is located at a point along the Denali Fault where uplifting forces find maximum expression. A major earthquake of magnitude 7.9 occurred on November 3, 2002 along the Denali Fault, the largest ever recorded in the interior of Alaska. Grizzly bears, black bears, caribou, moose, wolves, Dall’s sheep, and many kinds of smaller mammals are found throughout the Alaska Range. The native people of the Alaska Range are largely Dena’ina Athapaskan Indians, originally an inland group from the west of the Alaska Range. Denali, the name of Mt McKinley, is a Koyukon Athapaskan name. J. RICHARD GORHAM See also Alaska Peninsula; Mount McKinley (Denali); National Parks and Protected Areas: Alaska

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Further Reading Brown, William E., Denali: Symbol of the Alaskan Wild: An Illustrated History of the Denali-Mount McKinley Region, Alaska, Virginia Beach: The Donning Company and the Alaska Natural History Association, 1993 Collier, Michael, The Geology of Denali National Park, Anchorage: Alaska Natural History Association, 1989 Murie, Adolph, A Naturalist in Alaska, Garden City: The Natural History Library, Anchor Books, Doubleday and Company, 1963, many reprints Plafker, George & Henry C. Berg, The Geology of Alaska, Boulder: The Geological Society of America, 1994 Rennick, Penny (editor), “Backcountry Alaska.” Alaska Geographic, 13(2) (1986): 1–224 ——— (editor), “Denali.” Alaska Geographic, 15(3) (1988): 1–96 ——— (editor), “Glaciers of Alaska.” Alaska Geographic, 28(2) (2001): 1–128 Ward, Kennan, Denali: Reflections of a Naturalist, Minnetonka: NorthWord Press, 2000 Waterman, Jonathan, In the Shadow of Denali: Life and Death on Alaska’s Mt McKinley, New York: The Lyons Press, 1998 Woerner, R.K., The Alaska Handbook, Jefferson: McFarland and Company, 1986 Wuerthner, George, Alaska’s Mountain Ranges, Helena: Alaska Geographic Publishing, 1988

ALASKA TREATY (CONVENTION FOR THE CESSION OF THE RUSSIAN POSSESSIONS IN NORTH AMERICA TO THE UNITED STATES) During the 18th century, the Russian Empire spread its influence into Arctic lands as it expanded to the east. On June 4, 1741, two Russian ships, the Saint Peter captained by Vitus Bering and Saint Paul led by Alexey Chirikov, started from Petropavlovsk on the

ALBEDO Kamchatka peninsula, and on July 15 approached the northwestern coast of North America. Since 1741 for more than a century, the Russian Empire ruled Alaska and the Aleutian Islands until their acquisition by the United States in 1867. Exploration of Alaska was bound primarily to fur trade; colonization of the new lands and the Arctic people remained minimal and settlers founded the first settlement on Kodiak Island only in 1784. The first town of Novoarchangelsk (New Archangel) was founded in 1802, and the total Russian population of Alaska never exceeded 800 people. By the middle of the 19th century, Russia’s geopolitical and economical interests in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands had waned. The governor of East Siberia, N. Muraviev-Amyrskiy, first suggested selling the Russian territory in Alaska to the United States, which he formulated in his report to the Czar Nicolai I in 1853. Duke Constantine, the brother of the next Czar in line to the throne, Alexander II, supported Muraviev-Amyrskiy, and in 1857 wrote an official letter to the Russian foreign minister Prince A. Gorchakov encouraging him to begin negotiations with the US government. In 1859–1860, Gorchakov, acting through the Russian minister to the United States, Baron Edward de Stoeckl, began negotiations with the Californian Senator William Gwin and Vice-Secretary of State J. Appleton. The negotiations, however, failed as the parties disagreed on the selling price. Negotiations continued through 1866 until after the end of the American Civil War. Minister de Stoeckl and William Henry Seward, Secretary of State under President Andrew Johnson, inspired this second round. In the fall of 1866, Stoeckl visited St Petersburg, where he conducted several meetings with Russian officials including Duke Constantine and the Russian minister of finances. On March 29, 1867, Stoeckl and Seward drafted the text of the resultant treaty according to which Russia ceded 1,518,800 sq km (586,412 sq mi) of its territories in North America to the United States for the sum total of $7,200,000. The United States and Russia signed the Alaska Treaty on March 30, 1867; it passed through the US Senate on April 9 despite negative public opinion in both countries. Russian officials in St Petersburg adopted the Alaska Treaty on May 15, 1867. To mitigate the negative response from the American media, officials in Russia published the text of the treaty in French in the diplomatic periodical of 1868, which had a small distribution. One year later, on July 14, 1868, the US Congress adopted the Alaska Treaty. On October 18, 1867, the American flag was raised in New Archangel, the former capital of the Russian territories in America. MARINA BELOLUTSKAIA

See also Alaska Further Reading Bolkhovitinov, Nikolai N., Russian-American Relations and the Sale of Alaska, 1834–1867, translated and edited by Richard A. Pierce, Moscow: Nauka and Fairbanks, Alaska: Aleutian Islands, Limestone Press, 1997 Callahan, J., Russian-American Relations During the American Civil War, Morgantown: West Virginia University, 1908 Jados, Stanley (editor), Documents on Russian-American Relations. Washington to Eisenhower, Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1965 Jensen, Ronald, The Alaska Purchase and Russian American Relations, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975 Shiels, Archibald, The Purchase of Alaska, Fairbanks: University of Alaska and Seattle: University of Washington, 1967 Sumner, Charles, Works of Charles Sumner, 15 volumes, Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1870–1877 Van Deusen, Glydon, William Henry Seward, New York: Oxford University Press, 1967

ALBEDO In general, the term albedo denotes the fraction of incident radiation reflected by a particle or surface. The shortwave (i.e., in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum where the Sun’s radiation is concentrated) albedo of the Earth as a whole, and temporal and spatial variations in this quantity, are of fundamental importance in the global climate system. The planetary albedo is defined as the ratio of the total shortwave radiation reflected back into space to the total incident shortwave radiation; for the Earth this figure is about 30%, implying that about 70% of the incident energy in sunlight is absorbed by the Earth. This absorbed radiation is balanced by longwave (thermal infrared) radiation emitted by the Earth by virtue of its temperature. If the Earth had no atmosphere, the spatially and temporally averaged equilibrium temperature reached by its surface would be about −18°C. The presence of the atmosphere raises this average temperature, through the action of the greenhouse effect, to about +10°C. The 70% of the incident shortwave radiation that is absorbed by the Earth is distributed such that about 50% is absorbed by the Earth’s surface, and the remaining 20% by the atmosphere. Heat transfer between the Earth’s surface and atmosphere takes place through evaporation and precipitation, convection, and directly by longwave radiation. Spatial variations in the Earth’s albedo cause local differences in the heat balance and drive the global weather system. Although the main contributor to the albedo is cloud cover (clouds have albedos that can range up to about 0.85, although optically thin clouds may have albedos as low as 0.05), variations in the material constituting the Earth’s surface are also

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ALERT 0.7

350 absorbed radiation

0.6

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Strugnell, N., W. Lucht & C. Schaaf, “A global albedo data set derived from AVHRR data for use in climate simulations.” Geophysical Research Letters, 28 (2001): 191–194

0.5

250 outgoing radiation 200

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Variation of albedo with latitude.

significant. The albedo of vegetated areas is low, typically 0.3 at most, not an unexpected fact since plants depend on the absorption of shortwave radiation for photosynthesis. Water surfaces also exhibit low albedo, down to 0.02 in the case of clear water. The albedos of exposed soil, rock, urban, and desert areas do not generally exceed about 0.4. However, the albedo of a snow-covered surface is significantly higher, and can reach about 0.9 in the case of freshly fallen dry snow. Consequently, there is a strong latitudinal gradient of albedo, illustrated by the figure above. The figure shows that the regions poleward of about 30° latitude are net emitters of radiation, the phenomenon becoming more pronounced as the latitude increases, while the tropical regions are net absorbers. The Earth’s planetary albedo exerts a negative influence on the global mean temperature, since an increase in the albedo would result in a smaller proportion of the incident shortwave radiation being absorbed. Since a decrease in the global mean temperature would be likely to cause an increase in the snowcovered area, and hence in the planetary albedo, this mechanism constitutes a positive feedback, magnifying the effect and tending to destabilize the global climate system. The importance of this albedo feedback, among the many feedback mechanisms within the global climate system, is one of the reasons why it is particularly desirable to monitor and model the distribution of ice and snow at high latitudes. GARETH REES See also Climate Change; Energy Balance Further Reading Barry, R.G. & R.J. Chorley, Atmosphere, Weather and Climate (6th edition), London: Routledge, 1992 Houghton, J.T., The Physics of Atmospheres (2nd edition), Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986 Jacobsen, M.Z., Fundamentals of Atmospheric Modeling, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999

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ALERT Alert, on the northern tip of Canada’s Ellesmere Island, is the world’s most northerly continuously inhabited place. It was established in 1950 as a United States-Canada Joint Arctic Weather Station. Alert was named for HMS Alert, the flagship of the British North Polar Expedition of 1875–1876 led by Sir George Nares. HMS Alert overwintered near Cape Sheridan just east of Alert. At the turn of the century, Commander Robert Peary established camps in the Alert area during his three expeditions toward the North Pole. Although northern Ellesmere is known to the Inuit as “the land beyond the land of the people,” archaeological evidence shows that people of the Thule and Independence cultures did live and travel in the area. Today the closest settlements to Alert are the communities in the Avanersuaq (Thule district) of Greenland located 675 km southeast, and Grise Firord located 750 km south on Ellesmere Island’s south coast. Alert is just over 800 km south of the North Pole. The Royal Canadian Air Force established an experimental wireless station at Alert in 1956. This evolved into the Alert Wireless Station and became Canadian Forces Station Alert (CFS Alert) in 1966. The location was strategic for intercepting radio signals from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and for listening to radio traffic from ships and submarines operating in northern waters. As the Cold War among the allies and the Soviet Block and Eastern Europe set in, CFS Alert grew from a staff of 27 running a one-hut operation to a station with over 30 buildings. At the peak of activity in the 1980s, over 300 people often inhabited Alert during the summer. The annual resupply to Alert has involved hundreds of tons of food and materials, half a million gallons of fuel, and hundreds of personnel. The resupply of Alert by icebreaker ended in 1953 due to the short season of open water and the difficulties of ice navigation. After 1954, ship and aircraft delivered supplies and equipment to the Thule air base in Greenland and then airlifted a resupply mission code-named Operation Boxtop to Alert. In 1961, the Hercules C-130 transport aircraft replaced the C-119 Boxcars used originally. The original accommodations at Alert comprised prefabricated huts. Services were minimal. An impressive expansion program between 1975 and 1984 saw CFS Alert equipped with modern buildings with more comfortable accommodations and extensive facilities for recreation. Most members of the military are

ALEUT posted to Alert for six months, although weather station personnel served for one year. Women began serving at CFS Alert in 1980. Since the very beginning, Alert has provided accommodation and logistical support for scientific research and exploration. The Polar Continental Shelf Project maintained a research base at Alert in the 1960s. With the easing of the Cold War tensions and with great advances in communications technology, the station was downsized in the 1990s, yet remains an active outpost of the Canadian Forces. The original buildings and weather station were demolished in 1996. The attractions of Alert include cairns and artifacts from both Nares’s and Peary’s expeditions, the remnants of two aircraft crashes, ice caves, and deposits of quartz crystals. Wildlife commonly observed in Alert includes wolves, muskoxen, Peary caribou, Arctic fox, Arctic hare, Arctic terns, ivory gulls, and Arctic char. In recognition of the importance of northern Ellesmere Island to Canada’s heritage, the area surrounding Alert is protected as part of Quttinirpaaq National Park. DAVID R. GRAY See also British Arctic Expedition, 1875–1876; Ellesmere Island; Militarization of the Arctic in the West; Peary, Robert E.; Thule Air Base Further Reading Baril, Gerald, “Room at the top.” Sentinel, 3 (1980): 7–10 Gray, David Robert, Alert, Beyond the Inuit Lands: The Story of Canadian Forces Station Alert, Ottawa: Borealis Press, 1997 Johnson Jr., J. Peter, “The establishment of Alert, N.W.T., Canada.” Arctic, 43(1) (1990): 21–34 Kobalenko, Jerry, The Horizontal Everest: Extreme Journeys on Ellesmere Island, Toronto: Penguin, 2002 Lanken, Dane & Janice Lang, “On Alert: at the top of Ellesmere Island, Canada’s military listens in on the neighbours and perfects the art of ““hearing” sea traffic.” Canadian Geographic, 120(7) (2000): 58–72 Lee, Robert Mason, Death and Deliverance, Toronto: Macfarlane Walter and Ross, 1992 MacDonald, Stewart D., “Report of Biological Investigations at Alert, N.W.T.,” National Museum of Canada, Bulletin No. 128, Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1953

ALEUT The Aleut, or Unangan in their own language, traditionally inhabited the lower Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian archipelago, a 1300-mile-long volcanic island arc of almost entirely treeless tundra extending from the Alaska Peninsula west toward Kamchatka. As the southern edge of the Bering Land Bridge, the eastern Aleutian Islands formed the initial route to the colonization of the Americas. The ancestors to the Aleut occupied this region for at least 10,000 years, and for most of that period they lived as sedentary hunter-

gatherers, occupying semi-subterranean dwellings in villages ranging from a few households to those supporting up to 1000 people in more recent times. By 4000 years ago, they were living in some of the largest villages ever seen in the Arctic. Early fur hunters, explorers, and priests estimated the Aleut population as between 12,000 and 20,000 people. Today, there are a dozen Aleut communities in the Aleutian region, including the Pribilof Islands and Russia’s Commander Islands, where Russian fur traders relocated Aleuts to hunt for them in the 18th century. Two and a half centuries of widespread disease, social and cultural reorganization, and political hegemony has left the Alaska Aleut population at 2150, with another 300 Aleuts living in Russia. Aleuts comprise 2.2% of the total Alaskan Native population. The Aleut were a ranked society, with hereditary nobility, a middle class of the nobility’s kinsmen, commoners, and slaves, who were often war captives. They participated in trade and warfare over hundreds of miles with their closest neighbors, the Koniag of Kodiak Island, who today call themselves Alutiiq, and the Yupiit to their north, as well as between Aleut villages and islands. Villages consisted largely of kinsmen and several related nuclear families comprised a typical household, the chief often being the head of the largest extended family. Though usually an inherited position, chieftaincy relied on leadership abilities, consanguineal and affinal relationships, ability to mediate disputes and wage wars, and hunting prowess. The kinship system in Aleut society is difficult to determine because of sociopolitical heterogeneity throughout the islands and circumstances of contact. It is possible that there were multiple descent systems based on archaeological data of residence patterns. Review of the kinship terminology compiled by Knut Bergsland found that Aleut kinship resembled the Iroquois system, where there is some separation between parallel and cross-cousins. A mother’s sister and father’s brother were called my other mother and father, and parallel cousins were the same word for brother and sister with suffixes. Inheritance was through the male line. Polygyny and polyandry were also practiced. After Russian contact, Aleut kinship terms changed to reflect their Russian counterparts. Except for a low intensity use of terrestrial mammals such as caribou, bear, and foxes on the Alaska Peninsula and first Aleutian Island of Unimak, the Aleut were, and continue to be, oriented almost entirely toward the sea. Aleut villages were located on bays and next to salmon streams where they had access to sea mammals and fish year round. All species were harvested for food and for making clothing and tools, such as seals, sea otters, whales, walrus, salmon, halibut, herring, and cod, among many. A variety of

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ALEUT edible plants and wild berries were eaten. Intertidal resources were harvested as well, including sea urchins, clams, limpets, and mussels. Ducks, geese, cormorant, and other waterfowl were also hunted. All available wild species are still subsistence harvested today by the Aleut. Clothing was made from fur, bird skins, or sea mammal intestines. Highly decorated wooden hunting visors were worn by the men, their shape indicating rank, and their toolkit consisted of the bow and arrow, fish spears and hooks, harpoons, bird darts, wooden shields, and bone or ivory armor. A woman’s toolkit included skin sewing and beading needles made of bone and ivory, household utensils such as knives and bowls, and basketry items. Both men and women were adorned with labrets, earrings, and tattoos. Aleuts are well known for intricate basket weaving, a craft that is being revived today, and the modern kayak was modeled after Aleutian design. The Aleut had a broad knowledge of human anatomy and practiced a wide range of medicinal treatments such as acupuncture, bloodletting and massage, and the use of teas and tonics for curing certain ailments. They mummified many of the dead, although this practice may have been reserved for Aleuts of high rank. Over millennia, the Aleutian region has been the center of a vast interaction sphere that, in addition to the Koniag and Yup’ik peoples to the north and east, included prehistoric Chinese, Japanese, and northeast Asians to the west. In 1741, Aleutian prehistory came to an end when two vessels of Bering’s Second Kamchatka Expedition, commissioned by the Czar to determine the relationship and trading potential between Asia and America, sailed from Kamchatka. The St Peter, commanded by Vitus Bering, landed in the Shumagin Islands where crewmembers Friedrich Müller, Sven Waxell, and Georg Steller described the first encounter with Aleuts. The St Paul, commanded by Aleksey Chirikov, arrived near Adak Island and was approached by Aleuts in their baidarkas (kayaks). The czarist government, interested in securing rights to these new lands and reaping profits from the harvest of sea mammals, commissioned additional voyages in search of new areas to exploit. Russian stewards acutely reorganized the Aleut population and transformed a large number of them into producers for the Russian state. Aleut men were transported to new hunting territory that had previously been uninhabited and established settlements. Within a few decades of the Russian-American Company’s establishment in 1799, the Aleut population had drastically declined by as much as 80% from disease, malnutrition, exposure, suicide, and punishment by Russians. Russian Orthodox missions were established in the early 19th century, and instead of a total replacement

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of Aleut cosmology and religion, a Russian orthodoxy emerged with cultural elements that were distinctly Aleut. Most Aleuts were baptized and a few were ordained as priests. Traditional Aleut religion has been described as animistic shamanism with a concept of a creator and spirits who controlled the fate of humanity, but the belief system is largely unknown. In 1824–1834, the priest Ivan Veniaminov lived and carried out religious duties on Unalaska and eastward, all the while concerning himself with Aleut origins, language, and culture. In Notes on the Islands of the Unalaska District, he criticized former explorers’ accounts of the people and culture because of shortterm visits, ignorance of the language, and too much emphasis on economic exploits. Despite its 1840 date, Veniaminov’s Notes remains the most comprehensive ethnographic description of Aleut life. A detailed recording of language and customs was critical to communicate the gospel, but moral obligation to save their souls turned into mutual esteem and affection. Most Aleuts today are Russian orthodoxy and many villages have a church. With the American purchase of Alaska in 1867, the treaty excluded Native peoples and made them wards, not citizens, of the US government, a status that continued through statehood in 1959 until the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) in 1971. Hunting for furs continued under US rule until sea otters were almost extinct and the government banned the practice. Hunting for fur seals was eventually limited to the Pribilof Islands and controlled by the government, which is now a subsistence hunt. Mission schools established by various churches were replaced by federal schools in several communities, although older children had to board away from home. Medical care was sparse and the mortality rate remained high. In 1942, the threat of the Japanese landing in the Aleutians prompted a forced evacuation of all Aleut villages west of Unimak Island (save for those of Attu Island, who were taken to a prison camp in Japan). Hundreds of men, women, and children were taken to southeast Alaska and housed in abandoned canneries, where many elders and children died from disease or malnutrition. Not everyone returned to their villages after the war, and those who did found that the American servicemen, not the Japanese, had ravaged their homes, burned villages (supposedly to prevent Japanese use), stolen personal items, and riddled, homes and churches with bullet holes using them as target practice. Several villages were no longer habitable and were permanently abandoned. Reparations for damaged or stolen personal property, church property, loss of lands, and human life were finally made in 1988 by the US government after

ALEUT many years of personal testimony and petitioning Washington DC. Their success in this process is due in large part to the creation of pan-Aleutian organizations. The Aleut League was formed in 1967 to coordinate individual community groups and secure funding for education, health, and housing programs. Members of the Aleut League were instrumental in the passage of ANCSA in 1971. This act passed title of land to Natives and created regional Native for-profit corporations, of which the Aleut Corporation is one. The Aleut League and the Aleutian Planning Commission merged in 1976 to form the Aleutian/Pribilof Islands Association, the nonprofit companion to the Aleut Corporation. Each village also has a village corporation that manages their lands, and a tribal council, which provides social, educational, and employment services to the village and acts as an advocate on behalf of their tribal members. After World War II, the United States continued to assume control over the western half of the Aleutians for military purposes, and the Atomic Energy Commission used the island of Amchitka for underground nuclear testing. The long-term effects of these tests on the environment, ocean, wildlife, and health of Aleuts continue to be investigated. The Aleut have maintained a lifestyle and culture based almost entirely on marine resources since their arrival to the region. The modern Aleut economy is based on subsistence harvesting of most local species, commercial fishing, wage employment in local services, the Permanent Fund, and state and federal aid, but most are commercial fishermen. Eastern Aleutian villages (Sand Point, King Cove, Nelson Lagoon, False Pass, Akutan) are predominantly commercial fishing villages, including the large port at Dutch Harbor and Unalaska. The seafood industry has seen cycles of abundance and decline in salmon, crab, codfish, walleye pollock, shrimp, herring, and halibut. Central Aleutian villages of Atka and Nikolski also share in commercial fishing in smaller percentages, largely supported through community development programs of which the smaller of the eastern villages and Pribilof villages are also a part. Aleuts of St Paul and St George, the Pribilof Islands villages, annually harvest fur seals for subsistence and fish commercially. In the Commander Islands where poverty is widespread, Aleuts have been working to develop a commercial economy based on its natural resources with limited success. The traditional Aleut language is derived from the Eskimo-Aleut language stock, and is thought to have been distinct by at least 3000 years ago (M. Krauss, 1980, Alaska Native Languages: Past, Present and Future, Alaska Native Language Center, Fairbanks).

At contact, there were at least a dozen dialects throughout Aleut territory, often coinciding with island groups and village clusters. Pan’kov, who was an Aleut chief of Tigal’da Island, and Veniaminov recorded the Aleut language in the Cyrillic alphabet. Waldemar Jochelson recorded spoken word and song on phonographic cylinders in the early 20th century and Aleuts helped him translate it into Russian. Knut Bergsland detailed Aleut grammar, dialects, created a dictionary, and compiled a book of Aleut personal names taken from Joseph Billings’s expedition and other sources that were replaced by Christian names. Today there are only about 300 speakers spread throughout villages and in Anchorage, and these Aleuts take pride in being literate in their own language. Language programs are being revived in several village schools. The term Aleut is not their original self-designation. It has been argued to be from the Koryak and Chukchi languages, and that Russians and their eastern Siberian crew gave it to Aleutian inhabitants, since Aliat in Chukchi means “island.” Others believe that it came from the village of Alut on the coast of Kamchatka, whose residents were also whale hunters. Still others argue that it originally was the ethnonym of the inhabitants of the Near Islands, the westernmost in the Aleutian chain, distinct from other Aleuts culturally and linguistically. In the native language, there are multiple names for different groups. For example, Atkans called themselves Unangas, and called the eastern groups Qayakuris and the western groups na Mirus. Local groupings and inhabitants of different islands are known to have also used other names for themselves. The self-designation Unangan originally applied to the eastern Aleuts only, meaning “coastal people,” according to some. In addition to Aleut being the most widely used name for all Aleutian inhabitants, it had also been the self-designation of the Pacific Eskimos of Kodiak Island and Prince William Sound who, since 1982, call themselves (and their Yupik language) Alutiiq. Aleut villages are ethnically diverse. Major fish processing plants are located in several of the communities and claim an international seasonal work force, primarily Filipinos and Mexicans. Aleuts claim a strong Russian heritage, but perhaps less known is their claim of a Scandinavian heritage since numerous Scandinavian fishermen arrived after World War I for the cod fishery and introduced their own techniques of boat building and commercial fishing. Aleut society and culture has been continuously shaped by a history of foreign visitors, indigenous innovation, introduced lifeways and technology, a dynamic environment, and governmental policies over millennia. KATHERINE REEDY-MASCHNER

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ALEUT CORPORATION See also Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA); Alaska Peninsula; Aleut Corporation; Aleutian Islands; Aleutian/Pribilof Islands Association; Aleutian Range; Aleut International Association; Alutiit; Archbishop Innocent (Ivan Veniaminov); Eskimo-Aleut Languages Further Reading Bergsland, Knut & Moses Dirks (editors), Unangam Ungiikangin kayux Tunusangin; Unangam Uniikangis ama Tunuzangis; Aleut Tales and Narratives, collected 1909–1910 by Waldemar Jochelson, Fairbanks: Alaska Native Language Center, 1990 Black, Lydia, Sarah McGowan, Jerry Jacka, Natalia Taksami & Miranda Wright, The History and Ethnohistory of the Aleutians East Borough, Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1999 Jones, Dorothy, Aleuts in Transition: A Comparison of Two Villages, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976 Kohloff, Dean, When the Wind was a River: Aleut Evacuation in World War II, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995 Lantis, Margaret, Aleut. In Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 5, Arctic, edited by D. Damas, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1984 Laughlin, William S., Aleuts: Survivors of the Bering Land Bridge, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980 Liapunova, R.G., Essays on the Ethnography of the Aleuts (at the end of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century), translated by J. Shelest, Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1996 MacLeish, Sumner, Seven Words for Wind: Essays and Field Notes from Alaska’s Pribilof Islands, Seattle: Epicenter Press, 1997 Maschner, Herbert & Katherine Reedy-Maschner, “Raid, retreat, defend (repeat): the archaeology and ethnohistory of warfare on the North Pacific.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 17 (1998): 19–51 Townsend, Joan, “Precontact Political Organization and Slavery in Aleut Societies.” In The Development of Political Organization in Native North America, edited by E. Tooker, Washington, District of Columbia: Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society 1979, 1983 Veniaminov, Ioann, Notes on the Islands of the Unalaska District [1840], translated by L. Black & R.H. Goeghega, edited by R.A. Pierce, Alaska History, No. 27, Kinston, Ontario: The Limestone Press, 1984

ALEUT CORPORATION The United States Congress passed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) of 1971 as a means of compensating Alaska Natives for the loss of lands after a long-standing dispute over ownership. The Settlement Act passed titles of land to Alaska Natives and formed 13 regional for-profit corporations, 12 regional nonprofit social service corporations, and over 200 village corporations. Legislation provided a land settlement totaling 44 million acres and a cash settlement of $962.5 million to be divided among the

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13 regional corporations. Individuals became shareholders of local village and nonprofit corporations as well as the regional corporation. As a result, village corporations owned the surface rights of the land while regional corporations owned the subsurface rights. The Aleut Corporation was established in 1972 under the terms of ANCSA as the regional corporation for the Aleut homeland in a settlement of $19.5 million. The corporation was entitled to 66,000 acres of surface lands and 1.572 million acres of subsurface estate. Voting shares of stock were issued to 3249 shareholders. The Aleut Corporation oversees 12 local village corporations designed to enhance housing, education, and health of its members. The monetary settlement greatly impacted Aleut economic development and social services because there is little landbased resource potential, while the land settlement meant regaining rights to ancestral lands. Most of the Aleut Corporation’s land entitlements are located between Port Moller on the Alaska Peninsula and the western tip of Atka Island in the central Aleutians, as well as on the Shumagin and Pribilof Islands. The corporation owns the village site on Attu Island and numerous historical and burial sites. No known oil or natural gas is present underneath the islands, and no timber on the tundra, and only limited gold or other mining prospects. Instead, the Aleut Corporation is a multi-industry conglomerate that manages and sells sand, gravel, and rock aggregates as part of its subsurface rights within the region. With the initial capital from the ANCSA settlement, the company made a number of investments in commercial real estate, government operations and maintenance contracts, construction, aggregate sales, and oil- and gas-producing properties in and out of Alaska. Subsidiaries of the corporation include the Aleut Enterprise Corporation, Akima Corporation, Ki LLC, SMI International Corporation, TekStar Incorporated, Alaska Trust Company, and Aleut Real Estate LLC. The goals of the Aleut Corporation include improving the economic and social lives of Aleut people through successful business ventures, providing significant dividends and benefits to its shareholders, and preserving Aleut culture. The corporation also funds The Aleut Foundation (TAF), a private nonprofit foundation formed in 1987 to support the economic and social needs of its enrollees and their descendants by offering scholarship, job referral, and cultural preservation programs that promote socioeconomic stability and cultural awareness. ANCSA launched Aleuts onto the global stage as corporate managers of regional and national companies, but the local impact was less significant because, while individual shareholders may receive a return on

ALEUT INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION the economic success of the Aleut Corporation, Aleut villages remain dominated by family-based fishing economies. A board of directors consisting of a president, vice president, chairperson, vice chairperson, secretary-treasurer, and four directors govern the corporation. The board appoints a CEO (chief executive officer) to conduct corporate business. KATHERINE REEDY-MASCHNER See also Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA); Aleut, Aleutian Islands; Aleutian/Pribilof Islands Association; Aleut International Association Further Reading Berger, Thomas, Village Journey, New York: Hill & Wang, 1985 Case, David S., Alaska Natives and American Laws, Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1984 Flanders, Nicholas, “The Alaska Native Corporation as conglomerate: the problem of profitability.” Human Organization, 48(4) (1989): 299–312 Jones, Dorothy, Aleuts in Transition: A Comparison of Two Villages, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976 Lantis, Margaret, “Aleut.” In Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 5, edited by D. Damas, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1984 Laughlin, William S., Aleuts: Survivors of the Bering Land Bridge, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980

ALEUT INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION The Aleut International Association (AIA) was formed in September 1998 as a nonprofit organization representing the Aleut people of Russia and Alaska. Spearheaded by the Aleut leader Flore Lekanof in the hopes of giving Aleuts a voice in the international Arctic community, the association reunites a people who have been separated for 200 years since the US purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. The formation of the AIA was realized through the efforts of two separate organizations: the Aleutian/Pribilof Islands Association in Alaska, a nonprofit consortium of 12 federally recognized tribes living in the Aleutian/Pribilof region, and the Association of Peoples of the North-Aleut District, Kamachatskaya region, a nonprofit organization representing the interests of the Russian Aleuts, most of whom live on the Commander Islands. The Aleut people are indigenous to the lower Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands of Alaska, which has been occupied by their ancestors for at least 8000 years. During the 1800s, Russian fur traders forcefully relocated many Aleuts to islands that had previously been uninhabited, most notably the Pribilof

Islands and Russia’s Commander Islands, to harvest sea mammals for Russian fur traders. Aleuts of the Commander Islands (Bering and Mednyi islands) were subsequently separated from their relatives and homeland with the purchase of Alaska by the United States. The Aleut District of the Kamachatskaya region was established in 1932, and in 1969 the Aleuts of the two Commander Islands were consolidated by the Soviet government to live in the village of Nikolskoye, Bering Island. Aleuts still live there today and face severe economic and social problems, but have no representation in the regional legislature. Those American Aleuts who speak the western dialect of their Native language are still able to communicate with Russian Aleuts 200 years later. A sharing of traditional Aleut songs and dances presumed lost has likewise flowed across the border from Russia. The purpose of the AIA is to protect the natural resources and the environment of the region surrounding the traditional and modern Aleut homelands, which today are threatened by the influence of the changing Russian and American economies, pollution, military activity, climate change, and the commercial fishing fleets of several nations. The organization also aims to increase the frequency of contact between Russian Aleuts and American Aleuts, reunite relatives from both countries, and provide economic, medical, educational, and technological support where needed. The AIA is the result of a decade of efforts by Aleut tribal leaders in both countries. Since Aleut people occupy some of the most remote islands in the Northern Hemisphere, communication and organizational hurdles were overcome to bring all Aleuts together and form the AIA. Soon after its creation, AIA became a permanent participant in the Arctic Council, an international environmental council of officials representing eight Arctic nations and four international indigenous peoples. Membership in the Arctic Council provides the AIA with an international forum to address the health of the Bering Sea ecosystem and threats to the Aleut homelands. Today AIA is working to secure funds for infrastructure, travel throughout the vast Aleutian region, travel for participation in Arctic Council meetings, and to expand the organization. The association has recently written grants to study overfishing, contaminants in the Bering Sea, contaminants in subsistence foods, and health risks in Aleut communities in Russia and Alaska. Research efforts combine scientific data with Aleut traditional knowledge to address economic, social, and health risks to Russian and Alaskan villages, with the ultimate goal of preserving the Aleut way of life for future generations.

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ALEUTIAN ISLANDS The AIA maintains a small office in Anchorage, Alaska, and one in Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka. Currently, the organization has a president from St Paul, Alaska, a vice president from Petropavlovsk, Russia, and a secretary/treasurer from Unalaska, Alaska. The organization has a constitution, bylaws, and a five-member board of directors, representing the various tribal groups. KATHERINE REEDY-MASCHNER See also Aleut; Aleutian Islands; Aleutian/Pribilof Islands Association; Arctic Council Further Reading Black, Lydia, Atka: An Ethnohistory of the Western Aleutian Islands, Alaska History, No. 24, edited by R.A. Pierce, Kingston, Ontario: The Limestone Press, 1984 Krivoshapkin, Vladimir, “Who will help the Aleuts of the Commander Islands?.” Arctic Voice, 12 (1996): 21–22 Laughlin, William S., Aleuts: Survivors of the Bering Land Bridge, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980 Lebedeva, Janna, “The Aleuts’ culture on the Komandorskie Islands may disappear.” Northern News, 8(55) (1993): 1–3 Liapunova, R.G., Essays on the Ethnography of the Aleuts (at the end of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century), translated by J. Shelest, Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1996 Young, O.R., The Arctic Council: making a new era. In International Relations, New York: The Twentieth Century Fund, 1996

ALEUTIAN ISLANDS The Aleutians are a chain of over 200 islands that arc from the Alaska Peninsula (163° W) east for 1700 miles across the International Date Line toward the Kamchatka Peninsula (172° E). With an area of 6821 square miles, the chain is composed of volcanic islands, called the Aleutian Ridge, that have been active for at least 55 million years. With over 80 major volcanic vents resulting from the tectonic collision of the southern Pacific and the North American plates, just south of the ridge is the deep Aleutian Trench. All along the chain, but especially the eastern end, earthquakes are frequent and sometimes quite severe—the Aleutians experienced two of the world’s top ten earthquakes between 1904 and 1997. The Aleutian chain can be segmented into five major links from west to east: the Near Islands in the west, the Rat Islands, the Delarof and Andreanof Islands, the Islands of the Four Mountains, and the Fox Islands in the east. Geologically, while the southern front of the chain is eroding into the Aleutian Trench, volcanoes are forming on the northern front, as evidenced by Bogoslov Island. In addition, the far western Near Islands are slowly heading for collision with the Kamchatka Peninsula. This geologic structure of

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the Aleutian Islands has contributed to the formation of ocean currents of the North Pacific and Bering Sea, the island chain acting as a sieve or porous boundary between these bodies of water, with 14 shallow Aleutian passes. The climate is dominated by the barometric pressure phenomenon known as the Aleutian Low, a cyclonic center caused by the temperature differences between the cooler land and the warmer waters from the Alaska Current and North Pacific Drift. The Aleutian Low is characterized by the colliding frontal zones of warm Pacific air, contrasted with the cold, dense Arctic air. Thus, while in summer the islands are wrapped in seemingly endless fog, in winter they are wracked by continual storms. In the summer months the Aleutian Low is weak, but the sky is overcast 95% of the days, and fog forms 25–40% from June to August. Because land cools relatively faster than water, cold and dense air builds up along the windward slopes of the mountains, eventually falling rapidly on the leeward side due to gravity. These severe winds are called “williwaws,” and they can be frequent; wind speeds of 44 m s−1 are common. Wind can also create considerable snowdrifts, even though the wet and heavy snow usually accumulates less than a foot at one time during winter. However, because of the warm currents and the bow of the arc to a latitude nearly equivalent to the Canada-United States border, the Aleutians have a mild annual temperature. In summer, the average temperature is 65°F, while in winter it is barely below freezing. This relatively mild climate, along with a large amount of precipitation, encourages the success of a variety of flora and fauna. The Bering Sea as a whole, due to its extensive winter ice coverage and large continental shelf, is the year-round home of an extremely productive ecosystem, with some of the largest marine mammal populations in the world. The Bering Sea also contains some of the most productive fisheries, such as groundfish, salmon, and crab; out of approximately 450 species of fish and invertebrates, as many as 25 species are harvestable. The Aleutians are home to tremendous populations of birds as well, for the lack of safe ship harbors, and high, inaccessible cliffs are ideal habitat. Fulmars, petrels, cormorants, gulls, kittiwakes, murres, auklets, and puffins congregate in the millions. Biologists have identified approximately 200 species that nest in, migrate through, or stray into the region. Unimak Island, in the east, also has a bear population; red foxes are also indigenous to the Fox Islands. The Aleutians do not naturally include trees, but instead tall grasses, wild rye, and alpine meadows with ferns, salmonberries, and wildflowers such as fireweed, lupine, saxifrage, and iris.

ALEUTIAN ISLANDS

Early Human-Environment Relationships Humans migrating across the Bering Strait have occupied the Aleutian Islands for over 8000 years. The first stage of occupation by the Aleuts began in 6000 BP. Much debate exists on whether the Aleut civilization developed in relative isolation, or in contact with communities from the larger Bering Sea region. The Aleuts, however, became a sophisticated marine civilization, creating the bidarka, a kayak-like vessel suited to long hunting trips. The numbers and distribution of these early Aleuts fluctuated in response to volcanic activity, which would periodically alter the local ecology upon which they depended. By the time Russian explorers began colonizing the region in the 18th century, the Aleut population, dispersed throughout the chain, reached approximately 16,000, with principal settlements on islands that included Umnak, Unalaska, Atka, and Attu in the far west.

The Russian Period The Second Kamchatka Expedition, led by Vitus Bering in 1741, established a Russian claim of the Aleutian Islands and mainland Alaska, and precipitated an expansive commercial operation. In 1750, the Russians introduced Arctic foxes from the Commander Islands to numerous islands without an indigenous fox population. This farming industry spread rapidly to include the Pribilof Islands and the Alaska Peninsula. Traders also exploited the sea otter; by 1762, the harvesting operation reached Kodiak Island. During these years of early expansion, Russians traded extensively with Aleuts and many Russian crews intermarried with Aleut women; however, trade relations were characterized by an increasing frequency of violence. Russians established a permanent trading post in Unalaska in approximately 1774, with male Aleuts often pressed into service, depriving their villages of hunters to fulfill subsistence needs. Russian harvesting operations by then expanded beyond the sea otter and included the fur seal, walrus ivory, land otters, beavers, wolves, and especially foxes. British explorer James Cook landed at Unalaska on his way north in June of 1778 and again on his way south in his failed attempt to discover the North West Passage. Other imperial powers learned of the Russian expansion and profit through Cook’s exploits, and the Aleutian Islands would shortly enter the world economy and the gaze of imperial science, with Unalaska as a crucial port of trade. The Russians mapped the chain by 1791 under the command of Captain Sarychev. By 1799, the Russian-American Company obtained a charter and a monopoly on Alaskan resources.

Managed by Aleksandr Baranov, company officials relocated many Aleuts for service in the fur harvest, including the Pribilof Islands. Slave labor ended in 1818, and Aleuts were considered to be Russian subjects, eventually converting to the Russian Orthodox Church. Aleut men helped Russians create more charts of the region, and from 1824 to 1828 the RussianAmerican Company instituted conservation efforts for the fur seals and sea otters, due to their depletion. By the early 1830s, fox farming had reached a peak. The exploding fox population feasted on ground-nesting birds’ eggs, and many avian species would become endangered, such as the Aleutian Canada goose.

Early Years as Territory of the United States Russian America was sold to the United States in 1867 due partly to Russia’s setback in the Crimean War. Before the congressional appropriations debate, the United States sent a Coast Survey party to survey the region; USCS Assistant George Davidson identified the Aleutian Islands as an agricultural frontier, citing its luxuriant foliage and its mild winter climate. Davidson’s map functioned as an important visual aid in the ensuing congressional debate; with it, Senator Charles Sumner illustrated the geopolitical importance of Alaska, as well as the position of the Aleutians along the Great Circle Route toward Asian markets. Another Coast Survey party, led by William Healey Dall, created charts of the Aleutians 1872–1874, although he also gave the first major reports about the difficulties of the Aleutian climate. Other scientists followed, such as the vulcanologist Thomas Jaggar, although he would later leave this field for the more hospitable climate of Hawaii. When the fur seal population in the Bering Sea reached an all-time low, the 1911 Bering Sea Tribunal created an international management plan. By 1913, the Aleutian Islands were recognized as a crucial habitat for marine and avifaunal species, and the government designated much of the chain as a National Wildlife Refuge. While mainland Alaska began extensive development, few economic ventures boomed in the Aleutians. Instead, the most productive work revolved around anthropological and biological research, with researchers such as Vladimir Il’ich Iokhel’son (Waldemar Jochelson in English) recording the Aleut language, Aleš HrdliJ ka researching Aleut physical anthropology, and Eric Húlten and Olaus Murie completing biological surveys.

World War II in the Aleutians Extensive modern geological surveys were not completed until the US Department of Defense funded

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ALEUTIAN ISLANDS the US Geological Survey specifically for the project in 1946. For by the beginning of World War II, the Aleutian Islands were conceived as strategic location for the US military. In fact, by the war’s end, the islands would have hosted over 500,000 troops; military presence began in 1940 as part of the defense of Alaska. The Aleutians represented a vulnerable entry into North American soil by both the Japanese and the Soviets, and the military constructed bases at Dutch Harbor, Unalaska, concurrently with the bases in Anchorage and Fairbanks. By the end of the war, major military activity took place (from east to west) on Amaknak, Unalaska, Umnak, Atka, Great Sitkin, Adak, Tanaga, Amchitka, Kiska, Shemya, and Attu. Nevertheless, the geography of the Aleutian Islands was troublesome for the military; the weather postponed invasions and caused more casualties than actual combat. Windstorms could tear up tents and cause pilots extreme difficulty. The Japanese bombed both Dutch Harbor and Adak, and occupied Attu and Kiska; the United States engaged in battle with the Japanese at Attu to take back the island. Kiska was abandoned, but in a thick fog US soldiers did not realize that the men they were shooting at were their own. Meanwhile, Aleut communities from Attu had been captured by the Japanese, while the US government relocated Unalaska Aleuts to inadequate shelters outside Juneau. High death rates resulting from disease and abominable living conditions decimated the older population, and the Aleuts suffered a great loss of cultural knowledge. Those who survived displacement from their homes, by both Japanese capture and US military relocation, returned to the Aleutians to discover their utter destitution due to pilfering and disrepair. Natives of Attu were returned to Alaska, but the US government relocated them to eastern Aleutian settlements. Military presence continued on numerous islands. Shemya Air Force base, for example, closed in 1999.

From the Cold War to the Modern Era While during World War II the Aleutians were considered a bridge to Japan, during the Cold War the Aleutians were instead perceived as a bridge to Russia or, more frequently, a dead end that allowed the military to conduct nuclear testing on Amchitka Island. The US Atomic Energy Commission needed a place more isolated than either the Nevada Test Site or Point Hope, Alaska (where the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) attempted to carry out Project Chariot), to conduct some of the largest underground nuclear tests in US history. Beginning in 1967, the AEC instituted an extensive bioenvironmental program on Amchitka, and within a few years had completed Project Milrow,

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Project Long Shot, and Project Cannikin. The environmental group Greenpeace was founded to protest these tests and today continues to advocate the health of the Bering Sea ecosystem. In fact, the present-day livelihoods of residents, both Aleut and nonnative, continue to rely on the resources of the sea. Over 5000 people live in the islands year-round, supported primarily by walleye pollock, cod, and halibut commercial fisheries, all based in Dutch Harbor. A burgeoning tourist industry exists, based on World War II history, Aleut cultural heritage, and the unique birding opportunities. In fact, through the 1980s, the US Fish and Wildlife Service exterminated most of the nonindigenous foxes, and endangered avian species such as the Aleutian Canada goose have made a tremendous comeback. The chain was included in the Alaska Maritime Wildlife Refuge in 1980, and is today an International Biosphere Reserve. ANNETTE WATSON See also Alaska Peninsula; Aleut; Aleutian Range; Kamchatka Peninsula; Militarization of the Arctic in Russia; Militarization of the Arctic in the West; Russian American Company; Second Kamchatka Expedition Further Reading Black, Lydia et al., The History and Ethnohistory of the Aleutians East Borough, Kingston, Ontario, and Fairbanks, Alaska: The Limestone Press, 1999 Corbett, Debra et al., “The Western Aleutians: cultural isolation and environmental change.” Human Ecology, 25(3) (1997): 450–480 Garfield, Brian, The Thousand Mile War: World War II in Alaska and the Aleutians, Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1995 Haycox, Steven & Mary Childers Mangusso (editors), An Alaska Anthology: Interpreting the Past, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996 Loughlin, Thomas & Kiyotaka Ohtani (editors), The Dynamics of the Bering Sea, Fairbanks: University of Alaska Sea Grant, 1999 Madden, Ryan, “The forgotten people: the relocation and internment of Aleuts during World War II.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 16(4) (1992): 55–76 Merritt, M.L. & Glen Fuller (editors), The Environment of Amchitka Island, Alaska, Oak Ridge, Tennessee: Technical Information Center, Energy Research and Development Administration, 1977 Plafker, George & Henry Berg (editors), The Geology of Alaska, Volume G-1, The Geology of North America, Boulder: Geological Society of America, 1994 Rennick, Penny (editor), “The Aleutian Islands.” Alaska Geographic, 22(2) (1995) Sumner, Charles, “Speech of the Hon. Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts on the Cession of Russian America to the United States,” Washington: Congressional Globe Office, 1867

ALEUTIAN TRADITION

ALEUTIAN RANGE The Aleutian Range is in southwestern Alaska, extending from about 54° N to 61° N and 153° W to 165° W. The portion of the range north of Iliamna Lake (59° N) is also called the Alaska-Aleutian Range. The Aleutian Islands are considered a continuation of the Aleutian Range, but the Aleutian Range proper extends only as far west as Unimak Island according to the Dictionary of Alaska Place Names. The geology consists of rounded east-trending ridges of Mesozoic sedimentary rocks, locally intruded by granitic rocks and surmounted by rugged volcanoes. The volcanoes date from the late Tertiary to the recent and many have calderas. The region was heavily glaciated during the Pleistocene epoch. The highest peaks are Redoubt Volcano (3108 m) and Iliamna Volcano (3053 m) in the far north, Shishaldin Volcano (2857 m) on Unimak Island, and Pavlov Volcano (2515 m) on the Alaska Peninsula. Most of the region is alpine tundra heath meadows and barrens. Willow and alder occur near sea level. Katmai National Park and Preserve is located within the Aleutian Range. The 1600 km2 park includes the barren “moonscape” of the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes and Mt Katmai volcano. The eruption of Mt Katmai in June 1912 was the largest in North America during the 20th century. Many of the other volcanoes are active. Pavlov Volcano is the most active in Alaska and has erupted 40 times since 1790. Mt Redoubt erupted several times in the 20th century. An eruption of Redoubt from December 1989 through April 1990 with 23 explosive events caused US$160 million in economic damages, making it the second costliest volcanic eruption in US history. The maritime climate has cool, rainy summers and mild, stormy winters. A more continental regime with colder winters, warmer summers, and less rain prevails on the northwest side of the Aleutian Range. Heavy snow falls above 300 m elevation. The average January temperature is −2°C at Cold Bay and −8°C at King Salmon. Both communities are near sea level but King Salmon is farther north and is west of the Aleutian Range. July temperatures average 10°C at Cold Bay and 12°C at King Salmon. The average precipitation is 910 mm at Cold Bay and 480 mm at King Salmon. Amounts are much greater at higher elevations. Native peoples have occupied the coastal region of the Aleutian Range for at least 4500 years. About onehalf of the population is Alaska Native. Aleuts live in the west and Alutiiq Eskimo live in the eastern section. The few small communities are along the coasts. Economic activities include government employment, transportation, commercial fishing, subsistence resource use, and recreational hunting and fishing.

Among the larger communities are King Salmon with 442 people (2000 US Census) and Port Heiden, a traditional Aleut community of 119 people (2001, Alaska Department of Community and Economic Development). THOMAS W. SCHMIDLIN See also Aleutian Islands Further Reading Alaska Volcano Observatory website: www.avo.alaska.edu Alaska Department of Community and Economic Development website: www.dced.state.ak.us Hunt, William, Alaska, A Bicentennial History, New York: W.W. Norton, 1976 Naske, Claus & Herman Slotnik, Alaska, A History of the 49th State, Grand Rapids: William Eerdmans Publishing, 1979 Orth, Donald, Dictionary of Alaska Place Names, US Geological Survey Professional Paper 567, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1967 Pierce, Richard, Katherine Arndt & Sarah McGowan (editors), The History and Ethnohistory of the Aleutians East Borough, Fairbanks: Limestone Press, 1999 Simmerman, Nancy Lange, Alaska’s Parklands, The Complete Guide, Seattle: The Mountaineers, 1991

ALEUTIAN TRADITION Approximately 5000 years ago, a regional shift to village life occurred in the Aleutian archipelago. Villages existed before that time, as data from the well-documented village of Anangula 8500 years ago would indicate, but such settlements were small, localized, and perhaps unique. However, sometime between 5500 and 4500 years ago a massive reorganization of ancient Aleut society appears to have transpired. Islands that were previously unoccupied were now inhabited, the westward expansion of peoples was nearly completed to the furthest of the Near Islands, and the bays and lagoons of the western Alaska Peninsula, and eastern Aleutian Islands showed signs of vibrant community life. A number of events, including climate change, population growth, an influx of new peoples, or a shift in subsistence strategies, might have caused this settlement reorganization. Archaeological data from before this time are so rare and ephemeral in most of the region that it might be easy to argue for an influx of peoples, but no evidence exists to support this contention at present and modern research has not addressed this question. Whatever the conditions that led to this societal shift, from Port Moller on the Alaska Peninsula in the east to the Near Islands in the far west, a suite of characteristics such as semisubterranean houses with roof entrances, oil lamps, sea mammal hunting and open water fishing, the use of red ochre and other pigments, long-distance travel, permanent villages, and

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ALEUTIAN TRADITION inter-island trade all coalesced into a cultural pattern. This combination of traits is what Allen McCartney first termed the Aleutian Tradition (McCartney, 1984). The Aleutian Tradition is generally seen as the period when most of the traits that were described by early explorers and scholars came to be part of the indigenous pattern. Archaeologically, these artifacts include projectiles, endblades, scrapers, hafted knives and other tools that are bifacially worked, a huge variety of sea mammal hunting harpoons, fishing spears and hooks, net sinkers, line weights, polished bit adzes and, at the end of the tradition, bone spoons and slate ulus. On the western Alaska Peninsula, pottery is found at a number of sites dating to the last 2000 years, and in the greater eastern Aleutian region, toggling harpoons more reminiscent of styles further north are found. One of the most spectacular aspects of the Aleutian Tradition is the ancient Aleut skill at mummification of the dead. Many of these mummies were individuals of high status, and when interred in caves they were perfectly preserved for up to 2000 years. This preservation allowed archaeologists to investigate many aspects of the Aleutian Tradition that are not preserved in the ancient village sites. These include baskets, mats, clothing, hats, masks, bags, shields, armor, spears, bows and arrows, kayaks, and many other aspects of perishable material culture. Prior to the 1990s, the Aleutian Tradition was known primarily through research conducted at Port Moller on the Alaska Peninsula, on Umnak and Unalaska islands in the eastern Aleutian region, Amchitka in the Andreanof group, and a scatter of small collections from excavations that occurred over the previous 100 years in the more western Aleutians. Excavations either conducted early in the American period of occupation or by soldiers during World War II also provided enough details that an ancillary western Aleutian variant had been suggested by McCartney (1971). Based on work over the last ten years, the Aleutian Tradition now shows a number of emergent regional variants. These can be roughly divided into the Alaska Peninsula region (including Unimak Island, the Shumagin Islands, Sanak Island, and adjacent islets); the eastern Aleutian Islands dominated by Umnak, Unalaska, and the Akun-Akutan group (Krenitzin Islands); the Central Aleutian Islands, which include Amchitka, Atka, Adak, and adjacent islands (Andreanof and Rat groups); and the western Aleutian Islands area, which includes Buldir and the Near Island group. Recent projects investigating the Aleutian Tradition period have found that while McCartney was correct in that a suite of traits could be found anytime during the last 5000 years and in any part of the Aleutian

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region, a great amount of variation is today recognizable. Perhaps most remarkable is that this newly recognized variation does not apply to all categories of data and all spatial scales. For example, house form and size generally grow larger through time, but the shape and organization of houses appear to change from east to west, with adjacent areas changing together in some time periods and clearly uncoordinated in others. Another important area of variation is in the degree of political complexity. The western Alaska Peninsula and the eastern Aleutian Islands had much larger villages at all times than farther west, and apparently embraced much more stratified social categories, including slaves. These differences in levels of integration probably reflected the density of food resources, which also resulted in a variable subsistence economy. While the Aleut of the Aleutian Tradition took advantage of almost everything edible in the north Pacific and southern Bering Sea, there have been significant spatial and temporal changes across the region. In the east, where salmon returns were greater, settlement, storage, subsistence, and technology reflected access to salmon. Elsewhere, cod, herring, and other fish were much more important. Sea mammals were central everywhere, although whales, sea lions, fur seals, harbor seals, and ring seals were harvested with varying emphasis in different areas at different times. With violent weather patterns, constant earthquakes, regular volcanic eruptions, tsunami, and other catastrophes, the ancient Aleut thrived on one of the world’s most dynamic landscapes. While the Aleut or Unangan people are one of the least known and least studied northern peoples, their archaeology is becoming one of the better case studies for investigating the relationship between humans and marine landscapes in the far north. HERBERT D. G. MASCHNER See also Alaska Peninsula; Aleut; Aleutian Islands Further Reading Corbett, D.G., C. Lefèvre & D. Siegel-Causey, “The western Aleutians: cultural isolation and environmental change.” Human Ecology, 25(3) (1997): 459–479 Hoffman, Brian W., “Agayadan village: household archaeology on Unimak Island, Alaska.” Journal of Field Archaeology, 26 (1999): 147–162 Johnson, L.L., “Prehistoric settlement patterns and population in the Shumagin Islands.” Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska, 24(1–2) (1992): 73–88 Jordan, James & H.D.G. Maschner, “Coastal paleogeography and human occupation of the lower Alaska peninsula.” Geoarchaeology: An International Journal, 15(5) (2000): 385–414 Laughlin, W.S., Aleuts: Survivors of the Bering Land Bridge, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980

ALEUTIAN/PRIBILOF ISLANDS ASSOCIATION Maschner, H.D.G., “Prologue to the prehistory of the Lower Alaska Peninsula.” Arctic Anthropology, 36(1–2) (1999): 84–102 Maschner, H.D.G. & K.L. Reedy-Maschner, “Raid, retreat, defend (repeat): the archaeology and ethnohistory of warfare on the North Pacific.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 17 (1998) 19–51 McCartney, A.P., “A proposed western Aleutian phase in the Near Islands, Alaska.” Arctic Anthropology, 8(2) (1971): 92–142 ———, A.P., “Prehistoric Human Occupation of the Rat Islands.” In The Environment of Amchika Island, Alaska, edited by M.L. Merritt & R.G. Fuller (TID-26712), Washington: Energy Research and Development Administration, Technical Information Center, 1977, pp. 59–113 ———, A.P., “Prehistory of the Aleutian Region.”In Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 5, Arctic, edited by D. Damas, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution, 1984, pp. 119–135. Okada, H., “Prehistory of the Alaska Peninsula as seen from the Hot Springs Site, Port Moller.” In Alaska Native Culture and History, edited by Y. Kotani & W.B. Workman, Senri Ethnological Studies No. 4, Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology, 1980, pp. 103–112 Yesner, D.R., “Archaeological Applications of Optimal Foraging Theory: Harvest Strategies of Aleut HunterGatherers.” In Hunter-Gatherer Foraging Strategies, edited by B. Winterhalder & E.A. Smith , Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981, pp. 148–170

ALEUTIAN/PRIBILOF ISLANDS ASSOCIATION The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 created the regional for-profit Aleut Corporation and village corporations in the 12 villages of the Alaska Peninsula, Aleutian Islands, and Pribilof Islands. The Act also sparked the passage of federal laws that transferred authority for many social services to regional and village nonprofit corporations and their shareholders. The Aleutian/Pribilof Islands Association (A/PIA) was formed as the regional Native nonprofit corporation serving Natives who are shareholders of the Aleut Corporation, direct descendants of a shareholder, or members of a federally recognized tribe residing within the Aleutian/Pribilof Islands region. The A/PIA formed in 1976 with the merger of the Aleut League, created in 1967 as a parent organization for individual community associations seeking funds for health and welfare projects, and the Aleutian Planning Commission. The Association was chartered in 1986 as a nonprofit corporation under the executive directorship of Aleut leader Patrick Pletnikoff. Dimitri Philemonof is the current president and chief executive officer of the A/PIA. A 13-member board of directors governs the Association. Each board member represents one of the 13 constituent tribal governments; each community’s tribal organization appoints

a board member who serves a three-year term. The board establishes overall policy and direction for the Association and appoints the president to administer the Association. The purpose of the Association is to promote the self-sufficiency and independence of the Aleut, or Unangan in their own language. The Association acts as political advocate, offers job training, and provides economic enhancement programs at the community and individual levels. IT assists in maintaining the health and safety of each Aleut village, and promotes, strengthens, and preserves the Aleut cultural heritage. A/PIA contracts with federal, state, and local governments and secures private funding to provide a broad range of health, educational, social, psychological, employment and vocational training, and public safety services throughout the region. It comprises five departments: administration, community services, cultural heritage, health, and human services. The administrative department is governed by the board of directors and the president. They handle accounting, human services, and strive to enhance the Association’s programs and finances. Administration supports local self-governance and provides tribal court training and assistance in handling cases for villages in its region. The Association’s cultural heritage department works to preserve language and culture. The department develops Aleut language curricula, oral history programs, facilitates family history research, and imports training in historic preservation to maintain historical sites that will be conveyed to the Aleut Corporation under section 14(h)(1) of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. The cultural heritage department sponsors traveling exhibitions, spirit and culture camps that bring together Aleuts of all ages to share traditional skills, and art and dance programs. The department has been instrumental in a number of repatriation cases of Aleut burials and artifacts. This department also manages the Aleut Resource Library and Archive. The community services department offers public safety services, improvements to infrastructure, transportation, environmental protection, natural resources management, housing improvements, and water and sanitation, among many, to Aleutian communities. It facilitates Aleut involvement in the cleanup of military sites throughout the chain, especially on Amchitka Island, the site of three underground nuclear tests in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Association’s community services also pursue research opportunities to understand environmental health changes occurring in the delicate Bering Sea ecosystem, and they sponsor the Traditional Foods Protection program. Other community service programs include the

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ALOOTOOK IPELLIE Village Public Safety Officers (VPSOs), who double as first responders in any emergency to communities in need and train VPSOs and social workers in child sexual abuse prevention and support of victims. The health department imparts services on health and nutrition, emergency medicine, substance abuse counseling and prevention, and behavioral health as well as specific health services for children, pregnant women, diabetics, and elders. The department operates and staffs clinics in a number of villages, and initiated the delivery of telemedicine to many communities where village providers could consult with Anchorage providers. The human services department within the Association provides aid to individuals based on need. Programs include education and training, financial aid, childcare, general assistance, and social services. The A/PIA was instrumental in the creation of the Aleut International Association (AIA). While the AIA is focused on broad natural resource and health concerns of all Aleut peoples in the United States and Russia and is able to maneuver on the international stage as a permanent participant in the Arctic Council, the A/PIA is concentrated in the United States. The organizations are separate, although some overlap exists in staff and office space. KATHERINE REEDY-MASCHNER See also Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA); Aleut; Aleut Corporation; Aleut International Association; Arctic Council Further Reading Anders, G. & K. Anders, “Incompatible Goals in Unconventional Organizations: The Politics of Alaska Native Corporations.” In Developing America’s Northern Frontier, edited by T. Lane, Lanham: University Press of America, 1987 Berger, Thomas, Village Journey, New York: Hill & Wang, 1985 Case, David S., Alaska Natives and American Laws, Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1984 Flanders, Nicholas, “The Alaska Native Corporation as conglomerate: the problem of profitability.” Human Organization, 48(4) (1989): 299–312 Korsmo, Fae L., “The Alaska Natives.” Polar Peoples: SelfDetermination and Development, edited by Minority Rights Group, 1994, pp. 81–104 Marenin, Otwin & Gary Copus, “Policing rural Alaska: The Village Public Safety Officer (VPSO) Program.” American Journal of Police, 10(4) (1991): 1–26

ALOOTOOK IPELLIE Alootook Ipellie is the most widely published Inuk author in English, who has written numerous essays, poems, and short stories. His literary and visual works

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are reflections of Inuit life at a time of social and cultural upheaval in Canada’s Arctic during the late 20th century. A leading contributor to Inuit culture over the past three decades, Ipellie was born in a hunting camp on Baffin Island in 1951. He lived through a time when the traditional nomadic lifestyle of his ancestors was being replaced by life in southern-style settlements. Although he and his family continued with seasonal forays onto the land for game, their principal residence was in the settlement of Iqaluit, the largest community (and since April 2001, the capital) in what is now Nunavut, Canada. Ipellie was the grandson of noted Inuk carver Ennutsiak, who shared many traditional stories with the young artist during fishing trips. The southern educational system demanded that young people who completed primary school in the North move to larger (usually southern) communities for their secondary schooling. Thus, Ipellie’s early formal education in Iqaluit was succeeded by schooling at Ottawa’s High School of Commerce, where he first developed his interest in drawing. Although he returned to Iqaluit briefly to serve as an announcerproducer for CBC North, Ottawa became his creative base. In the early 1970s, the newly formed, Ottawa-based Inuit Tapirisat Canada (presently Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami or ITK) published an English and Inuktitut newsletter that featured some of Ipellie’s poems and one of his drawings. Late in 1973, he was hired as a reporter-journalist for the Inuit Tapirisat Canada’s Inuit Monthly magazine, whose readers were primarily Inuit or those with an interest in the North. Ipellie had the opportunity to execute an ink drawing cover for Inuit Monthly, and in 1974 began his ongoing, satirical “Ice Box” cartoon strip, which ran until 1982. Although Ipellie witnessed the work of southern cartoonists, his characters were based upon the contemporary Inuit life in the changing Arctic he knew intimately. Later, from 1993 to 1997, he authored another comic strip featuring the characters “Nuna and Vut” that appeared in Iqaluit’s newspaper, Nunatsiaq News, which served the eastern Canadian Arctic’s largest community. Early poems such as “Hot to Warm and Cool to Cold” (North, 1971) and “A Picture” (Tukisivisksat, 1973) and later works such as “A Summer Day” and “The Water Moved an Instant Before” (Inuit Today, 1981) were minimalist responses to nature. “The Dancing Sun” (Inuit Monthly, 1974) and “Art and Poetry” (North, 1975) reflected elements of Inuit tradition. “We are Cold” (Inuit Today, 1978), “How Noisy They Seem” (Paper Stays Put, 1980), and “Walking Both Sides of an Invisible Border” (An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature in English,

ALPHA RIDGE 1992, 1998) reflected social problems in a new Arctic influenced by the values of the South. Concurrently, Ipellie’s poetry grew darker, and his nonfiction became more strident if not didactic in dealing with contemporary problems in the North. As an essayist and editor at Inuit Today from 1979 to 1982, Ipellie raised difficult, contemporary social issues. From 1996 to 1997, he authored a regular column “Ipellie’s Shadow” in the Nunatsiaq News in which he voiced a variety of opinions on daily life. Among non-Inuit, Ipellie has become best known as a writer of short fiction. His stories have appeared in northern publications such as Inuit Today and Inukshuk and also in southern periodicals such as The Beaver and anthologies such as Paper Stays Put (1980), Northern Voices: Inuit Writing in English (1988, 1997), and An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature in English (1992, 1998). He also served as coordinator of the Baffin Writers’ Project (1989–1992) and editor of Kivioq: Inuit Fiction Magazine (1990, 1992), thus lending his knowledge and experience to new writers in the North. Perhaps his most notable short fiction is among the 20 stories contained in Arctic Dreams and Nightmares (1992), which marked Ipellie as the first Canadian Inuk to produce an entire collection of short stories in English. This collection emerged as the most controversial thus far, in that he employed magical plot situations to combine traditional Inuit myths and legends with contemporary people and events from the South. With stories such as “When God Sings the Blues,” “After Brigitte Bardot,” and “Summit With Sedna,” Ipellie imaginatively created a fictional world inhabited by such familiar Inuit beings as the Sea Goddess Sedna, shamans, and walruses. While some of the images within Arctic Dreams and Nightmares have been described as disturbing, especially for Inuit traditionalists, the text has been acclaimed by several southern Canadian critics. Ipellie’s drawings and cartoons have been exhibited at shows in Ottawa (1989, 1993) and Saskatoon (1997) in Canada, as well as in Norway (1992), Greenland (1983, 1985, 1988), and in 2001 at St Lawrence University in Canton, New York, in the United States.

Biography Alootook Ipellie was born in a hunting camp on Baffin Island, in what is today Nunavut Territory in Canada’s Arctic, on August 11, 1951 to Napachie (Napachee) and Joanassie (Joanasie). His early formal education in Iqaluit was followed by high school in Yellowknife and later Ottawa. Ipellie worked in radio at CBC North in 1973, but eventually settled in Ottawa where he worked as an English-Inuktitut translator, as a reporter-journalist, and drew cartoons for Inuit

Monthly (later renamed Inuit Today) magazine. He served as its editor from 1979 to 1982. In the 1970s, he produced his satirical ink cartoon strips “Ice Box” and “Nuna and Vut.” MICHAEL P. J. KENNEDY See also Art and Artists (Indigenous); Literature, North American; Mythology of the Inuit; Sedna: The Sea Goddess Further Reading Gedalof, Robin, “Alootook Ipellie finds his voice in his work.” Arts and Culture of the North, 4 (1980): 283–285 ——— (editor), Paper Stays Put, Edmonton: Hurtig, 1980 Ipellie, Alootook, “Telling Tales: A Nomad Learns to Write and Draw.” In Echoing Silence: Essays on Arctic Narrative, edited by John Moss, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1996 Kennedy, Michael P.J., “Southern exposure: belated recognition of a significant Inuk writer-artist.” Canadian Journal of Native Studies, 15(2) (1995): 347–361 ———, “Alootook Ipellie: the voice of an Inuk artist.” In Studies in Canadian Literature, 21(2) (1996): 155–164 “Moses, Daniel David & Terry Goldie (editors), An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature in English (2nd edition), New York: Oxford University Press, 1998 Petrone, Penny (editor), Northern Voices: Inuit Writing in English, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988

ALPHA RIDGE The submarine Alpha Ridge is situated in the central Arctic Ocean, separating the Canada and Makarov basins, and terminating at Ellesmere Island (see the bathymetric map in Arctic Ocean). Discovery of the ridge was a consequence of intensive research of the Arctic Basin, first of all by the USSR from the late 1940s from drifting ice stations and air expeditions following discovery of the Lomonosov Ridge in 1951. Subsequent investigations established that other than Lomonosov Ridge there are two transoceanic ridges: the mid-oceanic Gakkel Ridge and Mendeleyev Ridge, the latter uniting with the Alpha Ridge. These ridges are separated from each other and from continental margins by four deep-water basins: the Nansen, Amundsen, Makarov, and Canadian basins. The age and origin of the Alpha Ridge is still debated, and is key to the reconstruction model of the Arctic Basin and, in particular, the Canada Basin. Alpha Ridge rises 1200 m above the surrounding ocean bottom (which is here about 3 km deep). The ocean surface is permanently covered with a thick layer of ice, and since its discovery from American drifting ice station “Alpha” in 1957–1958 up to the beginning of the 21st century, the ridge has been mainly investigated by drifting ice stations and aeromagnetic and aerogravity surveys, since passage through the surface ice is difficult. The ridge topography is

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ALPHABETS AND WRITING, NORTH AMERICA AND GREENLAND determined by the structure of the Earth’s crust and the presence of sedimentary layers. In the region of the ridge, there are other isolated linear uplifts, including the Lomonosov and Alpha ridges, Mendeleyev Rise, Northwind Ridge, and Chukchi Plateau. The ridges and plateaus are divided by linear troughs— Submariners, Makarov, Mendeleyev, Chukchi, Northwind, and Stefanson basins. The width of Alpha Ridge varies from 250 to 800 km. The Alpha and Mendeleyev ridges may be separate features with quite different origins, although they have morphological similarities. The width of the Alpha-Mendeleyev Ridge is 3–4 times greater than Lomonosov Ridge, except for the abutment zones connecting the ridges with continental margins, where their widths are approximately equal. The bathymetric position of the top of Lomonosov Ridge (600–1200 m depth), in general, corresponds to the bathymetric level of Alpha Ridge, but in some regions the depth of the latter is more than 1500 m. The greater width of Alpha Ridge suggests that it may have a hot spot or other broad magmatic origin rather than a spreading ocean ridge. Alpha Ridge was formerly believed to be continuous for more than 1000 km; however, modern bathymetric and morphologic analysis of relief in the region shows that the ridge is not continuous, but is interrupted by a network of cross-cutting grabens, although these blocks are in places obscured by thick sediments. Some have interpreted the breaks as offsets such as are found on mid-oceanic ridges. In the region of Ellesmere Island, both Lomonosov and Alpha ridges abut the continental slope at abyssal depths. This permits researchers to believe that Alpha Ridge is a natural continuation of the continental margin of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago into the Arctic basin according to morphological signs. Short drill cores from ice stations over the Alpha Ridge have yielded bottom sediments of Cretaceous to early Tertiary age, and basalt fragments from the basement of the ridge. The Alpha Ridge is characterized by some of the largest magnetic anomaly amplitudes observed over the deep ocean. A hot-spot model has been proposed for the early Cretaceous, giving a flood basalt province with a thicker than usual oceanic crust. The Iceland-Faroe Ridge has a similar crustal structure. Investigation of the biosphere shows that life on Alpha Ridge is very poor. This is the most uninhabited region of the Arctic Basin. For example, life on Lomonosov Ridge is much more intensive. Researchers connect relatively more beings on Lomonosov Ridge with food transports from high production regions. VALERY MIT’KO

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See also Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge; Lomosonov Ridge Further Reading Gorbatskiy, G.V., Physicogeographical Zoning of Arctic, Volume 3, Arctic Basin, Leningrad: Leningrad University Publishing House, 1973 Gramberg, I.S. (editor), Orographic Map of Arctic Basin, 1:5,000,000. Helsinki: Karttaneskus, 1995 Jackson, H.R., P.J. Mudie & S.M. Blasco . Initial Geological Report on CESAR—The Canadian Expedition to Study the Alpha Ridge, Arctic Ocean, Geological Survey of Canada, Paper 84-22, 1985 Jokat, M., “Seismic investigations along the western sector of Alpha Ridge, Central Arctic Ocean.” Geophysical Journal International, 152 (2003): 185–201 Sweeney, J.K., J.R. Weber & S.M. Blasko, “Continental ridges in the Arctic ocean: Lorex constraints.” Tectonophysics, 89 (1982): 217–238

ALPHABETS AND WRITING, NORTH AMERICA AND GREENLAND Eskimos (Iñupik and Yup’ik speakers) in North America and Greenland had no traditional writing systems. Early explorers often compiled word lists, but made no attempts to develop writing systems. After European contact, missionaries made the first attempts to reduce the Eskimo languages to written form. The earliest attempts to develop an orthography for the language were those by Lutheran missionaries to create a written language for Greenlandic. Poul Egede, son of Hans Egede, the first missionary to Greenland, pioneered this work, drawing on his father’s and other missionaries’ work in his translation of the New Testament, published in its entirety in Greenlandic in 1766. Egede had earlier published a dictionary of Greenlandic in 1750. In writing Greenlandic for Greenlanders, Egede used a Roman orthography. In 1794, Otto Fabricius published a new translation of the New Testament using a Roman orthography that differed in some points from that of Egede. A third translation of the New Testament was published in 1822 by the German Moravian Johan Conrad Kleinschmidt, and it differed orthographically from the previous translations. In these early attempts to proselytize, the aim was usually to produce an orthography for the use of other white missionaries and for students from among the Greenlandic population who had been trained by white scholars. By the mid-1800s, the need for a standard method of writing in Greenlandic was clear. Samuel Kleinschmidt, son of a missionary, took up this challenge; he was born in Greenland and was raised speaking Greenlandic. He contributed widely to the cultural life of Greenland through the publication

ALPHABETS AND WRITING, NORTH AMERICA AND GREENLAND of his Greenlandic grammar and dictionary and his contributions to the newspaper Atuagagdliutit. Kleinschmidt devoted himself to orthographic reform for many years. He aimed to bring literacy to the common Greenlander, and not simply to write for other missionaries or Greenlanders working for the missions. Linguistically far ahead of his time, Kleinschmidt wrote in 1850, “It is a serious fault when different sounds are indicated by means of one letter, or one sound by means of different letters, and the fault is doubly grave in a language which is so thoroughly regular as that of Greenland.” With this remark, he presaged the later development of phonemic orthography. By 1871, satisfied with his revised orthography, Kleinschmidt used it consistently in the dictionary he published that year. His innovation—a five-vowel system using three diacritic marks to represent vocalic length, doubling of a consonant, and a combination of the two—became the official standard for written Greenlandic in the next century, and was used consistently in books, newspapers, and official publications. In 1973, the Kleinschmidt orthography was revised. Certain consonant clusters were eliminated, as were the use of diacritic marks; although only three vowels are required in a phonemic orthography for Greenlandic, all five vowels were retained. The first missionaries to Labrador were Moravians with Greenlandic experience who founded a mission in Nain in 1771. Most were fluent in Greenlandic and assumed that few differences existed between Greenlandic and the Inuit speech of Labrador. They brought with them their Greenlandic orthography, but their arrival in Labrador predated Kleinschmidt’s development of standard Greenlandic by almost a century. The Labrador Moravian orthography therefore differed from what became standard Greenlandic in a number of points. At the end of the 19th century, Reverend Theodor Bourquin, a Moravian, standardized the Labrador orthography. Labrador Inuit have steadfastly refused to relinquish their adherence to the Moravian orthography, which they still use today. The only place where Eskimos attempted to develop their own systems of writing was Alaska. Uyaqoq, a Yup’ik speaker from the Kuskokwim River, better known by the name “Helper Neck,” worked at a Moravian mission station but could neither read nor write English. He began to develop a system of picture-writing. Inspired by his innovation, other native mission workers developed their own idiographies, but Uyaqoq continued to work on his system, adding extra symbols and eventually developing a remarkably accurate phonetic writing system. In the meantime, his associates continued to modify his pictorial writing. Two other independent developments of picture-writing occurred in Alaska, one on Kotzebue Sound, fully

developed by 1914, and the other on Nunivak Island, developed in the 1940s by the wife of a missionary. All these attempts were made by Eskimos involved in missionary work, and were not intended to be used by Eskimos in writing to each other but only as memory aids to assist the innovators in their preaching on Biblical texts. Alaskan picture-writing is no longer used. Aleut, one branch of the Eskimo-Aleut language family, spoken in the Aleutian Islands, and Alutiiq, an Eskimo language also known as Pacific Yup’ik, were written in a Cyrillic orthography devised by the Russian Orthodox missionary Father Ivan Veniaminov. Missionaries of this faith also did some Cyrillic writing in Central Yup’ik, although most was done by Catholics and Moravians who arrived in southwestern Alaska in the late 19th century and devised Yup’ik orthographies using the Roman alphabet, eventually supplanting the Cyrillic orthographies. The Roman orthography was used by Siberian Yup’ik speakers from 1932 to 1936, before the Russian Cyrillic alphabet replaced it. Modern phonemic orthographies were developed for Alaskan Eskimos in the mid-20th century. In 1947, Roy Ahmaogak, a North Slope Iñupiaq, worked with Eugene Nida, a linguist, and developed the modern Iñupiaq orthography that, somewhat revised, remains in use today. In the 1970s, a number of linguists and Yup’ik speakers worked at the University of Alaska to develop the modern Yup’ik orthography. David Shinen, a missionary, developed the St Lawrence Island (Siberian) Yup’ik orthography in the 1960s; it was subsequently revised by Michael Krauss. Jeffrey Leer developed the Alutiiq orthography in the 1970s. Literacy in the Eskimo languages is not high in Alaska. In the eastern Canadian Arctic, excluding Labrador, Inuit cling tenaciously to a syllabic writing system created by the missionaries. Inuit regard it as their own and vigorously resist suggestions that it should be replaced by a Roman orthography. It was the creation of James Evans, a Wesleyan missionary, who, while working in southern Ontario, devised a system of nine symbols, each of which could be written in four different positions, to represent the vowel and consonant combinations of Ojibway. His mission board refused him permission to use his creation. In 1840, having transferred to Norway House in what is now Manitoba, he reexamined his system and modified it to suit the Cree language. The Cree took well to this system, and literacy in Evans’s syllabic orthography spread rapidly as far as the Rocky Mountains. In 1851, John Horden arrived at Moose Factory in James Bay as a missionary, followed the next year by the Reverend Edwin Arthur Watkins who took up

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ALPHABETS AND WRITING, NORTH AMERICA AND GREENLAND mission work at Fort George. Horden believed that Evans’s Cree orthography should be used to bring the Bible to the Inuit and convinced Watkins of this. But both men recognized the need to adapt the system by the introduction of a few new characters. Horden ran his own printing press at Moose Factory, and in 1856 he printed a number of copies of a small book in Inuktitut syllabic script for Watkins to use. In 1865, Horden and Watkins met in London, at the request of Henry Venn, secretary of the Church Missionary Society, to “settle” the orthography for the Inuit language. The major outcome of that meeting was to abandon the use of the arbitrary characters Evans had used to represent syllable-final consonants, and instead use the symbols of the fourth column on the syllabic chart but written half-size as superscripts. In practice, however, Inuit writing from one to another seldom used the finals at all, relying on context to reduce the ambiguities possible as a result of underdifferentiation. In 1876, Edmund James Peck, as yet unordained, arrived at Little Whale River to work among the Inuit. Although it is often stated that Peck adapted Evans’s Cree syllabics to the Inuit language, the bulk of the work had already been done by Horden and Watkins. However, Peck was able to devote almost all his efforts toward the Inuit, unlike his predecessors whose primary foci were their missions to the Indians. Peck’s major contribution to mission work and to literacy among the Inuit was the translation or transliteration of the Gospels and other church literature into Inuktitut and seeing the completed works through the press. He devoted the next four decades of his life to that task. The syllabic writing system based on the model developed for Cree and Ojibwe was also introduced to the Dene people of the North by missionaries in the 19th century. The Roman Catholic missionary Father Turquetil formally introduced the syllabic orthography to the Inuit of the Keewatin in 1912. The Catholics treated vocalic length differently than did the Anglican missionaries; instead of using a dot above a symbol to represent a lengthened vowel sound, the Catholics chose to reduplicate the vowel by using the vocalic main character from the first series (ai, i, u, a) after another main character to lengthen the vowel sound of that main character. This remained a distinguishing characteristic of “Catholic” orthography until the 1970s. In the 1950s, Canada’s Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources turned its attention to orthographic reform for Inuit. The department advocated a gradual phasing out of syllabics and the introduction of a Roman alphabetic writing system that would be a common written language for all Canadian

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Inuit. The new system that the department developed was not maintained. The bureaucrats had seriously underestimated the attachment of most Inuit to the syllabic orthography. Ironically, the linguists employed by the government never considered the possibility of orthographic reform within the syllabic system itself. It remained for Inuit themselves to recognize that possibility. Mark Kalluak, educator and newspaper editor, and Armand Tagoona, the first Inuk to be ordained into the Anglican clergy, had long recognized the need for a standardization in the use of syllable-final consonants and the representation of vocalic length. Both men also recognized the inconsistency within the Anglican church of its representation of long vowels. Kalluak used the Keewatin Echo, a monthly newspaper, as a forum for the discussion on the need for syllabic reform, and Tagoona used his church as a venue for similar discussions. At a conference of educators held in Rankin Inlet in 1972, the delegates agreed that syllabics should be used with all the final characters, that a dot placed over a letter should indicate a long vowel, and that the first column of the syllabic chart should be abandoned because the sounds represented by that column could be created by a combination of the last column and the character representing the vowel “i.” This set the stage for the Inuit Language Commission, proposed and sponsored by Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (today known as the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami or ITK) and funded in 1974 by the federal Department of Indian and Northern Affairs. The second of its seven objectives was to “study the present state of the written language and recommend changes for the future.” The result was the development of a dual orthography. A Roman orthography was devised, built on an analysis of the language and the application of scientific principles to guide the development of the writing system. The committee decided to keep orthographic innovations in syllabics to a minimum and not to introduce new symbols unless absolutely necessary. The syllabic system was standardized and made compatible with the Roman system. Because the two orthographies were based on a single analysis of the language, it was in fact one system with two orthographic forms. The result, in syllabics, dealt adequately with the issues of vocalic length and the representation of syllable-final consonants. In fact, the orthography that resulted, for syllabics, differed little from that which had stemmed earlier from the Rankin Inlet education workshop in 1972. The dual orthography was ratified by the Inuit Language Commission in August 1976, and each orthographic form was given a name in Inuktitut—qaliujaaqpait for the Roman orthography and qaniujaaqpait for syllabics.

ALPHABETS AND WRITING, RUSSIA Inuit of the eastern Arctic excluding Labrador are still devoted to the use of the syllabic writing system. New computer technology has made it easier to use syllabics in publishing, and the system is used extensively in schools in Arctic Québec and Nunavut, with the exception of a few western communities. The 1976 revisions to the syllabic orthography have been the most completely accepted in the Keewatin Region, where Inuit pioneered the modern work of syllabic reform, and, ironically, the least so in Nunavik, where Horden and Watkins pioneered the work over a century ago. In fact, the ubiquitous computer technology, which has almost completely replaced the use of the typewriter for the creation of Inuit text, has allowed the Inuit of Nunavik to recently bring back the use of the first column from the old syllabic chart, which had been abandoned in 1976. In Cambridge Bay and Canadian Inuit communities to the west of it, syllabics were not used. The Inuit there were the last in Canada to come under the influence of Christianity. Historically, traders and missionaries in these communities, none with any linguistic training, used Roman characters to write their own orthographies, which were unique and inconsistent. Nonetheless, a majority of Inuit in this region have resisted attempts to standardize the writing of Inuktitut in Roman orthography. Nonstandard systems continue to be used, the derivatives of those brought by missionaries and traders. These are characterized by overdifferentiation of vowels and underdifferentiation of certain consonant sounds. Efforts to introduce the standardized Roman system through the schools have often met with parental resistance. From time to time there is discussion of the need for an international auxiliary Inuit writing system, which would use the Roman alphabet and increase written mutual intelligibility among Inuit presently using different orthographies. This is in part the result of a perception that the syllabic orthography, used in the geographic center of Inuit territory and surrounded by Roman alphabetic orthographies, hampers the development of a pan-Inuit literature. Despite the perceived need, there has been no progress in the development of such an international orthography. The five Athapaskan or Dene nations (Gwich’in (formerly known as Loucheux), South Slavey, North Slavey, Chipewyan, and Dogrib) began a standardization process in 1987, adopting the writing system using the Roman alphabet. KENN HARPER See also Aleut; Alutiiq; Archbishop Innocent (Ivan Veniaminov); Athapaskan; Cree; Dene; Dogrib (Tlicho); Egede, Hans; Egede, Poul; Eskimo; Gwich’in; Inuit; Kleinschmidt, Samuel

Further Reading Basse, Bjarne & Kirsten Jensen (editors), Eskimo Languages/Their Present-Day Conditions, Aarhus: Arkona, 1979 Collis, Dirmid R.F. (editor), Arctic Languages, An Awakening, Paris: UNESCO, 1990 Gagne, R.C., Tentative Standard Orthography for Canadian Eskimos, Ottawa: Northern Affairs and National Resources, 1965 Hammerich, L.L., Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab Historisk-filosofiske Skrifter [A Picture Writing by Edna Kenick, Nunivak, Alaska], Volume 9, No. 1, Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1977 Harper, Kenn, “Writing systems and translations.” Inuktitut, no. 53, September 1983 ———, “The early development of Inuktitut syllabic orthography.” Études Inuit Studies, 9(1) (1985): 141–162 ———,. “Innovation and inspiration—the development of Inuktitut syllabic orthography.” Meta/Journal Des Traducteurs/Translators’ Journal, 38(1) (1993): 18–24 Hitch, Doug, “Inuktitut syllabics and microcomputers.” Meta/Journal Des Traducteurs/Translators’ Journal, 38(1) (1993): 56–72 Rischel, Jørgen, “Greenland as a three vowel-language.” Études Inuit Studies, 5(supplementary issue) (1981): 71–80 Woodbury, Anthony C., “Eskimo and Aleut Languages.” In Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 5, Arctic, edited by D. Damas, Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1984

ALPHABETS AND WRITING, RUSSIA Early Pictographs and Ideographs In prehistoric times humans reflected the surrounding world that they perceived and learned through art. Numerous cave paintings and petroglyphs have been found in the Yenisey region, beginning in the Neolithic, for example petroglyphs in Yakutia (Belkachi Culture, 5200–4100 years ago and Ymyakhtakh Culture, 4200–3200 years ago) and at the Pegtymel’ River in Chukotka (late Stone Age). Depiction of hunting scenes, animals, and rituals reflected the mode of life. In the Bronze Age, images may have changed to figurative composition of abstract character, but many thousands of years passed before human beings learnt to represent a concept or an idea as a single picture (pictographic writing) or later as a character (ideographic writing). Few of the minority languages of the Russian north had writing systems before 1917. Pictographic writing among the peoples of Siberia seems to be unique to the Yukagir, the descendants of a circumpolar nomadic reindeer-breeding culture who now inhabit the Verkhnekolymsky district of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia). In the 19th century, samples of pictographic writing (tos) were collected from the Yukagir by Vladimir Il’ich Iokhel’son (Waldemar Jochelson) and

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Figure 1: Love letter (circa end of the 19th century). Collected by Iokhel’son. Published in Tugolukov, p. 51.

dotted line. Long vertical lines represent the legs of a man, collateral inclined lines are arms, and spots are parts of the body and joints. The ornamental frame above the figures is a house. The lines and arches symbolize thoughts and feelings. When paper and other equipment for writing became available, birch bark went out of use as a writing material. There was also no need for pictographs with letter spreading. For example, birch-bark letters written in the 19th century were different from later birch-bark messages, the writings on paper being more schematic. The ideas in the pictographic letter in Figure 3, according to the words of its drawer, are as follows: “My thoughts are striving for you but we could not meet each other.” The hunter’s shangar shorile messages were so accurate topographically that Iokhelson, who made his first studies on ancient letters at the end of the 19th century, called them “the embryo of geographic maps.” Comparing them with women’s messages, one can distinguish figures of people, animals, herds and summer houses, boats, ski, and other hunting tools drawn separately. These messages were used to transfer information about the routes taken by people leading a nomadic hunting and fishing existence. Figure 2 depicts Yukagir people walking on the thin crust of ice over snow for the spring hunt. Two hunters, the representatives of four families, are skiing and going in the same direction to hunt. Each of them had a team of two dogs and a sledge. Then they parted. The content of the letter is conveyed twice: first by pictographs and then by an ideogram. According to the ideogram placed at the center of the letter, the dwelling houses are represented as traditional conical tents and each footstep means a hunter. The “tree” ideogram shows that a man belongs to a particular clan.

S. Shargorodsky; further samples were collected by the 1959 scientific expedition of the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences and by the present author in the 1980s. The Yukagir used both feminine and masculine pictographs with elements of ideography. Pictographic letters were also used by shamans. The Yukagir wrote their letters on birch bark or shangar shorile (“a letter written on a tree skin,” from the Yukagir words shaal — “tree,” khaar — “skin,” shorileshum — “to write”). Women used the pictographs mostly to send love letters, and men’s messages were about hunting and route maps. Figure 1 (from the end of the 19th century) is an example of a letter by a young girl suffering from unrequited love. Each figure in the form of a “feather” or “umbrella” symbolizes a human being. The figure of a woman is distinguished by a plait depicted by a

Figure 2: Yukagir people going to spring hunt, walking on a thin crust of ice over snow (circa end of the 19th century). Collected by Iokhel’son. Published in Tugolukov, p. 104.

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Figure 5: Copy of an original drawing on paper (circa 1980) from the author’s (Zhukova) archives. 3

2

1

Figure 3: Love letter: (1) figure of a woman; (2) figure of a man; and (3) an obstacle (drawing on paper, 1959). Published in Iokhel’son, Yukagiry: Istoriko-etnograficheskii ocherk, p. 57.

Picture 4 shows another route message: the trees “
” symbolize two adults and a child, “” represents a traditional conical tent, and “B” is a road drawn in long dotted lines. Each dotted line meant one day, so in the picture we can see a route of six days length. The position of the moon shows the same phase as it was the day the people left for hunting. “A” is a special sign known from shaman pictograms, folklore of the Yukagir people, and from rock art of ancient Yakutia, and is connected with the idea of soul reincarnation and a cult of fertility and ancestors. This sign was also used in messages to indicate the action of “returning.” Picture 4 means that in six days the hosts would return to their houses. Sometimes the sign “return” would be accompanied by a definite moon phase, which was supposed to be the day the hunters would return. Picture 5 is a letter written by a Yukagir shaman in the 1980s. On the right, one can see realistic pictures: a house, man, tree, fire, and dog, which symbolize five spirit-helpers of the shaman. The picture of the dog is

B A

δ

placed lower, which means, according to the shaman’s explanation, that this helper is always near the shaman and that the others left the shaman during the first phase of the moon and went to a man living in a big house. The “way” of spirits is conveyed by short dotted lines and means their absence: “go and return.” Using the sign “return,” a shaman “closes” ways of further movement of spirits and makes them come back to him. In this case the “arch” sign carries a magical meaning. The origin of pictographic and later the ideographic messages was conditioned by the way of life led by the seminomadic population of the taiga forests of Siberia: During their nomadic existence especially during the period of winter hunting, … the relations between groups were stopped for a long time … The group of people being in the taiga forest or rivers would leave on trees pieces of birch-bark with realistic pictures on them. Another group seeing those original “letters” would learn of the destiny of the first group and, according to picture, take decisions. (Ivanov, 1954: 520)

Such “birch-bark mail” probably operated among the aboriginal population of the North and Siberia for at least a thousand years. However, some scholars say that the Yukagir pictographic writing may have appeared at the end of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th century as an imitation of Russian correspondence (Yukagiry: istoriko-etnograficheskii ocherk, p. 56) (Figures 6–8).

α

Figure 4: Ink copy from an original drawing on paper done by a Yukagir (circa 1980) from the authors’s (Zhukova) field diary.

Figure 6: Love letter (circa late 1920s).Source unknown; published in Tugolukov, p. 105.

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1

3

2

Figure 7: A map message: (1) picture of a summer house (Yukagir dwelling), somebody spent the night there; (2) figure of a hunter and elk (got an elk); and (3) a place where one is planning to stay for a night. Published in Iokhel’son,Yukagiry: Istoriko-etnograficheskii ocherk, p. 57.

Yakov Lindenau, writing in German, depicted the sounds of various Siberian languages using combinations of letters according to the rules of German orthography). Today, this fact is essential for the correct reading of historical materials by contemporary linguists. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Russian Orthodox Church began missionary activity among the native peoples of Siberia. In the first half of the 19th century, members of the Russian Bible Society attempted to translate parts of the Old and New Testaments into the Khanty and Evenki languages, and some ritual texts and prayers into Chukchi (the first book in the Chukchi language was published in Irkutsk in 1823; however, information about other works is only now becoming known and the editions themselves may be lost). Since the 1840s, on the initiative of Archbishop Innocent (Ivan Veniaminov), who was at that time the archbishop of Kamchatka (his eparchy also included Alaska and the Aleutian

Shangar-Shorile

Ceramics

1

After the revolution of 1917, efforts were made to promote literacy among people of the USSR. As a result, people of different nationalities living in Russian territory began to study Russian and Russian grammar, and use paper and writing equipment. The use of pictographic and ideographic writing has disappeared in connection with the increase in literacy among the northern peoples.

2 3

4

Writing in Russia After the Revolution Before contact with the Russians (in western Siberia in the 16th to the beginning of the 17th centuries, and in eastern Siberia in the middle of the 17th century), none of the native peoples of Siberia had proper writing systems. The only objects used to record information were route signs on paths and special wooden tallies used for counting the yasak (a tax paid to the Russian Czar by the native peoples of Siberia); later these were also used for counting reindeer. The only way to record proper names (place names and names of people) as well as some glosses (containing words and phrases) in the native languages in Russian documents of the 17th and 18th centuries was using Russian (Cyrillic) letters. Some travelers and scholars of the 18th century and also European travelers of earlier times (e.g., Nicolaus Witzen), while collecting linguistic materials on the native peoples of northern Russia, used the Latin alphabet together with the orthographic rules of their own language (so,

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5

6

7

8

Figure 8: Parallels between women’s birch-bark letters [Shangar-Shorile] and late Stone Age ceramics found in Yakutia.Published in Zhukova (1986).

ALPHABETS AND WRITING, RUSSIA Islands), the interpreters began to translate the gospel of St Matthew into “Tungus” (in fact, into one of the dialects of the Even (Lamut) language). The Russian Orthodox mission later published this translation of St Matthew as well as translations of parts of the New Testament and some other religious books into Nanai, Sel’kup, and some other languages. The missionaries of the Russian Orthodox Church prepared and published some grammars (named in Russian “Azbuka” of “Bukvar”), which were planned for use in teaching children of the native peoples in the primary schools being organized around the churches and conducted by priests. For these editions, they used the Cyrillic alphabet in its Old Church Slavonic alphabet and style of letters. From about 1912 to 1913, the Russian government planned a wide program for the education of native peoples of the outlying districts of Russia, including the northern territories. This program stipulated the organization of primary and secondary schools as well as national colleges for teaching the youngsters of native peoples in their native language, with the aim of preparing future teachers and administrators from representatives of these peoples. The program was discussed at the 1st congress of teachers of Russia in Kaluga in 1913 and approved by the participants of this congress. This program, though very realistic, was not carried out because of World War I and the October revolution of 1917. However, the measures undertaken by the Soviet government during the 1920s and 1930s to increase literacy and create a school system in the Russian North were not created by the new political regime, but inherited from the national and educational policy of the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. From the mid-1920s, the Soviet Union began a wide campaign of schools organization in the regions of the Far North, Siberia, and the Far East for primary education of children and adults. The first alphabets for the languages of peoples of the North were created by the teachers of these schools, and the teachers also had to write the first school manuals. For example, the first grammar for the Siberian Yup’ik Eskimos was introduced in 1924–1925 by the teacher A. Karayev and was based on the Ossetic alphabet (Ossetic being the teacher’s native language, which used Cyrillic letters at that time). The first alphabet for the Even (Lamut), created by the teacher N. Tkachik in the Okhotsk region, was also based on the Cyrillic alphabet. Each national alphabet had its own specific “national” features. From the end of the 1920s to the beginning of the 1930s, a campaign began to replace older writings of other major languages of the former Russian Empire (some of which were Cyrillic; the others, such as the

Central Asians, were based on the Arabic script) with a new writing system based on the Latin script: the New Turkic Alphabet (NTA) and the so-called Yedinyj Severnyj Alfavit or ESA (Standard Northern Alphabet). The latter was created from the set of letters used in NTA with some additions. After the revision of several variants of Standard Northern Alphabet and after the appearance of Latin-based alphabets for some languages (Evenk, Nanai), in 1932 the first schoolbooks were published for 14 native languages (Khanty, Mansi, Nenets, Sel’kup, Russian Saami, Evenki (Tungus), Even (Lamut), Udege, Nanai, Chukchi, Koryak, Itel’men (Kamchadal), Eskimo, and Nivkh (Gilyak)). At that time, books also began to be published on political and medical subjects, as well as stories and poems by native writers (written by the first native writers and translated from Russian) and some small books of folklore. Primers were also prepared in Aleutian (for Soviet Aleuts living in the Commander Islands) and in the Yukagir and Ket languages; however, for various reasons these were not published. In 1936, according to a decision of the Council of Nationalities (part of the Supreme Council, the structure of the representative power in the Soviet Union), the writing systems for languages of all the peoples of the Soviet Union (except Armenian and Georgian) were replaced with alphabets based on the Cyrillic script, to be more exact, on the standard alphabet of Russian. The introduction of new alphabets in books, school manuals, and local newspapers began in 1937. In practice, the use of Cyrillic letters for some northern languages had begun earlier, so the Cyrillic alphabet for Nanai appeared in spring 1936, and in Magadan from 1936 to 1939 both Even alphabets were in use on the same pages of the Even language newspaper. For the Chukchi language in Chukotka, the change of alphabets took place later, in the early 1940s (according to some sources, Latin symbols were in use for Chukchi writing even up to the 1950s). Some representatives of the older generations could read, and some of them could even write, in their languages using the Latin script to the second half of the 1980s. During the 1940s and 1950s, almost all alphabets of the peoples of the Russian North were modified, some of them several times. A standardized literary form was required for each language: the original emphasis on phonetic spelling created problems due to large dialectical differences for some languages and the large influx of Russian borrowings. In some cases, additional letters were introduced for sounds that were absent in the Russian language; some written forms of the letters were also changed. The process of graphic reforms continued up to the end of the 1980s. Some graphic reform projects were not accepted by the linguists or, in

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ALPHABETS AND WRITING, RUSSIA some cases, not adopted by the majority of educated representatives of the nation (e.g., Nanai in 1983–1986, Evens in 1980–1987). The writing systems of some languages, for example, Saami and Udege, are still under discussion, and therefore these languages have no standard writing system that could be used to teach the language in primary or secondary schools. Some languages of the peoples of the Russian North became written ones only in the second half of the 20th century. The Yukagir language only got its script in 1969, when the Yukagir poet Gavril Kurilov began to publish poems in his native language using the Yakut alphabet. The writing system for the Dolgan language was created at the end of the 1970s. By the end of the 1970s, the writing of the Nivkhi was almost dying out, but in 1981–1982 it was modified and introduced in slightly differing variants for two Nivkh dialects, Amur and Sakhalin. At different times, there were attempts to publish schoolbooks in five dialects of Khanty, but only in two of these (Kazym and Shuryshkar) have writings survived today. The last period of creating alphabets for nonwritten languages of the Russian North relates to 1985–1995, when new written forms of the Udege and Itel’men languages, using the Cyrillic script, and the Ul’chi, Ket, Aleutian, and Nganasan languages were introduced. There were also attempts to create written languages for the most small-numbered peoples—the Orok (with the assistance of Japanese scholars), the Negidal, and the Enets. Recently, the first schoolbooks in the dialect of the Sel’kups living in the Tomsk region were published; several booklets were also published in the dialect of the coastal Koryaks living in Kamchatka. Also, since the 1990s written forms began to develop in some Turkic languages, which have come to be regarded as endangered, and the speakers of which have been entered into the list of Russian national minorities as separate nations (such as Shor and Teleut, in the Altai mountains bordering on Mongolia and China). Among the languages of the Russian North, only some have received a true form of a written language that can be regarded as functioning outside local primary schools. These languages are Khanty, Mansi, Nenets, Evenki, Even, Nanai, Chukchi, Koryak, and Siberian (Chukotkan) Eskimo. In these languages, significant numbers of books (from several tens to several hundreds) have been published and the written form of these languages is (or was up to recent times) in use in local mass media. The other languages that have had a writing tradition for more than 50 years (Sel’kup, Udege, Nivkh, Itel’men) and the newest written languages (Nganasan, Forest Nenets, Enets, Ul’chi, Ket, Aleutian, Tofalar, and others) are used in written form only for teaching the native language in primary school.

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The creation and development of literacy for the nation was described for a very long time as one of the greatest achievements of Soviet national and language policy. Nevertheless, the existence of the written form and school teaching could not prevent the languages of the peoples of the North of Russia from becoming endangered languages. The decline in the linguistic situation in the territories of the native peoples of the Russian North is, without a doubt, connected to economic, industrial, demographic, and cultural changes in these territories. But a no less important role in such processes belongs in part to certain representatives of the nations (usually those who live in towns, have higher education, and work in nontraditional spheres of activity: local governments and administration, Communist Party structures, education and culture management and so on), who distance themselves from the traditional culture of their nations and prefer to speak the language of the majority (Russian, or Yakut in Yakutia, Buryat in Buryatia) even when they are bilingual or multilingual. The next generation inherits the customs of oral communication in the most prestigious language and regards their native language as part of an obsolete ethnic culture having no future. The use of the written form of the native language turns into the profession of only certain social groups (writers, journalists, teachers, and the authors of schoolbooks). Reading in the native languages is not usually widespread because of the low prestige of the national mass media and the destination of national literature first of all for children; thus, several generations of youngsters and adults whose contact with the written form of their native language stops after primary schools have neither the habit of reading nor literature available to their interests. However, none of the languages of the peoples of the Russian North disappeared during the 20th century, and in spite of problems in the contemporary linguistic situation, the prognosis for survival of most of the languages of the Russian North is still more or less optimistic. LUDMILA ZHUKOVA AND ALEXIS A. BURYKIN See also Archbishop Innocent (Ivan Veniaminov); Belkachi Culture; Chukchi; Evenky; Iokhel’son, Vladimir Il’ich; Ket; Khanty; Koryak; Nanai; Russia; Sakha Republic (Yakutia); Sel’kup; Tungus; Ymyakhtakh Culture; Yukagir Further Reading Al’kor (Koshkin), Ya.P. (editor), Pis’mennost’ narodov Severa [The writing of the peoples of the North], Leningrad: Uchpedgiz, 1931 ———, (editor), Materialy I Vserossiyskoy konferentsii po razvitiyu yazykov i pis’mennosti narodov Severa [The materials of the First All-Russia Conference on the development

ALPHABETS AND WRITING, SCANDINAVIA AND ICELAND of the languages and writing of the peoples of the north], Leningrad, 1932 ——— (editor), Yazyki i pis’mennost’ narodov Severa, Vyp. I., Finno-ugorskie i samodiyskiye yazyki [The languages and writings of the peoples of the North. Part I. The Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic languages], Leningrad: Uchpedgiz, 1934 ——— (editor), Yazyki i pis’mennost’ narodov Severa, Vyp. III. Paleoaziatskie yazyki [The languages and writings of the peoples of the North. Part III, The Paleosiberian languages], Leningrad: Uchpedgiz, 1934 Alpatov, V.M., 150 yazykov i politika (150 languages and politics), Moscow: RAS, Institute for Oriental Studies, 1997 Bugarski, R., Pismo [Writing], Beograd: Higoja štampa, 1996 Burykin, A.A., Yazyk malochislennogo naroda v yego pis’mennoy forme (na materiale evenskogo yazyka) [The language of a minority people in its written form (on the material of the Even language)], Dissertation, St Petersburg University, 2001 Coulmas, F., Writing Systems of the World, Oxford: Blackwell, 1989 Desheriyev, Yu.D., Razvitie mladopis’mennyx yazykov narodov SSSR [Development of the new written languages of the USSR], Moscow: Uchpedgiz, 1958 Giljarevsky, R.S. & V.S. Grivnin, Languages Identification Guide, Moscow: Nauka, 1970 (originally published in Russian) Iokhel’son, V., “Po rekam Yasachnoi i Korkodonu. Drevnii i sovremenny yukagirski byt i pis’mena.” In Izvestia usskogo Geograficheskogo Obschestva [“Along the rivers Yasachnaya and Korkodon. Ancient and contemporary way of life and letters of the Yukagir people.” In Proceedings of Russian Geographic Society] (3rd edition) Volume 34, St Petersburg, 1898 Iokhel’son, V., Yukagiry i yukagirizovannye tungusy, translated as The Yukaghir and the Yukaghized Tungus, edited by Franz Boas, New York: The American Museum of Natural History, 1926 ———, Odul’ski (Yukagirski) yazyk. In Yazyk i pis’mennost’ narodov Severa [Odoul (Yukagir) language. In Language and Written Language of the Peoples of the North], Part 3, Moscow-Leningrad, 1934, pp. 149–180 Isayev, M.I., Yazykovoye stroitel’stvo v SSSR [Language construction in the USSR], Moscow: Nauka, 1979 ———, Sotsiolingvistisheskie problemy yazykov narodov SSSR [The sociolinguistic problems of the peoples of the USSR], Moscow: Vysshaya shkola, 1982 Ivanov, S., “Materialy po izobrazitel’nomu iskusstvu narodov Sibiri XIX -nach. XX vv” [Proceedings on fine arts of the peoples of Siberia, 19th to early 20th century], MoskvaLeningrad, 1954 Krupa, V. & J. Genzor, Pisma sveta [The writings of the world], Bratislava: Obzor, 1989 Musayev, K.M., Alfavity yazykov narodov SSSR [The alphabets of the languages of the peoples of the USSR], Moscow: Nauka, 1965 Okladnikov, A.P. (editor), Yukagiry. Istoriko-etnographichesky ocherk [The Yukagir people. Historical ethnographic essay], Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1975 Okladnikov, A.P. & V.D. Zaporozhskaya, Petroglify Srednei Leny [Petroglyphs of the Middle Lena], Leningrad, 1972 Pavlenko, N.A., Istoriya pis’ma [The history of writing], Minsk: Vysshaia Shkola, 1987 Pis’mennyje yazyki mira. Yazyki Rossijskoj Federacii [Written languages of the world. Languages of Russian Federation], Volume 1, Moscow: Nauka, 2000; Volume 2, Moscow: Nauka, 2003

Poppe, N.N., Lingvisticheskiye problemy Vostochnoy Sibiri [The linguistic problems of Eastern Siberia], Leningrad, 1933 Sampson, G., Writing Systems. A Linguistic Introduction, London: Hutchinson, 1985 Tugolukov V.A., Kto vy, yukagiry? [Yukagirs, who are you?], Moscow: Nauka, 1979 Vakhtin, N.B., Yazyki narodov Severa v 20 veke [The languages of the peoples of the North in 20th century], St Petersburg: Jevropejsky Dom, 2001 Zhukova, L., “The Yukagir pictographic writing.” Polyarnaya Zvezda, 6 (1986): 121–124 ———, “Binarnye oppozitsii v mirovozzrenii aborigenov Sibiri: sinvolika raznonapravlennykh dug. Yazyk-mif-kul’tura narodov Sibiri” [Binar oppositions in the world perception of the indigenous people of Siberia: symbolism of arches with different directions. Language-myth-culture of peoples of Siberia] (3rd edition), Yakutsk, 1994, pp. 33–54 ———, “Novye obrazsty piktograficheskogo pis’ma Yukagirov.” Lingvistichesky sbornik [New patterns of pictographic letters of Yukagir people. Linguistic collection], Yakutsk, 1996, pp. 85–95

ALPHABETS AND WRITING, SCANDINAVIA AND ICELAND The North Germanic languages have historically been written with two alphabets, namely the Runic (from the 1st or 2nd century AD onward) and the Roman (from the 11th century onward).

The Runic Alphabet It is not known how, when, and where the Runic alphabet was invented, but the oldest extant inscriptions have generally been dated to around AD 200. The earliest version of the alphabet was at this time a fullfledged system including 24 characters, or Runes, from a proto-Germanic word meaning “secret.” The alphabet seems to have suited the proto-Scandinavian language phonemically, mostly by using one character for each phoneme. The idea of creating an alphabetic writing must have found its inspiration in the Roman empire where several alphabetic writings were concurrently in use. The Roman alphabet was likely the most significant source of inspiration. However, the shape of the Runic characters clearly shows traces of conscious creation, not only imitation of another alphabet, and therefore it is regarded as an autonomous alphabet. Significantly, the order of the characters—which is preserved in many inscriptions presumably made for educational use—differed completely from that of the Roman, Greek, and other Semitic-derived alphabets. The first six characters denoted f, u, þ, a, r, and k, and the alphabet was therefore called futhark. The shape of the characters’ shape demonstrates that the Runes were meant to be carved in wood, since all strokes are vertical, while round or curved lines and horizontal

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ALPHABETS AND WRITING, SCANDINAVIA AND ICELAND lines are avoided. These characters were most likely used extensively, as the shape is quite uniform across most of the ancient Germanic-speaking world. However, the Runic inscriptions that have been preserved till the present age are found in materials harder than wood, such as stone, bone, and metal. Tombstone inscriptions and inscriptions on objects for private use (such as weapons and drinking vessels) are also rather common. As to the geographical distribution, early Runic inscriptions have been found predominantly in Denmark (particularly Jutland), although other sites exist in different Germanic-speaking countries, from Norway in the north, to England in the west, and the Gothic-speaking area in the southeast. From the 6th century till the outbreak of the Viking age in the late 9th century, the futhark was simplified yet diversified. For reasons unknown to scholars, many phonemic distinctions were apparently no longer considered important by the users of the alphabet, for example, several vowels/diphthongs (e, i, ei; u, o, au) and voiced versus voiceless homorganic consonants. The loss of these distinctions resulted in the reduction from a 24- to a 16-character system, which developed in two varieties—the Danish and the North Scandinavian. Outside Scandinavia, Runes fell into disuse, probably due to the spread of Christianity. However, in Scandinavia, Runes remained in use even among Christians, and an astonishing quantity of inscriptions has been found in what is now called the “younger futhark” from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and areas where people from these countries settled down, including Russian towns with Swedish merchant populations and the Orkneys (settled from Norway). Inscriptions commonly appear upon tombstones or memorial stones, particularly in Sweden, where in the 10th through the 11th century an extensive market for stones with Runic inscriptions appears to have thrived. Equally remarkable are the finds of small wooden sticks with Runes in towns and trading centers of the time, notably Bergen in Norway, where an archaeological excavation in the port area brought to light hundreds of such inscribed sticks whose messages communicated aspects of daily life. This discovery suggests that Runes functioned as a vital everyday medium of communication for people. Runes were rarely used in manuscripts with longer texts, however, because of the dominance of the Roman alphabet in this area. The shape of the characters changed over time, and the existence of the Roman alphabet (educated people probably often knew and used both alphabets for different purposes) inspired someone to augment the futhark by adding dots to indicate suppressed phonemic distinctions. Writers have used these dots to some extent, but never with any regularity.

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The everyday use of Runes continued until the late Middle Ages in towns such as Bergen. It is not accurately known when the practice ended, but scholars do not find Runic inscriptions from later than the 15th century, except in Sweden, where the knowledge of Runes survived even longer. In the district of Dalarna, Sweden, the use of Runes, in a form barely reminiscent of the medieval Runes, continued among common people until the 19th century.

The Roman Alphabet Christianity brought the Roman alphabet to Scandinavia. In the beginning, this alphabet was used for writing Latin, the language of the Roman Catholic Church. In Norway, however, the vernacular (Old Norse) was used in writing prior to 1100, and this practice was taken up in Iceland shortly afterwards. The reason for this was that Norway and Iceland received Christianity from England and Ireland, where the vernaculars (Anglo-Saxon and Gaelic) were habitually used in writing. In Sweden and Denmark, where German influence dominated, Latin remained the main written language until the 13th and 14th centuries. The Roman alphabet was mainly used in parchment manuscripts that could be bound into large books. Through the dissemination of book manuscripts, an advanced written literary culture developed, primarily within churches and monasteries, but also among worldly administrators attached to royal and local chanceries (where the scribes were most often ecclesiastical people). In some locations, however, above all in Iceland, writing and reading skills developed among lay people, particularly those from the chieftain class, quite early. Written literature was often of a secular nature (law texts were an important genre). The expansion of trade during the late Middle Ages, where foreign and, in particular, North German merchants within the Hanseatic League played a significant role, led to a democratization of writing and reading. This development accelerated when printing was introduced in Denmark in 1482 and in Sweden in 1483. From the 16th century onward, the use of written language steadily and intensively grew, although it remained dominated by religious and ecclesiastical texts. The Lutheran Reformation led to the growth of vernacular-based written languages such as Danish (in Denmark, Norway, and the Faroe Islands) and Swedish (in Sweden and Finland). Standardized orthographies of these languages gradually developed, promoted by the printing presses and other early agents of standardization. Only around 1800 did schools assume a chief role in the dissemination of

ALPHABETS AND WRITING, SCANDINAVIA AND ICELAND reading and writing skills among the population, and by the end of the 19th century, Scandinavian countries had achieved general literacy. The script used in early Scandinavian printing was the so-called Gothic script. In Sweden, however, Roman characters were in use by the 18th century. They appeared somewhat later in Iceland, and only by 1900 in Denmark and Norway, where the Gothic and Roman scripts existed side by side for quite some time. Despite the appearance of both scripts, the Roman characters retained an elite position while the Gothic was reserved for texts read by common people, mostly religious texts, although later supplemented by educational, vocational, and other literature in the wake of the Enlightenment in the 18th century. The Gothic and Roman scripts are, however, structurally identical; only the shape of the characters differs.

Orthographies Scandinavian orthographies comprise some letters in addition to the 26 characters of English. Mainland Scandinavian features three extra vowel characters: all of them have å (as aw in law), and Swedish has ä (as a in man) and ö (as the same character in German). Finnish has taken over ä and ö, while Danish, Norwegian, and Faroese use æ, which corresponds to ä, and ø, which corresponds to ö. Faroese and Icelandic also feature a series of accented vowel characters that denote separate vowel or diphthong phonemes: á, í, ó, ú, ý and, in Icelandic, é. Finally, Icelandic includes the characters þ and ð, pronounced “th” (as in “thing” and “that,” respectively) in English. Faroese, too, includes ð (but in this case it remains mute, only etymologically determined). North Saami includes a number of consonant characters absent from the rest of Scandinavia: I,
, ŋ, š, –t, Kz. The Scandinavian orthographies derive from late medieval pronunciation. They were originally relatively speech-based, although writing conventions that did not correspond to the spoken language were already developing. However, at the time when the orthographies were fixed in a stable form, pronunciation had already begun to shift from the medieval structures, and move in quite different directions within the Danish, Swedish, and Icelandic languages. In some respects, spelling followed these developments in pronunciation; for instance, in Danish the original unvoiced plosives in postvocalic position were spelled as voiced in accordance with their medieval pronunciation, thereby distinguishing this language clearly from the others, and the weakened unstressed vowels were spelled as e (e.g., gade or “street” versus gata in Swedish). In most other respects, however, Danish spelling has continued to remain conservative, espe-

cially during the last two to three centuries, when the phonological structure of the language changed as a result of the fricativization of the mentioned plosives and, in many cases, their virtual disappearance in pronunciation. The uvular r, which spread in Danish from the 18th century onward, has made a similar impact, changing its surrounding vowels profoundly and thereby giving the spoken language a completely different appearance as compared with the written. The Swedish language, on the other hand, evolved more conservatively in its phonology, but some unstressed morphological suffixes were weakened, losing a consonant or disappearing altogether, while the old forms were retained in writing and in fact restored in pronunciation (so-called “spelling pronunciation”) during the 20th century. Icelandic pronunciation has shown a different development, primarily marked by a series of changes of long vowels, including diphthongization. The old spelling conventions were retained, however, and in the 19th century systematized by the introduction of accent marks. As a result, Icelandic is reasonably easy to pronounce from the written word (if the rather complicated pronunciation rules are mastered), but it is difficult to predict the spelling from the pronunciation. The Norwegian alphabet borrowed most of its spelling conventions from the Danish, but these were modified to better suit Norwegian pronunciation. Even Nynorsk, which was established to counter Danish in Norway, accepted the same graphical conventions as Danish. However, as a result of the policy of bringing both Norwegian varieties closer to popular speech and to each other, more regular and speechlike spellings were introduced in many words. Especially with regard to foreign words, Norway has been more eager to nationalize its spelling than the Swedish and Danish (who have, however, also done so to some extent). An example is the word for concentration, which in Swedish and Danish is spelled koncentration, and in Norwegian konsentrasjon. This “Norwegianization” of international words is accepted in Norway, but when it comes to modern loanwords from English, it has become a controversial issue. Iceland also nationalizes spellings of foreign words, although the Icelandic language tends to reject such words and coins Icelandic neologisms instead. The Faroese spelling is generally conservative, approaching Icelandic and Old Norse and disregarding much of the postmedieval developments in Faroese speech. Finnish orthography is known for its near-perfect correspondence with standard speech. Quantity is faithfully rendered by a consistent doubling of long consonants and vowels. For example, compare the following verb forms: tulee (meaning “comes”); tuulee (“blows”); tullee (“will probably come”); and tuullee

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ALTA/KAUTOKEINO DEMONSTRATIONS (“will probably blow”). Double characters are always pronounced long. With respect to the Saami languages, they have been written with different orthographies created by foreign (Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish) experts, mainly missionaries or linguists. Only from the 1970s onward were there enough Saami linguists to approach this work, and a panScandinavian Saami cooperation concurrently emerged. In 1978, new, united spelling, containing the special characters mentioned above, replaced the established spellings of North Saami—one valid in Norway and Sweden, and the other in Finland. Other forms of Saami (South Saami, Lule Saami, Enare Saami, etc.) have acquired their own spellings during the last several decades of the 20th century, although these are based on the existing Scandinavian alphabets and express special phonemes with digraphs. The numeral 7, thus, is spelled I iezK a in North Saami, gietjav in Lule Saami, tjijhtje in South Saami, and seitsemän in Finnish. LARS S. VIKØR See also Iceland; Norway; Saami; Scandinavian Languages; Sweden Further Reading Haugen, Einar, The Scandinavian Languages, An Introduction to Their History, London: Faber and Faber Ltd, 1976

ALTA/KAUTOKEINO DEMONSTRATIONS On August 27, 1970, some 400 Saami in the small community of Mási in Finnmark, the northernmost county of Norway, carried banners protesting the Norwegian authorities’ announcement for a new and vast hydroelectric development project of the Alta/Kautokeino River—plans which at that stage also involved the flooding of the entire settlement of Mási. In the demonstrations to prevent the Norwegian government from damming the river, large numbers of political activists of different convictions joined forces to save a significant monument of nature. After the demonstrations, the chant “Let the River Live” resonated among most Norwegians. To the Saami people, the case represented a turning point in Norwegian indigenous politics. Along with the river Tana, the Alta/Kautokeino is one of the major watercourses in the county of Finnmark in Norway. In 1970, the Norwegian Water Resources Electricity Board /Norwegian Hydro announced plans of a hydroelectric project on the river. The project met with tremendous opposition not just among the indigenous population. In 1974, an official report commissioned by Norwegian Hydro and

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the national electricity board warned of the dam’s “catastrophic” consequences for reindeer pastoralism. The following year, national Saami associations, Norske Samers Riksforbund (NSR), Norske Reindriftssamers Landsforbund (NRL), and Samenes Lands Forbund (SLF) publicly voiced their resistance against the project. The government responded to these signals by legislating a reduced project in 1978. The revised plan included a 100 m tall dam of reinforced concrete to be built across a canyon downstream from Mási. For construction purposes, a 36 km road was to be built from nearby Stilla. For the 150–200 workers, a camp was planned near the construction site. In response to the government plans, Saami reindeer herders affected by the proposed project filed a lawsuit against the Norwegian government. The landscape around the Alta/Kautokeino is open tundra providing 60,000 reindeer with pasture. Referring to the 1974 assessment report, the reindeer herders argued that the government had only focused on direct damage to Saami interests—the flooding reindeer pastures. The reindeer herders demanded a study of the impact of the project in its entirety, including the construction of the road and the camp, reindeer herding, as well as the impact upon the Saami of Mási and Kautokeino. At the same time, two action groups were formed: a Saami Action Group (SAG) and a Peoples Action Group (PAG) (Paine, 1985). PAG activists left for Stilla to keep the bulldozers from clearing the road through acts of civil disobedience. In the weeks to follow, as many as 5000 people passed through the PAG camp at “Ground Zero” (Paine, 1985). When the government in June 1979 reaffirmed its decision to start the construction of the road to the dam site, SAG took to more extreme measures. In Oslo, a lavvo (Saami tent) was positioned on the lawn outside the parliament building. From this position, a group of SAG members demanded that the government rescind its authorization to the electricity board concerning the Alta/Kautokeino River until Saami status and rights were settled by the courts. If no positive response was given, SAG would start a hunger strike that would not end until the government acceded its requests. On October 9, 1979, the government rejected SAG’s demands and the hunger strike began. In response to the hunger strike, appeals were made by the World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP) and the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA). SAG’s demands to the government were repeated by the Saami section of the Nordic Council. During the next few days, the strikers were repeatedly placed in custody. Their tent was confiscated. As soon as they were released, they would return to the same place, erect another tent, and continue their

ALUTIIT demonstration. The hunger strikers received massive support from the general public. After two days, the police removed 200 demonstrators from Eidsvolls Plass, in front of parliament. Charta 79, a newsletter, sold 8000 copies, and 20,000 people signed their petition. After three days, the government retreated and withdrew its authorization for the project. For the Saami, these events had a positive outcome. In 1980, the Norwegian government appointed a commission to carry out an inquiry into Saami rights, the Saami Rights Commission, with representatives of the principal Saami organizations included in the commission. Saami optimism did not last long. Shortly after, the parliament recommended that the construction of the access road be reauthorized as soon as the district court in Alta had made its decision. In December 1980, the district court rejected the plea. The plaintiffs immediately appealed to the Supreme Court. The government did not want to make further concessions. Instead of waiting for the Supreme Court to hear the appeal, the construction work resumed. Soon after, in January 1981, with temperatures of − 33°C, PAG protesters chained themselves to constructed ice barriers at Stilla. This time, however, the police had learned from their 1979 experiences. Over 500 police were brought in to aid the local police in their efforts to remove the 800 activists. The construction went ahead. Later on, the Supreme Court unanimously supported the decision of the Alta District Court. The court decided that there had been no faults or defects in the way Saami interests had been handled. Although the dam on the Alta/Kautokeino River was built, the ethnopolitical drama played out around it had important consequences for the development of Saami politics. New Saami political visions were created, Saami needs were brought to the attention of the general public, and the Saami Rights Commission started a development toward the greater recognition of Saami rights, which has not yet been completed. GRO WEEN See also Finnmark; Norway; Reindeer Pastoralism; Saami Further Reading Bjørklund, I. & T. Brantenberg, Samisk reindrift—norske inngrep, Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1981 Paine, R., Dam a River, Damn a people: Saami Livelihood and the Alta/Kautokeino Hydro Electric Project and the Norwegian Parliament, IWGIA Document 45, IWGIA, Copenhagen ———, “Ethnodrama and the Fourth World: the Saami Action Group in Norway, 1979–1981.” In Indigenous Peoples and the Nation-State, edited by Noel Dyck, Social and Economic Papers No. 14, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Institute of Social and Economic Research, 1985

ALUTIIT Alutiit, or Sugpiat, are the indigenous people of Prince William Sound, the eastern Kenai Peninsula, Kodiak Island, and portions of the lower Alaska Peninsula. Russian colonizers called both the Unangan of the Aleutian Islands and the Alutiit “Aleuts,” thinking they were the same people as sea mammal hunters of Kamchatka who were called Aliutors. After almost 100 years of Russian rule, Alutiit called themselves Aleuts. Kodiak Island Alutiit are also called Koniag, derived from the term Kanaagin used by their Unangan enemies and trading partners. Alutiit of the Prince William Sound area are also called Chugachmiut. Anthropologists coined the term Pacific Eskimo in the 20th century to indicate Alutiiq linguistic and cultural ties to Yupiit (singular Yup’ik) and other Eskimo peoples. Alutiit considered the term insulting or at best strange. This led to the adoption of “Alutiiq” (plural Alutiit) as an alternative designation. Alutiit leaders suggested a return to the traditional self-designation Sugpiat in the 1980s or 1990s, but so far Alutiiq (Alutiit) remains the most common appellation for the people (Pullar, 1996). Alutiiq lands spread from Ivanof Bay (55°54′ N 159°29′ W) on the Alaska Peninsula to Cordova (60° 33′ N 145° 45′ W) in Prince William Sound, and south to the village of Akhiok (56° 56′ N 154°10′ W) on Kodiak Island. On the Alaska Peninsula, current Alutiiq communities include Perryville, Ivanof Bay, Chignik Lake, Chignik Lagoon, and Chignik Bay. In addition to the city of Kodiak, Kodiak area Native villages are Karluk, Akhiok, Larsen Bay, Port Lions, Old Harbor, and Ouzinkie. In the Chugachmiut region of Prince William Sound are Chenega Bay, Tatitlek, and the cities of Cordova and Valdez. Nanwalek (English Bay) and Port Graham are on the lower Kenai Peninsula; the nearby city of Seward also has some Alutiiq population. Port Graham and Nanwalek may formerly have been part of a separate group of Alutiit on the Kenai Peninsula that extended through much of Cook Inlet before colonization. Their regional name is Unegkurmiut. The smallest village in the Alutiiq region had 22 residents in 2000, contrasting with around 200 Native inhabitants in the larger villages and 660 Alutiit in the city of Kodiak (ADCED, c.2000). The cities of Kodiak, Seward, Valdez, and Cordova have 10–15% Native residents (ADCED, c.2000). The total Alutiiq population at the 2000 census totaled approximately 3000 in the above communities, although possible confusion between the terms Aleut and Eskimo and the definition of mixed-race individuals may underrepresent Alutiit. Many more Alutiit reside in other parts of Alaska and in other states. The membership of the Koniag and Chugach regional corporations 71

ALUTIIT includes 5300 Alutiit, with an undetermined number of Alutiit also members of the Bristol Bay Native Corporation (which also has Yup’ik shareholders). These figures suggest that there are more than 6000 people of Alutiiq heritage, since not all Alutiit are corporation shareholders under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA). Archaeological evidence indicates that Alutiit have lived on the Pacific coast for the past 7000 years or more. Yup’ik Eskimos likely settled on this portion of southern Alaska and picked up elements of both Aleut and Northwest Coast Indian cultures over time. The relatively warm maritime climate and abundance of salmon and a wide variety of other resources allowed the development of large settlements and a high degree of cultural complexity. Along with a relatively high population density came social ranking, with classes from nobles to slaves. Precontact populations were likely many times the current levels, and have been estimated by archaeologists to be between 8000 and 30,000 on Kodiak Island and the adjacent Alaska Peninsula villages (Clark, 1984). Estimates for 1800 gauge all Alutiiq Natives to have numbered 6000. A smallpox epidemic in the 1830s cut the population to 3000, close to those counted in the first US census in 1880 (Clark, 1984). Over time there has been much exchange between Alutiiq communities. Traditionally, villages traded, raided, and intermarried with each other in addition to contact and warfare with Eyak, Tlingit, Tanaina, and Unangan neighbors. Since contact, dozens of villages have been abandoned due to natural disasters, epidemics, and population decline. Others moved or consolidated. A few communities are very old. Karluk, perched on the edge of Kodiak Island’s most productive salmon run, is built nearly on top of successive village sites dating back several thousand years. Patterns of life were changed markedly with the arrival of Russian fur traders in the region in the 1780s. After initial resistance, the invaders won a victory at a “refuge rock” on the east side of Kodiak Island, where Alutiit had been hiding. As many as 500 Natives may have perished, bringing Alutiiq resistance to Russian force to an end. The Russians took hostages and, this together with the threat of force, were able to keep Alutiit in a state of servitude. Villages were divided into work groups, with the mutual goal of providing as many high-quality furs as possible for the lucrative China trade. Lack of provisioning from Russia necessitated the production of dried salmon, whale meat, and the ricelike rhizomes of the chocolate lily, Fritillaria camschatcensis, to feed both Russians and their indentured hunters. Many of the best hunters traveled in groups as far as California in pursuit of luxurious sea otter pelts, leaving the less able at home

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to trap fox, pursue sea mammals, birds, and other game as best as they could. Women were also employed in sewing waterproof kamleikas, the gut rain parkas worn by hunters and adopted by Russians. Subsistence activities are still vitally important both economically and culturally in Alutiiq communities. Salmon makes up the largest portion of the subsistence take. Other types of fish (primarily halibut) and game (caribou, moose, and deer) are second to salmon, with marine mammals, birds, eggs, marine invertebrates, and wild plants used to a lesser extent (Fall and Walker, 1993). Alutiit traditionally fished and hunted sea mammals, including whales from baidarkas (the Aleut-type kayak). Brown bear was an important quarry of hunters in the past, but few Alutiit now have a taste for the meat. Black bear is still used in the Chugach region. Reliance on country foods varies considerably, depending upon access to employment (cash income) and stores. Ivanof Bay, the community with the fewest available jobs and services such as inexpensive freight, had a per capita harvest of 490 pounds of wild game, fish, and vegetable products in 1989. Communities in the region averaged around 300 pounds of subsistence foods harvested per person as calculated for the most representative year between 1982 and 1997 by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G, 2000). Alutiiq villages have participated in the commercial fisheries since they were established in Alaska, both as fishers and in processing. The mass production of salted and dried salmon (youkala) under the Russians led to the establishment of commercial salteries around the region, but they were not successful. The first salmon cannery in the region was sited at Karluk in 1882 (Roppel, 1994). Salmon processors and herring oil reduction plants were spread widely across the region in the 20th century until market forces and improved transportation shut down all but the largest and most modern plants. Present fish processing ventures are located in Chignik Lagoon, and the cities of Kodiak, Seward, and Cordova. While canneries operated near Native communities, whole villages would move seasonally to the vicinity. Most men fished and women worked in the plants along with imported laborers. Currently, salmon, halibut, herring, crab, and cod are harvested commercially from most Alutiiq communities. Income from commercial fishing varies significantly between the villages and years, falling significantly in recent years mostly due to weak markets. In 2000, village per capita income generated by operation of fishing vessels ranged from approximately $41,000 in salmon-rich Chignik and $6559 in Old Harbor, to nothing in Karluk, where there are no longer any vessel operators (CFEC, 2001; ADCED,

ALUTIIT c.2000). In the villages with significant catches, there are large disparities between families with fishing income and those without. As the fisheries decline, a growing number of Alutiiq individuals, villages, and corporations are developing ecotourism and sport fishing and hunting outfitting ventures. Government and Native organization offices provide a few jobs, and most villages have at least a small store that hires workers. In general, men are more interested in subsistence, commercial fishing, or outdoor guiding activities, whereas there is little interesting or high-paying work available to women in small communities. Sea mammal hunting, under pressure from government regulation and declining stocks, no longer holds the importance to subsistence it once did. Seals and sea lions are still hunted on occasion. The highly developed whale hunting technology declined after the Russians forcibly redirected Alutiiq hunting efforts to sea otters. Whales were hunted from baidarkas with ground slate lances poisoned with an aconite extract from the root of monkshood (Aconitum delphinifolium). The whales were not pursued after being speared, but washed ashore after several days. Whale and seal oil were burned in stone lamps and provided a main source of light and heat. Whales figured prominently in Alutiiq cosmology, and are featured subjects of petroglyphs on Kodiak Island. These may be related to Aleut whaling cults. Other aspects of ceremonialism, including seasonal festivals and masks, resemble those of Bristol Bay and Bering Sea coast Yupiit (Fitzhugh, 1988). Most ceremonial activities were held in the kashim (men’s house) and included memorial feasts, potlatches, and whaling ceremonies. The kashim was a large version of the barabara, a semisubterranean house supported with driftwood and covered in sod in which people lived. Ordinary barabaras housed about 20 people, typically constructed with a large central cooking and gathering room and smaller private family rooms and a steam bath (magiwek) off to the sides. A large settlement might have as many as ten of the structures. Families were matrilocal, several sisters often sharing a house. Chiefs (anayugak), who were the richest men and owners of the kashim, would lead one or more villages. Shamans could be either men or women. They predicted the weather, divined times for hunting and other activities, dealt with the spirit world, and brokered human disputes through supernatural means using dolls and other objects. (Some shamanism has continued underground in living memory.) Women were generally the midwives and healers and employed bloodletting, herbalism, and other methods. Most men and women wore labrets or lip piercings,

the value of which may have indicated rank. Women tattooed their faces. Russian Orthodox priests arrived soon after fur traders in Alutiiq country. Most families adopted Orthodoxy, since Russian priests often provided the only relief the people had from cruel treatment by the fur traders, and the doctrine was flexible enough to incorporate some indigenous cosmology. All of the Alutiiq villages except Ivanof Bay still have Russian churches, although few have resident priests. After Alaska was purchased by the United States in 1867, Kodiak became the site of a large Baptist mission. Although the majority of Alutiit still practice Orthodoxy over other religions, other Christian churches have some followers. A relatively new influence on Alutiiq life is the corporate system put in place by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) in 1971. The Alutiiq culture region was split between three Native corporations (see above), each responsible for managing their own lands and resources. Each village also has a tribal council with a separate relationship to the federal government, and a tribal or municipal relationship to state and borough governments. These divisions must be overcome in order for the Alutiiq people to unite in supporting their heritage. The Alutiiq language (also called Sugcestun) flourishes in Nanwalek, where all children learn it in school. Other districts have had less success in obtaining support for native language curriculum, and only a handful of fluent speakers survive in these communities. Revitalization of Alutiiq culture is being expressed in a number of ways, including regular performances of Alutiiq dance groups, the establishment of the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository in Kodiak in 1995, and artists producing masks and other media. DEBORAH B. ROBINSON See also Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA); Alaska Peninsula; Aleut; Eskimo-Aleut languages; Kenai Peninsula; Kodiak Island; Shamanism; Yupiit Further Reading ADCED, Alaska Community Database: Detailed Community Information, Alaska Department of Community and Economic Development, c.2000; website: http://www.dced. state.ak.us/mra/CF_BLOCK.cfm ADF & G, Community Profile Database, Division of Subsistence, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, 2000; website: http://www.state.ak.us/adfg/subsist/geninfo/publctns/ cpdb.htm Bray, Tamara L. & Thomas W. Killion (editors), Reckoning with the Dead: The Larsen Bay Repatriation and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994

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AMAGOALIK, JOHN CFEC, Alaska Limited Entry Commission Fishing Statistics, Alaska Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission; website: http://www.cfec.state.ak.us/mnu_Limitations.htm Chaussonnet, Valerie (editor), Crossroads Alaska: Native Cultures of Alaska and Siberia, Washington, District of Columbia: Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995 Chugach, History and Culture, Chugach Alaska Corporation, 2001; website: http://www.chugach-ak.com/history main.html Clark, Donald W., Koniag Prehistory: Archaeological Investigations at Late Prehistoric Sites on Kodiak Island, Alaska, Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1974 ———, “Pacific Eskimo: Historical Ethnography.” In Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 5, Arctic, edited by David Damas, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution, 1984 Fall, James A. & Robert J. Walker, “Subsistence Harvests in Six Kodiak Island Borough Communities, 1986,” Juneau, Division of Subsistence, Alaska Department. of Fish and Game, 1993 Fitzhugh, William W., “Eskimos: Hunters of the Frozen Coasts.” In Crossroads of Continents: Cultures of Siberia and Alaska, edited by William W. Fitzhugh & Aron Crowell, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988 ———, (editor), Crossroads of Continents: Cultures of Siberia and Alaska, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988 Koniag, About Koniag [www], Koniag Incorporated, 2001; website: http://www.koniag.com/ Maschner, Herbert D.G., “Raid, retreat, defend (repeat): the archaeology and ethnohistory of warfare on the North Pacific Rim.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 17(1) (1998): 19–51 Moss, Madonna L. & Jon M. Erlandson (editors), Maritime Cultures of Southern Alaska: Papers in Honor of Richard H. Jordan, Volume 29, No. 2, Arctic Anthropology, edited by Richard Condon, Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992 Pullar, Gordon L., Aleut. In Encyclopedia of North American Indians, edited by Frederick E. Hoxie, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996 Roppel, Patricia, Salmon from Kodiak: An History of the Salmon Fishery of Kodiak Island, Alaska, Anchorage: Alaska Historical Commission Studies in History No. 216, 1994 Yaw-Davis, Nancy, “Contemporary Pacific Eskimo.” In Handbook of North American Indians, edited by David Damas, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1984

AMAGOALIK, JOHN John Amagoalik is widely recognized as one of the key leaders in the creation of the Nunavut Territory in Canada. The territory, encompassing just over 27,000 people but extending over 2 million sq km (800,000 sq mi), was carved from eastern and central portions of the Northwest Territories, and accounts for nearly one-fifth of the entire area of Canada. With a population that is approximately 80% Inuit, Nunavut serves to guarantee the future of indigenous culture and language.

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In 1974, Amagoalik served as executive director of the Nunavut Land Claims Project, which was responsible for formulating the Inuit land claim. In this role, he was one of the first to call for the creation of an Inuit-majority territory in the eastern Northwest Territories. In the late 1970s, Amagoalik headed the Inuit Land Claim Commission, which negotiated land claims with representatives of the Canadian and Northwest Territories governments. During the 1980s, Amagoalik served two terms as the president of the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (presently known as Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), Canada’s national Inuit organization), where he continued to promote the protection of native culture, language, and political interests. During his tenure, the Northwest Territories held a plebiscite to measure the support for the possible creation of Nunavut. The proposal was endorsed by 56% of the voters, with a wider margin of support among Inuit voters. In the early 1990s, Amagoalik acted as a political advisor to the Tungavik Federation of Nunavut, the Inuit agency responsible for the final negotiations with the government of Canada to settle native land claims and the creation of a new territory. The Canadian Parliament passed the Nunavut Act (initiating the creation of the new territory) and the Nunavut Land Claims in 1993 with relatively little opposition. The successful outcome of these acts has been attributed to the Inuit position that the new Nunavut territory would not exist exclusively for aboriginals of the Northwest Territories but rather all people living within the territorial borders. As chief commissioner of the Nunavut Implementation Commission (NIC), Amagoalik was responsible for overseeing the creation of a territorial government. Although he borrowed from the existing laws of the Northwest Territories, duplicate government agencies needed to be formed in order to provide services once the political division took place. In order for Nunavut to function as a self-governing entity, Amagoalik also ascertained that a sufficient number of Nunavut residents received proper training for careers in government services. This required a concerted effort by the NIC and other agencies to combat the exceedingly high dropout rate within Inuit high schools. Amagoalik endorsed a controversial effort to mandate equal representation of men and women in the Nunavut legislative assembly. The proposal, first considered in 1994, would have created two-member legislative districts in which voters elected one man and one woman to serve in the Nunavut Assembly. The proposal was ultimately rejected in a territorial plebiscite in 1997. In addition to his work in advancing the cause of self-government for the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic,

AMEDEO, LUIGI, DUKE OF ABRUZZI Amagoalik was active in the formation of the Inukshuk Project. A forerunner to the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation, this project brought Inuitproduced television to the Eastern and Central Arctic of Canada. Amagoalik also succeeded in negotiating a settlement with the Canadian government in 1995 for reparations to Inuit families relocated against their will during the 1950s from northern Québec to settlements in the Northwest Territories. The relocation project, which included the moving of Amagoalik’s own family from Resolute Bay in the Canadian Arctic, was intended to provide land for the construction of American military bases.

Biography John Amagoalik was born in Inukjuaq, Québec on November 26, 1947. He and his family, along with several other Inuit families, were relocated to Resolute Bay by the Canadian government in an effort to support military bases in the Canadian Arctic. He attended school in Iqaluit (formerly Frobisher Bay) and began his career in public service there in 1971 as the Baffin Regional Information Officer for the government of the Northwest Territories. In 1974, he became the executive director of the Nunavut Land Claims Project. From 1977 until its dissolution in 1979, Amagoalik served as head of the Inuit Land Claim Commission. He then served as vice president of the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (today Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami or ITK ) before serving two nonconsecutive terms as that organization’s president (1981–1985, 1988–1991). In 1994, he received an award from the ITK for his contribution to Inuit political rights in Canada. In 1991, he served as political advisor to the Tungavik Federation of Nunavut. In 1993, he was appointed chief commissioner of the Nunavut Implementation Commission, which oversaw the establishment of Nunavut territory in 1999. J. BRENT ETZEL See also Inuit Broadcasting Corporation; Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami; Nunavut; Nunavut Final Agreement; Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. Further Reading Amagoalik, John, “Canada’s Nunavut: An Indigenous Northern Territory.” In Surviving Columbus: Indigenous Peoples, Political Reform, and Environmental Management in North Australia, edited by Peter Jull et al., Darwin: North Australia Research Unit, Australian National University, 1994 ———, Footprints in New Snow: A Comprehensive Report From the Nunavut Implementation Commission to the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Government of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut

Tunngavik Incorporated Concerning the Establishment of the Nunavut Government, Iqaluit: Nunavut Implementation Commission, 1995 Cameron, Kirk & Graham White, Northern Governments in Transition, Montreal: Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1995 Dahl, Jens, Jack Hicks & Peter Jull (editors), Nunavut: Inuit Regain Control of Their Land and Their Lives, Copenhagen: International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, 2000 Duffy, R. Quinn, The Road to Nunavut: The Progress of the Eastern Arctic Inuit Since the Second World War, Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988 Légaré, André, The Evolution of the Government of the Northwest Territories (1967–1995): The Debate Over its Legitimacy and the Emergence of Nunavut and Denedeh, Québec: Gétic, 1998

AMEDEO, LUIGI, DUKE OF ABRUZZI Luigi Amedeo Giuseppe Maria Ferdinando Francesco, Prince of Savoy, Duke of Abruzzi, was a member of the Italian navy whose cruises around the world developed in him an interest in climbing peaks in the Himalayas and ascending Mount St Elias in Alaska. After securing financial support from his uncle, King Umberto, in 1897, the Duke organized and led his expedition to Alaska. The expedition members included fellow naval officer Umberto Cagni, photographer Vittorio Sella, Dr. Filippo De Filippi, chief guide Joseph Petigax and four other professional alpine guides, a photography assistant along with Tlingit and American porters. After enduring a difficult 38-day glacier journey, avalanches, and hard climbing, the Duke became the first to reach the summit of Mount St Elias on July 31, 1897. The remoteness and the difficult glacier travel make this peak a difficult challenge even for modern mountaineers. After this remarkable achievement, the Duke and Captain Cagni planned an expedition to the North Pole. In 1898, they traveled to Spitsbergen (Svalbard) to test their equipment, and then sought the advice of Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen. With his assistance they purchased a Norwegian ship, renamed the Polar Star (Stella Polare), and hired a Norwegian crew. The Duke again had Cagni, Petigax and three experienced alpine guides, plus Lt. Francesco Querini and Dr. Achille Cavalli Molinelli in his party. On August 6, 1899, the expedition arrived at Teplitz Bay, Rudolph Island, Franz Josef Land (81°47′ N), and prepared to winter aboard ship. Their confidence was badly shaken when ice pressure from a September storm nearly sank the ship. Although they saved the vessel, the men were forced to build winter shelters ashore. During a December sledging trip, the Duke’s hands became severely frozen and he lost parts of the fingers on his left hand. This injury precluded him from accompanying the sledging parties when they finally departed on March 11, 1900.

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AMERICAN PALEO-ARCTIC TRADITION Cagni led the group north from Rudolph Island with nine men, 102 dogs, and 13 sledges. Progress on the Arctic Ocean was slower than expected. On March 21, about 52 miles (83.4 km) north of Rudolph Island, Cagni sent Querini and two men back to land. They never arrived and no trace of them was ever found. Molinelli and two men returned from 83°16′ on March 30. They were fortunate to reach their base camp on April 18 after a difficult journey over the drifting ice. Cagni, Petigax, and two other guides continued northward until April 25, when they reached 86°34′ N, about 23 miles (37 km) north of Nansen’s “Farthest North” record. Ice drift and adverse weather hampered their return. Furthermore, 28 continuous days of cloudy weather prevented observations to determine their position. Currents and ice drift carried them west to Teplitz Bay as the ice began to break up and melt. They finally reached Rudolph Island on June 23, with only seven dogs remaining and their food supply exhausted. The damaged Polar Star eventually escaped from the ice of Teplitz Bay and reached Norway in September 1900. After his return from the Arctic, many nations honored the Duke for his achievements. He was acclaimed a national hero in Italy and later became an admiral in the Italian Navy. He added to his mountaineering accomplishments in 1906 by naming and climbing the 16 highest Ruwenzori peaks in Africa. In 1909, he ascended above 21,000 feet on K2 and to 24,600 feet (7498 m) on Bride’s Peak (Chogolisa) in Pakistan. During World War I, the Duke commanded the Italian Navy’s Adriatic Fleet, and oversaw the evacuation of 240,000 Serbian soldiers and refugees. In 1917, a French admiral replaced him in the Adriatic command and he retired to private life. Following the war, the Duke organized a large experimental farm in Italian Somaliland (now Somalia) at Johar, 80 miles (176 km) northeast of Mogadishu. His farming-industrial enterprise served as a major source of income and employment for the country for the next seven decades. The Duke of Abruzzi remains a legend among modern mountaineers for his pioneering ascents of Mount St Elias, the Ruwenzori, and K2. However, polar historians underrate or ignore his polar accomplishments. Subsequent polar expeditions by Scott and Shackleton in the Antarctic and by Peary and Cook in the Arctic soon overshadowed the Abruzzi expedition. Despite the Duke’s failure to reach the pole, he determined that Franz Josef Land did not extend north of Rudolph Island, and Cagni’s northern journey far exceeded those of four other Franz Josef Land expeditions of that era (Jackson, Wellman, Baldwin, and Fiala). The Duke rightly concluded that the Smith Sound route offered the best possibility for reaching the North Pole

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by dog sledge. Perhaps his greatest contribution to Arctic exploration was his introduction of alpine equipment, techniques, and using pioneer parties for polar ice travel.

Biography Luigi Amedeo Giuseppe Maria Ferdinando Francesco was born in Madrid, Spain, on February 11, 1873, the third son of Princess Maria Vittoria dal Pozzo della Sisterna and Spain’s King Amadeus, Duke of Aosta. His father abdicated the Spanish throne only 11 days after his birth and returned to his birthplace in Turin, Italy. Luigi was privately tutored and at the age of six was enrolled in the Italian Navy as a cabin boy, performing menial duties with no special privileges. By his teenage years he had sailed to ports around the world, mastered French, English, German, Spanish, and some Arabic, earned a degree in mathematics, and was promoted to midshipman in the navy. He spent time on shore with his aunt, Queen Margherita, a pioneer, female mountain climber, and ascended many major peaks in the Alps such as Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn. He later joined noted British climbers Alfred Mummery and Norman Collie for ascents in the Alps. The Duke died at his home in Somalia on March 18, 1933. TED HECKATHORN Further Reading Amedeo, Luigi, “On the Polar Star.” In Arctic Sea, 2 volumes, London: Hutchinson & Company,1903 De Filippi, Filippo, The Ascent of Mount St Elias [Alaska], Westminster: Archibald Constable and Co., 1900 Greely, A.W., A Handbook of Polar Discoveries (4th edition), Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1909 McConnell, Burt M. (editor), “Death takes its toll.” The Explorers Journal, May 1932–May 1934 Tenderini, Mirella & Michael Shandrick, The Duke of the Abruzzi: An Explorer’s Life, Seattle: The Mountaineers, 1997 Waterman, Jonathan, A Most Hostile Mountain: Re-creating the Duke of Abruzzi’s Historic Expedition on Alaska’s Mount St Elias, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997

AMERICAN PALEO-ARCTIC TRADITION The American Paleo-Arctic Tradition is an archaeological technological tradition encompassing a number of well-defined technocomplexes and archaeological cultures, from the Denali Complex in Interior Alaska and the Yukon Territory to the Akmak and Kobuk Complexes in Northwest Alaska dating from about 13,500 to 2000 calendar years ago. First defined in 1970 by Douglas D. Anderson on the basis of the Akmak and Kobuk complexes at Onion Portage, Trail

AMERICAN PALEO-ARCTIC TRADITION Creek Cave 2, and several Brooks Range sites, the American Paleo-Arctic Tradition has been enlarged by various researchers to encompass or equate with Frederick Hadleigh West’s Denali Complex and later Beringian Tradition, and John Cook’s Chindadn and Athapaskan Complexes. The American Paleo-Arctic Tradition does not appear to be associated with the Arctic Small Tool Tradition or Northern Archaic Tradition, which postdates the former. The geographic distributions of the American Paleo-Arctic Tradition are Alaska, Yukon Territory, and northwest British Columbia, although similar artifact types are found in Siberia, as far west as Lake Baikal. Important American Paleo-Arctic Tradition sites include Onion Portage, Dry Creek, Swan Point, Campus, Donnelly Ridge, Teklanika West, Panguingue Creek, various Tangle Lake sites, Healy Lake, Jay Creek Ridge, Gerstle River, and Annie Lake. Although there is some variability in diagnostic artifact types, the key types include specialized wedge-shaped microblade cores from which regular, parallel-sided microblades were detached, platform rejuvenation tablets struck from these cores to facilitate microblade removal, burins and burin spalls made on flakes, large blades on prepared pebbles, and biconvex bifaces. Other artifact types found in American Paleo-Arctic tradition sites include endscrapers on blades or flakes (sometimes with graver spurs, or burinated), boulder spall scrapers, and utilized flakes. Siberian and Alaskan evidence indicates that microblades were retouched and inserted into slotted bone or antler points, possibly used with atl atls (spear throwers). Numerous dated sites have been documented, ranging from Swan Point (13,500 years ago) to various sites dating from 12,500 to 7500 years ago. Increasing evidence indicates that many hallmarks of this tradition, including wedge-shaped microblade cores, continued to the middle to late Holocene, at least to 2000 years ago in Alaska. The largest American Paleo-Arctic Tradition or Denali site is Dry Creek Component 2, which yielded almost 29,000 artifacts, including 121 microblade cores or core fragments, over one thousand microblades, burins, small lanceolate projectile points, bifaces, scrapers, retouched flakes, and hammerstones. However, the vast majority of the 303 sites with microblade technology in interior Alaska (10% of the total number of sites) are small lithic concentrations averaging less than 500 artifacts each. Since the original discovery of microblade technology in Alaska in 1939 and the increase in cultural resource management-related archaeological investigations in the 1970s and 1980s, the delineation of a late Pleistocene-early Holocene microblade-using tra-

dition has occupied the attention of northern archaeologists. Regional or temporal variants have been described in the literature. In 1981, West incorporated all microblade technologies (excluding Denbigh) into a Beringian Tradition, which included the Dyuktai Culture of Siberia. The favored prey species of populations using American Paleo-Arctic Tradition (or Denali complex) technology appears to have been caribou and other large game such as bison, wapiti, and sheep. Small game and waterfowl were also present in American Paleo-Arctic Tradition sites. Preferred site locales included hills overlooking river and stream confluences and lake margins. Mobility appears to have been high, based on lithic material sourcing and the portability of the toolkit. Almost all American Paleo-Arctic Tradition sites in Eastern Beringia are relatively small lithic scatters, the largest of which (Dry Creek Component 2) is considered a “spike camp,,” or a short-term logistical hunting base. No residential bases have been located in this area, and some archaeologists speculate that these sites would have been near the large braided rivers, and thus probably destroyed due to erosion. Small ephemeral hunting camps typify the American Paleo-Arctic Tradition settlement pattern. Spatial analyses from various sites indicate that specialized tool clusters were used, perhaps indicative of seasonal or prey-specific toolkits. Recent work finds a correlation of American PaleoArctic Tradition occupations and cooler, windier climates, perhaps relating to subsistence strategies. The American Paleo-Arctic Tradition is potentially important in various scenarios of the peopling of the Americas. In the early 20th century, Edward Nelson and Froelich Rainey noted that certain chipped stone technologies found in Alaska were similar or identical to those found in Mongolia. Wedge-shaped microblade cores were one of the first technological linkages between the Old and New Worlds. Sites with this specific microblade core and burin technology occur from about 20,000 years ago in the Aldan region, and later in areas further east. The first documented human occupation in far eastern Siberia occurs around 16,000 years ago at Ushki, and is apparently unrelated technologically to the American Paleo-Arctic tradition. Microblade sites occur later (~13,000 years ago), roughly coinciding with the first archaeological sites in Alaska. Some archaeologists believe that the earliest occupation of Alaska was by a nonmicroblade tradition, termed the Nenana Complex, supported by technological similarities among Walker Road, Dry Creek Component I and Ushki-1, level 7. Others believe that the first occupation in Alaska was by microblade-using peoples, supported by a radiocarbon date of 13,500 years at Swan Point. There appears to

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AMPHIBIANS be no valid technological relationship between the American Paleo-Arctic Tradition and the various Paleo-Indian complexes further south in North America. With the paucity of dated, excavated sites, and the recent resurgence of interest in various coastal migration models, the relationship of the American Paleo-Arctic tradition and the first inhabitants of the New World remains unclear. Despite the various temporal, technological, typological, and cultural historical issues relating to the American Paleo-Arctic Tradition, it occupies an integral place in the prehistory of the Arctic and Subarctic, the peopling of the New World, and various ecological paradigms. BEN A. POTTER See also Beringia; Dyuktai Culture; Rainey, Froelich Further Reading Anderson, Douglas, “Microblade traditions in Northwestern Alaska.” Arctic Anthropology, 7(2) (1970): 2–16 Bonnichsen, Robson & Karen L. Turnmire (editors), Ice Age People of North America: Environments, Origins, and Adaptations, Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1999 Dikov, Nikolai N., Asia at the Juncture with America in Antiquity, translated by Richard L. Bland, originally published by Nauka, St Petersburg; English version published by the US Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Beringian Program, Anchorage, Alaska, 1997 Dixon, E. James, “Cultural chronology of Central Interior Alaska.” Arctic Anthropology, 22(1) (1985): 47–66 “Mason, Owen K., Peter M. Bowers & David M. Hopkins, “The Early Holocene Milankovitch thermal maximum and humans: adverse conditions for the Denali complex of Eastern Beringia.” Quaternary Science Review, 20 (2001): 525–548 Powers, W. Roger, R. Dale Guthrie & John F. Hoffecker, Dry Creek: Archaeology and Paleoecology of a Late Pleistocene Hunting Camp, Final Report, Prepared for the National Park Service, 1983 Rainey, Froelich, “Archaeology of Central Alaska.” Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska, 12(2) (1939): 92–100 West, Frederick Hadleigh, “The Donnelly Ridge site and the definition of an early core and blade complex in Central Alaska.” American Antiquity, 32(2) (1967): 360–382 ———, (editor), 1996 American Beginnings: The Prehistory and Palaeoecology of Beringia. , Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996

AMPHIBIANS Amphibians (Amphibia) is the class of poikilothermic (also known as cold-blooded) terrestrial vertebrates that usually retain the aquatic larval stage; hence, proximity to fresh water is typical for a majority of the species. Breeding takes place in water (or wet soil), and the aquatic larvae (which breathe through the gills) metamorphose and subsequently live on land.

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The food of adults and some larvae (in salamanders) consists of small invertebrates; otherwise, adults eat invertebrates, whereas frog and toad larvae eat detritus and algae and small invertebrates. The majority of amphibians live in wet tropical and subtropical areas, from where species richness decreases northward and southward. Few amphibian species cross the Arctic Circle: one salamander, one toad, and four frog species. However, they cannot be considered as true Arctic species because the main part of their distribution ranges covers the Subarctic and the temperate zone. Their penetration into the Arctic is usually with wood vegetation, particularly by intrazonal landscapes of river valleys. However, further dispersal in moist tundra landscapes also occurs in woodless areas. These species have evolved some mechanisms for survival in the severe climatic conditions of the north, such as seasonal changes in biochemistry and physiology, relatively fast accumulation of special cryoprotectant substances preventing the formation of ice crystals breaking cell walls, high ability of amylases to maintain high activity during a sharp fall in temperature, relatively high connection of adults with wetlands during the nonbreeding season, freeze tolerance of spawn, and relatively fast development of embryos and larvae (allowing them to complete transformation from the embryo to the terrestrial animal during a short activity period in high latitudes). These species form stable and sometimes dense populations in the Arctic. The Siberian newt, Salamandrella keyserlingii (Caudata: Hynobiidae), is a small amphibian with a total length of 119–162 mm. It has 11–15 costal grooves on each body side; its tail is slightly shorter, equal, or slightly longer than the body including the head; coloration is brown, bronze-brown, olive or grayish with dark spots and a light, often golden or silver longitudinal dorsal band. This newt has the widest geographical range of any recent amphibian species, c.12 million km2, and is the most widespread amphibian species in the Arctic. It lives in Russia, the north of Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China, Korea, and Japan. Over a considerable part of the northern margin of its range, this species crosses the Arctic Circle. The northern margin of the range extends in the former Soviet Union from the Russian Plain (Arkhangelskaya Province: c.64°40′ N 43° E) eastward to the Arctic part of the Urals (Tyumenskaya Province, south of Yamal Peninsula: c.67°56′ N 67°51′ E), through the south of Taymyr Peninsula, Krasnoyarsk Kray (the Avam River: c.71° N 93° E) to the north of the Sakha Republic (c.70–71° N: Kyusyur Settlement—Kazachie Village on the Yana River—the Chukochya River mouth), Magadanskaya Province and Chukotka Peninsula (the northernmost known localities are Apapelgino

AMPHIBIANS Settlement: 69°47′ N 170°36′ E, Palyavaam River valley 60 km from Chaun Bay: 68°45′ N, 171°43′ E; Palyavaam River middle current 66 km upstream of Levtuttutveem River: 68°27′ N 174°37′ E; Amguema River left bank at the confluence of its tributary Ekitiki River: 67°40′ N 181°17′ E; Kanchalan River: 65°40′ N 177°4′ E; and Anadyr Settlement: 64°43′ N 177°24′ E). The newt usually inhabits various forests, but in the Arctic zone it lives in riparian groves (mainly composed of the larch, Larix sibirica) and in woodless tundra with moss and small lakes. The Siberian newt is a unique amphibian in terms of its freeze tolerance. Adults are able to survive freezing to −35°C to −40°C and can move at +0.5°C to +1°C. Biochemical analysis has revealed seasonal changes in concentrations of the cryoprotectant, glycerol, which is reallocated from the liver into other organs before hibernation. As a result, the tissues and organs do not freeze even at −20°C, and crystals of water, which can break cell walls, are located in extracellular cavities and under the skin. The eggs can survive short-term freezing in the ice. Adults can survive in a frozen state for a very long time. Sometimes such frozen salamanders, found in the permafrost at a depth of 4–14 m, “revive” after melting. About ten such instances are known, mainly from northeastern Siberia. As a rule, such animals die soon after melting, but sometimes they survive for a long time. The age of one such specimen excavated from a depth of 11 m was determined as 90±15 years, much more than the life span in “common” individuals. In the northern part of the range, the newts enter hibernacula in August or early September. The newt hibernates in rotten trees, under logs, snags, in holes, etc., usually in groups of five to ten (up to 200) individuals, sometimes singly. Hibernacula may be located within up to 200–500 m distance from ponds. At the beginning of hibernation (August-September), the permafrost alleviates significant fluctuations of the air temperature, and the fluctuations of temperature in hibernacula do not exceed 0.5–1.5°C. When the mean daily temperature approaches zero, the conditions in hibernacula become almost thermostatic, which is maintained for 10–20 days. Hibernation grounds (moss, rotten trees, etc.) do not alleviate daily fluctuations of temperature, which depends mainly on the air temperature and peculiarities of the snow cover. Nevertheless, even at the ambient temperatures of −45°C to −50°C, the temperatures in hibernacula fall to −18°C to −23°C for only two to three days (depth 5–10 cm, thickness of snow 30–35 cm). Snow cover plays the main role in this stabilization of temperature. The temperature increases with depth due to “warming” by the permafrost, the temperature of which is higher than that on the ground surface. Thus, the biochemical freeze tolerance of the

Siberian newt in combination with the peculiarities of its hibernacula allow the species to survive near the Arctic Circle. The total duration of overwintering at the north is not less than c.75% year. Only 4–10% of the annual activity falls within the aquatic phase, which tends to increase in duration northward. In the northern part of the species distribution, reproduction is extended (sometimes up to one month), which seems to depend mainly on the thawing of the soil. The clutch is a pair of egg sacs connected to one another by a very short mucous stalk, which serves to attach the clutch to the substrate. Each sac contains 14–166 eggs (usually 50–90 eggs). The duration of embryonic and larval development is shorter at the north due to a short activity period. The common toad, Bufo bufo (Anura: Bufonidae), is the central and the northernmost member of the Bufo bufo species complex. This is a large toad, 50–130 mm in length, with prominent parotoids (a pair of wartlike glands at the back of the head); the tympanic membrane is not visible; and males have no external resonator to amplify their calls. The toad has second and third toes with paired tubercles on the underside; no tarsal fold; dorsal skin as a rule with rounded tubercles, sometimes with sharp top; and a white-grayish, gray, brown, or olive-brown dorsal surface with more or less developed dark spots. The common toad is widespread in Europe and West Siberia, penetrating into East Siberia. The northern margin of the range extends from Norway and northern Sweden through the north of Russia, from the northern shore of the White Sea in Murmanskaya Province (Kandalaksha Nature Reserve: 66°35′ N 33°13′ E) and covers the whole of Karelia. In Arkhangelskaya Province, the range runs from the environs of Arkhangel’sk City (64°36′ N 40°32′ E) to Pinezhsky Nature Reserve (64°35′ N 43°03′ E). Then the margin extends southerly to the Arctic Circle southeastwards to the Irkutskaya Province of Russia in East Siberia (c.58° N 96° E to 56° N 100° E). Thus, the common toad crosses the Arctic Circle only in the western part of its distribution: in Fennoscandia, while eastward the northern margin of the range is shifted gradually more and more southward, in negative relation to the increased severe climatic conditions in East Siberia. The common toad is associated mainly with the forest zone, where it prefers coniferous forests with marshes. Large open areas are avoided, but in forested landscapes the toad readily inhabits bushlands, meadows, fields, glades, etc. Hibernation occurs on land in rotten trees, burrows, etc. The toads hibernate singly or in groups from September to the beginning of November to March-June, depending on the altitude and latitude. Breeding occurs from March to June (usually late April-May) and lasts for three to seven (up to 14) days

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AMPHIBIANS at a single site. Various types of wetlands are used for spawning. However, at the north, reproduction occurs in shallow areas of lakes and rivers. The clutch has the shape of very long (upto 1–2 m) strings with spawn. Metamorphosis occurs from the middle to late summer. The common frog, Rana temporaria (Anura: Ranidae), is the central member of the group of brown frogs, which is widespread in Europe and Asia. The name R. temporaria has been used for almost all species of Eurasian brown frogs, including the species living in the Arctic. This is a medium-sized frog, from 33 to -100 mm; the body is corpulent and the snout is rounded; males have internal guttural resonators; dorsal coloration is olive, olive-brown, gray-brown, brown, gray, yellowish, or rufous; there is a V-shaped dark glandular spot on the neck and a large dark temporal spot behind the eyes; and the belly and hind legs are white from below, yellowish or grayish with a blotched-like pattern formed by brown, brownish-gray, or almost black spots. The frog inhabits Europe from the Pyrenees to the Urals and West Siberia. In Fennoscandia, the northern range margin corresponds approximately to the coast of the Norwegian and the Barents seas to the area between Kharlovka and Voyatka rivers (c.68°20′ N 37°20′ E). Then the margin runs beyond the Arctic Circle southward to the northern coast of Kandalaksha Bay. Southeastward, in Arkhangelskaya Province, the margin corresponds to the coast of the White Sea, including the Kanin Peninsula. From the latter, it runs southeastward and eastward through Komi Republic in Russia, approximately along the line: lower Shapkina River in UstTsilma District (c.67° N 53° E)—Vorkuta City (67°29′ N 64°00′ E), then to the Polar Urals (Yamalo-Nenet Autonomous Okrug in Tyumen Province: Shchuchya River, ca. 67° N 69° E). Then the margin runs southward to Kurganskaya Province of Russia and northern Kazakhstan. The species lives on many marine and lake islands, but the indication for Kolguev Island in the east of the Barents Sea needs further verification. The common frog inhabits various forests, in which it penetrates tundra. In the northern part of its range, the species tends to occur near ponds, lakes, and rivers, spending more time in water. At the northern limit of its distribution, this species lives in the forest and true tundras, usually on the shores of permanent lakes. In particular, in the Kola region, the common frog inhabits depositions of ancient glaciers in valleys, slopes of hills and the sea coast, as well as areas of northern taiga. In the Arctic, the common frog breeds in depressions in rocks, flooded plains, swamps, ponds, and the littoral zones of lakes. This species is quite resistant to low temperatures: it does not stop activity at +2°C to +3ºC. Hibernation starts after the first frosts, and finishes

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before the time when the mean night temperature exceeds zero. The latest appearance (early June) and earliest disappearance (late August) within the range are in the Polar Urals. The eggs are deposited usually after the night temperature rises above zero. The clutch, as in other brown frogs, has the shape of a large clump. The clutches, deposited by a group of frogs, form a dense aggregation. The aggregation allows alleviation of sharp fluctuations of temperature and penetration of small natural enemies. The embryonic and larval development ends in late summer to autumn. The moor frog, Rana arvalis (Anura: Ranidae), is a small animal 36–80 mm in length, with the snout more or less terminating in a point. The male has internal guttural resonators. It has a smooth flank and thigh skin; gray, light-olive, yellowish, brown, or rufous dorsal coloration; a V-shaped dark glandular spot on the neck; a light mid-dorsal band frequently present (especially in northern populations); and a white or yellowish belly without pattern or with pallid brownish or grayish spots on the throat and chest. The frog inhabits a large area from southern Sweden and Finland to France, southeastern Europe and Siberia. The northern limit of the range runs from southern Sweden eastward through the Arctic Circle to the northern Sweden, Murmanskaya Province of Russia (Kandalakshsky Nature Reserve: 66°35′ N 33°13′ E) and northern Karelia, then through northern Arkhangelskaya Province (Pinezhsky Nature Reserve: 64°35′ N 43°03′ E—south of the Kanin Peninsula, Chesha River delta—Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Tobseda Settlement: c.68°30′ N 52°30′ E)—Komi Republic (Vorkuta City: 67°29′ N 64°00′ E)— Tyumenskaya Province (Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Kharvuta Settlement on the Khadyta-Yakha River: c.67°40′ N 70° E)—Krasnoyarsk Region (Taymyr Autonomous Okrug, Khantaika River basin: c.68° N 87° E), then southeastward to Yakutia below the Arctic circle. Thus, in Fennoscandia R. arvalis penetrates less northward in the Arctic than another brown frog, R. temporaria. However, in contrast to the latter species, it occurs in the Siberian Arctic, while R. temporaria does not penetrate farther northeastward than the Polar Urals. The moor frog penetrates tundra in association with arboreal vegetation, primarily along river valleys. At the northern limit of its distribution, in tundra, it lives near water bodies: rivers and lakes. In the shrubby tundra, it lives in sedge bogs and in lichen-sedge-moss tundras. In forest-tundra open woodlands, the moor frog is abundant in the riparian forests and associated bogs. In Europe, R. arvalis is probably a more thermophilous species, with lower requirements to humidity of the environment, than the sympatric R. temporaria. When these two frogs coexist in the same habitat, the first species more often

AMPHIBIANS lives in more open and well-illuminated habitats; it enters hibernation a little earlier and leaves it a little later; and the reproduction takes place a little later. The latest appearance (June) and earliest disappearance (September) within the moor frog range is in the Polar Urals. Spawning and early development occur in stagnant waters, including lakes, swamps, etc. The spawn is deposited as a clump, sometimes two to three clumps. The clutches do not form uniform masses and are positioned in a pond singly. The absolute duration of life (measured in years) is more at the north (tundra zone) than southerly. However, the duration of life measured by the periods of activity should be similar on various latitudes. The Siberian wood frog, Rana amurensis (Anura: Ranidae), is a brown frog of 38–84 mm length; the snout is moderately sharp; male resonators are reduced; dorsal coloration is grayish or gray-brown with dark spots; temporal spot is large; a light middorsal band is present; flank and thigh skin are granular, the granules are often red; and the belly is white or white-yellowish with large, irregular, partially fused blood-red spots. This frog inhabits Western and East Siberia, the Russian Far East, Korea, northern and central Mongolia, and northeastern China. The Arctic regions are reached in Russia, where the northern margin of the species’ range extends eastwards from Sverdlovskaya and Tyumenskaya provinces to Krasnoyarsk Region to Irkutskaya Province, then northeastward in Yakutia, where the species exceeds the Arctic Circle approximately along the line: upper flow of the Vilyui River—upper flow of the Markha River (c.66° N 114° E)—Zhigansk Town on the Lena River (c.67° N 124° E)—upward by the Lena River to Siktyakh and Buuru settlements (c.70°30′ N 125° E)—Khaiyr Lake in the lower Omoloi River area (c.71° N 133° E). Then the margin runs southeastward approximately along the line: Verkhoyansky District, Tylgys Settlement (30 km northward from the Arctic Circle)—Verkhnekolymsky District, Usun-Kyuyol Settlement (c.67°40′ N 155° E)—Magadanskaya Province (Srednekansky District, Balygychan and Seimchan Settlements, c.63° N 152° E). Then the margin runs southward to the shore of the Sea of Okhotsk. Information on the presence of the Siberian frog in several localities in northern Yakutia between 70 and 72° N needs further verification. The Siberian frog lives in coniferous, mixed and deciduous forests, within which it penetrates the tundra zone. The connection with water bodies (overgrown river valleys with floodplain ponds and lakes) is typical in the northernmost areas. Although its freeze tolerance has not been studied, this frog, together with the Siberian newt, may be the most cold-tolerant amphibian in the world. The ecology above the Arctic Circle was unstudied, but it

seems to be basically similar to that in R. temporaria and R. arvalis in the polar regions. The wood frog, Rana sylvatica (Anura: Ranidae), is a brown frog of 34–83 mm length. Dorsal coloration is from pink to dark brown, with a prominent dark mask ending abruptly behind the eardrum; a light mid-dorsal band is sometimes present; and the belly is white, sometimes with dark mottling. This species is widespread in the northern part of North America, where it lives from the east of USA (North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas) northward and northeastward to Minnesota and Wisconsin, then to Canada (Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, and Mackenzie) and Alaska. This frog lives north of the Arctic Circle in areas westward from the Mackenzie District of Canada (the northernmost record is the Mackenzie River delta, Yellowknife) to Alaska (Bettles) in USA. The Alaskan part of this species distribution is closest to the range of the Old World brown frogs. The systematic and phylogenetic relationships of R. sylvatica with Eurasian brown frogs remain unexplored. The wood frog lives mainly in woods, but in the northernmost areas it lives in tundra. Hibernation is finished there in late April—May; the breeding season in the Mackenzie region is May-July. As in other studied northern amphibian species, the liver is the primary site of cryoprotectant production in the wood frog. The induction of cryoprotectant synthesis seems to be triggered solely by the initiation of freezing at the body extremities. This species is able to survive extracellular freezing at subzero temperatures from −2°C to −4°C for periods up to two weeks. There are two old records of the great crested newt, Triturus cristatus (Caudata: Salamandridae), from Lapland, Sweden, made above the Arctic Circle. This may indicate possible penetration of this species into the Arctic. SERGIUS L. KUZMIN

Further Reading Behler, J. & F.W. King, The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Reptiles and Amphibians, New York: Knopf, 1988 Gasc, J.-P., A. Cabela, J. Crnobrnja-Isajlovic, D. Dolmen, K. Grossenbacher, P. Haffner, J. Lescure, H. Martens, J.P. Martinez-Rica, H. Maurin, M.E. Oliveira, T.S. Sofianidou, M. Veith & A. Zuiderwijk (editors), Atlas of Amphibians and Reptiles in Europe, Paris: SHE and NMNH Publ., 1997 Gislen, T. & H. Kauri, Zoogeography of the Swedish Amphibians and Reptiles with Notes on Their Growth and Ecology, Stockholm: Almquist and Wiksell, 1959 Kuzmin, S.L., The Amphibians of the Former Soviet Union, Sofia, Moscow: Pensoft, 1999 Logier, E.B.S. & G.C. Toner, Check List of the Amphibians and Reptiles of Canada and Alaska, Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1961

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AMUND RINGNES ISLAND Shvarts, S.S. & V.G. Ishchenko, Puti Prisposobleniya Nazemnykh Pozvonochnykh Zhivotnykh k Usloviyam Sushchestvovaniya v Subarktike 3 Zemnovodnye [The Ways of Adaptation of Terrestrial Vertebrate Animals to the Subarctic Conditions 3 Amphibians], Sverdlovsk: Inst. Plant and Anim. Ecol. Uralian Sci. Center of USSR Acad. Sci. Publ., 1971 (in Russian) Storey, K.B. & J.M. Storey, “Freeze tolerance and intolerance as strategies of winter survival in terrestrially-hibernating amphibians,” Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology, 83A (1986): 613–614 Vorobyeva, E.I. (editor), The Siberian Newt (Salamandrella keyserlingii Dybowski, 1870): Zoogeography, Systematics, Morphology, Moscow: Nauka, 1994 (in Russian) ——— (editor), The Siberian Newt (Salamandrella keyserlingii Dybowski, 1870): Ecology, Behaviour, Conservation, Moscow: Nauka, 1995 (in Russian) Wright, A.H. & A.A. Wright, Handbook of Frogs and Toads of the United States and Canada, Ithaca, NY: Comstock, 1949

AMUND RINGNES ISLAND Amund Ringnes Island, located in the Queen Elizabeth Islands, Nunavut (formerly Canadian Northwest Territories), is roughly 2230 square miles (about the size of the state of Delaware) with the northern tip, Cape Sverre, at about 79° N latitude and about 77°30′ N at the southernmost cape. The island is situated along the 96° W meridian between Axel Heiberg Island and Ellef Ringnes Island. Most of the surface of Amund Ringnes Island is below 500 feet with little relief and low coastlines. Haig-Thomas Island lies off its southeastern coast; a low, sandy island, unofficially called Cook Island, lies just west of Cape Sverre. Amund Ringnes Island has no permanent human inhabitants and rarely any visitors. Before World War II, expeditions from several nations visited the island. On April 16, 1900, the Norwegian explorer Otto Sverdrup first sighted the island while exploring western Axel Heiberg Island. He dispatched Gunnar Isachsen and Sverre Hassel for a brief visit in 1900 and more extensive exploration in 1901. The three Norwegians circumnavigated Ellef and Amund Ringnes Islands and mapped a possible channel (Hassel Sound) separating what appeared to be two islands. The next visitors—American Frederick Cook and Greenlanders Ittukusuk and Apilak—landed on the sandy island off Cape Sverre in June 1908, while returning from the Arctic Ocean and their North Pole journey. Finding no game, they quickly passed through Hassel Sound and headed south seeking a whaling vessel. In 1916, American Donald MacMillan reached the southern coasts of the Ringnes Islands from Greenland, and a month later the Canadian explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson passed through Hassel Sound. Royal Canadian Mounted Police officials A.H. Joy and R.W. Hamilton visited the island between

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1929 and 1932. In 1938, British explorer David HaigThomas explored the island that bears his name. After World War II, the Canadian government instituted scientific exploration of Amund Ringnes with aerial mapping in the 1950s and geological and other surveys in the 1960s. The government discovered a piercement dome, about 17 miles long, composed mostly of gypsum, rising to about 850 feet in the northern part of the island. The island mostly consists of shale and limestone with dyke and sill intrusions of labradorite and other igneous minerals. Many small streams drain the island during the summer, and vegetation supports seasonal visits from deer, caribou, and hares, which in turn provide food for wolves and polar bears. Amund Ringnes Island retains historic significance due to its role in the controversy about Frederick Cook’s 1908 North Pole claim. Cook’s rival for polar honors, Robert E. Peary, claimed that Cook had gone only a short distance on the Arctic Ocean, and then went south along the west coast of Axel Heiberg Island before landing about 30° southeast of Cape Sverre on the eastern shore of Amund Ringnes Island. Cook allegedly followed the coast to the southeastern cape of the island rather than the route south through Hassel Sound. Peary supposedly obtained this information plus a map from Cook’s two Inuit companions. Although Peary’s “Eskimo Testimony” was hearsay and self-serving, it was Peary’s primary tool to discredit Cook’s polar trip and establish his own. Peary advocates, Stefansson and MacMillan, later tried to prove that Cook did not use Hassel Sound. Critical flaws emerged in Peary’s account during the 1990s when researchers gained access to Peary’s personal papers. These documents disclosed that Peary misrepresented his interrogation of the Inuit. He prevented his own medical officer from questioning them and later blocked MacMillan’s offer to bring the Inuit to the United States for questioning. Additionally, had Cook followed Peary’s map route, he would have discovered Haig-Thomas Island. Since Peary had never visited the area, he was unaware of the small, sandy island at the north end of Hassel Sound, just west of Cape Sverre. Isachsen and Hassel had not seen it in 1901, but Cook landed on it and photographed it in June 1908. In July 1916, Cook’s opponent, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, passed near or directly over this island, but omitted any mention of it and did not include it on his map. A July 1950 photograph clearly depicts Cook’s island without snow (Heckathorn, 1998). In 1935, Cook’s former companion, Apilak, told Haig-Thomas about his discovery of apparent “monster bones” that he had made of Ellef Ringnes Island many years before. Haig-Thomas was unable to reach the location in 1938. Heckathorn

AMUNDSEN BASIN found and photographed Apilak’s Ellef Ringnes site in 1998, adding further evidence that Cook had used the Hassel Sound route. TED HECKATHORN See also Axel Heiberg Island; Cook, Frederick A.; Ellef Ringnes Island; Peary, Robert E.; Queen Elizabeth Islands Further Reading Cook, Frederick A., My Attainment of the Pole, New York: Polar Publishing Company, 1911 (see also new edition, Polar Publishing Company, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2001) Dunbar, Moira & Keith B. Greenaway, Arctic Canada from the Air, Ottawa: Defence (sic) Research Board, 1956 Featherstonhaugh, R.C., The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, New York: Garden City Publishing Company, 1940 Fortier, Y.O. et al., Geology of the North-Central Part of the Arctic Archipelago, Northwest Territories (Operation Franklin), Ottawa: Department of Mines and Technical Surveys, 1963 Haig-Thomas, David, Tracks in the Snow, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1939 Heckathorn, Ted, “Dr. Frederick A. Cook’s 1908 journey: a 1998 Arctic field investigation.” Polar Priorities, September 1998 MacMillan, Donald B., “New evidence that Cook did not reach the pole.” Geographical Review, February 1918 Peary, Robert E., The Peary Papers, Unpublished, Washington, District of Columbia: National Archives Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, The Friendly Arctic, New York: MacMillan, 1921 Sverdrup, Otto, New Land: Four Years in the Arctic Regions, 2 volumes, New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1904 Taylor, Andrew, Geographical Discovery and Exploration in the Queen Elizabeth Islands, Ottawa: Department of Mines and Technical Services, 1955

AMUNDSEN BASIN Amundsen Basin lies in the Arctic Ocean between Lomonosov and Gakkel ridges (see the bathymetric map in Arctic Ocean). Named in honor of Norwegian polar traveler and investigator Roald Amundsen, it is also called Fram Basin according to some sources. The Amundsen and Nansen basins, separated by the Gakkel Ridge, together are often referred to as the Eurasian Basin. Knowledge about the basin structure and about the deep structure of the whole of the Arctic Basin is based on observations from more than 30 years of drifting ice stations such as North Pole 1, and high-latitude air expeditions. Seismic refraction results from the drifting ice stations characterized the main regions and structures of the deep Arctic Basin, including Amundsen Basin. In spring 1979, an ice camp Fram-1 carried out further seismic studies above Amundsen Basin. In the 1980s and 1990s, further geophysical investigations were conducted on the icebreakers Polarstern (Germany) and Oden (Sweden), and the submarine SCICEX.

Amundsen Basin is a deep, linear basin with a length of about 2000 km and a width of 200–400 km. The basin floor is almost flat, at an average depth of about 4300 m. Due to an increased thickness of sediments in the Nansen Basin (which is closer to a sediment source, the Barents Sea shelf), its depth is 500 m less than the Amundsen Basin everywhere. At the border of the Amundsen Basin with the continental margins of Eurasia, the continental shelf is represented by a gently sloping inclined plain. At the opposite end, in the region of the Greenland and Eurasian (Svalbard archipelago) continental margins, the shelf is developed in a relatively narrow strip (up to 50 km) at depths from 3800 to 4200 m. Low-frequency relief characterizes the eastern part of the basin, and higher frequency relief describes the western part of the basin and Gakkel Ridge, which rises rapidly from the abyssal plain. The slope of Lomonosov Ridge in Amundsen Basin has a stepped profile, complicated by numerous terraces at depths from 2200 to 3200 m, with valleys of up to 600 m relative depth. Crustal structure in the basin is determined by its age, the oldest sediments furthest from Gakkel Ridge being about 60 million years old. In the eastern part of Amundsen Basin, the basement structures beneath the sediments appear to have a highly irregular relief. In the west part, such a phenomenon is not observed. The bottom of the basin is covered by loose sediments (mainly silts or clay) and sedimentary rocks reaching a thickness of not less than 2000 m, the thickness of sediment decreasing toward Gakkel Ridge. The thickness of oceanic crust in the basin as measured by seismic refraction experiments is 5–6° km in the center. Magnetic anomalies in Amundsen Basin are low gradient and linear, following the typical oceanic type magnetic field of the spreading Gakkel Ridge. The crustal structure of Amundsen Basin has much in common with the crustal structure of the western part of the abyssal valley of Iberia according to dynamics of the wave field and irregularity of its basement. Water circulation in Amundsen Basin is determined by the inflow of Atlantic waters. Circulation of surface waters, as in the Arctic Ocean in general, is determined by surplus fresh-water balance, atmospheric circulation, and basin topography. The warm waters of Atlantic origin, because of their high salinity, are denser than the surface fresh waters, and thus descend deep into the basin and cannot play a significant role in the circulation of surface waters. Water of Atlantic origin enters the basin through the eastern part of Fram Strait with the West Spitsbergen current. It flows round the Arctic basins in boundary currents, flowing eastward along the Eurasian continental slope. One branch turns north to flow along the Lomonosov Ridge inside the Amundsen Basin, returning to the North European basin through

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AMUNDSEN, ROALD Fram Strait, leaving the Arctic Ocean. Another branch crosses the Lomonosov Ridge and penetrates into Amerasian Basin, before recrossing the Lomosonov Ridge to return to the Fram Strait. Cold bottom waters at depths of about 2000–3000 m, which enter the basin from the Barents Sea North European basin, move very slowly. This, together with insignificant horizontal and vertical thermohaline gradients, makes it difficult to track the circulation of these waters. VALERY MIT’KO See also Lomonosov Ridge; Nansen Basin Further Reading Gorbatskiy, G.V., Physicogeographical Zoning of Arctic, Volume 3, Arctic Basin, Leningrad: Leningrad University Publishing House, 1973 Gramberg, I.S. (editor), Orographic Map of Arctic Basin. 1:5,000,000, Helsinki: Karttaneskus, 1995 Gramberg, I.S. & G.D. Naryshkin, Peculiarities of the Arctic Deep-Water Basin’s Ground. SPb, VNII Okenologiya, 2000 Sweeney, J.F., J.R. Weber & S.M. Blasco,“Continental ridges in the Arctic Ocean: Lorex constraints.” Tectonophysics, 89 (1982): 217–238 Weigelt, E. & W. Jokat, “Peculiarities of roughness and thickness of oceanic crust in the Eurasian Basin, Arctic Ocean.” Geophysical Journal International, 145 (2001): 505–516

AMUNDSEN, ROALD Roald Amundsen, born in Borge, Norway in 1872, was the first explorer to navigate a North West Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the first to reach the South Pole, and the first to lay an undisputed claim to reaching the North Pole. Amundsen also sailed the North East Passage, reached a farthest point north by air, and realized the first crossing of the Arctic Ocean. An astute and respectful ethnographer of the Netsilik Inuit, Amundsen provided valuable records and pictures of his two-year stay in northern Canada. Yet Amundsen was regarded with suspicion by many competitors as the person who “stole” the South Pole from Robert F. Scott. He never received the adulation that his fellow Norwegian and sometime mentor Fridtjof Nansen enjoyed. Amundsen grew up in Oslo, and at a young age was fascinated with the outdoors and tales of Arctic exploration. He trained himself for exploration by taking extended hiking and ski trips in Norway’s mountains and learning seamanship and navigation. At the age of 25, Amundsen signed on as first mate for the Belgian Antarctic expedition aboard Belgica, which became the first ship to winter in the south polar region. Amundsen would form a lifelong respect for Belgica’s physician Frederick Cook, who combated onboard scurvy and freed the ship from ice.

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Portrait of Roald Amundsen. Licensed with permission of the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, UK

In 1903, Amundsen set sail on the Gjoa on his first expedition to navigate the North West Passage. Amundsen inferred that previous expeditions had suffered from divisive objectives and commands of the expedition leader, ship captain, and scientific leader. He resolved to avoid this problem on his expedition by assuming all three roles. To fit himself for these tasks, Amundsen obtained his ship captain’s license and studied the theory and measurement of the earth’s magnetism. He pitched his expedition, in part, as an investigation of whether the earth’s north magnetic pole was stationary. Although he obtained the backing of Fridtjof Nansen, he still had difficulty obtaining sufficient funds. Unlike previous explorers who attempted to navigate the North West Passage, Amundsen used a small ship that helped him maneuver the shallow passages through the Canadian archipelago just north of the Canadian mainland. His small crew consisted of six men. The passage to the Pacific was ice-free that year, but Amundsen stopped near the south shore of King William Island on September 12, 1903 to perform the magnetic observations he had promised his scientific sponsors. This is noteworthy because it belies a claim commonly made about Amundsen that his exploratory successes came at the expense of his scientific work.

AMUNDSEN, ROALD The Gjoa and its crew spent two years anchored at this spot, during which time they befriended the local Netsilik Inuit. In contrast to many other Arctic explorers, Amundsen’s writing about the Inuit displays an appreciation and respect for that culture that appeals to modern sensitivities. On King William Island he learned the art of dog sledding, a skill that would aid the explorer’s success in the race to the South Pole. Amundsen completed the navigation of the North West Passage in 1905 and cabled news of his accomplishment to supporters in Oslo. He had intended to sell exclusive rights to his story to help offset his debts. However, a telegraph operator along the way leaked the story to the American press before it got to Norway, spoiling Amundsen’s hopes for a financial return on his story. Amundsen’s next goal was to reach the North Pole. News that Robert E. Peary claimed to reach the Pole in 1909, however, prompted Amundsen to turn south instead, putting him in direct competition with Robert Falcon Scott, who by then had embarked on his second expedition to Antarctica. Fearing that a public admission of his objective would undermine support from Nansen and others, Amundsen kept his plans to travel to the South Pole a secret until his ship left Norway. Amundsen established a base camp on the Ross Antarctic Ice Shelf 60 miles closer to the South Pole than Scott’s camp. Although he started closer to the Pole than Scott did, Amundsen had to pioneer a new route over uncharted territory, whereas Scott had the benefit of following a route previously established by Ernest Shackleton. Nevertheless, Amundsen’s superior planning and knowledge of dog sledding, skiing, coldweather clothing, and snow shelters enabled him to beat Scott easily to the Pole. Scott and four companions suffered miserably and died upon their return from the Pole, whereas Amundsen and his team executed the trip with a large margin of safety, suffering as little as a toothache. Amundsen’s third expedition sought to utilize an idea first developed by Nansen, that is, to intentionally get a ship stuck in the Arctic ice and float his way to the North Pole. Amundsen left Norway in 1918 aboard the Maud. In the ensuing year, however, he suffered three accidents, including an attack from a polar bear and carbon monoxide poisoning aboard the ship. The Maud completed the North East Passage in 1920, but never succeeded in entering the Arctic icepack. It reached the highest latitude of only 76° N. Thereafter, Amundsen set his sights on air travel. A fortuitous meeting in 1924 with Lincoln Ellsworth, the scion of a wealthy US industrialist, provided Amundsen’s funding. Amundsen and Ellsworth, along with four crewmates, planned to fly two Dornier-Wahl flying boats north from Spitsbergen, land at the North Pole to make scientific measurements, abandon one

plane at the Pole, and fly the remaining one to Alaska. They took off successfully on May 21, 1925, but crash-landed 136 miles south of the Pole. With one plane damaged beyond repair, the crew worked for almost three weeks to repair the other damaged plane and create a runway that was barely sufficient to allow them to take off and return safely to Spitsbergen. Amundsen teamed with Ellsworth again in 1926 and contracted with Italian airship pioneer Umberto Nobile to build a 348-foot dirigible. Christened the Norge, the airship left Spitsbergen on May 10, 1926 with a crew of 16, and successfully reached the North Pole on May 12, 1926 before landing in Alaska 70 hours after takeoff. Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett had flown north from Spitsbergen in a Fokker monoplane only the day before the Norge took off. Recent research, however, casts doubt on Byrd’s claim to have reached the North Pole. Combined with growing skepticism over Robert Peary’s claim to have reached the Pole in 1909, a plausible argument can be made that Amundsen’s Norge was the first crew to reach the North Pole. Unfortunately, a disagreement emerged between Amundsen and Nobile over credit for the Norge’s success. Nobile asserted that he was, in effect, the expedition leader. Amundsen regarded Nobile essentially as a hired pilot, and not a particularly good one at that. The conflict dogged Amundsen throughout his career; his creditors hounded him over unpaid bills. Although an effective leader in the field who inspired intense loyalty from his crews, Amundsen was taciturn in public life and occasionally displayed a churlish streak over the lack of recognition for his accomplishments. Amundsen died in 1928. His plane disappeared while on his way to try to rescue Nobile, his former foe whose dirigible had crash-landed on the Arctic Ocean ice.

Biography Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen was born on July 16, 1872 in Borge, Norway, the youngest of four brothers. He studied medicine until, after his mother’s death, he sold his medical books to devote his life to exploration. Amundsen served as first mate on the Belgica expedition from 1898 to 1899, and afterwards obtained his skipper’s license. He embarked on five major expeditions: first, aboard the Gjoa, in which he sailed the North West Passage from 1903 to 1906; second, aboard the Fram to Antarctica from 1911 to 1912, during which time Amundsen discovered the South Pole; third, aboard the Maud from 1918 to 1922, during which he sailed the North East Passage but failed to approach the North Pole; fourth, a failed attempt to fly to the North Pole in 1925; and finally the successful trip in 1926 from Spitsbergen to Alaska via the

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ANADYR North Pole, aboard the dirigible Norge. Amundsen never married and had no children. He died c. June 8, 1928 after taking off in a plane from Tromsø, Norway, bound for Spitsbergen, in an attempt to rescue the crew of the Italia airship. JONATHAN KARPOFF See also Nansen, Fridtjof; North East Passage; North East Passage, Exploration of; North West Passage; North West Passage, Exploration of; Race to the North Pole Further Reading Amundsen, Roald, The Amundsen Photographs, edited by Roland Huntford, New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987 ———, My Life as an Explorer, Garden City: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1928 Berton, Pierre, The Arctic Grail: The Quest for the Northwest Passage and the North Pole, 1818–1909, New York: Penguin Books, 1988 Fisher, David E., Across the Top of the World, New York: Random House, 1992 Huntford, Roland, The Last Place on Earth, New York: The Modern Library, 1999

ANADYR Anadyr is the capital of the Chukchi Autonomous Okrug in the Russian Far East and of the district of Anadyr (Anadyrskii Raion, one of the eight districts of Chukotka). Anadyr is also the name of a 1150 km long river, a plain, a plateau, a bay of the Bering Sea, and a mountain range in the region. The port city of Anadyr is located at 64°47′ N and 177°34′ E at the estuary of the river Anadyr, which

flows into the Bering Sea. Anadyr is located in a tundra area and is subject to strong winds coming from the sea and an unstable atmospheric pressure, with many violent storms. The climate is harsh, with long cold winters and short summers, and an average annual temperature of −7.7°C. The lowest and highest temperatures recorded in the city are −44.6°C and 28.2°C. The population of Anadyr, the largest city in Chukotka, has decreased in recent years: in 1989, 16,450 inhabitants lived in the city, but by the beginning of 2001 approximately 11,200 remained. A great majority of the citizens of Anadyr are incomers (Russian and Ukrainian); indigenous people represent only 1641 people (in 2001, according to The Association of Indigenous Peoples of Chukotka): 1020 Chukchi, 280 Chuvans, 149 Evens (also called Lamuts), 113 Eskimos or Yupiget, 38 Yukagirs, 19 Koryaks, 18 Yakuts, and 4 Kamchadals-Itel’men. With the rehabilitation of the city starting from 2001, the population of the city is expected to stabilize or possibly grow. Anadyr, initially called Novo-Mariinsk, was founded in August 1889 by L.F. Grinevetskii (1853–1891), first administrative chief of the region of Chukotka. It was built near the Chukchi village V’’en, which remains today the Chukchi name of the city. At that time, it consisted of one house and three iaranga—the Chukchi traditional tent made of reindeer skins. NovoMariinsk was a border post, protecting state warehouses. It became the county town of the region. In 1919, the Revolutionary Committee (revkom) of Anadyr was created, as the first organ of Soviet power in Chukotka. At that time, around 300 inhabitants were living in Novo-Mariinsk. In January 1920, members of

Boats frozen into the sea ice beside the harbor cranes in winter, Anadyr, Chukotka. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

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ANADYR RIVER the committee, led by Mikhail Sergeevich Mandrikov, were shot by local Russian traders, who disapproved of the Bolsheviks nationalizing fisheries and canceling the natives’ debts to them. In August, the village was taken back by Soviet power. Mandrikov and members of the first Revkom became local heroes. Today, one of the few sights of the city is a monument that was erected in 1969 in their honor. In 1923, Novo-Mariinsk was renamed Anadyr, after the first fort (Anadyrsky Ostrog) established in 1649 by Semyon Dezhnev, derived from a Yukagir toponym (place name). In 1930, Anadyr became the center of the newly created National Region of Chukotka (chukotskij natsional’nyi okrug). It received the status of a city (gorod) in January 1965. The main streets of Anadyr were named in memory of the first indigenous representatives of the party: Otke (1913–1955), Tevlianto (1905–1959), and Ivan Rultetegin (1924–1962). At the end of the 1950s, Anadyr grew very rapidly. The expansion of the city accelerated due to the development of air transport in the 1960s and the building of the port in 1961. Today, Anadyr airport connects services with Moscow and the main villages of the districts of Chukotka. Anadyr is a place where native writers, whose works have been translated in foreign languages, have chosen to live, such as the Chukchi Valentina Veqet (born 1934) and Ivan Omruvie (1940), and the Eskimo poets Tatiana Achirgina (1944) and Zoia Nenliumkina (1950). With new investments, the city of Anadyr has undergone radical changes: it has new hotels, new shops, and new facilities in the area of medical care, culture, education, administration, and services. VIRGINIE VATÉ See also Anadyr River; Chukchi Autonomous Okrug (Chukotka); Dezhnev, Semyon Further Reading City of Anadyr website: www.anadyr.org Forsyth, James, A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia’s North Asian Colony (1581–1990), Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992 Rastorgueva, O.B. & I.V. Kolonteeva, Anadyr, Magadanskaia oblastnaia biblioteka im, Magadan: A.S. Puškina, 1989 Vdovin, I.S., “Iz istorii russkikh na Anadyre v XVII-XVIII vv.” In Etnokul’turnye kontakty narodov Sibiri, edited by Ch.M. Taksami, Leningrad: Nauka, 1984, pp. 5–13

ANADYR RIVER Anadyr River is the largest river in the Chukchi Autonomous Okrug, and flows into the Bering Sea. Its first geographical description was provided by the

Russian explorer Mikhail Stadukhin in the 17th century. The word “Anadyr” is an adaptation in the Russian language of the Yukagir word “anu-an” or “anu-on,” which means “river.” In the Chukchi language it is called Yaayvaam, which means “Seagull River.” The river, which rises in the eastern slopes of the Aniui Range, is 1150 km long and drains into the western Anadyrsky Bay on the Bering Sea via the Anadyrsky Liman (a brackish lagoon in an embayment of the Anadyrsky Bay). The Anadyr has a drainage basin of area 191,000 km2 and flows mainly from west to east. In its upper reaches (about 400 km long to Markova Lowland) in the Aniui Range, the river is narrow and flows southwest. Its main tributaries here are the Bolshoi Peledon, Mechkeryeva, Yablon, and Eropol rivers, which come from the Aniui and Anadyr ranges. The river turns eastward in the area of the Markovo Lowland, and in its middle and lower parts flows through plains. Here the Anadyr River divides into channels over a 70 km wide floodplain and forms a kind of inland delta with many islands and branches. The lowland is unique due to its warm climate and large areas of talik (bodies of unfrozen ground). Below the Markovo Lowland, the Anadyr River turns northeast at the confluence with Main River coming from the southwest. Other large tributaries in the middle and lower reaches are Belaya River coming from the Chukotskoya Range in the north in the Belskyje Mountains area, the Tanyurer River and Kanchalan River coming from Chukotskoya Range, and the large Velikaya River, which comes from Koryak Range. In the lower reaches extending up to the Belskyje Mountains, tidal flows are important. The major lakes of the Anadyr River basin are Krasnoye and Elgygytgyn. Krasnoye Lake of area 600 km2 and no more than 4 m depth was originally a channel, now cut off, of the lower Anadyr River. Elgygytgyn Lake, which has an area of 250 km2 and a depth of 170 m, fills the crater of an extinct volcano. It is situated in the Anadyrsko-Kolymskoya watershed in the basin of the Belaya River. The lake remains frozen almost throughout the year, and the temperature of the upper layer of water usually does not exceed +5°C. The lake is characterized by its unique fauna, which includes two species of char endemic to the lake due to its long-term isolation. The Anadyr freezes from the first half of October to the end of May or early June. Freezeup and ice drifting initiates in the Markovo Lowland. The ice in the estuary appears in the second half of October, but till December or January it remains fragmentary due to tidal flows and strong winds. During ice breakup and snowmelt in June, the river reaches its maximum discharge.

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ANCHORAGE The climate of the Anadyr river basin changes from strong continental Subarctic in the upper part of the river to oceanic Subarctic in the Anadyrsky Bay area. Northern boreal larch forest (Larix cajanderi) reaches its northeastern limit here. In the upper and middle reaches of the river, floodplains are covered by chosenia-willow-poplar forest (Chosenia arbutifolia, Salix udensis, S. schwerinii, Populus balsamifera) and are rich in boreal (taiga) plant species. The middle and lower Anadyr River is the northern part of a special stlanik subzone that is dominated by a tall (2.5–5 m) shrub growth form of pine and alder species (Pinus pumila, Alnus fruticosa). In the oceanic Onemen Bay area, Arctic shrub tundra vegetation (dwarf willow and other dwarf shrubs, cottongrass, and sedges) dominates. Terrestrial fauna of the river includes boreal species such as goshawk, woodpeckers, ouzels, moose, chipmunk, lynx, squirrel, river otter, and brown bear populating the floodplain forest, and common tundra birds and animals of mountain tundra landscape such as ptarmigan, Arctic fox, lemmings, and bighorn sheep. The largest population of wild reindeer in Chukotka migrates from the south to mountain pastures of the Anadyrskoya and Chukotskoya ranges every summer, crossing the Anadyr River valley. From the time of initial settlement by Paleo-Eskimo Aleuts and Yukagirs, and later Chukchi, fishing has been an important subsistence activity for indigenous peoples in the region, and today chum salmon that spawn in the Anadyr River are an important part of the local income. The most important species fished are chum, hunchback, and red salmon (species of genus Oncorhynchus, Pacific salmon) along with several species of whitefish and char, sheefish, grayling, and pike. Today the river is an important transportation artery connecting many small villages, and the larger Markovo, Ust-Belaya, and Krasneno villages with Anadyr, the capital city of Chukotka on Anadyrsky Liman. VOLODYA RAZZHIVIN See also Anadyr; Bering Sea; Chukchi Autonomous Okrug (Chukotka)

ANCHORAGE Alaska’s largest city lies between Cook Inlet and the Chugach Mountains at 61° N and 150° W. Anchorage’s growth from an Alaska Railroad staging area in 1915 to a city of 259,391 people owes much to its location. It lies in the Anchorage “bowl,” undulating terrain between the two arms of Cook Inlet, Knik Arm to the north and Turnagain Arm to the south. British explorer James Cook named its ice-free port when he explored Cook Inlet in the 18th century. Native

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Alaskans lived here long before European explorers arrived. At Beluga Point, on Turnagain Arm, multiple layers of archaeological remains show that both the Athapaskan Denaina people and the Eskimo-like Alutiit people lived in the Anchorage area at different times in prehistory. Until recently, they maintained a fishery on Fire Island, clearly seen off the approach to the eastwest runway of Anchorage International Airport. Much of the archaeological story, however, was probably lost in the early days of the city’s growth. Anchorage spread outward from Ship Creek, still a superb salmon fishery, at the Port of Anchorage. The United States military developed an extensive presence in the Anchorage Bowl before and during World War II. Much of the coastline is military reserve land, and has not been explored for archaeological remains. The native village of Eklutna, a Denaina community, has been incorporated into the suburbs of Anchorage. The urban native population of Anchorage is presently about 40,000. The Alaska Native Heritage Center opened in 1999 both as a cultural center introducing outsiders to the five major native peoples in Alaska and as an educational center where native elders teach their cultures to Alaskan youth. Anchorage functions as a prosperous business and service center for Alaska. The military, federal, and state governments are major employers, but since 1969 the oil industry and the businesses it supports have emerged as Anchorage’s key economic force. The state of Alaska opened the North Slope to oil extraction leases in 1969. Within five years, oil was being piped across Alaska. Prior to that time, Anchorage maintained many characteristics of a small city far from American centers of power. The North Slope oil boom expanded the city rapidly and brought the concomitant problems of swift urban growth. Many newer residents of Alaska call the city “Los Anchorage” in reference to its resemblance to Los Angeles, another sprawling city between ocean and mountains, complete with smog. In 1970, however, concerned citizens lobbied to have much of the mountains to the east set aside as Chugach State Park. Anchorage’s citizens are thus able to drive, in 20 min from downtown, to trail heads leading quickly into Alaskan wilderness. Business people catch salmon on their lunch hours from Ship Creek and the several branches of Campbell Creek. The municipal area encompasses several hundred kilometers of cross-country ski trails, bike trails, horseback trails, and other outdoor recreational opportunities, including two downhill ski areas. Anchorage is also home to a thriving arts community. Anchorage features one of the busiest air traffic centers in the world. Elmendorf Air Force base maintains steady military traffic. The International Airport

ANDRÉE, SALOMON AUGUST has become a global air freight hub, but much air traffic is still at nearby Lake Hood float plane base. Many residents own small planes that are berthed at Lake Hood. Other planes take off and land from several gravel airstrips scattered through the Anchorage Bowl, still others at the city’s original Merrill Field, barely three miles from downtown. ELLEN BIELAWSKI See also Alaska; Alutiit; North Slope; Oil Exploration Further Reading Henning, Robert (editor), Anchorage and the Cook Inlet Basin, Volume 10, No. 2, Anchorage: Alaska Geographic Society, 1983 Rennick, Penny (editor), Anchorage, Volume 23, No. 1, Anchorage: Alaska Geographic Society, 1996

ANDRÉE, SALOMON AUGUST Salomon August Andrée, a Swedish engineer, led the first aerial expedition in search of the North Pole. With two other Swedes, Andrée lifted off in a hydrogenfilled balloon from Virgohamna (Virgo Harbor), on Danskøya (Danes Island), in the Svalbard archipelago, on the afternoon of July 11, 1897. The three men were never seen alive again, and their bodies were not discovered until the late summer of 1930. In the spring of 1876, Andrée visited the US Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, where he met American balloonist John Wise, read C.F.E. Björling’s The Laws of the Winds, and decided that prevailing trade winds could push cargo and passenger balloons along regular air routes. After six months in America, Andrée returned to a succession of mechanical jobs in Sweden. In 1882, Andrée joined an expedition to Svalbard led by Nils Ekholm of the Meteorological Institute of Stockholm, part of the first international geophysical year. Following this Arctic experience, Andrée returned to Stockholm and in 1885 was promoted to the position as chief engineer of the Swedish Patent Office. In 1892, Andrée successfully applied for a grant from a Stockholm foundation in order to obtain a hydrogen balloon. This research balloon, which Andrée envisioned as a test platform for aerial photography and photogrammetry research, was christened Svea (Sweden). On July 15, 1893, with Andrée its lone occupant, Svea lifted off to explore Sweden and the Baltic from the air. Over the course of the next 20 months, Andrée’s nine ascents in the balloon covered some 1300 km in less than 40 h, an average speed of 30 kph. While traveling Andrée recorded some 400 scientific observations.

Andrée’s experience led him to plan a daring balloon voyage to the North Pole. On February 13, 1895, he announced the attempt to the Swedish Anthropological and Geographical Society. The proposal earned the support of both A.E. Nordenskiöld and Alfred Nobel—the latter providing half the expedition’s funding. Andrée arrived in Svalbard in June 1896 to construct a base camp for his polar flight on Danskøya. This launch area included the balloon, named Örnen (Eagle), as well as a prefabricated balloon shed and a hydrogen-generating plant. Remains of these last two constructions remain at the present-day site. The harbor where Andrée located his camp later took the name of the ship that brought him there, the Virgo. Andrée equipped Örnen with an instrument ring to carry range finders, anemometers, and two specially designed cameras. Built with Zeiss lenses and highspeed shutters, these cameras would record the balloon’s passage across the polar sea and provide the first aerial remote sensing of the Arctic environment. Early in August 1896, Fridtjof Nansen’s ship Fram appeared in Virgohamn. Without Nansen, Fram was returning home to Oslo after a three and a half year drift through the polar basin, during which Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen attained their now-famous latitude of 86°14′ N. Andrée, however, did not find the favorable south winds he anticipated and was forced to return to Stockholm. Andrée returned to Virgohamn in the summer of 1897 along with balloon crew members Nils Strindberg and Knut Fraenkel, and reserve member G.V.E. Svedenborg. On July 11, 1897, Örnen lifted off from Danskøya and proceeded north at an exponentially faster rate than any prior polar expedition. Where most sail and sledge expeditions were lucky to cover a few kilometers per day, Örnen covered 3 km approximately every 5 min during the first hours of the flight. Progress stopped, however, two and a half days later, near latitude 83°, as humidity, ice, and hoarfrost forced the balloon onto the ice pack. After 65.5 h of flight, the crew decided to crashland the balloon, approximately 500 km northeast of Danskøya and 700 km short of the Pole. A forced march southward over the pack followed. The men shot polar bears for food, dragged a boat on top of a sledge, and were drenched by repeated falls into the icy water. Two years after the launch, on the coast of Kong Karls Land in southeast Svalbard and about one hundred miles from Andrée’s balloon shed, his “Polar Buoy” was discovered. The buoy would have been dropped from the car of Örnen as it passed over the North Pole. A year later, in August of 1900, another buoy was found, along with another note describing

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ANIMAL RIGHTS MOVEMENTS AND RENEWABLE RESOURCES the first buoy that Andrée had deposited on the ice, at ten o’clock in the evening of July 11, 1897. Relief expeditions were sent north to look for the balloonists, but no further traces were found. On August 5, 1930, a Norwegian sealer making routine Arctic surveys landed on Kvitøya (White Island), a small island off the far northeastern coast of Svalbard. The expedition’s scientist, Gunnar Horn, identified the remains of three bodies, as well as a boat prow imprinted with the words “Andrée’s polar exp.” Horn also identified the diaries of both Andrée and Strindberg, a meteorological log kept by Fraenkel, and many of the expedition’s artifacts, including rifles, the sledge, and the canvas boat. The diaries revealed that the flight had lasted three days, during which time the balloon was as much dragged as flew across the pack ice. A study of the diaries also led to the hypothesis that the men died from the cumulative effects of eating poorly cooked trichina-infected bear meat; they died at Kvitøya. Several rolls of undeveloped film were also found on the island, which, after 33 years in the ice, were developed in a laboratory in Sweden. The resulting images remain some of the most eerily fascinating in all of the history of exploration. For many decades, historians and other experts considered the flight more or less a suicidal fiasco. Yet in recent years, scholars have reevaluated Andrée’s polar balloon expedition and concluded otherwise. Many historians now see it as a serious and seminal exploration conducted by a scientist-aeronaut prepared to dare the lives of himself and his crew in the furtherance of knowledge of the Arctic basin, of the North Pole itself, and of remote sensing in extreme environments.

Biography Salomon August Andrée was born in the village of Gränna, Sweden, alongside Lake Vattern, on October 18, 1854, into a family of four brothers and two sisters. He was educated first by his mother, then spent time at the State High School in nearby Jönköping, before entering Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology in 1869. By the age of 26, he began publishing articles on social, economic, and political problems, and authored a series of articles arising from his research during the Swedish expedition to Cape Thordsen, Svalbard, during the first geophysical year in 1882–1883. Andrée’s flights in the Svea provided material for a further series of scientific articles. Nearly a dozen geographical features in Svalbard have been named after Andrée, including a point on Kvitøya where the bodies of Andrée and his companions were discovered in 1930; Andrée Land, the

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considerable area between Woodfjorden in the west and Wijdefjorden in the east; and a bay in Kong Karls Land. P.J. CAPELOTTI See also Nansen, Fridtjof; Race to the North Pole Further Reading Bergengren, Erik, Alfred Nobel, London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1962 Berton, Pierre, The Arctic Grail, New York: Viking, 1988 Capelotti, P.J., The Wellman Polar Airship Expeditions at Virgohamna, Danskøya, Svalbard; A Study in Aerospace Archaeology, Oslo: Norwegian Polar Institute, Meddelelser Nr. 145, 1997 ———, By Airship to the North Pole: An Archaeology of Human Exploration, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1999 Glines, C.V. (editor), Polar Aviation, New York: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1964 Grierson, John, Challenge to the Poles, Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Press, 1964 LaChambre, Henri & Alexis Machuron, Andrée’s Balloon Expedition in Search of the North Pole, New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1898 Lundström, Sven, Andrée’s Polar Expedition, Gränna: Wiken, 1988 Norsk Polarinstitutt, The Placenames of Svalbard, Oslo: Norsk Polarinstitutt (Skrifter Nr. 80 and 112; Ny-Trykk), 1991 Sundman, Per Olof, The Flight of the Eagle, New York: Pantheon, 1970 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography, Andrée’s Story: The Complete Record of His Polar Flight, 1897, New York: Viking Press, 1930 Wråkberg, Urban (editor), “Andrée’s folly: time for reappraisal?.” In Centennial of S.A. Andrée’s North Pole Expedition Proceedings of a Conference on S.A. Andrée and the Agenda for Social Science Research of the Polar Regions, edited by Urban Wråkberg Stockholm: Bidrag till Kungl. Svenska Vetenskapsakademiens Historia (Contributions to the History of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences), No. 28, 1999, pp. 56–99.

ANIMAL RIGHTS MOVEMENTS AND RENEWABLE RESOURCES Animal Rights (AR) is a general concept covering a wide spectrum of philosophies. It has deep historical roots, including a reaction to industrial urban development in the 19th century. The Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was created at this time, followed by Humane Societies throughout Europe and North America. More recently, in the 1970s, AR activists became influential in reaction to the sealing (see Seal Skin Directive) and fur trapping industries. Many different groups exist, concentrated in urban areas and developed nations. At one end of the spectrum, the World-Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Greenpeace stress environmental protection and

ANIMAL RIGHTS MOVEMENTS AND RENEWABLE RESOURCES conservation, maintaining ecological processes and genetic diversity, but accept the sustainable use of wildlife and ecosystems, although they do not favor commercial harvesting. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), formed in 1969 in reaction to the seal hunt, takes the position that it is immoral for humans to impose suffering on animals. Further on the spectrum, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) was formed in 1980, on the philosophical foundation that “animals are not ours to eat, wear or use for entertainment.” They do, however, allow that humans may have pets. At the far end of the spectrum, the Animal Liberation Front feels justified in threatening and harming humans in retaliation for perceived animal harm, and has taken responsibility for letter bombs and terrorist attacks in Europe and North America, and actions such as releasing animals from a cancer research laboratory and causing millions of dollars in vandalism damages. The philosophy has been transformed over time, from an ethic of respect and rights for animals to be expressed as a matter of individual conscience, to a political, often militant activism aimed at ending “speciesism”—the domination of animals by humans. Some are opposed to a scientific/rationalist/anthropocentric approach to managing global ecology. Nature is deemed to have value in its own right, not just for human benefit. Conflicts and issues are moved away from scientific research, data or analysis, then infused with values and ideology, to dwell on moral and ethical differences and political action. Ironically, the environmental values of Native Americans were used as a touchstone, and Greenpeace’s foundation philosophy drew on an “ancient Native American Indian legend” about the Warriors of the Rainbow. (This “myth” has been used several times by different groups, with the identity of the native group changing often, indicating slight knowledge of the actual native cultures.) The negative response by native peoples to the antisealing campaign meant that they became a “political problem” and the AR movement began to critique native lifestyles and ethics. For instance, many Aleuts were subjected to hate mail, threats, and harassment, as well as legal challenges by humane societies and negative media coverage, when they sought to continue the Pribilof Island fur seal harvest.

History of Campaigns After its modern beginning with the antisealing campaign in 1969 (see Seal Skin Directive), the AR movement went on to attack fur trapping. Both campaigns were aimed at deterring consumers and establishing trade barriers against the pelts and products.

Relatively immediate effects were felt by sealers and trappers. A subsequent campaign against whaling focussed first on commercial whaling, but has affected indigenous peoples as well. Among Arctic countries, Canada and Iceland have withdrawn from the International Whaling Commission (IWC), although Iceland has since rejoined. Norway and Iceland continue to whale for commercial purposes. Inuit in Canada, Greenland, the US (Alaska), and Russia continue to whale as they have traditionally done, for subsistence purposes and small-scale trade. Some indigenous peoples have been able, with difficulty, to protect their rights to hunt small whales despite IWC pressures, but others, like the Faroese and Japanese, have not. More recently, there has been some AR pressure against the harvest of caribou because of fears about antler sales to Chinese and Korean pharmaceuticals, and against Inuit participation as guides or outfitters for sport hunters. Moving the focus southward, campaigns have been launched against grizzly bear sport hunts, use of animals in research and, more recently, against meat-eating. This may reflect the growth and evolution of a school of thought, but also the need for the continued in-flow of monies to support the AR organizations. A key tactic of the AR movement is to focus only on selected parts of a problem, and to create and use simplistic images: the antisealing campaign portrayed sealers as brutal thugs clubbing “babies”; the antifur campaign portrayed trappers as living archaic, rough lifestyles out of place in the modern world. Fur users were portrayed as cruel, ignorant, frivolous, destructive, and stupid. Animals are portrayed in anthropomorphic terms. Exaggerated and wrong information is frequently used in AR campaigns. While Greenpeace and IFAW eventually became aware that the Inuit seal hunt was not commercially oriented and did not focus on harp or hooded seal pups, neither attempted to clarify this nuance. Stephen Best (IFAW) claimed that 240,000 seals were being killed annually in 1989, although this was three times the government quota and he could show no data to support the claim. In the campaign for the proposed EU fur ban, species have been pronounced as “endangered” when they are not. The concept of the “precautionary approach” has also been used to close down some whale and seal fisheries, based on claims that scientific knowledge regarding their management is “uncertain,” even though the populations are abundant. The concepts of “subsistence” and “tradition” are an important part of the conflict. They comprise values of economic, social, cultural, and spiritual dimension. Subsistence provides food, clothing, and materials, but it also requires special skills, knowledge, and resourcefulness. It promotes cohesiveness, pride, and

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ANIMAL RIGHTS MOVEMENTS AND RENEWABLE RESOURCES sharing in aboriginal communities. For many people, the use of animals is a key, traditional, part of their livelihood, whether it provides food and other materials or cash income; it all helps to provide for the survival of the family and community. The essence of tradition comes from their relationship with the resource (such as skills, harvesting activities, consumption, and sharing relationships within the community)—not the particular technology used to catch it. In most cases, money earned from the harvest of animals or fish is used to support further subsistence activities, which in turn support cultural values. Thus, the line between money and nonmonetary income is blurred, and between economy, community, and culture, with each critical to the other, and ensuring continued survival for northern people. In Greenland, for instance, hunters are seen as a crucial part of local economies, who provide country food to communities and those unable to hunt, and thereby maintain Greenlandic values. While some AR groups are willing to accept native peoples’ use of renewable resources, it is deemed acceptable only if it provides food and skins for the family and community, not if there is commercial sale of skins or other animal parts—making money from the use of animals is anathema. The luxury aspect of furs cements their disapprobation. “Subsistence use” is thus acceptable only when it conforms to a southern perception of what is traditional and necessary. This ignores the fact that traditions change and societies evolve (Europeans no longer plow fields with oxen). For instance, when Canadian and Greenlandic Inuit attended the European Parliament as part of the Canadian and Danish delegations, they were dismissed by AR activists such as Stephen Best of IFAW, because they “wore fancy suits and wristwatches” and blended with government officials and industry spokespersons. Some AR critics have questioned whether Arctic peoples can truly be traditional if they live in modern houses. Others have argued that Inuit are motivated, as are all wildlife harvesters, by greed for money or by boredom. Neither argument, nor others like them, recognize that other cultures can be different than European ones, nor that other parts of the world may face different realities than urban centers in Europe and North America. The difference in worldviews is cast into sharper relief by a number of attitudes that native peoples bring to their harvesting practices, which are either disregarded or not understood by AR activists. Native peoples believe that animals give themselves to humans for their use and survival, and, importantly, that a lack of respect from humans will make animals avoid being harvested. Furthermore, they know from their experience and traditional knowledge that the

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world/environment/life is sometimes harsh, and requires steely action in order to survive. Ironically, the Inuit at first sympathized with some parts of the AR position on the Newfoundland seal hunt—typically, the Inuit use rifles or harpoons, hunt adult seals, and use them for food. Later statements and misrepresentation regarding native culture, however, were deeply offensive to the Inuit and others, and there remains little sympathy now.

Impacts of the Campaigns The AR campaigns have had a significant impact on public opinion, government policy, and Arctic communities, although whether these impacts will endure is questionable. With their bold public relations tactics, simplistic arguments, and choice of ethnic groups far removed from the political “core,” AR groups were able to influence public awareness and to diminish markets to some extent. However, the Malouf Commission in Canada found that 75% of the public in Canada supported trapping and sealing, and would continue to do so as long as the harvest was sustainable and as humane as possible. Seventy-five percent of the global fur market is in Europe, and these markets have been revitalized in recent years. The longterm public impact thus seems impermanent, and it may be that we will see additional campaigns in the near future to regenerate public antipathy. The AR activists have also had significant impact at the government level, especially in international organizations that are not burdened by national government obligations to respect their citizens’ needs. Thus, the EU was lobbied to ban sealskins and then furs. In fact, the latter were not banned because of the substantial interests of EU members in fur farming, and the sealskin ban was amended to specify seal pups so as to meet Denmark’s concerns about Greenland’s adult-seal hunt (this was ineffective because the market did not differentiate between adult and pup pelts). An exception to this was the Aleut fur-seal harvest in the Pribilof Islands, which was shut down by the US government, both in response to the market devaluation of pelts and to satisfy a number of domestic interests, as well as the US Humane Society, Save the Seal Inc., and Greenpeace. The IWC was the forum used to attempt to end all whaling. Membership of the IWC suddenly blossomed; to the 14–17 nations who were long-term members, about 20 other nonwhaling countries were added who could then sway the votes. With the NGOs there as observers, and sometimes as funders of small countries’ attendance, those governments with shaky environmental practices at home could improve their image by voting against whaling at the IWC. A similar technique has been used at meetings of

ANIMAL RIGHTS MOVEMENTS AND RENEWABLE RESOURCES the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to manipulate votes in the direction desired by nongovernmental organizations. By becoming members of organizations such as the International Standards Organization (ISO), or the Federal-Provincial Committee for Humane Trapping in Canada, antiharvesting activists have been able to ensure that standards are defined so that they are hard or impossible to meet—and that the goalposts are kept moving. In both these cases, it became apparent that when a set of standards for humane traps were close to being agreed on by all members of the committee, the AR representatives would be removed by their organizations and replaced with stronger advocates. As made clear by Patrick Moore of Greenpeace, in a presentation to the Malouf Commission regarding the antisealing campaign: It wasn’t primarily a question of wildlife management or economics or politics or science or any of the other things they tried to argue their way around. It … came down to a question of morality.

In a host of international agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, Agenda 21 of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, The World Conservation Strategy, the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Labour Organization Convention on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, indigenous delegates and their states have ensured wording respecting sustainable indigenous use of renewable resources. Despite having signed the agreements, some governments and international actors continue to act against such use. The AR campaigns have had a profound impact on Arctic communities, undermining economic selfreliance, food security, dignity, and cultural identity. Repeatedly, observers record social breakdown, drinking, suicide, outmigration, and the breakdown of effective community institutions as effects from the antisealing, antitrapping, and antiwhaling campaigns. Occasionally however, the response to the campaigns has generated stronger native organizations and community-based management, such as the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, the Fisheries Joint Management Committee in the Inuvialuit Settlement Area of Canada, and the Greenland Home Rule Government’s comanagement of whaling. The loss of sealskin income was estimated to have destroyed 60% of the annual income of most Canadian Inuit communities in the mid-1980s (see Seal Skin Directive), and Greenland Inuit livelihoods were also devastated. The price of sealskins dropped from a high of $23.65 in 1976 to below $4 in 1978/1979. The

income of $1.5 million to Inuit communities in the Northwest Territories and Nunavik dropped by nearly 85%, causing immediate declines in harvesting activity, and therefore in country food availability. In the Pribilof Islands, the sole economic mainstay of the islands was lost with the fur seal harvest. The antifur campaigns have had a serious negative impact on the fur trade in Canada, although the markets have recently revived again after a long depression: wild and ranched raw fur sales there dropped from around $800 million in the mid-1980s to as low as $350 million by 1988, although they had climbed back to $450 million by 1996 (see Trapping). In the past year or so, they have rebounded another 25%. From a northern native perspective, the campaigns against resource harvesting are often seen as representing the interests of rich, urban, well-fed people, who have destroyed their own immediate environment and now want to save others: rich people who have a secure livelihood, but do not understand that other people do not. They are one more way in which the urban European cultures are attempting to subjugate and colonize, if not wipe out, native cultures. The colonial attitudes are clear in statements such as that by Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Society: this is an era of changing social values … [T]raditions will be broken, people on both sides will be hurt but it is a part of natural human evolution.... [S]hould social change within the context of one social group be restricted by the result it will have on another social group, especially in light of the fact that such social change is perceived ... as being progressive?

Larry Merculieff, an Aleut, said that “any attempts to stop [the seal harvest] through misdirected emotionalism of people who do not live with nature as closely as we do can only be viewed as violence against us—and the seals.” As Finn Lynge despaired: How can aboriginal hunters and trappers ever hope to have their voices heard and their viewpoint understood across this immense gulf of cultural alienation, misinformation, and plain ignorance? Ironically, by removing northern peoples’ traditional ties to the land and resources, the Arctic may become subject to different, more severe impacts. The US withdrawal from the International Fur-Seal Treaty left the seals without international migratory protection, open to pelagic killing, and without international scientific monitoring or research. The Pribilof Island communities are now caught up in the industrial fishery in the Bering Sea. And the Fur Seal population is showing a drastic decline in numbers. In the final irony, pollution and overconsumption in the urban south are likely to have a more profound impact on the quality of the Arctic environment and the survival of

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ANIMALS IN THE WORLDVIEWS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES its wildlife than hunting and trapping ever did, through the transport of contaminants and the demand for nonrenewable resources. HEATHER MYERS See also Hunting, Subsistence; Seal Skin Directive; Trapping; Whaling, Subsistence Further Reading Caulfield, R., Greenlanders, Whales and Whaling: Sustainability and Self-Determination in the Arctic, Hanover: Dartmouth College, 1997 D’Amato, A. & S. Chopra, “Whales: their emerging right to life.” The American Journal of International Law, 85(1) (1991): 21–62 Duffy, Maureen, Men and Beasts: An Animal Rights Handbook, London: Paladin Publishing, 1984 Freeman, M.M.R., “A commentary on political issues with regard to contemporary whaling.” North Atlantic Studies, 2(1–2) (1990): 106–116 ———, “Issues affecting subsistence security in Arctic societies.” Arctic Anthropology, 34(1) (1997): 7–17 ——— (editor), Endangered Peoples of the Arctic: Struggles to Survive and Thrive, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000 Godlovitch, S., R. Godlovitch & J. Harris (editors), Animals, Men and Morals: An Enquiry into the Maltreatment of NonHumans, London: Victor Gollancz, 1971 Herscovici, A., The Animal Rights Controversy, Toronto: CBC Enterprises, 1985 Lynge, F., Arctic Wars: Animal Rights, Endangered Peoples, Hanover: Dartmouth College, 1992 Malouf, A. (chair), Seals and Sealing in Canada: Report of the Royal Commission, 3 volumes, Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1986 Regan, T., The Case for Animal Rights, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983 Singer, P., Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals, New York: Avon, 1975 Stoett, P., The International Politics of Whaling, Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997 Wenzel, G., Animal Rights, Human Rights: Ecology, Economy and Ideology in the Canadian Arctic, London: Belhaven, 1991

ANIMALS IN THE WORLDVIEWS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES The indigenous peoples of the Arctic have their own distinctive histories, cultures, economies, and forms of social organization, yet they all share a distinctive and special relationship with their environment and the animals they depend upon, which is essential for economic survival, social identity, and spiritual life. This relationship with nature is reflected in a rich mythology and worldview, and in moral and ethical codes that guide people in their treatment of animals and the environment. Whether they are hunted or herded, animals remain the basis for the cultural and economic life of the Arctic’s indigenous peoples. Animals make

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life in the Arctic possible, providing (in an environment where agriculture is impossible) meat for food and furs for clothing, whether for consumption by the household or wider community and region. Indigenous perspectives on animals and on humanenvironmental relations also lie at the heart of indigenous thinking on self-determination and environmental protection. In political arenas, the Arctic’s indigenous peoples argue that the harvesting of renewable animal resources, such as seals, whales, and caribou, is sustainable. From their perspective, all life—human and animal—is interdependent and indigenous peoples view themselves as being in a meaningful dialogue with the environment and with the animals they depend on for survival. This argument has come about partly because, in response to the antiharvesting campaigns of European and North American animal-rights groups, indigenous peoples such as the Inuit have been forced to reconstitute their own worldviews and redefine human-animal relationships as a philosophy that emphasizes harmony, rather than conflict, between humans and the natural world. In the worldviews of Arctic indigenous peoples, animals and all other aspects of the natural world, such as lakes, rivers, the sun, and the moon, have souls, just as humans do. Indeed, this spiritual essence is shared between humans, animals, and natural phenomena and reminds human beings that they are not unique, but part of a transcendent universe in which everything emanates from the same spiritual source. Among Inuit groups, the souls of animals are particularly significant, and ritual and ceremonial life is often devoted entirely to ensuring that the souls of whales, polar bears, walrus, seals, and caribou receive proper treatment and respect, while myths and stories emphasize the spiritual relationship between humans and animals. Thus, the souls of animals need to be propitiated once the animal has been killed. In the traditional religions of Arctic peoples, a great spirit protected the animals they hunted and herded, embodying their essence and supervising their correct ritual treatment after being slaughtered. This master or guardian of the animals also prevented or facilitated the hunting of animals. In Siberian reindeer-herding societies, such as the Chukchi and Nenets, the master is protector of the herds, while for the Inuit the Sea Woman is owner of the sea mammals. Animals are conceptualized as nonhuman persons, endowed with consciousness and intelligence. Some species are said to live in communities that are similar in social organization to human communities. For example, the Alaskan and Siberian Yup’ik say that seals live according to the same kinds of rules that humans are subject to. Yup’ik stories describe how young seals learn appropriate rules from their elders,

ANIMALS IN THE WORLDVIEWS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES such as knowing the dangers of approaching a hunter who appears to be a careless and disrespectful person. In Athapaskan mythology and stories from the Distant Time (a remote ancient time in Athapaskan religious belief), animals and humans are similar in many ways, and animals have distinct and unique personalities just as humans do. In the myths and oral histories of many Arctic peoples, it is common to find stories that describe how humans and animals were not as clearly distinguished as they are today. Stories tell how humans and animals not only lived in the same communities, often sharing the same household, but how humans have the power and ability to transform themselves into animals and vice versa. Because humans, animals, and everything in the natural world share the same spiritual essence, the Arctic environment is essentially a dangerous and uncertain one, and not just because of the extreme physical conditions people have to endure. Part of this danger is due to the fact that, as all human food consists of souls, offences by an individual against animals and spirits in the natural world can cause pain to the souls of recently killed animals and invite retribution from vindictive and malevolent spirits, putting entire human communities at risk through poor hunting, illness, misfortune, famine, and bad weather. As the rich mythology of Arctic peoples shows, maintaining a balance between the human and natural worlds was often perceived to be a matter of life and death. Care must therefore be taken to ensure that animals and animal spirits are not offended or harmed by hunters. Hunters are obliged to see that animals are killed properly, both in terms of hunting technique and in correct propitiatory rituals, and that their meat, bones, and hide are utilized in ways that will not offend the animal’s guardian spirit. For example, in northern Canada, if the soul of a recently killed seal is not returned to the sea, its guardian spirit may bring bad luck to the hunter in the form of poor hunting, while Yup’ik women in southwest Alaska must be careful not to trap their hair in the seams of animal skins they are sewing together for clothing; if this happens it can bring danger to whoever wears the clothes. Traditionally, rites practiced before a hunt were intended to ensure the hunter’s success. In traditional Greenlandic society, for example, a successful whale hunt depended in part on men abstaining from sexual intercourse for prescribed periods, and on women remaining indoors in darkness until the men returned with the whale. After the killing of animals, propitiatory rituals took the form of elaborate ceremonies. The purpose of these ceremonies was for people to honor the animal, for the hunter to ask forgiveness for killing it, and to return its soul safely to the spirit world. The respect for animals is illustrated perhaps

most vividly by the fact that some animals, such as bears and wolverines, are given funeral rituals after being killed. The rituals surrounding the hunt of a bear, for example, symbolize the close yet ambivalent relationship between humans and animals. The bear is humanlike, can stand on its hind legs, and resembles a human when skinned. The bear is a great hunter and has special power, and although the killing of a bear brings prestige to the hunter, it also brings danger. When a bear has been hunted, a feast is held where the dead bear is treated as an honored guest and asked to forgiven people for slaying it. In Saami tradition, hunters who take part in a bear hunt are regarded as unclean and must undergo ritual purification during a period of ritual seclusion, while the bear festival of Siberian peoples such as the Chukchi is one of the most elaborate forms of animal ceremonialism anywhere in the Arctic, expressing both the desire of the hunter for the bear and the anxiety that surrounds a kill. In the traditional religious life of Arctic peoples, the shaman was a central figure in the maintenance of good relations between humans and animals, acting as an intermediary in the transactions between humans, the souls of animals, and the guardian of the animals. Inuit myths, for example, relate how the shaman would first have to undergo a long, solitary, and arduous initiation in the mountains, on the barren tundra, or in a deep cave, wrestling with spirits and acquiring powers before returning home. The essence of shamanic practice was the trance and journey to the spirit world. As the shamans went into a trance, theirsouls would journey to the spirit world to search for the souls of human beings who had been captured by malevolent spirits, or bargain with the guardian of animals for the animals to be sent to the human world to be hunted. The dependence on animals for food and social and economic well-being is reflected in community hunting regulations, in herding practices, and in patterns of sharing and gift-giving. In seal-hunting households in Greenland and Canada, for example, the meat, fat, and skin of the seal is utilized. There is rarely much wasted. Complex and precise local rules exist, which determine the sharing and distribution of the catch, and seal meat is commonly shared out to people beyond the household, whether those people are related to the hunter or not. For Arctic hunting peoples, sharing can only be understood with reference to the sense of social relatedness that people feel they have with each other and with the environment, and this is manifest in, for instance, first-catch celebrations. At an early age, boys are taken on hunting trips with their fathers, who teach them the skills and impart the knowledge necessary to be a successful hunter. When a boy catches his

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ANZHU, PETR FEDOROVICH first seal, he gives gifts of meat to every household in his community, and people are invited to his parents’ home for coffee or tea and cake. A first-catch celebration is not only a recognition by the community of the boy’s development as a hunter, it is a statement of the vitality and cultural importance of the hunting way of life. Arctic hunting peoples such as the Inuit not only regard the environment as the provider for all their needs, but sharing the products of the hunt is a social event that demonstrates relatedness, affection, and concern. Obligations to share underlie subsistence ways of life and contribute to the reproduction of kinship ties and other close social relationships. MARK NUTTALL See also Animal-Rights Movements and Renewable Resources; Indigenous Knowledge; Indigenous Worldviews; Mythology of the Inuit; Shamanism Further Reading Asatchaq, The Things That Were Said of Them: Shaman Stories and Oral Histories of the Tikigaq People, translated by Tom Lowenstein & Tukummiq, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992 Bogoras, Waldemar, The Chukchee, 3 volumes, Leiden: Brill, and New York: Stechert, 1904–1909, reprinted New York: AMS, 1975 Kleivan, Inge & Birgitte Sonne, Eskimos: Greenland and Canada, Leiden: Brill, 1985 Lantis, Margaret, Alaskan Eskimo Ceremonialism, Seattle: University of Washington Press, and New York: Augustin, 1947, reprinted Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966 Lynge, Finn, Arctic Wars, Animal Rights, Endangered Peoples, translated by Marianne Stenbaek, Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1992

ANZHU, PETR FEDOROVICH Discovery of the Novosibirskiye archipelago (New Siberian Islands) is usually ascribed to the Yakutsk merchant Ivan Lyakhov in 1770, based on his visits to the two southern islands of the archipelago, now named after him. Thereafter, various trappers and hunters, especially Yakov Sannikov, roamed over most of the archipelago, discovering Kotel’ny Island, Faddeevskii Island, and Novaya Sibir’ over the period 1800–1806. The first expedition dispatched from St Petersburg to survey the islands was that of Matvei Matveevich Gedenshtrom over the period 1809–1810; however, Gedenshtrom had very poor instruments and the resultant survey was quite unreliable. In 1821–1823, Lt. Petr Fedorovich Anzhu was assigned to resurvey the archipelago as well as the mainland coast east and west from the mouth of the Yana, in parallel with the surveys of Lt. Ferdinand Petrovich von Wrangell farther east. Anzhu was also

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specifically instructed to investigate land sighted by Yakov Sannikov, who had participated in Gedenshtrom’s expedition, from the north coasts of both Kotel’ny and Faddeevskii islands in the spring of 1811. This land had even been named Sannikov’s Land. Anzhu was specifically ordered to travel by dog sled rather than try to explore the archipelago by boat. Accompanied by P.P. Il’in (surveying assistant), I.A. Berezhnykh (mate), Dr. A.E. Figurin (medical doctor and naturalist), and two sailors, Anzhu reached Ust’-Iansk, which was to be their base, in October 1820. Their first task was to establish a depot and forward base on Barkin Island (off Mys Bykovskyi), just north of the present port of Tiksi. They started north from here with 31 dog sleds on March 8, 1821 (old style), bound for Stolbovoi Island. Having surveyed it, they headed northeast to Kotel’ny Island. While Berezhnykh surveyed the south coast of that island and crossed to Faddeevskii Island, Anzhu and Figurin surveyed the west coast of Kotel’ny Island. On April 5, they headed northwest across the ice from the tip of Kotel’ny Island in search of the elusive Sannikov’s Land. After 30 miles (67 km) they were stopped by open water and there was still no sign of land. By April 8, they were back on Kotel’ny Island; they traveled east along its north coast and crossed Bunge’s Land to Faddeevskii Island where they rendezvoused with Berezhnykh. From here, on April 14, they headed north across the sea ice again; dangerously thin ice forced them to turn back after only 4.5 miles (10 km). Continuing east they crossed to Novaya Sibir’ on April 18. Then on April 21, once again they struck out across the sea ice, this time toward the northeast from the northern tip of Novaya Sibir’. After 15.5 miles (34 km), they were stopped by very rough ice, beyond which there was open water, but still no sign of land. They returned to land at Mys (cape) Kamennyi, the northeastern tip of Novaya Sibir’ on April 23. The entire party then headed back to the mainland, and was back at its base at Ust’-Iansk by May 9, 1821. Traveling on horseback Anzhu spent the summer of 1821 surveying the mainland coast from the mouth of the Yana east to the mouth of the Indigirka. Then in the spring of 1822, he resumed his surveys of the Novosibirskiye islands. Starting north on March 10, Anzhu and Berezhnykh focused their attention initially on surveys of Bol’shoi and Malyi Liakhovskii, but by April 22 Anzhu was back at the northwestern cape of Faddeevskii Island. From there he could see what appeared to be a bluish landmass to the northwest, and found reindeer tracks leading out across the sea ice. As Anzhu progressed farther from shore, the “land” disappeared; he concluded that it was probably a mirage of dirty pressure ridges. The reindeer had probably

ANZHU, PETR FEDOROVICH been heading out onto the sea ice to lick salt from the ice surface. On his way back to Faddeevskii Island, Anzhu discovered a small island that he named Figurina Island after the expedition’s doctor. By April 9, 1822 he was back at Cape Kamenyi, the northeastern tip of Novaya Sibir’; here he again tried heading northeast, but after 45.5 miles (100 km), on April 14, he was stopped by thin ice and open water. Instead of retracing his route to Novaya Sibir’, he then headed almost due south across the East Siberian Sea to the mainland coast. He reached land just to the west of Krestovskyi Island of the Medvezh’i group on April 27, having been away from land for 18 days, and having covered roughly 318 miles (700 km) across the sea ice. This ranked among the longest recorded sledge trips across sea ice up to that date. On May 5, Anzhu rendezvoused with Von Wrangell at Nizhne-Kolymsk, the latter having just completed his first in a series of surveys of the mainland coast east from there. On his return to Ust’-Iansk, Anzhu met Il’in, who had spent the spring surveying the coast west from the mouth of the Iana to the mouth of the Olenek. For his final season of exploration, accompanied by Dr. Figurin, Anzhu left Ust’-Iansk on February 10, 1823 and Cape Bykovskyi on February 25. Their initial goal was two small islands in the Laptev Sea, Semenovskii Island and Vasil’evskii Island, discovered by Ivan Liakhov in 1815. Anzhu reached Vasil’evskii Island and surveyed it and Semenovskii Island, just to the north. He found them to be long, low, and narrow, some 33–99 feet (10–30 m) in height but with steep coastal cliffs. Semenovskii Island was 6.8 miles (15 km) long and almost one-half mile (1 km) wide; Vasil’evskii Island was 3.6 miles (8 km) long. The remarkable feature of these islands is that they no longer exist; Vasil’evskii Island had disappeared by 1936 and Semenovskii Island by 1950. The explanation is that the islands consisted entirely of fine-grained ice-rich sediments with enormous tabular masses of ground ice; by a process known as thermal abrasion, the relatively warm summer waters of the Laptev Sea completely eliminated the islands by a combination of thawing of the ground ice and mechanical erosion by the waves. From here, Anzhu headed northeast to Belkovskii Island despite very rough ice. Having surveyed that island, he crossed to Kotel’ny Island and headed south. Back at Ust’-Iansk, he began the long haul back to St Petersburg. The major result of Anzhu’s surveys was a remarkably accurate map of the Novosibirskiye archipelago, considerably more accurate than that of Gedenshtrom (both maps are reproduced in Belov, 1956: 501, 508). In addition, he had demonstrated that Sannikov’s Land almost certainly did not exist, or at least not as a land-

mass of any significant size. What Sannikov had seen was probably dirty pressure ridges or possibly an ice island, or possibly a mirage of Bennett Island or one of the other De Long Islands (Henrietta, Vil’kitskogo, or Zhokhova) to the north of the Novosibirskiye archipelago.

Biography Petr Fedorovich Anzhu (Anjou) was born on February 15, 1796 in Vyshnii-Volochek (midway between Moscow and St Petersburg). He was a junior lieutenant when he embarked on his surveys of the Novosibirskiye archipelago. Soon after returning from his Arctic expedition, he was dispatched to the then-southern boundaries of Russia to survey the northeastern shores of the Caspian Sea and the western shores of the Aral Sea over the period 1825–1826. In 1829, as one of the officers on board Gangut, one of the Russian ships-of-the-line, he took part in the Battle of Navarino off the south coast of Greece, in which a combined British/French/Russian fleet destroyed a Turkish/Egyptian fleet in the last major battle among wooden ships. Gangut was severely damaged, but Anzhu distinguished himself by his bravery. Thereafter he served at the Russian Admiralty in St Petersburg and in its various scientific institutions. He died on October 12, 1869. The Ostrova Anzhu (the northern tier of the Novosibirskiye archipelago, that is, Kotel’ny Island, Bunge’s Land, Faddeevskii Island, and Novaya Sibir’) is named after him. WILLIAM BARR See also New Siberian Islands; Wrangell, Baron Ferdinand Petrovich von Further Reading Barr, William, “Retreating coasts and disappearing islands in the Arctic.” The Musk-Ox, 18 (1976): 103–111 Belov, M.I., Arkticheskoe moreplavanie s drevneishikh vremen do serediny XIX veka. Istoriia otkrytiia i osvoeniia Severnogo morskogo puti, I [Arctic navigation from the earliest times to the middle of the 19th century. History of the discovery and exploitation of the Northern Sea Route, I], Moscow: Izdatel’stvo “Morskoi Transport,” 1956 Pasetskii, V.M., Russkie otkrytiia i issledovaniia v Arktike. Pervaya polovina XIX v. [Russian discoveries and investigations in the Arctic. First half of the 19th century], Leningrad: Gidrometeoizdat, 1984 Vize, V.Yu., Morya Sovetskoy Arktiki. Ocherki po istorii issledovaniia [Seas of the Soviet Arctic. Studies in the history of exploration], Moscow/Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Glavsevmorputi, 1948 Wrangel, F.P., Narrative of an Expedition to the Polar Sea in the Years 1820, 1821, 1822 & 1823 (2nd edition), London: James Madden & Co., 1844

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ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE ARCTIC: ALASKA AND BERINGIA

ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE ARCTIC: ALASKA AND BERINGIA The late Pleistocene reality of Beringia was first recognized from floral distributions as including both Alaska and Chukotka as well as the one-time land connection between them, now the Bering Strait. Some broad definitions would extend its limits to the Lena River in the west and the Mackenzie in the east. Even before the development of the formal conceptualization, the earliest researchers into the archaeology and native culture expected to uncover significant human contact between America and Asia. This involved two distinct periods: on the one hand, the origin of the first Americans by immigration and, on the other, much later contacts between peoples with or without migration.

The Later Cultural Horizons The first serious excavations at Bering Strait drew on the results of the ethnographic and archaeological work of the Fifth Thule Expedition in northern Canada (1921–1924), where fieldworkers disagreed on whether the Eskimo, or Inuit, people had originated in Canada or farther west. In 1926, Diamond Jenness of the National Museum of Canada excavated on the American shore of the strait, where he was charged to secure information regarding both the origin of the Eskimo and migrations between Asia and America. That same year, Aleš HrdliJ ka began an anthropological survey of western Alaska that focused on similar questions. Both reported the discovery of a few ivory artifacts decorated in a hitherto unknown style that Jenness declared pertinent to an early Bering Sea culture. These results led Henry B. Collins to St Lawrence Island from 1928 to 1931 to seek the source of artifacts of this distinctive style, which he rechristened Old Bering Sea—evidently earlier than anything then known from the Inuit region of Canada, implying a western origin. Collins reported a sequence of prehistoric stylistic periods labeled Old Bering Sea I, II, III, Punuk, and then late prehistoric, the earliest design elements suggesting to him an Asian origin. His assistant, James A. Ford, described a related sequence in the Pt Barrow region in which Punuk-related Birnirk developed into the Thule culture reported from northcentral Canada by the Fifth Thule Expedition. In the same years, Otto Geist, excavating on St Lawrence Island for what is now the University of Alaska, discovered on one of the outlying Punuk islets the Okvik culture described by Froelich Rainey, and which they and most other researchers would equate with Collins’s Old Bering Sea I. The sequential design elements and artifacts, which included sophisticated harpoon technology as well as crude pottery, oil lamps, and an increase through time in the polishing of slate,

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were accompanied by an evolution in maritime adaptation leading to the pursuit of large whales. Until after World War II, this sequence leading from Okvik to Thule culture was widely accepted as embodying all of early Eskimo prehistory. Estimated by some researchers to begin by 1000 BC, recent radiocarbon evidence suggests that all of this development occurred within the past two millennia. Farther south, in 1930–1931 Frederica de Laguna excavated in Cook Inlet and Kachemak Bay, describing a sequence of slate-using cultures that she concluded had developed from something like the Thule of northern Canada. Beginning at the same time, HrdliJ ka conducted six seasons of extensive excavations on Kodiak Island—his rationale being that Asian migrants would have shortly found the great island to be free from hard winters and teeming with resources; collections were comparable to de Laguna’s. HrdliJ ka was also attracted by the preservation of skeletal remains in shell-rich middens, and he followed Kodiak with three seasons in the Aleutian Islands (1936–1938), conducting scattered excavations throughout the chain. For each of these regions, he adduced a succession of two peoples: pre-Koniag and Koniag, and pre-Aleut and Aleut. In both cases, the later were related to living inhabitants of the regions, although recognizably distinct from one another, the earlier showing more resemblance to various American Indians, although again distinct from one another. All of the people involved, however, displayed an ability to live along coasts of the open (as opposed to freezing) sea. And all of the later peoples were linguistic relatives of the northern Eskimo. During and after World War II, events brought major changes in interpretation. In the north, Rainey and Helge Larsen were attracted to Pt Hope for information on the earliest prehistory of the Eskimo people. Their Ipiutak site revealed certain ties to Old Bering Sea, but lacked pottery, the oil lamp, and polished slate, and showed a tradition of artistic embellishment of ivory that they believed to mark a people only recently descended from the most ancient Eskimo ancestors from Asia, but which is now recognized as beginning after AD 200. Not long afterward, James L. Giddings embarked on research into Eskimo prehistory on the American mainland both immediately south and north of Bering Strait. To the south, in Norton Bay, the early Denbigh Flint complex, later to be subsumed by William Irving into the Arctic Small Tool tradition, indicated relations both with the Neolithic of northeasternmost Asia and the pre-Dorset of Canada. This was followed by Norton culture and then the Thule-related Nukleet culture. The appearance of the Denbigh Flint complex on the Seward Peninsula is now dated around 3000 BC, is

ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE ARCTIC: ALASKA AND BERINGIA generally thought to be the progenitor of the preDorset of Canada and Greenland, and is presumed to indicate a movement from preceramic Neolithic Asia, although no specific donor culture has been identified. Within Alaska, Irving and others showed that the Denbigh Flint complex was especially well represented in the northern Brooks Range, seasonally crossed by migrating caribou (Rangifer). Around Kotzebue Sound north of Seward Peninsula, Giddings revealed a sequence of cultures including the Denbigh Flint complex, followed by the first suggestion of maritime adaptation before 1000 BC, thereafter in order by Choris, Norton, Ipiutak, Birnirk, and then Thule cultures. He demonstrated both that American coastal sequences north and south of Bering Strait varied somewhat from one another, and that the archaeological cultures of the American coast were largely independent of the sequence posited by Collins, which was characteristic of the Asian coast and the islands of the Bering Strait region, Asia and America intersecting only shortly before the Thule movement eastward across Canada to Greenland. This Asian coastal sequence has been largely confirmed by work on the Chukchi Peninsula coast of Bering Strait that began in 1945 and has continued intermittently with a concentration on cemeteries. But from the cemetery excavations came mixed grave lots that included artifacts (especially harpoon heads) related to the Okvik, Old Bering Sea, Punuk, and Birnirk cultures in various degrees of mixture. This suggested to Sergei A. Arutyunov and his colleagues that, rather than simply a sequential progression, the stylistic categories reflect contemporary ethnic distinctiveness as well as developmental changes. In Alaska to the south, cultures revealed by the excavations of de Laguna and HrdliJka were amalgamated in the 1960s through work by Donald W. Clark in a sequence beginning by 4000 BC with an Ocean Bay tradition, with plentiful slate polishing appearing within a millennium, followed by manifestations labeled Kachemak and Koniag. Similar results were revealed by Don E. Dumond and his students on the Pacific coast of the Alaska Peninsula immediately west of Kodiak, whereas the Bering Sea slope of the same peninsula yielded a sequence mirroring that of Giddings on Norton Bay. Thus, the Aleutian Range of mountains on the Alaska Peninsula was found to stand as a long-term boundary between peoples of the Bering Sea and the north Pacific, apparently breached only after AD 1000 by what is interpreted as a movement of Bering Sea people probably responsible for the presence of an Eskimoan language in the KodiakPrince William Sound region. The linguistic relationship among the EskimoAleut peoples (see Eskimo-Aleut Languages) is

indicative both of an ancient common ancestor of both Eskimo and Aleut, and of a later dispersal of Eskimoan speakers who in recent decades have been represented by some six different stocks accorded the status of separate languages. Thus far, however, there is no widely accepted archaeological evidence of either a common Eskimo-Aleut or a common Eskimoan ancestor. It is possible that recent research in the Aleutians Islands may throw some light on these issues. HrdliJka’s early work was followed after World War II by that of William S. Laughlin, who reinterpreted the shifts from pre-Aleut to Aleut and pre-Koniag to Koniag as those of continuity—of Paleo-Aleut to NeoAleut, and Paleo-Koniag to Neo-Koniag. In the Aleutians, his work appeared to indicate cultural stability or even stagnation, especially after 2000 BC. From an islet off Umnak Island in the Eastern Aleutians, he also reported the Anangula Blade site, dated before 6000 BC, to which he and some of his students imputed the origin of all later Aleutian culture. The most recent work in the Aleutians tends to support this contention, although it replaces the near absence of change in the eastern islands with a much more dynamic sequence in which faunal remains about 2000 BC indicate a new interest in ice-edge marine resources—normally found far north of the Aleutian Islands—with evidence of changes in the following millennium that some investigators believe to be due to influence from the more northerly Arctic Small Tool tradition. Clearly, the ability of the prehistoric Aleuts to derive a living from their shores and the open seas was a development more precocious than that indicated for their Eskimo cousins to the north in either America or Asia, whom early Aleuts may have crucially influenced: by 4000 BC at the latest, maritime efficiency is evident both in the easternmost Aleutians and on the Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak Island, and by 1000 BC ancestral Aleuts had expanded to the westernmost of the lengthy chain of oceanbound islands. Whether they also penetrated as far north as Bering Strait is possible but not yet known.

The Earlier Horizons Earlier Beringian cultures were reported in the 1930s from Alaska at the Campus site, where small blades (microblades) and specialized (micro)cores recovered by Rainey and others were compared to artifacts from interior north Asia. These were found with chipped stone projectile heads of lanceolate shape, and a few with carelessly formed side or corner notches. Analogs of these were found widespread in interior Alaska after the 1950s, usually without microblades, and were seen as key artifacts of the Northern Archaic tradition—of people who lived largely within the expanding interior

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ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE ARCTIC: CANADA AND GREENLAND forest, where they evidently fished and hunted large animals such as caribou and moose (Alces). The majority of the sites have been dated between 4000 and 2000 BC. With no Asian counterpart to most diagnostic artifacts, the tradition is considered American in origin. By the 1960s, other sites were recognized to yield plentiful microblades pressed from similar wedgeshaped cores of Asian type, without Northern Archaic points, but at times associated with scrapers, discoidal bifaces, and a particular form of small burin. These have been referred to the American Paleo-Arctic tradition in northwest Alaska, the Denali complex in central Alaska, and given other localized names elsewhere. They have been dated to begin at around 9000 BC and to endure until at least 6000 BC, and likely represent the origin of the Anangula Blade complex, although the blade industry of the eastern Aleutians is somewhat variant. Importantly, PaleoArctic or Denali can be related to late Pleistocene complexes in northeast Asia, where the tradition includes the terminal Paleolithic Dyuktai culture of the Aldan River region and Yakutia, plus archaeological cultures to the south and east in Hokkaido, the Russian Maritime Territory, Sakhalin Island, as well as those from both Ushki Lake in interior Kamchatka Peninsula and sites reported from the eastern Chukotka Peninsula by Nikolai N. Dikov. These appear to have been in place by 10,000 BC or earlier— two millennia before the flooding of Bering Strait and in time to account for the appearance of the related cultures in Alaska. Reports of later sites in eastern Chukotka that may also show resemblances to assemblages known from eastern Beringia or Alaska are yet to be evaluated. More recently, a second set of assemblages of even earlier American cast has been reported from Alaskan sites most heavily located in the Brooks Range in the north. Of these, the Mesa site has reportedly produced more than four dozen radiocarbon determinations that cluster strongly around 8000 BC in radiocarbon years, associated with an impressive series of chipped lanceolate dart or spear points that are highly reminiscent of assemblages of interior North America to the south that date slightly earlier. There is no clear prototype in Asia and it is doubtful that the origin of these assemblages can be attributed to that continent, although certain Diuktai-related collections there do include at least a few lanceolate-form bifaces. In short, western Beringia (Asia) displayed early cultures that were evidently imported into eastern Beringia (Alaska) before the flooding of the central part of the region, after which the Asian transplant appeared for a substantial portion of its lifetime face to face with other cultures derived from America to the

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south. All of the researchers of these earlier horizons have claimed a special interest in the first movements into the New World. Thus far, however, results have been inadequate to account for the very earliest of the clearly attested human presence in America. DON E. DUMOND See also American Paleo-Arctic Tradition; Arctic Small Tool Tradition; Arutyunov, Sergei; Beringia; Birnirk Culture; Collins, Henry B.; Denbigh Flint Culture; Dikov, Nikolay N.; Dyuktai Culture; Giddings, Louis; HrdliJ ka, Aleš; Ipiutak Culture; Jenness, Diamond; Laguna, Frederica de; Larsen, Helge; Migration (Prehistory); Northern Archaic Period; Norton Culture; Old Bering Sea Culture; Rainey, Froelich; Thule Culture Further Reading Clark, Donald W., “Prehistory of the Western Subarctic.” In Subarctic, edited by June Helm, Volume 6 of Handbook of North American Indians, edited by William T. Sturtevant, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981 Damas, David (editor), Arctic, Volume 5 of Handbook of North American Indians, edited by William T. Sturtevant, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1984 Dikov, Nikolai N., Aziia na Styke s Amerikoi v Drevnosti, St Petersburg: Nauka, 1993; translated by Richard L. Bland as Asia at the Juncture with America in Antiquity, Anchorage: US National Park Service, Beringia Program, 1997 Dumond, Don E., The Eskimos and Aleuts (revised edition), London: Thames and Hudson, 1987 ——— (editor), “Archaeology in the Aleut Zone of Alaska: some recent research.” University of Oregon Anthropological Papers 59, Eugene: University of Oregon, 2001 Dumond, Don E. & Richard L. Bland, “Holocene Prehistory of the Northernmost North Pacific.” Journal of World Prehistory, 9(4) (1995): 401–451 Fitzhugh, William W. & Aron Crowell (editors), Crossroads of Continents, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988 Leskov, A.M. & H. Müller-Beck (editors), Artische Waljäger vor 3000 Jahren: unbekannte sibirsche Kunst [Arctic whale hunters 3000 years ago: unknown Siberian art], MainzMünchen: v. Hase und Koeler, 1993 West, Frederick H. (editor), American Beginnings: The Prehistory and Palaeoecology of Beringia, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996

ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE ARCTIC: CANADA AND GREENLAND Western interest in North American Arctic cultures goes back to the earliest encounters between aboriginal peoples, European and Russian explorers, whalers, traders, and missionaries. Naturally the level of interest varied greatly, with trade undoubtedly being one of the primary objectives.

ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE ARCTIC: CANADA AND GREENLAND Aboriginal interests in past cultural activities centered principally on oral tradition, the passing of myths and legends from generation to generation. In many instances, material cultural elements and styles were passed on from one generation to the next. The location of old habitation sites and faunal remains told the pioneering bands much about the potential richness of an area used over hundreds of years. Old tools were undoubtedly examined, occasionally copied, and used. Old settlements contained building materials used in the construction of new dwellings. When Thule Inuit in Greenland excavated abandoned Norse farmhouses, useful items such as iron and wood were collected and carried away. The systematic excavation and recording of past habitation sites were an outgrowth of the Western scientific approach, with ethnographic fieldwork providing the foundation for analyses and interpretations of archaeological evidence. Franz Boas’s detailed ethnographic research in the Eastern Arctic in the 1880s was an early contribution along these lines. Few archaeological debates have been carried out with more fervor than those surrounding the question of the first human migration into the New World; did the first people follow the southern coastal region of Beringia or did they migrate through the interior tundra of the land bridge, or did they use both routes? The gradual post-Pleistocene flooding of Beringia eventually severed the land connection about 8000 years ago, and steadily submerged evidence of human occupations along its ancient shores. Most archaeologists accept that people have resided in North America during the past 15,000–20,000 years. A few researchers, such as William Irving, called for considerably greater antiquity, possibly in excess of 100,000 years, based on fairly controversial findings in the Old Crow Flats in the Yukon. Nevertheless, substantial and indisputable evidence of human occupation, such as the remains investigated by Jacques Cinq-Mars at Blue Fish Cave in the Yukon, do not predate 15,000 years. With the exception of sites in the Yukon and Elmer Harp’s location of Paleo-Indian sites in the Keewatin District of the Barren Grounds, the human presence in the Central, Eastern and High Arctic Canada and Greenland occurred relatively late. With the gradual retreat of the Laurentian Ice Sheet about 9000 years ago, newly opened lands supported sufficient numbers of caribou to entice hunters northward. However, several thousand years would pass before the first Paleo-Eskimo hunters headed eastward from northern Alaska into the Canadian Arctic and Greenland. The first systematic excavation of archaeological sites in the Arctic took place between 1921 and 1924, when Therkel Mathiassen (1927), an archaeologist on

the Danish Fifth Thule Expedition, investigated prehistoric sites in the central and eastern Canadian Arctic. His findings provided the foundation for the prehistoric period called the Thule culture. The data obtained by Mathiassen combined with the ethnographic fieldwork of Knud Rasmussen and Kaj BirketSmith resulted in theoretical discussions concerning the origin of the Eskimo culture and its relationship to the present-day Inuit populations in the Arctic. BirketSmith favored an inland origin for the Eskimo culture, whereas Mathiassen was of the opinion that the Thule culture had an Asiatic origin and a direct relationship to Eskimo cultures in Alaska and the Bering Sea region. Many decades passed before James VanStone’s ideas of a direct connection between the Thule culture and modern Eskimo groups were accepted. Mathiassen held the opinion that no culture predated the Thule culture in the Canadian Arctic and Greenland. However, Diamond Jenness, examining a collection of artifacts obtained by Inuit near Cape Dorset and on Coats Island, noted that the style of the small stone, bone, and ivory artifacts was quite dissimilar from those associated with the Thule culture. With superb insight, Jenness (1925) announced that a culture predating the Thule culture had existed in the Arctic, and named it the Dorset culture. We now know that the Dorset culture encompassed the latter stage of a long-lived Paleo-Eskimo tradition in both Canada and Greenland. Jenness’s insightfulness was not limited to prehistoric evidence from Canada. In 1926, he studied an assemblage of artifacts purchased from Eskimos on St Lawrence and Little Diomede Island. The artifacts constituted the first traces of what became known as the Old Bering Sea culture. Jenness also recognized the relationship of the artifacts to prehistoric finds he had made previously at Cape Prince of Wales in Alaska and the connection to the Thule culture. In the late 1930s, Robert Bentham forwarded artifacts from southeastern Ellesmere Island to Ottawa, where they were studied and described by Jenness; however, not until the late 1940s and early 1950s did Arctic archaeology in Canada reach a more active stage. In many ways it was the work of Louis Giddings, in 1948 at Cape Denbigh, that created a renewed interest in Canadian Arctic Inuit antiquity. Giddings’s 4000–4500-year-old Denbigh Flint complex was thought to be ancestral to the Canadian Dorset culture. During the summers of 1949 and 1950, Henry B. Collins (1955) excavated Thule and Dorset culture sites on Cornwallis Island and in the vicinity of Frobisher Bay where, at the Crystal II site, he located a clear stratigraphic separation between earlier Dorset and later Thule culture materials. During the summers of 1954 and 1955, Collins directed archaeological

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ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE ARCTIC: CANADA AND GREENLAND investigations of Thule and Dorset sites on Southampton, Coats, and Walrus islands. Interest in Dorset/Thule culture contact remains undiminished and offers one of the most debated topics in Arctic archaeology. Following earlier investigations by Graham Rowel, Jørgen Meldgaard conducted a series of investigations in the Foxe Basin region between 1954 and 1957. The excavations produced data spanning nearly 4000 years of Paleo-Eskimo activities in the Central Canadian Arctic. The style of cultural elements, particularly harpoon heads, provided a basis for establishing a cultural chronology that separated Dorset from earlier Pre-Dorset components. Regrettably, most of these data remain unpublished. In 1957 and 1958, William Taylor Jr. (1968) excavated Pre-Dorset and Dorset sites on Mansel and Sugluk islands. Of particular interest at the time was the question of the degree of the relationship between the two Paleo-Eskimo periods. It was Taylor’s contention that there was continuity between the two, a view shared by most contemporary Arctic prehistorians. Taylor also traced the western limits of Pre-Dorset on Banks and Victoria islands. For several decades Father Guy Mary-Rousselière (1976), assisted by Inuit from Pond Inlet, excavated sites on northern Baffin Island, obtaining well-preserved specimens relating to Paleo- and Neo-Eskimo (Thule culture) occupations. In 1958, Moreau Maxwell investigated Thule culture sites in the Lake Hazen/Lady Franklin Bay areas of northern Ellesmere Island. Maxwell’s principal contribution to Arctic research came from his subsequent work on PreDorset and Dorset sites on the south coast of Baffin Island and his excellent, 1985, comprehensive overview of eastern Arctic prehistory (Maxwell, 1985). The 1970s saw a marked expansion of archaeological research in the Arctic. In Central Labrador, James Tuck (1976) and William Fitzhugh established the presence of early pre-Dorset occupations, barely postdating the last stages of Maritime Archaic. Peter Schledermann excavated early Thule culture sites and established occupational continuity culminating with the 18th-century Communal House period. Elmer Harp had extended the known presence of Dorset sites to the west coast of Newfoundland, while in Labrador, Fitzhugh and Steven Cox (1978) identified a distinct variant of the Dorset culture: Gross Water Dorset. Robert McGhee’s (1979) excavations of Paleo-Eskimo sites at Port Refuge on Grinnell Peninsula established a preliminary set of criteria for separating the Independence I and Pre-Dorset complexes of the Arctic Small Tool tradition. In 1976, Schledermann identified the presence of Early Dorset in the High

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Arctic Islands. The following year Schledermann (1996) and Karen McCullough (1989) initiated a longterm archaeological investigation of the central east coast of Ellesmere Island covering the entire span of High Arctic prehistoric occupations, including sites associated with Independence I, Pre-Dorset, Early, and Late Dorset. Investigations into the early Thule culture period resulted in establishing a possible contact episode between Inuit and Norsemen in the Smith Sound region. The timing of the first appearance of the Thule culture was also determined to be around AD 1200, later by several centuries than previously thought. In northern Ellesmere Island Pat Sutherland excavated Paleo- and Neo-Eskimo sites, while McGhee investigated Thule sites on Bathurst Island. In the 1980s, Late Dorset period sites were investigated by James Helmer and Erik Damkjar.

Greenland Carl Fleisher’s work on the Qajaa site in Jacobshavn Isfjord (Ilulissat) in 1870 resulted in the recognition of a Greenlandic stone age. In 1907, the Norwegian geographer Ole Solberg published his studies on stone age materials from Greenland, while in North Greenland Christian Thostrup located evidence of early occupations. Following his return from the Fifth Thule Expedition in Canada, Mathiassen carried out archaeological investigations in many parts of Greenland. He concentrated exclusively on the Thule culture, which he believed represented the total prehistory of Greenland (and Arctic Canada). Mathiassen’s (1931) work in the Upernavik district, assisted by Frederica de Laguna, resulted in defining the Inugsuk phase of the Thule culture, characterized by an inclusion of Norse artifacts in Thule culture assemblages supposedly signifying contact between Norse Greenlanders and Thule culture Inuit. More recent investigations, notably by Jette Arneborg, have questioned the importance of such contacts in terms of Thule culture developments. Helge Larsen’s (1934) work in the early 1930s on Clavering Island and in Knud Rasmussen Land in northeast Greenland provided some of the first systematically excavated evidence of a Thule culture presence in that part of Greenland. This work, together with that of Mathiassen’s investigations in southeast Greenland and William Laughlin’s and Jorgen Jorgensen’s studies of skeletal material, led to varying hypotheses concerning the direction(s) of Thule culture expansion into East Greenland. Although the extent of Paleo-Eskimo activities in central East Greenland is not well known, recent investigations in the Ittoqqortoormiit (Scoresbysund) and Ammassalik regions by the Sandells and Tina Møbjerg have provided important

ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE ARCTIC: CANADA AND GREENLAND new data. Erik Holtved’s (1944, 1954) excavations of Thule culture winter sites in North Greenland during the 1930s and 1940s provided the first clear evidence of Thule culture activities at the major crossroads between High Arctic Canada and Greenland. His work established a close link between early Thule in the Far North and contemporaneous maritime cultures in Northwest Alaska. The excavations yielded a number of Norse artifacts thought at the time to indicate intertribal trade originating in West Greenland. After the end of World War II, the pace of archaeological investigations increased significantly. Meldgaard’s investigation of the Mosegaard 1948 collection from Saqqaq resulted in the formal recognition of two PaleoEskimo complexes: Saqqaq and Early Dorset. Excavations by Larsen and Meldgaard (1958) at the Sermermiut site located near Jacobshavn (Ilulissat) provided an important chronological framework consisting of three components: Saqqaq, Dorset, and Thule. Numerous Saqqaq sites located subsequently on the west and east coast of Greenland attest to the vitality of this long-lived and successful period of Greenlandic Paleo-Eskimo occupation. In the Far North, Eigil Knuth (1984) excavated Paleo-Eskimo sites in Peary Land, naming the Independence I and II complexes. Initial radiocarbon dating indicated a temporal separation between Saqqaq and Independence I. However, more recent dates suggest initial contemporaneity between the two complexes. Not only is Saqqaq of the same vintage as Independence I, but it lasted far longer: from about 2500 BC to 950 BC. Presently, Independence I is seen as an early but fairly short-lived regional complex of the Paleo-Eskimo tradition. In 1982, the Qajaa site was investigated by Meldgaard, Larsen, and Jeppe Møhl, revealing, as had Sermermiut (Meldgaard, 1952), three prehistoric stages beginning with Saqqaq, overlain by Dorset, and covered by Thule culture and historic Inuit middens. In the early 1980s, Bjarne Grønnow (1996) directed the excavation of the Qeqertasussuk site in Disko Bugt. The results provided important new insights into an early stage of the Saqqaq culture in West Greenland. The later stages of Saqqaq are less well documented, although one important exception is the Akia site in the Sisimiut district of West Greenland where Finn Kramer observed a possible influence of Canadian Late Pre-Dorset at a late stage of the Saqqaq period. A similar conclusion about a Saqqaq and Pre-Dorset overlap had been drawn by Schledermann (1990), based on excavation data from the central east coast of Ellesmere Island. The evidence from the Akia site suggests that some degree of a cultural continuum between Saqqaq and Early Dorset (Dorset I) existed in West Greenland. Although Knuth’s concept of Independence II as a

cultural complex connected to Independence I is supported by some investigators, alternative assessments of the data point to a far more complex set of cultural interactions in the Far North, involving a blending of cultural traits derived from a northward spread of late Saqqaq elements combined with an expansion of both late Pre-Dorset and Early Dorset traits from the Canadian Arctic. During the 1990s, Claus Andreasen carried out an extensive excavation program in northeast Greenland, verifying the significant population expansion and level of cultural activity of this Transitional or Independence II complex in the Far North. Although Late Dorset sites were known to exist in North Greenland, not until 1996 did the first systematic excavations of such sites take place under the direction of Martin Appelt and Hans Christian Gulløv. These investigations have corroborated earlier findings concerning Late Dorset activities made in the late 1970s and 1980s on the central east coast of Ellesmere Island. In addition, according to Appelt (1999) and Gulløv, data from the Greenlandic Late Dorset sites point to Dorset/Norse and Dorset/Thule contact. Norse settlers from Iceland arrived in southern Greenland shortly before AD 1000. According to recent studies by Arneborg, the Norse had abandoned Greenland by the middle of the 15th century. Although many factors caused the Norse to leave, a slow, gradual out-migration rather than large-scale abandonment is suggested by Berglund and Niels Lynnerup. Archaeological investigations, beginning with the work of Daniel Bruun in 1894, continued in the 1920s with Poul Nørlund’s (1967) work on late period burials at Herjolfsnæs, Aage Russell’s and Christen Vebæk’s work in the 1940s, followed by that of Meldgaard and Knuth Krogh (1982). Presently about 250 farms, 17 churches, and two monasteries have been recorded in the Eastern Settlement and about 80 farms and three churches in the Western Settlement. Relatively recent excavations in the Western Settlement by Arneborg (1993), Berglund (2000), and Claus Andreasen have yielded important information concerning the final stages of the Norse occupation at the time of abandonment of that region about the middle of the 14th century. Arctic archaeology in North America and Greenland has progressed from the initial and essential step of collecting and analyzing cultural remains, defining diagnostic elements of major cultural episodes to more far-reaching interpretations resting upon a broader, multidisciplinary, cultural ecological framework. PETER SCHLEDERMANN See also Arctic Small Tool Tradition; Denbigh Flint Culture; Dorset Culture; Independence Culture; Migration, Prehistory; Old Bering Sea Culture; PreDorset Culture; Saqqaq Culture; Thule Culture

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ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE ARCTIC: SCANDINAVIAN SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC Further Reading Appelt, M. & H.C. Gulløv, Late Dorset in High Arctic Greenland: Final Report on the Gateway to Greenland Project, Copenhagen: Danish Polar Center Publication 7, 1999 Arneborg, J. & J. Berglund, “Gaarden under Sandet.” Copenhagen, Forskning i Grønland Tusaat 4 (1993) Berglund, J., “The Farm Beneath the Sand.” In Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga, edited by William W. Fitzhugh and Elisabeth I. Ward, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000 Collins, H.B., “Excavation of Thule and Dorset culture sites at Resolute, Cornwallis Island, NWT.” Annual Report of the National Museum of Canada, 136 (1955): 22–35 Cox, S.L., “Palaeo-Eskimo occupations of the North Labrador Coast.” Arctic Anthropology, 15(2) (1978) Fitzhugh, W.W., “Paleo-Eskimo cultures of Greenland.” In Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 5, William C. Sturtevant, general editor, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution,1984, pp. 528–539 Grønnow, B. (editor), The Palaeo-Eskimo Cultures of Greenland: New Perspectives in Greenlandic Archaeology, Copenhagen: Danish Polar Center, 1996 Holtved, E., “Archaeological Investigations in the Thule District. Copenhagen.” Meddelelser om Grønland, 141 (parts 1 and 2) (1944) ———, “Archaeological Investigations in the Thule District, III; Nûgdlît and Comer’s Midden. Copenhagen.” Meddelelser om Grønland, 146(3) (1954) Jenness, D., “A new Eskimo culture in Hudson Bay. Ottawa.” Geographical Review, 15 (1925): 428–437 Knuth, E., Reports from the Musk-Ox Way: A compilation of Previously Published Articles, Copenhagen: E. Knuth, 1984 Krogh, K.J., Grønland: Erik the Red’s Greenland. (2nd revised edition), Copenhagen: Nationalmuseet, 1982 Larsen, H.E., “Dødemandsbugten: An Eskimo settlement on Clavering Island. Copenhagen.” Meddelelser om Grønland, 102(1) (1934) Larsen, H.E. & J. Meldgaard, “Paleo-Eskimo cultures in Disko Bugt, West Greenland.” Copenhagen. Meddelelser om Grønland, 161(2) (1958) McCullough, K.M., The Ruin Islanders: Early Thule Culture Pioneers in the Eastern High Arctic, Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civilization Mercury Series, Archaeological Survey of Canada Paper 141, 1989 McGhee, R., The Palaeoeskimo occupations at Port Refuge, High Arctic Canada. National Museum of Man, Archaeological Survey of Canada Paper 92, 1979 Mary-Rousselière, G., “The Paleoeskimo in Northern Baffinland.” In Eastern Arctic Prehistory: Paleoeskimo Problems, edited by Moreau S. Maxwell, Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology 31, 1976 Mathiassen, T., Archaeology of the central Eskimo, Copenhagen, Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921–1924, Volume 4(1–2), 1927 ———, “Inugsuk, a medieval Eskimo settlement in Upernivik District, West Greenland.” Copenhagen. Meddelelser om Grønland, 77 (1931) Maxwell, M.S., Prehistory of the Eastern Arctic, New York: Academic Press Inc., 1985 Meldgaard, J.A., “Palaeo-Eskimo culture in West Greenland.” American Antiquity, 17(3) (1952) Nørlund, P., De gamle nordbobygder ved verdens ende, Copenhagen: Nationalmuseet, 1967 Schledermann, P., Crossroads to Greenland; 3000 Years of Prehistory in the Eastern Arctic, Calgary: Arctic Institute of North America, Komatic Series, 1990

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———, Voices in Stone: A Personal Journey into the Arctic Past, Calgary: Arctic Institute of North America, Komatik Series, 1996 Taylor Jr., W.E., “The Arnapik and Tyara Sites: an archaeological study of Dorset cultural origins.” Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology, 22 (1968) Tuck, J.A., Prehistory of Saglek Bay, Labrador: Archaic and Palaeo-Eskimo occupations. Ottawa. National Museum of Man, Archaeological Survey of Canada Paper 72, 1976

ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE ARCTIC: SCANDINAVIAN SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC In the 7th century AD a remarkable emphasis on coastal settlement is noted over wide parts of northwest Europe. Some of the settlements are rather small and display few traces of various activities, while others can be regarded as urban centers. These sites reflect a Carolingian rise in expansion, development of settlement, in productivity and commerce, and in political, military, and ecclesiastic organization. At the close of the 8th century, a link was established through the Baltic with northwestern Russia and further southward, thereby linking the North to the rich Islamic world. Thousands of Islamic silver coins reached southern Scandinavia in a few decades, and from around AD 800 the Scandinavian societies, situated on the fringe of continental Europe, all became part of a world system of exchange. This development, which brought the pagan Scandinavian societies to the scene in the following centuries, introduced an expansive period of Scandinavian history that, among other things, included the colonization of the North Atlantic. This phase in Scandinavian history is sometimes termed the Viking Age. The background for the expansion was partly the economical, social, and political development within late Iron Age societies in Scandinavia, including the development of a superior shipbuilding technology. The beginning of the Viking Age expansion is normally ascribed to the earliest written records of Scandinavian attacks on monasteries in Britain and Ireland: Lindisfarne (Northumbria) in AD 793, Jarrow (Northumbria) in AD 794, Ireland in AD 795, and Iona (Hebrides) in AD 795, 802, and 806. While these attacks seem to have had a more or less sporadic and unorganized character rather than that of a wellplanned strategic agenda, they did, however, introduce the increasingly expansive trends developing within Scandinavian society around AD 800. The Viking Age (in a North Atlantic context often referred to as Early Norse) is traditionally accepted to cover the period c.AD 800–1050 and is followed by the Medieval (often referred to as Late Norse) covering the period c.AD 1050–1400.

ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE ARCTIC: SCANDINAVIAN SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC During the Viking Age, the expansive Scandinavian societies were to play a rather dominant and decisive role in events not only in Ireland and England but also in mainland Scotland, the Scottish Isles, and in the entire process of land-taking (Scandinavian: landnám) in the North Atlantic. During the 9th and 10th centuries, the basis of a virtual Scandinavian Empire of the Western Seas was established, which included parts of Ireland and England, major parts of the Scottish mainland, the Western (Hebrides) and Northern Isles of Scotland (Orkney and Shetland), the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland. This expansion ultimately ended in attempts to settle on the eastern fringes of North America around AD 1000. Hereby, the North Sea region and parts of the North Atlantic were transformed into a cultural inland sea in what could be termed a Scandinavian sphere of interest. In the east were the Scandinavian homelands, primarily Norway and Denmark; in the west were the established new emigrant communities in Ireland, England, Scotland, and the Western and Northern Isles. In this inland sea the expansive, and initially pagan, Scandinavian culture was confronted and mixed with a Christian, Celtic culture, which was to put its imprint on the Scandinavian expansion further away in the North Atlantic. The establishment of settlements in the North Atlantic is evidenced in written records (sagas, ecclesiastic annals, etc.), material culture, environmental records, place-names, and other linguistic relics. The written records include a range of Norse sagas, all of which were written centuries after the events that they claim to describe took place. Their information should be seen in this light, and be subject to a continuous critical approach and continuously tested against the evidence of archaeology and natural sciences. The Scandinavian emigrant communities in the North Atlantic, in the words of the saga writers, were established primarily by a Norwegian peasant aristocracy, which at the end of the 9th century was forced to flee Norway as a result of their opposition to King Harald Finehair’s attempts to gain sovereign supremacy over all Norway. According to the Saga of Harald Finehair, this happened following the so-called Battle of Hafrsfjord, outside Stavanger in Southwest Norway, which is supposed to have taken place c.AD 872. The saga states: “In the discontent when King Harald seized on the lands of Norway, the out-countries of Iceland and the Faroe Isles were discovered and peopled. The Northmen had also a great resort to Shetland, and many men left Norway, flying the country on account of King Harald, and went on viking cruises into the West Sea.” Although the sagas suggest a direct link between the events in western Norway and the earliest settle-

ment of the Faroe Islands and Iceland, there seems to be little doubt that there was also a strong Celtic element involved in the process. Thus, some of the early settlers mentioned in the written records had Christian or Celtic names, thereby indicating an alternative origin. This is also evidenced in artifact assemblages from archaeological sites. Furthermore, a number of place-names in the Faroe Islands and Iceland are clearly of Gaelic origin and modern Faroese also contains a number of linguistic elements, especially linked to farming and husbandry, derived from Gaelic. It is interesting to note that in the Faroe Islands identification of shielings sites of the Viking Age have demonstrated a connection between these and the place-name element ærgi, which is derived from Gaelic airge, thereby indicating that this farming practise had its roots in the Gaelic-speaking world. The early Scandinavian settlers in the Hebrides and the Irish Sea region integrated with the native Celtic and Christian population, and formed what could be termed a Hiberno-Scandinavian culture. The term “Hiberno-Scandinavian” refers to material culture traditions that are characterized by a fusion of elements that are derived from both Scandinavia and Ireland. The spreading of objects of Hiberno-Scandinavian character in the North Atlantic may well represent people who have become acculturated through the cumulative effects of processes such as trade and intermarriage. The mixture of various cultural identities and traditions with different ethnic backgrounds is highlighted in the sagas, thereby presenting a picture of the North Atlantic as a melting pot in the Viking and early Medieval ages. The expansion was not a homogeneous process that materialized under the different conditions that the Scandinavians encountered in the North Atlantic. Thus Scotland and the Scottish archipelagos of the Hebrides, Orkney, and Shetland already had a native population and a history stretching back to the Neolithic and before. Scandinavian activity in Scotland in the early 9th century was probably of a sporadic and relatively nonpermanent character. Not until the late 9th century does this seem to have been of a more permanent character. The nature of the relationship with the native Christian Pictish (Celtic) societies is still a matter of discussion, with arguments ranging from a completely peaceful integration (the “peace-school”) to a hostile almost genocide takeover of the islands by the Scandinavians (the “warschool”). Contrary to this, there is no unequivocal evidence of a permanent settlement in the Faroe Islands and Iceland prior to the Scandinavian arrival. The Faroe Islands as well as Iceland were, however, probably

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ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE ARCTIC: SCANDINAVIAN SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC already known in the Celtic world. An Irish ecclesiastic Dicuil in his work Liber de mensura orbis, probably written at a Carolingian court on the continent around AD 825, describes the travels of Irish anchorites to islands north of Scotland. He further mentions that these islands, which are generally identified as the Faroe Islands and Iceland, were visited or even settled by Irish anchorites (hermit saints) as early as the 8th century, but that these were driven away by the arrival of the Scandinavians. Radiocarbon datings in connection with pollen profiles in the Faroe Islands have recently indicated a dating of the earliest settlement here stretching back to the 7th–8th centuries AD. Large-scale excavations on a number of sites within the last decades have, however, produced no archaeological evidence to substantiate such an early date. If the implications of these early radiocarbon datings prove to be correct, that the Faroe Islands were settled before the 9th century, the matter remains as to whether it was by Irish or Scandinavian people. Considerable distances often separated the newly established emigrant communities from each other, but at the same time they were strongly connected by a homogeneous culture with a background in their Scandinavian homelands. This homogeneity was expressed through traditions, partly in articles for daily use and the preferred raw materials, but also in the building customs as they were displayed in the vernacular architecture of the farmsteads. There is hardly any reason not to believe that the initial emigrants brought with them what they found to be essential for the maintenance of an existence. At the same time it must be presumed that maintaining a stabile contact with the homelands may have proved difficult. To some of the settlers, there was probably only a limited desire to maintain such a contact. Bitterness and frustration over their forced political exile must have made it difficult for these emigrants subsequently to identify themselves with the new social and political order, which they had only recently fought. The emigrants were faced with two problems, which were inextricably linked. On the one hand, they faced the task of establishing new communities, organizing them, and making them function; on the other hand, they would have had a need to create for themselves a new cultural identity. In this process they sought access to urban centers where they could trade their produce for staple goods, exotic merchandise, jewellery, etc. This they may very well have found in the urban centers established by them in Ireland during the 10th century, especially Dublin. The emigrant communities were well organized with clearly defined rights of property and ownership of land and access to the natural resources, which were

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essential for the maintenance of a living. They were also communities with a political and legal administration that found expression, for example, in legal cases and disputes being settled at so-called things, evidence for the existence of which is still preserved in place-names such as, for instance, Þingvellir (Iceland), Tinganes (Faroe Islands), Tingwall (Shetland), and Dingwall (Scotland). No doubt, such places existed in the Scandinavian settlements in Greenland too, but as we are left with no place-name evidence here they are difficult to identify. The Scandinavian emigrant communities were characterized by a rural settlement, typically consisting of farmsteads spread over all the cultivable parts of the landscape. In the Faroe Islands, the nature of the landscape only left a limited number of places, mainly low-lying coastal areas, suitable for farming, and therefore the present-day settlement pattern, to a very high degree, reflects the settlement of the early Viking Age. The Faroe Islands probably contained no proper woodland but, according to pollen profiles, did have slopes covered by willow and creeping dwarf juniper. At the time of the settlement, woodlands of birch dominated the lowlands of Iceland, separated by bogs and river estuaries. At higher altitudes, especially in the more mountainous interiors of the island, dwarf birch, willow, and grasses took over where the woodlands ended. The targets for the earliest settlement, as evidenced by the results of archaeological excavations on settlement sites and by the distribution of Viking burials, were the fertile protected lowland areas along the coast and in small plains and valley systems stretching into the interior. It seems that most of the habitable areas were occupied within half a century of the initial settlement. This is evidenced in pollen profiles, where a distinct decline in birch just after AD 871 indicates that an extensive clearance of the woodland took place. Eirík the Red, through a number of explorations during the years 984–992, founded the Scandinavian settlements in Greenland. It was the protected fjords in the south (the so-called Eastern Settlement) and those further north along the West Coast near present-day Nuuk (the so-called Western Settlement) that attracted the settlers, who had their background in the Scandinavian settlements in Iceland. Under the climate optimum of the Viking Age and early Medieval, especially the landscape of the Eastern Settlement offered extensive fertile pastures, which could accommodate not only extensive numbers of sheep but also big cattle holds, as evidenced by the byres identified on several farms in the Eastern Settlement. Most of the building remains preserved in the Greenland landscape should probably be dated to the later phases of the Scandinavian settlement. However, recently a

ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE ARCTIC: SCANDINAVIAN SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC group of house foundations with curved walls of more classical Viking character have been identified and these may represent the very early stages of settlement. The settlers of the North Atlantic brought farming systems and methods with them. The typical organization of the land would contain a settlement area (Scandinavian: tun) where the buildings would be located, surrounded by the infield or homefield that would be used for growing corn or hay for fodder. Outside the infield areas would lie the pastures or outfield areas used for the grazing of cattle and sheep. In some regions of the North Atlantic, like the Faroe Islands and Greenland, it has been demonstrated that shielings (Scandinavian: sæter) were part of the settlement pattern and the subsistence economy. These shielings, used during the summer period, would be situated in the mountains in areas with good pastures and fresh water supply. They would consist of a limited number of small buildings and were used throughout the summer for the milking of animals, treating and storing of milk and other dairy products, and for the harvesting or collecting of winter fodder, for instance production of hay. The subsistence economy of the farmsteads seems to have been primarily based on husbandry, where sheep and cows, followed by pigs, were the dominant species. The environment would also have appeared attractive to the early settlers in that it offered plenty of potential for fishing, fowling, and seal and whale hunting to supplement the economy. In the Faroe Islands and in the southern and western parts of Iceland, there was potential for barley growing. The corn production in some of the emigrant communities may have been of such a size that it required a mechanical milling process. Horizontal mills of the Viking Age have been documented in the Scottish Isles, and there are indications that they were also common in the Faroe Islands. The farmsteads consisted of a number of buildings, basically of wooden construction, but protected by stone-built walls. The early dwellings had curved walls and two rows of roof-supporting posts dividing the building into three aisles along the axis. Centrally located in the buildings were the long hearths. Until the end of the 10th century, it seems to have been common practice that the byre and the dwelling were located under the same roof. This feature is characteristic of the Northwest European longhouse, which has a tradition stretching back at least 1300 years before the beginning of the Viking Age. The Scandinavian longhouse of the Viking Age appears all over the North Atlantic. The wood-consuming buildings are strikingly similar in appearance and can hardly be seen as functional in these regions with their tree-sparse or even treeless landscapes. The

homogeneity and almost standardized size and layout of the farmsteads in the North Atlantic emigrant communities indicate the importance of architecture to the emigrants. The house, being the forum for a number of activities, which were central to social and daily life, may therefore be regarded as a cultural emphasizer and must have had an almost symbolic importance to the settlers. The reason why the emigrants brought with them their architecture and building customs was that they had a very clear idea and concept of what a house and home was. The mobile farmers of the Viking Age could thus travel from one end of the North Atlantic to the other and still feel confident and safe everywhere, no matter what house they had to enter. They were, so to speak, traveling in a Scandinavian world. The impressive wooden buildings required plenty of timbers, of which the new environment only offered little. Rather than imports, it is much more likely that the early settlers had to rely on driftwood, which could be collected at suitable locations along the coastline. The conditions for preservation of wood are very different between the individual regions of the North Atlantic. Thus, hardly any wood is preserved on archaeological sites in the Scottish Isles and rarely in Iceland. On the other hand, it is a common feature on many sites in the Faroe Islands and Greenland. The wood preserved on these sites reveals that the driftwood, to a large extent, consisted of larch and spruce transported all the way from Siberia. On Faroese sites, it is documented that these species were used for a number of purposes, including that of elements in the wooden construction of houses. The homogeneity of the Scandinavian emigrant culture is also expressed in the implements and raw materials that were essential for daily life. The archaeological material from the Viking settlements in Scandinavia, and particularly in Norway, is to a large extent dominated by soapstone (steatite). This soft stone material is abundant at Viking settlements in Norway, where it was used for a wide number of purposes. The artifact assemblages from the excavated archaeological sites in the North Atlantic include, for instance, sherds of various types of vessels, loom weights, line- and net-sinkers, and spindle whorls, all of soapstone. Likewise, whetstones of schist were very essential tools in daily life. A number of the whetstones were produced of a light, coarse-grained schist. Whetstones of this material have been found all over the Viking world, and the raw material has recently been identified as originating from a particular mountain in Eidsborg in Norway. The provenance of a more bluish, fine-grained schist, which was also used for whetstones all over the Viking world, has regrettably not

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ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE ARCTIC: SCANDINAVIAN SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC yet been identified. The emigrants brought with them traditions for using both types. Furthermore, the artifact assemblage includes wooden objects such as timbers, bowls, spoons, barrels, etc., and iron implements, bronze jewelry, and so forth. A major problem for the emigrants was that the separate archipelagos had different conditions to offer them. Shetland and Greenland, for instance, are gifted with abundant outcrops of soapstone as well as schist and sandstone, while the Faroe Islands and Iceland have neither of these. Thus in Shetland especially, because of the short distances, there was easy access to the raw materials that were basic to a Scandinavian tool assemblage. Contrary to their fellow emigrants in Shetland, the emigrants in the Faroe Islands and Iceland were forced to import finished products, semimanufactured or even raw materials for their own production of tools, or to gradually adapt to the environment and increase the exploitation of local resources. The economic conditions thus were sometimes extremely different in the individual communities. The culmination of the attempts by the Scandinavians to colonize the North Atlantic occurred during the opening years of the second millennium. For a long time, the sagas provided the only evidence for this event, while firm archaeological evidence could not be presented. The sagas contain details of sailing routes between Greenland and the North American continent, and also descriptions of landscapes along the sailing routes. Thus, the sagas mention landscapes termed Helluland, Markland, and Vinland, which have now generally been identified as Baffin Island, the Labrador coast and, presumably, Newfoundland, respectively. After decades of search for material evidence of Scandinavian settlement, a site was eventually located and excavated at L’Anse aux Meadows at the northern tip of Newfoundland in the 1960s. It contained the remains of three turf-built buildings of Scandinavian character. There was no evidence of byres and the general impression of the settlement was that it was a short-lived one, maybe a way-station. It has been suggested that it may represent one of the actual events mentioned in the sagas. The site only produced a limited number of finds of diagnostic Viking character, of which the most important were a spindle whorl of soapstone and a ringed pin of Hiberno-Scandinavian type. Although there is still a lack of evidence of a more permanent Scandinavian settlement in North America, there seems to be no doubt that the Scandinavian communities in Greenland frequently traveled there, probably to collect timbers, which were much needed as

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they, except for driftwood, were nonexisting resources in Greenland. The last vessel, according to written records, bound for Markland to acquire lumber, left in 1347. Recently, a series of remarkable radiocarbon datings of the 7th–8th centuries AD have been obtained on presumed Scandinavian objects of organic materials such as antler, wood, and strands of yarn found in Dorset Inuit contexts in Newfoundland, Labrador, and Baffin Island. If these dates prove to be right, the revolutionizing implication is an unexpectedly early Scandinavian presence in the Eastern Arctic. The question of how and when the Scandinavian communities in the North Atlantic became Christian is a matter of ongoing discussion. The process is no doubt reflected in burial practices, but in some areas the evidence is still rather sparse. Thus, only two Viking cemeteries have been located in the Faroe Islands. They contain a number of poorly constructed and poorly equipped graves. It is difficult to establish whether these burials are pagan or Christian in character. In Iceland, on the other hand, a total of c.300 pagan burials are recorded. These are normally of simple constructions and are not very visible in the landscape. The burials are usually poorly furnished compared with contemporary graves in Norway. The Icelanders, like the Faroese, are said to have formally accepted Christianity around the year AD 1000. A strong Hiberno-Scandinavian element in the entire settlement process, however, may mean that the emigrant societies contained strong Christian elements from the very beginning. The settlers in Greenland probably only remained pagan for a short time. Being settled in the 980s and allegedly having accepted Christianity around AD 1000, we are probably only dealing with one generation of pagan settlers, which may explain why no pagan burials have so far turned up. The early phases of Christianity in the North Atlantic saw the appearance of small church buildings surrounded by dykes. These churches were probably proprietary churches, associated with major farmsteads, rather than proper community churches as known from later. The Faroe Islands received its own bishopric in 1152 or 1153 (Kirkjubø), Iceland in AD 1135 (Skálholt), and Greenland in c.AD 1125 (Gardar, Eastern Settlement). The Scandinavian communities in the North Atlantic gradually came under the Norwegian church order. The Scandinavian Empire of the Western Seas at its highest peak comprised, besides the homelands, the urban centers in Ireland, large parts of Scotland, the Western and Northern Isles of Scotland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, the settlements in Greenland, and perhaps even the presumably very temporary and fragile outposts in North America.

ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE ARCTIC: SCANDINAVIAN SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC The settlers created their own emigrant identity that, in the course of the 10th century, was expressed in combining traditions from their Scandinavian homelands, as for instance the building customs, with a shieling system and types of personal equipment, which had their roots in the Hiberno-Scandinavian world. Among the most popular items were the socalled ringed pins of Hiberno-Scandinavian type, produced in the Hiberno-Scandinavian towns in Ireland, especially Dublin. The spreading of various types of personal equipment from the Scandinavian settlements in Ireland to the emigrant communities in the North Atlantic probably not only represents a transmission of ideas but also a movement of people. Thus, the period until c.AD 1100 was characterized by a rather independent emigrant culture, whose identity was the product of an interplay between Celtic and Scandinavian traditions. The following centuries, however, bore the stamp of an increasing Christian influence in the emigrant communities and the consequences of their becoming, as taxlands, an integrated part of the medieval Norwegian church and kingdom. The Scandinavian bastions in Ireland were brought to an end by the 12th century. After a battle at Largs, near Glasgow, in 1263, the engagement in Mainland Scotland also had to stop, and the Scandinavian element rapidly disappeared. The Western Isles were given up in 1266. The Northern Isles of Scotland, Orkney and Shetland, with their motherland Norway came under Danish supremacy in 1380. They remained under Scandinavian control until 1469 when the Danish king pawned them to Scotland as a dowry for his daughter. An already-initiated scottification of the islands now intensified, but the Scandinavian language Norn was still spoken in Shetland until around the year 1800. Today, the former Scandinavian settlements in Ireland and, especially, Scotland first and foremost reveal themselves in an abundance of place-names of Scandinavian origin. This is most distinct in Shetland, where as much as 98% of present-day place-names are regarded as being Scandinavian in origin. The Scandinavian communities further away in the North Atlantic remained Scandinavian in identity, for which there are several reasons. Firstly, these islands and archipelagos had not, or at the most very sparsely, been inhabited previously, and therefore had no Celtic or Pictish heritage that Scandinavian emigrants had to deal with. Secondly, their very remoteness meant that they did not attract too much attention. By the end of the Medieval, they had been degraded to being on the fringe of Europe. Of all the Scandinavian emigrant communities established in the Viking Age in the hitherto uninhab-

ited areas of the North Atlantic, only one did not survive. The death of the Scandinavian settlements in Greenland, probably by the end of the 15th century, is still a fascinating mystery. A number of possible explanations have been offered, such as, for instance, an increasingly stressing interaction with the Thule Inuit, probably over hunting grounds, climate deterioration, population decline, and cultural isolation. These explanations may very well all be elements in the process. It seems that cattle husbandry was failing, which is reflected in an increasingly marine diet over time as evidenced in skeletal material, and no doubt the decline in climate in the Medieval also played its part. However, it cannot be ruled out that the Scandinavian Greenlanders left the country or otherwise disappeared before the Thule Inuit expanded into their settlements. Broken contacts with Scandinavia, and even Iceland, from the 15th century onwards will almost certainly have exposed the Greenlanders to English fishing and whaling activity. Whether this contact was peaceful, or whether the Greenlanders, forcedly or voluntarily, ended up as manpower in an increasingly urbanized and demanding European market is unknown. It has been put journalistically: “Young Greenlanders ending up as workers in Bristol or Hull—their genes now walking like the ghosts of as many research propositions on the disappearing Norsemen.” The Scandinavian Empire of the Western Seas lasted, as a whole or in part, for approximately 500 years before it turned into history. The memory of a glorious past, however, still lives on in sagas and tradition up until the present day. STEFFEN STUMMANN HANSEN See also Eirík the Red; Eriksson, Leif; Norse and Icelandic Sagas; Vikings; Vinland

Further Reading Albrethsen, Svend Erik, Grönland. Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskünde, Volume 13, Berlin and New York, 1999, pp. 63–71 Albrethsen, Svend Erik & Christian Keller, “The use of Saeter in Medieval Norse Farming in Greenland.” Arctic Anthropology, 23(1–2) (1986): 91–109 Appelt, Martin, Joel Berglund & Hans Christian Gulløv (editors), Identities and Cultural Contacts in the Arctic, Copenhagen: Danish Polar Center Publications No. 8, 1999 Arneborg, Jette & Hans Christian Gulløv (editors), Man, Culture and Environment in Ancient Greenland. Report on a Research Programme, Copenhagen: Danish Polar Center Publications No. 4, 1998 Barrett, James, H. (editor), Contact, Continuity and Collapse: The Norse Colonization of the North Atlantic, Belgium: Brepols, 2002 Batey, Colleen E., Judith Jetsch & Christopher D. Morris (editors), The Viking Age in Caithness,Orkney and the

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ARCHBISHOP INNOCENT (IVAN VENIAMINOV) North Atlantic, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993 Bigelow, G.F. (editor), “The Norse of the North Atlantic.” Acta Archaeologica, 61 (1990): 1991 Christensen, Karin Marie Bojsen & Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson (editors), Nordatlantisk arkæologi - vikingetid og middelalder. Hikuin 15, 1989 Clarke, Howard, Maíre Ní Mhanaigh & Ragnall Ó Floinn (editors), Ireland and Scandinavia in the Early Viking Age, Blackrock, Ireland: Four Court Press, 1998 Crawford, Barbara E., Scandinavian Scotland, Leicester: Leicester University Press and Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1987 Fenton, Alexander & Hermann Pálsson (editors), The Northern and Western Viking World. Survival, Continuity and Change, Edinburgh: John Donaldson, 1984 Fitzhugh, William W. & Elisabeth I. Ward (editors), Vikings. The North Atlantic Saga, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000 Graham-Campbell, James, Colleen E. Batey, Helen Clarke, R.I. Page & Neil S. Price (editors), Cultural Atlas of the Viking World, Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Andromeda and New York: Facts on File, 1994 Graham-Campbell, James & Colleen E. Batey, Vikings in Scotland. An Archaeological Survey, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998 Guldager, Ole, Steffen Stummann Hansen & Simon Gleie, Medieval Farmsteads in Greenland. The Brattahlid Region 1999–2000, Copenhagen: Danish Polar Center Publications No. 9, 2002 Jones, Gwyn, The Norse Atlantic Saga. Being the Norse Voyages of Discovery and Settlement to Iceland, Greenland and North America (2nd edition), Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1986 Lewis, S.M. (editor), Vinland revisited: the Norse world at the turn of the first millennium AD: Selected papers from the Viking Millennium International Symposium, September 15–24, Newfoundland and Labrador: St John’s Historic Sites Association, 2002 Magnússon, Thor, Símun V. Arge & Jette Arneborg, “New Lands in the North Atlantic.” In From Viking to Crusader. The Scandinavians and Europe 800–1200, edited by Roesdahl Else & David M. Wilson, Uddevalla: Bohusläningens Boktryckeri AB Morris, Christoper D. & D. James Rackham (editors), Norse and Later Settlement and Subsistence in the North Atlantic, Glasgow: University of Glasgow, Department of Archaeology, 1992 Müller-Wille, Michael, Landnahmen von Skandinaviern im nordatlantischen Bereich aus archäologischer Sicht, edited by Michael Müller-Wille et al., Ausgewählte Probleme europäischer Landnahmen des Früh- und Hochmittelalters. Metodische Grundlagendiskussion im Grenzgebiet zwischen Archäologie und Geschichte. Vorträge und Forschungen 41, Sigmaringen 1994, pp. 129–196 Myhre, Bjørn, Bjarne Stoklund & Per Gjæder (editors), Vestnordisk byggeskikk gjennom to tusen år. Tradisjon og forandring fra romertid til det 19. århundre, AmS-Skrifter 7, Stavanger, 1982 Randsborg, Klavs, “Archaeological globalization. The first practitioners.” Acta Archaeologica, 72(2) (2001): 1–53 Seaver, Kirsten, The Frozen Echo: Greenland and the Exploration of North America ca. AD 1000–1500, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996 Smyth, Alfred P., Warlords and Holy Men. Scotland AD 800–1000, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1980

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Stoklund, Bjarne, Det færøske hus - i kulturhistorisk belysning, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzels, 1996 Stummann Hansen, Steffen, “Settlement archaeology in Iceland. The race for the Pan-Scandinavian Project in 1939.” Acta Archaeologica, 72(2) (2001): 115–127 Stummann Hansen, Steffen & Klavs Randsborg (editors), “Vikings in the West.” Acta Archaeologica, 71 (2000) Sutherland, Patricia, “Nunguvik and Saatut revisited.” In Nunguvik et Saatut. Sites Paléoeskimaux de Navy Board Inlet, Isle de Baffin, edited by Guy Mary-Rousselìre, Collection Merauve Commission Archaeologique du Canada, Numero 162, Canadian Museum of Civilisation, Hull, Québec, 2002, pp. 115–121

ARCHBISHOP INNOCENT (IVAN VENIAMINOV) Archbishop Innocent (Ivan Veniaminov) was born on August 26, 1797, of local lineage, in the village of Anga (Anginskoe) in the Irkutsk gubernia. He would become an important missionary of Alaska, Siberia, and the Far East, an ethnologist, and a linguist. He received the name Ioann at baptism as an infant, inherited his father’s surname, and was known as Ioann (Ivan) Evseevich Popov in his youth. Enrolled in the Irkutsk Theological Seminary, he was gifted not only as a scholar but in mechanics, and gained skills in architecture and clock-making-skills that he would apply later in Alaska. He received the surname Veniaminov in 1814, in honor of the bishop of Irkutsk, Veniamin, who had died that year. The rector of the seminary gave the name as a surname to the brightest student. He was thereafter known as Ioann (Ivan) Evseevich Veniaminov. In 1817, Veniaminov married Ekaterina Ivanovna, the daughter of a local clergyman. Graduating from the seminary in 1820, Veniaminov was ordained to the priesthood in Irkutsk in 1821. The Holy Synod of the Russian Church requested a volunteer to serve as the first parish priest ever to be assigned to the Unalaska district in Russian-America (Alaska), and Veniaminov offered his services. He arrived with his family at Unalaska Island in 1824, and entered into cooperative relationships with the Aleuts. Veniaminov was received principally by the Aleut toion (chief) of Akun and Tigalda Islands in the district, Ivan Pan’kov. Bilingual, and a generation older than the young priest, Pan’kov became his mentor with regard to Aleut culture and language. Together, they traveled by kayak from village to village. Pan’kov served as translator until Veniaminov had learned Aleut. Eventually, they translated the Gospel according to Matthew into the Unalaska dialect of the Aleut language. They constructed an alphabet, based on Cyrillic letters with new characters introduced to represent special sounds in Aleut phonetics. Also,

ARCHBISHOP INNOCENT (IVAN VENIAMINOV) Veniaminov included Aleut with Russian lessons in the parish school. Concurrently, he increased his own knowledge of the district, producing an ethnography and geography as well as a grammar and a bilingual dictionary. Ultimately, Veniaminov achieved such proficiency that he was able to compose a doctrinal work in this language, Indication of the Way into the Kingdom of Heaven. It was printed as a book in Aleut (1840), and then translated and published through numerous editions in the Russian language. It has been translated furthermore for publication in various Asian and European languages, including English. This international popularity indicates the substance and relevance of the text, written originally by Veniaminov in Aleut for the Aleuts. After a decade in the Unalaska district, in 1834 Veniaminov assumed the duties of parish priest at Novo Arkhangel’sk (today Sitka), where he concentrated, among his other activities, on learning the Tlingit language and customs. In 1839, Veniaminov traveled to Europe, including St Petersburg. The same year, his wife died. A widower, he was tonsured as a monastic in 1840, receiving the name Innokentii (Innocent), and he was elevated to the status of bishop for the newly established Diocese of Kamchatka, the Kurils, and the Aleutians. He traveled from St Petersburg via Moscow to his diocesan see at Novo Arkhangel’sk (Sitka), arriving in 1841. Veniaminov opened missions on the Alaska mainland, and one for the Tlingits in the Alexander archipelago, while he actively ministered in Kamchatka. He continued to promote the use of native languages in education and literature along with liturgics, and he continued to develop multilingual native leadership. Veniaminov was elevated to archbishop in 1850. The archdiocesan see was located in Aian, northeast Asia, where he worked among the Tungus (Evenk) tribes. The archdiocese was expanded to include Chukotka, Yakutia, and the Amur region in addition to his former diocese. The archdiocese was subdivided into two vicariates in 1858, one administered from Novo Arkhangel’sk and the other from Yakutsk. In Yakutsk, Veniaminov intensified the production of translations in the Sakha (Yakut) language, a process that had already begun here in 1812. Many fine publications were produced, including the Bible, liturgical texts, patristic texts, catechisms, grammars, dictionaries, and schoolbooks, thus inaugurating the flowering of literacy in this language. Some publications were achieved in other languages of Yakutia also, particularly Evenk (Tungus). Veniaminov was elected as an Honorary Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1857. In 1868, the year after the sale of Alaska to the United States,

he was appointed to succeed as the Metropolitan of Moscow, which was the highest rank in the Russian Church at the time. Veniaminov’s enduring importance is reflected through the commemorations that spanned the Northern Hemisphere in 1997 at the bicentennial of his birth. The government of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) sponsored a two-year-long series of events that involved the state universities, national library, state museum, and academy of sciences along with the diocese. In Alaska, the bicentennial commemorations were patronized by the Aleut Foundation, and the Governor of Alaska officially designated 1997 as the Veniaminov Bicentennial Year in the state. An international conference was convened in the state university at Fairbanks. Exhibits were organized by the Alaska State Museums. Other commemorations involving civic institutions took place in Irkutsk, Kamchatka, Vladivostock, and Moscow. A distinguished lecture series took place even in Berkeley, as he had visited the San Francisco Bay Area from Fort Ross, the Russian settlement in northern California, during his lifetime. His international importance is reflected furthermore at the bicentennial through an exhibit in the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, as well as academic symposia in Oxford University and Edinburgh University.

Biography Ioann Evsevievich Popov was born on August 26, 1797 at the village of Anginskoye, Irkutsk Province, Russia. His father Evsei Popov was the sacristan of the village church. The family was poor, yet the boy received a substantial education. He entered the seminary in Irkutsk, c.1806. In 1814, he received the surname Veniaminov in honor of Veniamin, the bishop of Irkustk, who had passed away earlier that year. In 1817, he married Ekaterina Ivanovna, with whom eventually he had seven children. He graduated from the seminary in 1820, and was ordained to the priesthood in 1821. Volunteering for parish ministry in Alaska, he arrived at Unalaska with his family in June 1824. He wrote and published several studies in the Aleut and Tlingit languages, including an Aleut catechism, and ethnographic studies such as his Notes on the Unalaska District (1840). Becoming a monk in 1840, after his wife’s death, he took the name Innokentii (Innocent). He was consecrated bishop on December 15, 1840, becoming archbishop in 1850, and ultimately becoming the Metropolitan of Moscow in 1868. He passed away on the March 31, 1879, and was buried in the St Sergius Monastery of the Holy Trinity at Zagorsk near Moscow. He was

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ARCTIC ATHABASCAN COUNCIL canonized as a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1977. S.A. MOUSALIMAS See also Aleut Further Reading Chryssavgis, John, “The Spiritual Legacy of Innocent Veniaminov: Reflections on the Indication of the Way into the Kingdom of Heaven.” The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, 44(1–4) (1999): 585–596 Garrett, Paul, St Innocent: Apostle to America, Crestwood, New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1979 Library of Congress, “Father Ioann Veniaminov.” In Meeting of Frontiers (published in American and Russian), website: http://memory.loc.gov/intldl/mtfhtml/mfak/igfather.html, Washington, District of Columbia, 2001 Mousalimas, S.A., From Mask to Icon: Transformation in the Arctic, Brookline, Massachusetts: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2003 Pierce, Richard A., “Veniaminov, Ivan I.” In Russian-America: A Biographical Dictionary, Kingston, Ontario, and Fairbanks: The Limestone Press, 1990 Shishigin, Egor Spiridonovich, Rasprostranenie Hristianstva v Yakutii [The Formation of Christianity in Yakutia], Yakutsk: State Museum of the Histories and Cultures of the People of Siberia, 1991 ———, “Prelate Innokentii and Yakutia.” The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, 44(1–4) (1999): 597–605 Veniaminov, Ioann (Innokentii), “The condition of the Orthodox Church in Russian America: Innokentii Veniaminov’s history of the Russian Church in Alaska,” translated and edited by Robert Nichols and Robert Croskey. Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 63(2) (1972): 41–54 ———, “The Russian Orthodox Church in Alaska: Innokentii Veniaminov’s supplementary account (1858),” translated by Robert Croskey. Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 65(1) (1975): 26–29 ———, Notes on the Islands of the Unalashka District, translated by Lydia T. Black & Richard H. Geoghegan, edited by Richard A. Pierce, Kingston, Ontario, and Fairbanks: The Limestone Press and University of Alaska, 1984 ———, Journals of the Priest Ioann Veniaminov in Alaska, 1823 to 1833, translated by Jerome Kisslinger, Fairbanks: University of Alaska, 1993 Ware, Kallistos, “The light that enlightens everyone: the knowledge of God according to the Greek Fathers and St Innocent.” The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, 44(1–4) (1999): 557–564 Yakimov, Oleg Dmitrievich, “The Unalaska period of Ioann Veniaminov’s life and activity.” The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, 44(1–4) (1999): 623–631

ARCTIC ATHABASCAN COUNCIL The Arctic Athabascan Council is an international treaty organization established to foster a greater understanding of the heritage of the Athapaskan peoples of the Arctic and Subarctic North America and to represent the interests of Athapaskan First Nation governments in the Arctic Council.

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Seven Athapaskan leaders from Alaska, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories signed the Council treaty in June 2000. Signatures included Chief Gary Harrison from Chickaloon Village Traditional Council, Chief Patrick Sayler from Healy Lake Traditional Council, Chief Randy Mayo from Stevens Village Tribal Government, Chief Gerald Albert from Northway Tribal Council, Grand Chief Ed Schultz from Council of Yukon First Nations, National Chief Bill Erasmus from Dene Nation, and President George Motin from Métis Nation. At the Ministerial meeting of the Arctic Council in Barrow, Alaska in October 2000, the Arctic Athabascan Council applied and gained admittance as a permanent member of the council. The Arctic Athabascan Council represents four First Nation government bodies in Alaska: the Chickaloon Village Traditional Council (Nay’Dini’Aa Na), the Healy Lake Traditional Council (Mendas Cha-Ag), the Steven Village Tribal Government Council, and the Northway Tribal Council. On the Canadian side, the Arctic Athabascan Council represents three governing bodies, including the Council of Yukon First Nations, which represents 11 Yukon First Nations, the Dene Nations (Deh Cho First Nations), representing 30 Nations, and the Métis Nations, representing 13 communities. In total, the Arctic Athabascan Council represents approximately 32,000 indigenous peoples of Athapaskan descent from 23 language groups. Within this umbrella organization, the Métis hold a special position, as their aboriginal rights were not recognized until 1982 (Constitution Act, 1982). The Métis were born from Cree, Ojibway, and Saulteaux women mixing with French, Scottish, Irish, and English men in the early stages of colonization in western Canada. Following the Métis’s recognition as a distinct people, the Métis National Council was established in 1983. Within the Arctic Athabascan Council, the Dene Nations also represents some Métis Communities. The permanent office of the AAC is located in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada, within the administrative headquarters of the Yukon First Nations. The current chairperson is Ed Schultz, the Grand Chief of the Council of Yukon First Nations. The position as a chairperson of the council rotates among representative nations. According to the council, the traditionally occupied area of the Athapaskan peoples stretches across three million square kilometers and includes Alaska, the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and includes parts of British Colombia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Today, most Athapaskan peoples live in Alaska, Yukon, NorthWest Territories, and Manitoba. This vast Arctic and Subarctic landscape includes three of North America’s largest river systems: the Mackenzie, Yukon, and Churchill rivers. The district

ARCTIC CHAR of Athapaska includes areas of tundra and taiga, as well as high mountains, Mt McKinley, and Mt Logan. Ancestors of the Athapaskan peoples were seminomadic hunters who existed on a diet of caribou, moose, beaver, rabbit, and fish. Most of the Athapaskan peoples are inland people—taiga and tundra dwellers, with the exception of South Central Alaska (Tanana and Eyak) and the Hudson Bay (Chipweyan). The Council is committed to environmental issues closely connected to the preservation of Athapaskan cultures and lifestyles. It is a member of the organization Canadian Arctic Indigenous Peoples Against Persistent Organic Pollutants (CAIPAP), which focuses on the preservation of northern ecosystems and the long-term effects of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) on northern indigenous peoples. GRO WEEN See also Arctic Council; Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) Further Reading http://www.arcticathabaskancouncil.com/ http://chickaloon.org http://www.500nations.com/Yukon_Tribes.asp

ARCTIC CHAR The most northern freshwater fish Salvelinus alpinus is variously known as Arctic char and Arctic charr (English), omble chevalier (French), eqaluk (Greenlandic), iqaluppik (Inuktitut), bleikja (Icelandic), tarr (Gaelic), røye (Norwegian), ravdo, rauta, and rautu (Saami), röding (Swedish), nieriä (Finnish), golets, paliya, and arkticheskii golets (Russian), and khivko and noratkan (Evenki). It belongs to the Salmonidae family, and is related to salmon and trout. Char are typically troutlike in shape (long, torpedolike body) with very small scales. The front edge of the pectoral, pelvic, and anal fins is white; the back and the dorsal fin do not have a vermicular (wormlike) pattern, as do brook char (S. fontinalis) and lake char (S. namaycush). The body can be extremely colorful, with a great deal of variation in appearance depending on its life cycle, locality, and sex. The back is grayish with a blue, green, or brown coloration, while the underside can be red, rose, orange, yellow, or silvery white. Light-colored spots are scattered on the back and sides. This great variation in appearance has led to confusion in Arctic char systematics and some confusion with the Dolly Varden char (S. malma), which is excluded here. Arctic char populations have two basic forms depending on life history: anadromous (feeding in the

sea and migrating to fresh water to breed) and landlocked. Both forms are widely distributed in a circumpolar pattern. However, while the anadromous form is restricted to the Arctic, landlocked char are also found in more southern latitudes, in Europe, Russia, Alaska, Canada, and the United States. The anadromous form occurs from northern Norway through northern Eurasia (except the White Sea) to the Chukotka Peninsula; from northern Canada to Newfoundland; Hudson Bay (excluding James Bay); Greenland; Iceland; and Svalbard (but not Alaska) (maps of Arctic char distribution in Alaska before and after 1992 differ considerably because of improved methods of distinguishing Dolly Varden from Arctic char). The landlocked form is found in all territories with the anadromous form, plus Børn Island; Jan Mayen; Faroe Islands; Ireland; United Kingdom; the Alps of France, Switzerland, Germany, and Austria; Scandinavian peninsula; Finland; Karelia; Putorana Plateau; Transbaikalia; Magadanskaya Oblast’ and Chukotka; Kamchatka (only in two lakes); Alaska; Québec; New Brunswick; and Maine. Arctic char vary considerably in body size between populations. In the 1930s, professional fishermen in Novaya Zemlya are believed to have caught char up to 1 m in length and 16 kg in weight. Johnson (1980) shows a photograph of three char caught in Greiner Lake (Victoria Island, Canada), the largest of which has a fork length (length from the tip of the snout to the fork in the tail) of 80.6 cm and a weight of 5.75 kg. In 1962, a specimen of 75.0 cm in body length (from the tip of the snout to the end of the last scale) and 6.43 kg in weight was caught in Khantaiskoe Lake (Putorana Plateau, Taymyr Autonomous Okrug). Professional hunters told the author that they have occasionally caught large individuals in this lake, each weighing more than 20 kg, and these rare catches were generally in winter. At the other end of the scale, a population can be dwarfed. These fish remain very small even as adults, often being less than 20 cm in total length (from snout tip to tail tip). In July 1985, Nyman (1987) sampled 30 individuals from a brook in Sweden called Västra Trullgrav. They averaged 9.1 cm in total length, the largest fish being 11.7 cm total length and the oldest fish being aged 10+ years (in its 11th year). The Arctic char life history varies between populations and also between individuals within populations. After hatching, young anadromous char remain in the lake (if hatched in a river, the young move to the lake) for two to nine years before making their first sea migration. Called smolts, they become silvery in color. The downstream migration occurs between the end of May and July, and they stay in the sea for only two to three months before migrating upstream between July

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ARCTIC CHAR and September. They overwinter in the lake and repeat the migration cycle the following spring. After several migrations, they become spawners. Almost all spawners have a very strong homing instinct, but the homing behavior does not seem to be so strong in nonspawners, which may swim up any river with a suitable overwintering lake. Spawning occurs in lakes or rivers, generally between October and February, and the char lay eggs in redds—hollows in the substrate used for spawning. The adults survive after spawning and will repeat the cycle the following year. Although the landlocked form does not migrate to the sea, their life histories are just as variable. One or more Arctic char populations may occur in a single lake. Each population can be characterized by morphology, genotype, feeding behavior, or spawning ground. The fish may be benthic (feeding on bottomliving animals), pelagic (feeding on plankton), or fish predators. In some cases, a population of dwarfed char occurs. These fish have neither commercial nor fishing value. There seem to be several factors that result in dwarfism, but the mechanisms are not yet fully understood. For some cases, however, a plausible explanation is simply that the fish are too numerous, and so food is scarce. Their growth is very limited or even prevented. If this is the case, removing a significant number of fish individuals artificially will improve the fish growth. High in the Arctic, where both anadromous and landlocked forms occur, the life pattern can be intermediate between the two forms. In some populations, there is an interval of a year between the spawning migration and reproduction; the spawners wait for a year in fresh water before spawning. The variability and apparent complexity of the life cycles result in the very wide ecological niche of Arctic char, which adapts to a wide range of habitats in the Arctic environment. Nevertheless, certain conditions seem to be necessary: cold oxygen-rich water, still water, and fresh water that does not freeze in winter. This is why Arctic char are not generally found in rivers (except during migration or spawning), in shallow lakes, or in the sea in winter. Arctic char are a valuable commercial and food resource for northern peoples. There are over 50,000 populations of Arctic char in the world with a catch of around 3000 tons a year. Since the 1980s, artificial rearing of Arctic char has been well developed, particularly by Iceland and Norway, and such fish have been available on the fish market all year round since the 1990s. In catching Arctic char today, gill nets and spinning fishing are the most widely used techniques. Canadian Inuit traditionally used stone weirs to corral the fish; the Arctic char were trapped in the weirs and speared.

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Harpoons were also used in certain areas, a technique requiring great skill. In Baffin Island, some Arctic char become naturally trapped during upstream migration. In spring, local people harvested these frozen fish through cutting holes in the ice. In sport fishing, char are generally caught by simple lure fishing, usually with a spinner or spoon. Fly fishing is also possible, but it depends on place and time. Since the 1980s, some sport-fishing tourism has been developed for this fish in northern Canada. There, fishing regulation and protection measures are strictly enforced on these sport fisheries in order to sustain the local economy that is dependent on Arctic char. YOICHI MACHINO Further Reading Balon, Eugene (editor), Charr: Salmonid fishes of the Genus Salvelinus, The Hague: Dr. Junk, 1980 Frost, Winifred, “Breeding habits of Windermere charr, Salvelinus willughbii (Günther) and their bearing on speciation of these fish.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B Biological Sciences, 163 (1965): 232–284 + pl. 6 Grainger, E., “On the age, growth, migration, reproductive potential and feeding habits of the Arctic char (Salvelinus alpinus) of Frobisher Bay, Baffin Island.” Journal of the Fisheries Research Board of Canada, 10 (1953): 326–370 Johnson, Lionel, “The Arctic Char, Salvelinus alpinus.” In Charr: Salmonid fishes of the Genus Salvelinus, edited by Eugene Balon, The Hague: Dr. Junk, 1980 Johnson, Lionel & Bonnie Burns (editors), Biology of the Arctic Charr: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Arctic Charr, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1984 Jónasson, Pétur (editor), “Ecology of oligotrphic, subarctic Thingvallavatn.” Oikos, 64(1/2) (1992): 1–439 Kawanabe, Hiroya, Fumio Yamazaki & David Noakes (editors), “Biology of Charrs and Masu Salmon: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Charrs and Masu Salmon.” Physiology and Ecology Japan, special volume 1 (1989): 1–711 Klemetsen, Anders, Bror Jonsson & Malcolm Elliott (editors), “Proceedings of the Third International Charr Symposium.” Nordic Journal of Freshwater Research, 71 (1995): 1–451 Machino, Yoichi & Nathalie Thibault, “Poissons & Bibliographies.” In Faune & Flore du Grand Nord, edited by Nathalie Thibault, Paris: Grand Nord Grand Large, 1999 Nordeng, Hans, “On the biology of char (Salmo alpinus L.) in Salangen, north Norway.” Nytt Magasin for Zoologi, 10 (1961): 67–123 Nyman, Lennart, “High, old and small: the dwarfs of Chardom.” ISACF Information Series, 4 (1987) 107–112 Savvaitova, Ksenia, Arkticheskie gol’tsy (Arctic chars), Moscow: Agropromizdat, 1989 (English translation in Canadian Translation of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 5607 (1993): 1–245) Watson, Rupert, Salmon, Trout & Charr of the World, Shrewsbury: Swan Hill Press, 1999 Yessipov, V., Materialy po biologii i promyslu Novozemel’skogo gol’tsa (Salvelinus alpinus L.) [Materials on the life history and fisheries of the char of Novaya Zemlya (Salvelinus alpinus L.)]. Trudy Arkticheskogo Instituta, 17 (1935): 5–71 (in Russian with English summary)

ARCTIC CIRCLE

ARCTIC CIRCLE The Arctic Circle is the circle of latitude at approximately 66°33′ N, the southern limit of the “midnight sun.” From the Arctic Circle northward, there is at least one day per year when the sun does not set. Proceeding westward around the world from 0° longitude, the Arctic Circle crosses the North Atlantic Ocean just north of Iceland, then Denmark Strait, southern Greenland, Davis Strait, Canada (Baffin Island, Foxe Basin, Nunavut, Northwest Territories, Yukon Territory), Alaska (United States of America), just north of Bering Strait, Russia, Finland, Sweden, and Norway. The length of the Arctic Circle is about 16,000 km. (For comparison, the length of the equator is 40,000 km.) The location of the Arctic Circle or limit of the midnight sun at this latitude is explained by a few basic facts relating to the geometry of the Earth’s motion around the sun. The Earth rotates on its axis (daily) and orbits around the sun (annually). The plane of the Earth’s equator is tilted by 23°27′ from the plane of its orbit around the sun. Equivalently, the Earth’s axis is tilted by 23°27′ from a perpendicular to the orbital plane. The Earth’s axis maintains a nearly constant orientation in space during each orbit around the sun. The consequences of this Earth-sun geometry are that the amount of daylight at a particular location on Earth varies throughout the year, which creates seasons. On the summer solstice (about June 21), when the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, the sun does not set at latitudes within 23°27′ of the North Pole (90° N). Similarly, on the winter solstice (about December 21), when the Northern Hemisphere is tilted away from the sun, the sun does not rise above the horizon at latitudes within 23°27′ of the North Pole. This limit defines the latitude of the Arctic Circle: 90° minus 23°27′ is 66°33′. The same astronomical facts lead to an analogous Antarctic Circle (66°33′ S) in the Southern Hemisphere. Also, the location at which the sun is directly overhead varies throughout the year between 23°27′ N (the Tropic of Cancer) and 23°27′ S (the Tropic of Capricorn). The two tropics and two Arctic Circles divide the Earth into five zones: the torrid zone (between the tropics), the north and south temperate zones (from the tropics to the Polar Regions), and the north and south frigid zones (poleward of the Arctic and Antarctic Circles). Thus, one definition of the Arctic, from a purely geometrical or astronomical perspective, is the area within the Arctic Circle. This area comprises about 4% of the surface area of the Earth. Any change in the tilt of the Earth’s axis gives rise to an equal change in the latitude of the Arctic Circle. The Earth’s axis undergoes a slight wobble (known as the Chandler wobble) due to atmospheric and oceanic

processes, with a period of about 14 months. This causes the latitude of the Arctic Circle to vary within 12 m of its mean location. Longer-term changes in the tilt (also known as obliquity) of the Earth’s axis give rise to a slow variation in the latitude of the Arctic Circle. Over a period of 41,000 years, the tilt shifts from about 22° to 24.5° and back again. This causes the latitude of the Arctic Circle to move from 68° N to 65.5° N and back again. The slow changes in the tilt and orientation of the Earth’s axis, similar to a spinning top, are due to forces exerted by the sun and moon on the Earth’s equatorial bulge. This, together with slow changes in the Earth’s orbit (eccentricity and precession), leads to small changes over thousands of years in the amount of solar energy reaching different parts of the Earth, which is the basis of the astronomical theory of the Ice Ages and a factor in long-term climate change. The tilt of the Earth’s axis is currently decreasing at a rate of about half an arc-second per year. This translates into a northward motion of the Arctic Circle of 14 m per year. In 10,000 years, the Arctic Circle will reach its northerly maximum and begin moving southward again. If the tilt of the Earth’s axis decreased to 0o, the Arctic Circle would shrink to a point at the North Pole, and there would be no seasons. If the tilt increased beyond 45°, the Arctic Circle would move south of the Tropic of Cancer—the tropics and the Polar Regions would overlap. Ancient peoples must have reached the Arctic Circle some 15,000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age, on their trek across the Bering land bridge from Asia to North America. A second wave of migration about 5000 years ago brought the ancestors of the Inuit and Aleut, who made their homes north of the Arctic Circle in Canada and Alaska. These people must have had an intuitive or experiential conception of the Arctic Circle, gained by observing the path of the sun for many years at high latitudes. In contrast, the ancient Greek astronomers and geographers deduced the existence of the Arctic Circle without ever having been there—indeed, without believing that such latitudes were habitable. They placed the Tropic of Cancer at 24° N, and hence the Arctic Circle at 66° N. In 330 BC, a Greek explorer, Pytheas of Massilia (Marseilles), sailed through the Strait of Gibraltar and headed north on a six-year voyage, inaugurating the modern exploration of the Arctic. Six days’ sail north of Britain, Pytheas reached “Thule” (perhaps Iceland or the north coast of Norway). A short distance farther north, at about the latitude of the Arctic Circle, he came to a place where there was no longer a distinction between land, sea, and air, but rather a mixture of the three (perhaps sea ice and fog). His tales were discredited by his

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ARCTIC COUNCIL contemporaries but have regained favor in recent times. HARRY L. STERN See also Arctic: Definitions and Boundaries; Cartography; North Pole Further Reading Bowditch, Nathaniel, American Practical Navigator, Washington, District of Columbia: Defense Mapping Agency Hydrographic Center (more than 70 editions from 1802 to the present) Brown, Lloyd A., The Story of Maps, New York: Dover, 1977 Crowley, Thomas J. & Gerald R. North, Paleoclimatology, Oxford Monographs on Geology and Geophysics, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991

ARCTIC COUNCIL In 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev in his Murmansk speech proposed greater cooperation among Arctic countries. This encouraged Finland to pursue such cooperation on a formal level as a means of addressing, along with other issues, environmental problems caused by Soviet mining operations close to Finnish Lapland. The result was the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS), adopted by declaration in 1991 at a ministerial conference of the eight Arctic countries held in Rovaniemi, Finland. (The AEPS would form the origins of what would become the Arctic Council five years later.) The Rovaniemi Declaration established AEPS’s objectives, which can be summarized as follows: protection of the Arctic ecosystem (including humans); restoration of environmental quality and the sustainable utilization of natural resources; recognition of the traditional and cultural needs, values, and practices of indigenous peoples; regular review of the state of the Arctic environment; and reduction and elimination of sources of pollution. While the AEPS provided a means to address issues of environmental protection, some of the eight countries thought that more formal arrangements were needed to facilitate international cooperation in the Arctic and to promote sustainable development of the region. Following two years of negotiations, the Declaration on the Establishment of the Arctic Council was signed by the eight Arctic countries (Canada, Finland, Denmark/Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States) at a ministerial conference in Ottawa, Canada, in September 1996. Article I of the Declaration states that: The Arctic Council is established as a high-level forum to: (a) provide a means for promoting cooperation, coordination, and interaction among the Arctic

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states, with the involvement of the Arctic indigenous communities and other Arctic inhabitants on common Arctic issues, in particular, issues of sustainable development and environmental protection in the Arctic; (b) oversee and coordinate the programs established under the AEPS on the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP); Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF); Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment (PAME); and Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response (EPPR); (c) adopt terms of reference for, and oversee and coordinate a sustainable development program; and (d) disseminate information, encourage education, and promote interest in Arctic-related issues. The chairmanship of the Arctic Council rotates for terms of two years. Canada served as chair of the Arctic Council from 1996 to 1998, followed by the United States, Finland, and Iceland (2002–2004), with Russia assuming the chairmanship in 2004. Between Council meetings, senior Arctic officials meet twice a year to oversee the activities of the various programs of the Council. The four working groups associated with the four programs mentioned in point (b) above have continued under the Arctic Council. A fifth working group on Sustainable Development and Utilization had been established, but was replaced by the Council’s own Sustainable Development Working Group. Terms of reference for this group were the subject of lengthy negotiation, but following the Council meeting in 1998, several projects have been undertaken on topics such as telemedicine, ecotourism, and the management of coastal fisheries in the Saami region. Finland, during its chairmanship of the Council from 2000 to 2002, examined options to restructure the working groups for greater efficiency and effectiveness. Recognizing the great significance of Arctic Council issues to indigenous groups in the region, the Arctic countries gave three indigenous peoples’ organizations Permanent Participant status within the Council. These groups are the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), the Saami Council, and the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON). At the Council meeting in 1998, the Aleut International Association was added, and at the 2000 meeting, the Gwich’in Council International and Arctic Athabascan Council brought the number of Permanent Participants to six. The category of Permanent Participant provides for the active participation and full consultation with the Arctic indigenous representatives within the Arctic Council.

ARCTIC: DEFINITIONS AND BOUNDARIES Observers, including non-Arctic nations, intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and nongovernment organizations such as the International Arctic Science Committee, are allowed to attend ministerial conferences, senior Arctic officials meetings, and working group meetings. To date, the AEPS and Arctic Council have carried out several major projects. The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) working group published a comprehensive assessment of environmental contaminants in the Arctic, both as a scientific volume and as a plain-language summary report. These reports are updated on a regular basis. They also led to the establishment of the Arctic Council Action Plan to Eliminate Pollution of the Arctic. The Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) working group developed conservation strategies for murres (Uria spp.) and eiders (Somateria spp. and Polysticta fischeri), established the Circumpolar Protected Areas Network, and completed a book-length report on the status of Arctic flora and fauna in 2001. The Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment (PAME) working group reviewed legal instruments for pollution prevention and control, established guidelines for oil and gas development in the Arctic, and developed a Regional Programme of Action for the Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment from Land-Based Activities. The Emergency Prevention, Preparedness, and Response (EPPR) working group has conducted several emergency exercises and has prepared a map of sites in the Arctic that are particularly vulnerable to an environmental emergency such as an oil spill. In addition, the Council has sponsored an Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) for delivery in 2004. HENRY P. HUNTINGTON See also Aleut International Association; Arctic Athabascan Council; Capacity Building; Declaration on the Protection of the Arctic Environment (1991); Gwich’in Council International; Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC); Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON); Saami Council Further Reading Arctic Council website: http://www.arctic-council.org/index. html Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme website: http://www. amap.no/ AMAP, Arctic Pollution Issues: A State of the Arctic Environment Report, Oslo: AMAP, 1997 AMAP, The AMAP Assessment Report: Arctic Pollution Issues, Oslo: AMAP, 1998 AMAP, Arctic Pollution 2002, Oslo: AMAP, 2002

Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) website: http://www.caff.is/ CAFF, Arctic Flora and Fauna: Status and Conservation, Helsinki: Edita, 2001 Emergency Prevention, Preparedness, and Response (EPPRl): http://eppr.arctic-council.org/ Huntington, Henry P., The Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy and the Arctic Council: A Review of United States Participation and Suggestions for Future Involvement, Bethesda, Maryland: Marine Mammal Commission, 1997 Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment (PAME) website: http://www.pame.is/ Russell, Bruce A., “The Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy and the new Arctic Council.” Arctic Research of the United States, 10 (1996): 2–10 Tennberg, Monica, The Arctic Council: A Study in Governmentality, Rovaniemi, Finland: University of Lapland, 1998

ARCTIC: DEFINITIONS AND BOUNDARIES The word “Arctic” comes from the Greek word for bear, arktos, after the constellations Ursa major and Ursa minor. Both are visible throughout the year in the northern night sky. The popular image of the Arctic is a treeless, remote wilderness with cold winters and cool summers occupying the northern reaches of the Earth. For many, the Arctic is a vast, frozen area around the North Pole, a harsh place of unforgiving and extreme conditions to which only a few species of plants, animals, and some indigenous peoples have adapted themselves, challenged constantly by cold and the seasonal variations of light and darkness. Geographically, the Arctic includes the Arctic Ocean, many islands and archipelagos, and the northern parts of the mainlands of the North American, Asian, and European continents. The largest Arctic land areas are in Russia, Canada, Greenland, Alaska, Fennoscandia, and Svalbard. However, there is considerable debate as to how the Arctic should be identified and defined and where its southern boundaries actually lie. Definitions of the Arctic boundary vary according to environmental, geographical, political, cultural, and scientific perspectives and biases. Confusion also arises because of the way “Arctic,” “circumpolar North,” “Northern regions,” and “the North” are all used interchangeably. Often, the definition varies according to subject matter and scientific discipline. Some scientists consider the approved criteria for a definition of the Arctic to include high latitude, long winters and short, cool summers, low precipitation, permafrost, frozen lakes and sea in winter, and the absence of trees. Astronomically, the boundary of the Arctic is the latitude beyond which the sun does not set during the summer solstice, or rise during the winter solstice, at

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ARCTIC: DEFINITIONS AND BOUNDARIES

© AMAP 2003 AMAP area Arctic marine boundary

Arctic Circle 10° C July isotherm

The Arctic as defined by temperature, and the Arctic marine boundary, also showing the boundary of the AMAP assessment area. From AMAP Assessment Report: Arctic Pollution Issues. Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), Oslo, Norway, 1998. Reproduced with permission from AMAP

about 66°33′ N, which we know more commonly as the imaginary line called the Arctic or Polar Circle. This astronomical feature sets a definite and specific photoperiod for the Arctic and reduces the amount of solar heat absorbed by the Earth’s surface, as well as providing the most recognized characteristics of the Arctic—long, cold, and dark winters, and short, cool summers with the midnight sun.

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All land north of the treeline is sometimes used as a defining characteristic, while others consider all lands and seas north of 60° N to be Arctic. The Arctic Circle, the treeline, and north of 60° are attractive markers because they make the Arctic easy to define. However, Arctic-like conditions are found far to the south of the Arctic Circle and many Inuit, who are regarded as quintessentially Arctic people, live in parts

ARCTIC: DEFINITIONS AND BOUNDARIES

© AMAP 2003

High Arctic

Subarctic

Low Arctic

Treeline

Arctic and Subarctic floristic boundaries. From AMAP Assessment Report: Arctic Pollution Issues. Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), Oslo, Norway, 1998. Reproduced by permission from AMAP

of Canada, Greenland, and Alaska that lie several hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle. Similarly, there are many scientists who would disagree that all areas north of 60°N lie in the Arctic, arguing instead that some lands included in this definition, such as south-

ern Greenland and southern Alaska, are actually Subarctic. When the treeline is taken as the southern boundary, western Alaska, the Aleutians, and southern Iceland are said to be Arctic (though they would not be according to strict climatic definitions), although vast

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ARCTIC: DEFINITIONS AND BOUNDARIES forested areas of northern Russia (which may have mean monthly temperatures below 10°C), where the transition from boreal forest to open tundra covers up to 300 km, would be Subarctic. Armstrong et al. (1978) consider Iceland to be the least “Arctic” country in their survey of the regions of the circumpolar North, on account of its position south of the Arctic Circle and its cold temperate oceanic climate caused by the North Atlantic drift. A common way of defining the Arctic is to do so climatically by using the 10°C summer isotherm (an area with an average annual temperature of 0°C and within which the mean annual temperature for the warmest summer month is at or below 10°C) as the boundary line. This boundary roughly corresponds with the treeline, but not with the Arctic Circle. Both the 10°C summer isotherm and the treeline, however, may diverge by as much as 100 km in some areas. Parts of western Alaska, the Aleutians, and southern Iceland are excluded from this climatic definition, even though they would be considered Arctic if the treeline is used as a defining boundary, yet both the 10°C summer isotherm and the treeline extend beyond 70° N in northern Norway and as far south as 55° N in Canada’s Hudson Bay region. Sweden and Finland extend above the Arctic Circle, but these countries lie south of the treeline and the 10°C summer isotherm. The Arctic climate varies significantly by location and season and is in fact a collection of regional climates with different ecological and physical climatic characteristics. The mean annual temperatures vary greatly according to location, for example, from −12.2°C at Pt Barrow, Alaska (71.3° N) to −28.1°C at the summit of the Greenland ice sheet (about 71° N). Some of these differences are due to the poleward intrusion of warm ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream and the southward extension of cold air masses (Weller, 2000). The North Pole is not the coldest place in the Arctic because its climate is moderated by the ocean, and coastal settlements in West Greenland that are adjacent to the ice sheet typically have a mean temperature of −7°C because the climate is moderated by relatively warm ocean currents. Arctic lands span some 33° of latitude reaching 84° N in Greenland. The summer period progressively decreases from about three to two months from the southern boundary of the Arctic to the North, the mean July temperature decreases from 10–12°C to 2°C, and precipitation decreases from about 250 mm to as low as 45 mm per year. Because low precipitation characterizes the Arctic, large and elaborate river and lake systems are rare. North of the treeline the Arctic is characterized by the presence of permafrost, which is more or less continuous north of the forest tundra but becomes discontinuous to the south of the region.

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Permafrost restricts the downward drainage of meltwater from snow, and water accumulates on the surface as shallow lakes, ponds, and marshes. In general, the Arctic is arid and cold deserts dominate the High Arctic. The problem of how to define the Arctic and how to explain where Arctic regions are located becomes increasingly apparent when drawing boundaries for terrestrial and marine environments. In the terrestrial environment, many scientists would probably say that the southern boundary of the circumpolar Arctic is located at the northern extent of the closed boreal forests. In reality, there is not a clear boundary but a transition from south to north consisting of the following sequence:- closed forest- forest with patches of tundra- tundra with patches of forest- tundra. This transition occurs over 300 km in flat areas but is compressed to hundreds of meters or less in mountainous areas of the Arctic. This transition zone stretches for more than 13,400 km around the lands of the Northern Hemisphere and is probably the Earth’s most important environmental transition zone. The zone has been called forest tundra, lesotundra, Subarctic, and the tundra-taiga boundary or ecotone. Again, this definition of the Arctic does not correspond with the geographical location of the zone delimited by the Arctic Circle at 66°33′ N latitude. Arctic lands are extensive beyond the northern limit of the tundra taiga-ecotone, where they amount to about 7,567,000 km2. They cover about 2,560,000 km2 of Russia and Scandinavia, 2,480,000 km2 in Canada, 2,167,000 km2 in Greenland and Iceland, and 360,000 km2 in Alaska. The complexity of defining the Arctic is amplified when the Arctic is divided into different zones. Although it is clear that the Arctic is not a homogeneous environment, definitions of Subarctic, Midarctic, and High Arctic environments conflict between different scientific traditions. In fact, there is a continuous gradient of environmental severity within the Arctic from the boreal forest zone at its southern boundary to the polar deserts of the far north, even if this is interrupted in some places by mountain chains and water bodies (Nuttall and Callaghan, 2000). The boundary of the Arctic marine environment is similarly difficult to delimit. An oceanographic definition is the meeting point of the relatively warm, salty water from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and the colder, less salty water of the Arctic Ocean (CAFF, 2001). The Arctic Ocean receives important inflows of water from rivers and the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The total area of the Arctic marine environment comprises about 14 million km², of which about 7 million represents the permanently ice-covered deep basins of the Arctic Ocean and most of the remaining 7 million km2 seasonally ice-covered areas. However, just as the

ARCTIC ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION STRATEGY boundary of the treeline varies greatly, so does the latitude of the ocean boundary, from about 63° N in the Canadian Archipelago to 80°N near Svalbard, with a Subarctic marine environment of mixed Arctic and Atlantic or Pacific water extending, in the case of the northern North Atlantic, from around 44°N off Newfoundland to 68°N off northern Norway (CAFF, 2001). Arctic marine regions may also be very cold, although they are usually less so than land areas. Cold waters in ocean currents that flow southward from the Arctic lower the temperatures in Greenland and the eastern Canadian Arctic, whereas the northward-flowing Gulf Stream warms the northern landmasses of Europe. This explains why polar bears and tundra are found at 51° N in eastern Canada and agriculture is practiced beyond 69°N in Norway. Such definitions of the Arctic are complicated further by attempts to draw geopolitical boundaries and to classify the regions of the circumpolar North as either political and economic peripheries or culture regions. Many Icelandic politicians and Arctic specialists would perhaps not agree with Armstrong et al.’s designation of their country as the least “Arctic” country in the circumpolar North, especially given Iceland’s active leadership in Arctic affairs and chairmanship of the Arctic Council from 2002 to 2004. The various working groups and projects under the auspices of the Arctic Council have all defined the Arctic differently, reflecting various scientific, political, and cultural traditions in understanding where and what the Arctic is. For the purposes of the Arctic Council’s Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), for example, the Arctic is defined approximately as the area north of 60° N in North America and Siberia, and north of the Arctic Circle (66.7°) in Europe, yet also including the Aleutian Islands, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and southern Greenland. The boundary used by Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF), another Arctic Council working group, differs slightly from AMAP’s in that the Faroe Islands are not included. That the Arctic is not an area that can be clearly defined reflects the fact that the extent of the Arctic is entirely dependent on whatever definition is used. Furthermore, no one way of defining the Arctic is satisfactory for all purposes, and more often than not a practical definition becomes necessary in research projects, reports, assessments, and scientific monographs to determine what physical, ecological, political, and cultural processes are to be covered. For example, researchers using botanical definitions for research on Arctic vegetation calculate that Arctic lands comprise some 7.6 million km2, yet others calculate an area of only 4 million km2 (Nuttall and Callaghan, 2000).

One important reason why it is difficult and perhaps inappropriate to define restrictive boundaries for the Arctic is because of its incredible variability, diversity, and connections with the rest of the globe. The Arctic is an important part of the global climate system and it both affects and is affected by global climate change (Weller, 2000), and the societies and economies of Arctic peoples are linked to the global economy and broader social and economic processes. Arctic ecosystems are linked to the ecosystems of warmer southern regions; Arctic air masses bring cold air to southern latitudes in the winter, but the winds from the south bring warmer air—and contaminants and pollutants— to northern regions. Migratory mammals, birds, and fish move to the Arctic in summer to feed and breed before returning south for the winter. Sea water cools as the currents bring it north and the cold fresh water from melting snow and ice add to the great ocean conveyer belt known as the thermohaline circulation, which has a significant impact on the global climate and sea conditions. Major rivers such as the Ob, Lena, Yenisey, and Mackenzie provide a substantial inflow of fresh water into Arctic waters, yet their headwaters are far to the south and provide a further connection between global and Arctic climates. MARK NUTTALL See also Arctic Circle; High Arctic; Subarctic; Treeline Further Reading Armstrong, Terence, Graham Rogers & Graham Rowley, The Circumpolar North, London: Methuen, 1978 Bernes, Claes, The Nordic Arctic Environment: Unspoilt, Exploited, Polluted?, Copenhagen: The Nordic Council of Ministers, 1996 CAFF (Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna), Arctic Flora and Fauna: Status and Conservation, Helsinki: Edita, 2001 Nuttall, Mark & Terry V. Callaghan (editors), The Arctic: Environment, People, Policy, London and New York: Taylor and Francis, 2000 Weller, Gunter, The weather and climate of the Arctic. In The Arctic; Environment, People, Policy, edited by Mark Nuttall & Terry V. Callaghan, London and New York: Taylor and Francis, 2000, pp. 143–160

ARCTIC ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION STRATEGY The Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS) was initiated in Rovaniemi, Finland, in June 1991 when environmental ministers from the eight Arctic countries signed the Declaration on the Protection of the Arctic Environment. Also referred to as the Rovaniemi Process, the AEPS was intended to be a forum for Canada, Finland, the United States, Iceland, the Russian

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ARCTIC ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION STRATEGY Federation, Denmark/Greenland, Sweden, and Norway to share information and to develop programs and initiatives to deal with Arctic conservation and environmental problems such as pollution. Six areas of concern were identified for action at Rovaniemi: persistent organic pollutants (POPs), radionuclides, heavy metals, oil, acidification, and noise. As set out in its various ministerial declarations, the AEPS objectives are: to protect Arctic ecosystems; to ensure the sustainable utilization of renewable resources by local populations and indigenous peoples; to recognize and incorporate the traditional and cultural needs, values, and practises of indigenous peoples related to protection of the Arctic environment; to review regularly the state of the Arctic environment; to identify the causes and extent of pollution in the Arctic; and to reduce and eliminate pollution. The Ministers established Working Groups in various program areas that would investigate issues and trends, produce assessments, and generate policy recommendations. The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) was set up to identify the levels and effects of anthropogenic pollutants and contaminants in the Arctic. A Working Group on the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) was established to address species and habitat conservation in the region by promoting the conservation of biodiversity and the sustainable use of living resources. The Working Group on Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment was established, following the Nuuk Ministerial Meeting in September 1993, to address policy and nonemergency pollution prevention and control measures related to the protection of the Arctic marine environment from land- and seabased activities, including marine shipping, offshore oil and gas development, land-based activities, and ocean disposal. At the same time a Working Group on Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response in the Arctic (EPPR) was set up, as was a Task Force (which later became the Working Group) on Sustainable Development and Utilization (TF/WGSDU). EPPR’s work is focused mainly on oil and gas transportation and extraction, and on radiological and other hazards, with a mandate to exchange information on best practices for preventing spills, preparing to respond to spills should they occur, and practical response measures for use in the event of a spill. The Working Group on Sustainable Development was established largely in response to prompting and lobbying by the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), and signaled the gradual movement away from the main AEPS emphasis on pollution and conservation issues toward sustainable development concerns. WGSDU became dormant as the negotiations for the Arctic Council drew to an end, but resurfaced as a strong element of the Arctic Council’s

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activities after the Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting in Barrow, Alaska, in 2000 approved a strategic framework document on sustainable development. Based on this foundation for further cooperation, the SDWG began developing the framework for activities on the economic, social, and cultural aspects of sustainable development. From the beginning, the main objective of the AEPS was to include the concerns of indigenous peoples. In the original Declaration on the Protection of the Arctic Environment, the ministers emphasized not only “our responsibility to protect and preserve the Arctic environment” but also the importance of “recognizing the special relationship of the indigenous peoples and local populations of the Arctic and their unique contribution to the protection of the Arctic environment.” The importance of indigenous participation in the AEPS was underscored in 1993 when the environmental ministers convened in Nuuk, Greenland, for the second ministerial meeting to review progress since signing the original Declaration two years previously. This meeting resulted in the “Nuuk Declaration,” which established a program with a secretariat to enable indigenous peoples’ organizations (IPOs) to participate in future meetings and discussions of the AEPS. The Indigenous Peoples’ Secretariat opened officially in February 1995 and is located in the Greenland Home Rule Government’s Danish office in Copenhagen. Initially, the ICC, the Saami Council, and the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON) were all given observer status within the AEPS. As an unprecedented framework for international cooperation on Arctic environmental and sustainability issues, the AEPS process initially consisted, at the political level, of Ministerial Meetings (Rovaniemi, June 1991; Nuuk, September 1993; Inuvik, April 1996; Alta, June 1997). There were one or two meetings each year at the executive level of what became known as the Senior Arctic Affairs Officials (SAAO) from each of the eight governments. There was no central, permanent secretariat to support the AEPS process as a whole, with the state chairing the AEPS between Ministerial Meetings in Finland, Denmark/Greenland, Canada, Norway providing its own small unit. In addition to preparing the Ministerial Meetings, the SAAOs attempted to give more substance to their role by directing and coordinating the increasingly broad networks of governmental scientists, experts, and administrators—together with IPOs and a range of nongovernmental actors—active at the working level in the AEPS program areas. The main activity within the AEPS was working to develop transgovernmental Arctic networks that facilitated the discussion and production of knowledge

ARCTIC FOX about the nature and severity of environmental challenges in the Arctic, as well as high-level discussion about how to formulate appropriate responses. Moreover, this programmatic activity has been hampered by the reluctance of member states to provide adequate funding for the Working Groups. Operating on a lead country principle, individual countries assumed responsibility for leading developing and financing projects they have a special interest in. While an agreement in principle was reached on sharing common costs, it proved difficult in reality to agree on a formula for sharing common costs, or to reach agreement on whether this was obligatory or voluntary. Although established as a high-level intergovernmental process between the eight Arctic governments, the AEPS process has been increasingly open and transparent. Accredited observer status at the political and executive levels was granted to four non-Arctic states (Germany, Netherlands, Poland, UK), to the Northern Forum of Arctic and Northern territorial governments, to some specialized intergovernmental organizations (e.g., UNEP, UN ECE), and to the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC). Several environmental/conservation NGOs (e.g., WWF International, Arctic Network) have participated as observers in Working Groups and achieved ad hoc, though not permanent (accredited), observer status at the political/executive level. The special position gradually asserted by the three existing transnational Arctic IPOs was reflected in their recognition as Permanent Participants in the AEPS by the time of the Nuuk Ministerial Meeting in 1993. With the establishment of the Arctic Council in Ottawa in September 1996, the Working Groups and programmatic activities of the AEPS were subsumed under this new high-level governmental forum. Foreign ministers of the Arctic states agreed in the Ottawa Declaration to form the Arctic Council with a mandate to undertake a broad program to coordinate the programs established under the AEPS, and to promote cooperation between Arctic states on common issues (excluding military security) including all dimensions of sustainable development. MARK NUTTALL See also Arctic Council; Capacity Building; Declaration on the Protection of the Arctic Environment (1991); Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations and Arctic Environmental Politics Further Reading AMAP, Arctic Pollution Issues: A State of the Arctic Environment Report, Oslo: Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, 1998

Archer, Clive & David Scrivener, “International Co-operation in the Arctic Environment.” In The Arctic: Environment, People, Policy, edited by Mark Nuttall & Terry V. Callaghan, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000, pp. 601–619 CAFF, Arctic Flora and Fauna: Status and Conservation, Helsinki: Ediita. 2001 Nuttall, Mark, “Indigenous Peoples’ Organisations and Arctic Environmental Co-operation.” In The Arctic: Environment, People, Policy, edited by Mark Nuttall & Terry V. Callaghan, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000, pp. 621–637 Scrivener, David, Environmental Cooperation in the Arctic from Strategy to Council, Oslo: Norwegian Atlantic Committee, 1996 Young, Oran R, The Arctic Council: Marking a New Era in International Relations, New York: The Twentieth Century Fund, 1996

ARCTIC FOX The Arctic fox (Alopex lagopus) occurs in two color morphs: white and blue. White foxes have a pure white winter coat, which turns brownish-gray on the back and white on the belly in summer. The blue morph is usually brownish-blue in winter and uniform blueblack in summer. Arctic foxes have long been prized for their winter fur for clothing by Greenlandic and Canadian Inuit, Saami, and Russian indigenous peoples, and early traders encouraged native peoples to trap foxes for the luxury European market. They are still of economic importance to the human inhabitants of the Arctic. Arctic foxes are called Teriangniaq qaqortaq (white color) and Teriangiaq qernertaq (blue color) in Greenlandic, Polarræv in Danish (also Hvidræv for the white form; Blåræv for the blue form), Refir in Icelandic, Fjellrev or Polarrev in Norwegian, Fjällräv in Swedish, Napakettu in Finnish (also Naali for the white form; Sinikettu for the blue), and pesets in Russian. The Arctic fox belongs to the dog family, Canidae, and is the only species in the genus Alopex. They are among the smallest canids, normally weighing between 2.5 and 4.0 kg. Arctic foxes seldom survive for more than three to four years under natural conditions. However, the oldest ever reported was 13 years old. The Arctic fox is circumpolar in distribution, living above the treeline in alpine areas in Fennoscandia, on the tundra mainland of Arctic Eurasia and North America, and on islands in the Arctic, North Atlantic, and North Pacific oceans. It also ranges widely over pack ice. The Arctic fox lives in two main habitat types, inland and coast, which offer differences in both diet and reproductive patterns. In inland tundra regions, Arctic foxes are food specialists or semispecialists relying on cyclic small rodent populations that fluctuate with a periodicity of three to five years. Such unpredictable environments, in terms of prey

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ARCTIC FOX

Arctic fox (Alopex lagopus). Copyright Paul Nicklen/National Geographic Image Collection

availability, provide wide variation between years in litter sizes. Foxes living on islands or near the sea close to bird cliffs are generalists, preying on food both from the marine and the terrestrial food web. This provides a more predictable and stable food supply and the foxes produce relatively few cubs every year. Arctic foxes are territorial in the breeding season, with home range sizes from 3 km2 (coast) to 60 km2 (inland), but can switch to a more nomadic behavior during winter, presumably in search for food. They are known to move great distances during such seasonal migrations, more than 1000 km in one season. Migrating Arctic foxes can penetrate deep into the taiga and cross vast tracts of pack ice. Information based on ear-tag return shows that Arctic foxes are able to travel from Western Alaska to Eastern Canada, from Siberia to Alaska, and from Svalbard to Novaya Zemlya. It has also been reported that mass migrations can take place between northeast Canada and Greenland, and within the Russian Arctic. Mass migrations usually take place after peak production years in Arctic foxes and their small rodent prey. Arctic foxes, considered to be generally or sequentially monogamous, can start breeding in their first year of life, but they are then not as successful as older foxes. The females enter estrus once a year and mating occurs in March or early April. Litters are born after a gestation period of 52 days (i.e., in late May or early June). The Arctic fox litter size is among the largest in the order Carnivora; the greatest number of cubs ever reported is 22. Inland Arctic fox populations have a mean litter size of seven with maximum 13, while coastal foxes have a mean litter size of five and maximum seven.

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The population biology of the Arctic fox in most inland tundra regions is dominated by large fluctuations in numbers, caused by and synchronized with the three- to five-year cyclical fluctuations in small rodents that are their main prey. The world population of Arctic foxes is thought to be in the order of several hundred thousand animals. The total trapping harvest for North America has been about 40,000 animals annually, with up to 85,000 during peak years from 1919 to 1987. The number of live animals in the Russian Arctic was estimated before 1985 to be around 50,000 during a low and more than 400,000 in peak years. Arctic foxes in Iceland were a threat to sheep and lamb farming and were subject to intense persecution from the late 13th century. In the year 2000, the calculated minimum population size was just over 6000, having recovered more than fourfold in 20 years (Pall Hersteinsson, personal communication). However, in Fennoscandia, intensive hunting at the end of the 19th and in the early 20th centuries resulted in near extinction of the Arctic fox populations. Despite total protection in all Fennoscandian countries since 1940, the population has not recovered and is now endangered. Arctic foxes are opportunistic generalist predators, but can also function as a specialist on fluctuating small rodent populations in most inland areas. Along the coast and near bird cliffs, food is available, in excess, during the breeding season, but is restricted during winter. Thus the coastal habitats provide a stable and predictable environment. In spring and summer, coastal foxes are ringed seal pup predators; they also prey on birds and feed on eggs, marine mammal carcasses, marine and freshwater fishes, marine and

ARCTIC GROUND SQUIRREL terrestrial invertebrates, and carcasses of reindeer or other large mammals. Winter diet is mainly ptarmigan and the carcasses of large mammals. Some Arctic foxes feed on remnants of seals killed by polar bears on the sea ice. In inland habitats, the main prey species in summer are lemmings (mainly Lemmus and Dicrostonyx spp.) and voles (mainly Microtus), and also carcasses of reindeer and other large mammals, while in winter, the most important food resources are large mammal carcasses and ptarmigans. Arctic foxes also store excess food gathered by caching during spring and summer, for use in late autumn and winter. The most important predators for the Arctic fox, especially the cubs, and competitors for food are red fox (Vulpes vulpes), wolf (Canis lupus), wolverine (Gulo gulo L.), snowy owl (Nyctea artica), golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos L.), and white-tailed eagle (Haliaeätus albicilla L.). Due to their long-range migrations, Arctic foxes are likely to be transmitters and important carriers of diseases and parasites affecting humans. Rabies is widespread throughout the Arctic region and is enzootic with the Arctic fox both as a reservoir species and the main vector of the disease in the Arctic. The tapeworm, Echinococcus multilocularis, uses the Arctic fox as a definitive host (i.e., the host harbors all developing stages as well as the egg-laying adults). This parasite causes the disease alveolar echinococcosis in humans that is often fatal, with mortality rates as high as 80% or 90% in untreated cases. In Scandinavian countries, foxes were believed to cause the northern lights (aurora borealis). The Eskimos have a legend about the parentless mistreated boy, Kagssagssuk, who obtain superhuman strength from the “Master of Strength,” who appears like a big fox with a long tail. The folklore of many cultures, such as the Inuit, Siberian people, and native North Americans, tells stories about the fox’s ability to shape-shift into a human being, usually an attractive young woman. EVA FUGLEI See also Fur Trade; Trapping Further Reading Eberhardt, Lester E. & Wayne C. Hanson, “Long-distance movements of Arctic foxes tagged in northern Alaska.” Canadian Field Naturalist, 92 (1978): 386–389 Garrot, Robert A. & Lester E. Eberhardt, “Arctic Fox.” In Wild Furbearer Management and Conservation in North America, edited by Milan Novak, James A. Baker, Martyn E. Obbard & Bruce Malloch, Ontario: Ontario Trappers Association, Ministry of Natural Resources, 1987, pp. 394–406 Grambo, Rebecca L., The World of the Fox, San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1995

Hersteinsson, Páll & David W. Macdonald, “Interspecific competition and the geographical distribution of red and Arctic foxes Vulpes vulpes and Alopex lagopus.” Oikos, 64 (1992): 505–515 Hersteinsson, Páll, Karl Frafjord & Asko Kaikusalo, “The Arctic fox in Fennoscandia and Iceland: management problems.” Biological Conservation, 49 (1989): 67–81 Macpherson, A.H., “The dynamics of Canadian Arctic fox populations.” Canadian Wildlife Service Report Series, 8 (1969): 1–49 Wiklund, Christer G., Anders Angerbjörn, Erik Isakson, Nils Kjellén & Magnus Tannerfeldt, “Lemming predators on the Siberian tundra.” Ambio, 28 (1999): 281–286

ARCTIC GROUND SQUIRREL The Arctic ground squirrel (Spermophilus parryi, Spermophilus means “seed loving”) is a large rodent belonging to the squirrel family (Sciuridae), rodent order (Rodentia). Known as a “gopher” to most Yukoners and a “tsik-tsik” by the Iñupiat Eskimos in Alaska, it is the largest and most northern of New World ground squirrels. The Arctic ground squirrel inhabits meadow-steppe, tundra, and mountain-tundra landscapes in the Northeastern Palearctic (from the Verkhoyansk Ridge in the east and to the south to the southern extremity of Kamchatka and environs of Okhotsk city), as well as Alaska and northeastern Canada, and generally hibernates from April to September. Adult males have a body length of 26–29 cm, a tail 8.9–11 cm long, and a body mass of 620–950 g. Females are distinguished by smaller sizes. The ears are short, slightly fur-trimmed, and positioned a little forward over the fur-covered head. The ground squirrel has cheek pouches. There are indistinct or clear small light speckles on its reddish-brown or yellowbrown back. It has strong front forelegs that are adapted for digging. The Arctic ground squirrel is found from sea level to mountain tundra zone, Alpine, and sub-Alpine meadows above the treeline. Its settlements are mainly arranged in sandy banks of well-drained river terraces or moraines, since good drainage increases the depth to permafrost through which the squirrels cannot dig, and sedge and cereals herbage grow. In mountains, the ground squirrel inhabits mainly steppe meadows formed by sparse vegetation composed of xerophyte mixed grasses and cereals growing on flat slopes and borders of south-facing intermountain valleys. Ground squirrels settle in sparse cedar groves and edges of sparse larch forests, but avoid continuous bush brushwood or forested areas. It is often found on the territory of small northern taiga and tundra villages. Ground squirrels typically live in colonies of 5–50 squirrels. Burrows are easy to find by earth mounds 125

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Arctic ground squirrel (Spermophilus parryi) by its burrow, Nunavut, Canada. Copyright Norbert Rosing/National Geographic Image Collection

near holes leading to underground passages. The entrance to the hole is often inclined and rarely vertical, and has up to ten entrances per burrow. Burrows are not more than 50 cm deep and generally positioned above permafrost. The passage widens to one or two nesting chambers lined with split sedge and cereals stems and leaves for insulation. Two to four blind alleys for feces are built not far from the chambers. Large winter food reserves have not been revealed. In colonies, separate holes are linked to each other and with temporary protective refuges—blind alleys 30–50 cm long—by means of surface paths. The Arctic ground squirrel lives in extremely cold environments, and gets through the harsh winters by incorporating hibernation into its life cycle. Ground squirrels hibernate seven months out of the year, retiring to their hibernation chambers with permanent snow covering in early September and waking in mid to late April, often into snow. In these conditions, heat is generated and lost rapidly. It is not uncommon for

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female juveniles to lose between 30% and 40% of their body weight during hibernation. Ground squirrels hibernate upright, with their heads tucked down and tails thrown over the head. The squirrel then allows its body temperature to fall close to of its hibernaculum for weeks at a time. During hibernation, its body temperature drops to almost 0°C, and the back part of its body can cool down to −20°C. It is the only known mammal capable of lowering its body temperature to below freezing. Periodically it briefly rouses and warms itself up to near its normal body temperature of 36.4°C before going back into hibernation. The Arctic ground squirrel is primarily herbivorous, favoring such foods as ground parts of plants, roots, rhizomes, sedge and grass seeds, small bushes, mushrooms, and berries. However, with a lack of vegetation forage, this squirrel eats insects and small rodents, including its own kind. It generally feeds around high noon and often stuffs its cheek pouches full of leaves or seeds to take back to its den for later consumption. Foraging is interrupted by frequent stops to sit up and check for danger. Generally, the ground squirrel uses its teeth to cut down vegetation, and then holds the food between its paws to eat so that it may keep its head up to watch for predators. Females give birth to one litter in late May or early June, with 5–14 young squirrels (on average, 5–7). Blind, naked, and weighing less than one ounce, the young rapidly increase in body weight, and at 20 days their eyes open. By 30 days, their fur resembles adults and they begin to explore the world above ground. They achieve the size of adult squirrels by the fall and take part in reproduction the following year. Despite the fact that there is continuous daylight during the summer months, this squirrel is diurnal. Because there is continuous light and very little vegetative cover available in their habitat, ground squirrels move with their bodies pressed close to the ground to make themselves less obvious to predators. This type of movement has been termed “tundra glide.” Social interactions include both physical and vocal communication. Physical encounters are characterized by either nose-to-nose contact or pressing together of body parts. This contact is a test of receptivity and can often lead to fights. The second type of interaction, vocal communication, has led humans to give this squirrel the nickname “tsik-tsik.” These “tsik” sounding calls generally alert others in the territory to the presence of nearby predators. There are even different kinds of calls for different kinds of predators. Low gutter chatters are used to indicate land-borne predators whereas short “band whistle” chatters indicate avian predators. The Arctic ground squirrel is hunted for its fur: in northern Alaska, women make parkas (and hence they

ARCTIC HARE are sometimes known as parka squirrels). Fur harvesting can reach one million squirrels annually. In some regions, ground squirrels carry and keep human infectious diseases. While no longer hunted for food, they are an important link in the food chains for predators important in the fur trade (ermine, polar fox, fox, and others). VLADIMIR VASILIEV Further Reading Hubbs, Anne & Rudy Boonstra, “Effects of food and predators on the home-range of Arctic ground squirrels.” Canadian Journal of Zoology, 76 (1998): 592–596 Tavrovsky, V.A. et al. (editors), Mlekopitaiuschchie Iakutti, Mammals of Yakutia, Moscow: Nauka, 1971 (in Russian) Woods Jr., S.E., The Squirrels of Canada, Ottawa, Canada: National Museums of Canada, 1980

ARCTIC HARE In spite of a wide distribution throughout northern Canada and Greenland, from the northernmost points of land south to Newfoundland, the Arctic hare (Lepus arcticus) remains one of the least known of the hare family. Though of limited economic importance, the Arctic hare is hunted by native hunters throughout most of its range. Inuktitut names include okalerk, okalik, and okalishugyuk. Related hares are the Blue or Mountain hare (Lepus timidus) of Eurasia and the Alaska hare (Lepus otis) or ukallisugruk of northern Alaska. Adult hares weigh on average 4–5 kg with a total length of over 70 cm. The young are born in June with mottled gray-brown fur providing excellent camouflage. Young of the year reach near-adult size and coloration by September but retain a brown topknot. Male and female hares are only distinguishable in the breeding season through behavior and during lactation. Summer color, shedding, and molt patterns change with latitude. From Baffin Island south, hares turn blue-gray in summer, while in the north they remain white all year. Hares feed primarily on Arctic willow and flowering plants such as purple saxifrage. Feeding can be destructive, as hares dig up roots and break off sizable willow twigs. In winter, hares dig craters in snow, but tend to feed in areas where snow is shallow or plants are exposed by wind. Reingestion of soft fecal pellets, common to all hares, occurs during rest periods at intervals of about 30 min. Hard round pellets are passed at regular intervals while moving and feeding, and less often while resting. The activities of Arctic hares in a group are synchronized, in that they feed and rest at about the same

Arctic hare (Lepus arcticus), Northwest Territories, Canada. Copyright Paul Nicklen/National Geographic Image Collection

time. In the Canadian High Arctic, hares feed actively in the early to mid-morning, rest for 2–3 h in the late morning and early afternoon, and feed again in the mid-afternoon. The morning rest period is highly synchronized, with most hares in an area resting at the same time. Another less coordinated rest period occurs in the evening before midnight. Behavioral modifications used by Arctic hares to maintain their normal body temperature in winter include posture, orientation, the use of natural shelter, and the digging of snow dens. Hares adopt a nearspherical shape while resting, with only the thick pads of the hind feet touching the snow. Hares typically rest together in closely spaced large winter groups, but do not huddle. Only young litter mates in summer are known to huddle together. Hares in groups do not usually seek shelter, but solitary hares groom, rest, and reingest in the shelter of rocks or snow drifts. When wind speeds increase, resting hares shift from facing the sun to orient their backs to the wind. As daily mean temperatures increase in the Arctic spring, the resting

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ARCTIC HAZE posture changes from the tightly curled sphere to a more relaxed sprawl. Hares dig forms in loose soil in summer and also dig snow dens up to 188 cm in length in snowdrifts. Snow dens are not used for feeding, and their value as safety from predators is likely to be secondary to their value as shelter. From late winter through late summer, Arctic hares may occur in groups of over 100 individuals. The composition of late winter groups varies, but most contain males and females. In late summer, groups also contain young of the year. There is no evidence of territory formation in Arctic hares, although dominant males displace others from food sources and shelter. Where home ranges of hares have been studied, they overlap considerably. Movements of hares either in groups or alone are variable. Hares may cover several kilometers while feeding over several hours. During the breeding season, males also make deliberate movements of up to 5 km without feeding. The first visual sign of the onset of breeding is the display of the penis by male hares. In the northern islands, this behavior is commonly seen in late April and early May after the onset of 24 h of daylight. Continual olfactory investigation of females often leads to agonistic encounters in the form of boxing with forepaws. Copulation occurs following persistent sexual chasing and fighting by several males within a group, or after a single male approaches a female away from a group. There is no long-term pair formation. Young Arctic hares are born in June in the open with no shelter, and are visited by the mother for nursing on a precise 18 or 19 h cycle. As young hares grow, they leave the nursing site for short periods, but then group together at the nursing site and huddle for about 1 h before the mother arrives for the next feeding. The time spent huddled together decreases as they grow. Young hares are weaned abruptly in late August, but continue to rest and feed together at least into September. Other than avian predators, such as gyrfalcons and snowy owls, hares are also hunted by wolves and even Arctic foxes will attempt to capture young hares or injured adults. In both Greenland and on Ellesmere Island, archaeological sites have been found where stones and boulders have been placed to form drives for hares. Traditional use of hares, other than as food, includes the use of skins for clothing and rope; the hind feet are used as brushes. With an increase in Arctic tourism, and continued traditional hunting by northerners, the importance of Arctic hares, a highly visible species, is growing. Arctic hares are regularly seen and are a popular feature in Ellesmere Island’s Quttinirpaaq National Park. DAVID R. GRAY

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See also Snowshoe Hare Further Reading Aniskowicz, B. Theresa, Heather Hamilton, David R. Gray & Connie Downes, “Nursing behaviour of arctic hares (Lepus arcticus).”In Canada’s Missing Dimension: Science and History in the Canadian Arctic Islands, edited by C. Richard Harington, Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Nature, 1990 Gray, David R., “Behavioural adaptations to arctic winter; shelter-seeking in the arctic hare (Lepus arcticus).” Arctic, 46 (1993): 340–453 Gray, David R. & Heather Hamilton, “Hare revelations: the bizarre behaviour of the arctic hare.” Nature Canada, 11 (1982): 48–54 Parker, Gerald R., “Morphology, reproduction, diet, and behaviour of the arctic hare (Lepus arcticus monstrabilis) on Axel Heiberg Island, Northwest Territories.” Canadian FieldNaturalist, 91 (1977): 8–18

ARCTIC HAZE Arctic haze is a seasonal atmospheric phenomenon affecting the Arctic, peaking in spring, that originates from pollution sources outside the Arctic. When the sun returns after the long polar night, layers of brownish haze are visible above the colorful horizon. Similar to the well-known air pollution phenomena in areas with process industries and large towns (smog), and the murky dust clouds (brown clouds) seen over large regions of tropical Asia, Arctic haze reduces visibility over polar regions to less than 30 km and contributes to contamination of the Arctic environment. The haze layers consist of small airborne particles and droplets called aerosols. The aerosols are produced both by natural processes like volcanic eruptions and dust storms, and by anthropogenic activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and biomass. Although natural sources of aerosols also contribute to aerosol loading of the atmosphere, Arctic haze is primarily a phenomenon involving the long-range transport of anthropogenic pollutants, particularly sulfate particles. Aerosol particles are transported by winds and atmospheric currents from industrialized areas mainly in Europe and Eurasia to the Arctic. As the winds pass over the chimney plumes of power plants and chemical industries, sulfate aerosols, soot, and other particulate compounds are transported to the Arctic by the large-scale atmospheric circulation. In the Arctic, thousands of kilometers from their source, they have significant effects on climate forcing and represent a source of contamination in Arctic ecosystems and food chains. During winter and spring, the northward transported particles build up within the cold, dry, and stable air mass over the Arctic basin since winter atmospheric

ARCTIC HAZE circulation (semipermanent high pressure) over the Arctic and the lack of solar radiation during the long polar night inhibit removal processes. This is because deposition or washing out of aerosol contamination by precipitation, and the photochemical processes that produce hydroxyl radicals (OH) (that modify the chemical and physical properties of the aerosols) are mainly driven by solar radiation. Aerosol loading of the atmosphere has a significant effect on the regional and global climate by modifying the natural radiation balance of the Earth and atmosphere. The forcing effect works through two different mechanisms. Due to the scattering and absorption properties of the haze particles, they directly influence the amount of solar shortwave radiation that reaches the Earth’s surface and the amount of thermal infrared radiation that is radiated back out through the atmosphere. In addition, the particles may modify the microphysical properties and the amount of clouds, thus indirectly influencing the radiation transfer through the troposphere. However, there are several factors that make estimation of the net climate effect of the aerosols difficult. The radiative effects depend on the chemical composition, size, shape, and spatial distribution, including vertical distribution, of the aerosol layers. The highest concentration of the aerosol layers is found in the lowest few kilometers of the troposphere, but aerosol particles may influence the whole vertical column of the troposphere. The aerosol layers are washed effectively out of the atmosphere by precipitation. All these factors cause a large and inhomogeneous temporal and spatial variation in the tropospheric distribution of aerosols, and the radiative effects are therefore regional and patchy. Both natural and anthropogenic sources contribute to the atmospheric content of aerosols. Soil dust is the major natural contributor to atmospheric aerosol loading in the tropics and subtropical regions. However, since the effectiveness of this aerosol source depends on the frequency of strong surface winds as well as the level of human disturbance of the soil, this source of atmospheric aerosols is certainly also modified by anthropogenic activities. This is also true for marine areas such as the Arctic, where sea salt aerosols can be the main contributor to cloud formation and properties as well as the direct scattering of light. This process also depends on the frequency of strong surface winds and is affected indirectly by the anthropogenic forcing of climate through the abundance of strong winds and the fraction of exposed water surfaces, which is believed to increase as the Arctic sea-ice diminishes. Volcanoes also emit a large amount of dust particles and sulfur dioxide (SO2) into the atmosphere. The effect is transient (lasting a few years) and has a significant effect on the upper atmosphere and lower

stratosphere. An important biogenic aerosol source is that formed by plant debris, humic matter, and microbial particles such as algae and pollen, viruses, and bacteria. These humic aerosols contribute to the absorption of ultraviolet radiation in the atmosphere. It is becoming increasingly evident that Arctic food chains are contaminated with a number of new substances not previously detected in the Arctic. These are transported to the Arctic by atmospheric and ocean currents. Through precipitation, these substances contribute to the toxification and acidification of the pristine Arctic environment. The burning of biomass and fossil fuel also produces a large amount of so-called carbonaceous compounds, which can be divided into organic and black carbon aerosols. Such aerosols are also formed by atmospheric oxidation of biogenic and anthropogenic volatile organic compounds. Carbonaceous particles from traffic, burning of fossil fuels, and process industries are one of the most important anthropogenic sources of aerosols. These particles, together with sulfate aerosols (formed by the chemical transformation of SO2), perfluorocarbons, and pesticides, are a major threat to the acidification and contamination of the Arctic environment. The sulfate aerosols are formed mainly by the photochemical transformation of SO2 from anthropogenic emissions and volcanoes as well as dimethyl sulfide (DMS), a trace sulfur-containing gas produced by marine plankton. Ice cores from Arctic ice sheets have shown a marked increase in Arctic air pollution since the 1950s. Other data show, for example, that the summertime visibility in the eastern United States was worst in the 1970s, which coincided with the period of maximum SO2 emission. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the trend has decreased due to reduced SO2 emission in Europe as well as the economic recession and industrial crisis in Russia, however, the growing industries and weaker emission controls, especially in Asia, may lead to further SO2 emission increases. On the other hand, ice cores from the Antarctic show no trend in SO2 emissions since the primary sources in the Southern Hemisphere are of natural origin. Large uncertainties still exist in the estimation of the regional and global net effects of the aerosols. An important challenge is still to determine the full range of compounds, the chemical properties of the haze particles, and especially how they are transformed, filtered out, and transported into the environment and food chains. The general state of knowledge indicates that most aerosol compounds (sulfate, biomass-burning aerosols, and fossil fuel organic carbon) induce a cooling effect on the climate system due to increased scattering of sunlight, except for black carbon (soot) particles, which constitute a small warming potential due to energy absorption. Other aerosols like mineral

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ARCTIC LEADERS’ SUMMIT and atmospheric dust particles are poorly described and add to the overall uncertainty in the total aerosol climate signal. In the Arctic, surface snow and ice also influence the radiation transfer through the atmosphere due to its high reflective properties (albedo). Some experiments indicate that the aerosol forcing signal is negative and even larger in the Arctic spring, that is, representing a significant cooling effect. Changes in the perennial ice cover of the Arctic Ocean will also affect the source of natural sulfate aerosols by DMS production in marine phytoplankton since the ice cover acts as a lid on the source. The Arctic conditions with the high surface albedo and low sun are complicated, and the uncertainties are too high yet to determine long-term trends in Arctic haze as well as the actual impact of the Arctic aerosols on the global and regional climate system. JON BØRRE ØRBÆK See also Albedo; Local and Transboundary Pollution Further Reading AMAP Assessment Report: Arctic Pollution Issues, Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), Oslo, Norway, 1998 Ghan, Steven J., Richard C. Easter, Elaine G. Chapman, Hayder Abdul-Razzak, Yang Zhang, L. Ruby Leung, Niels S. Laulainen, Rick D. Saylor & Rahul A. Zaveri, “A physically based estimate of radiative forcing by anthropogenic sulfate aerosol.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 106(D6) (2001): 5297–5293 Haywood, James & Olivier Boucher, “Estimates of the direct and indirect radiative forcing due to tropospheric aerosols: a review.” Reviews of Geophysics, 38(4) (2000): 513–543 Houghton, J.T. et al. (editors), Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001 Jacobsen, M.C., H.C. Hansson, K.J. Noone & R.J. Charlson,“Organic atmospheric aerosols: review and state of science.” Reviews of Geophysics, 38(2) (2000): 267–294 Rogers, David C., Paul J. DeMott & Sonia M. Kreidenweis, “Airborne measurements of tropospheric ice-nucleating aerosol particles in the Arctic spring.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 106(D14) (2001): 15053–15063

ARCTIC LEADERS’ SUMMIT Arctic Leaders’ Summit III was the last of three top meetings between the Arctic indigenous leaders, and was hosted by the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON) in the capital of the Russian Federation, Moscow, on September 14–16, 1999. The process of cooperation between the Arctic indigenous peoples was formalized at the First Arctic Leaders’ Summit, which took place on June 17–20, 1991 in Hørsholm north of Copenhagen in Denmark.

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This first meeting was hosted by the pan-Inuit organization Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC). The Second Arctic Leaders’ Summit held in Tromsø on January 25–27, 1995 continued this process. The third large indigenous organization in the Arctic, the Saami Council, hosted the second meeting. Prior to the first meeting, Aqqaluk Lynge, then vice-president of the ICC-Greenland, wrote in the ICC magazine Inuit Tusaatat, “With the fall of the Iron Curtain, the end of the Cold War and the many confidence-building-measures taken between the East and the West, we—the inhabitants of the Arctic—necessarily must talk about what we can offer each other to solve our common problems, and what we can offer the rest of the world.” Since 1991, these three Arctic indigenous organizations have participated in the international arena on many occasions, and today they more or less meet on a regular basis in fora such as the meetings within the Arctic Environment Protection Strategy (AEPS), the Arctic Council framework, and the UN Working Group on Indigenous Peoples (WGIP), as well as in the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, established in 2002. Until the establishment of the Permanent Forum, the Arctic Leaders’ Summit process was different from the other fora because the indigenous peoples solely set the agenda themselves. What is important to the nation states is not necessarily of equal importance to the indigenous peoples’ organizations and vice versa. Large differences exist among the Arctic regions and the Arctic indigenous organizations. These differences may be due to cultural, historical, or political reasons. It does not really matter, since the Arctic Leaders’ Summit was not a historical society, but a political forum where participants could discuss present and future matters of common concern. One of the foremost shared concerns has been the Arctic environment. It is of grave necessity to solve the environmental problems and to prevent future harm to the Arctic. However, the Arctic is not a preserve where people cannot develop and natural resources cannot be utilized. Living in the Arctic necessarily implies living in and off nature. On the other hand, this does not mean that alternatives cannot be identified. The future of the Arctic indigenous peoples is closely connected to new economic and business initiatives, not only locally but also regionally. Another common concern in the Arctic is the health of indigenous peoples. The lives of indigenous peoples are closely linked to local resources. This forms the basis of indigenous societies, cultures, economies, and spiritual world. But today it is a well-known fact that the severe health problems are closely linked to the state of the environment. Because the diet of

ARCTIC MID-OCEAN RIDGE indigenous peoples is mainly based on local food, they are severely threatened by environmental contaminants. Many of these contaminants have their origin in the South, are carried to the Arctic, and accumulate in those animals that end their lives as food of the indigenous peoples. At the First Arctic Leaders’ Summit, collective problems such as pollution and exploitation of living and nonliving resources were discussed. Working together requires a common language. Approximately 40 languages are spoken in the Arctic, notwithstanding multiple dialects. English was chosen as the official conference language. English-Russian and Russian-English interpretation was provided in Hørsholm. But according to the interpreters, there was a profound need for an English-Russian dictionary dealing with terminology specially related to the Arctic. As one of the outcomes of the First Arctic Leaders’ Summit, an English-Russian conference dictionary was written. Helvi Nuorgam-Poutasuo, then president of the Saami Council, spoke at the second Arctic Leaders’ Summit about the new situation of the world, stressing that the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 had created new and difficult challenges for indigenous peoples in Russia. Moreover, the creation of a European Union (EU) (which Finland and Sweden joined in 1995 and Norway voted to decline joining in 1994) resulted in Sápmi land’s division by a new border between members of the EU and nonmembers. NuorgamPoutasuo further stressed that cooperation among the ICC, the Saami Council, and the Association of the Indigenous Peoples of the Russian North, Siberia, and Far East has led to positive developments. At the third Arctic Leaders’ Summit, a fourth indigenous organization—the Aleut International Association—participated. The third summit’s theme was The Health of Arctic Indigenous Peoples, with special focus on the North, Siberia, and the Far East of the Russian Federation. This focus was justified by the simple fact that the health and welfare situation in these regions continues to be more endangered than in other places within the Arctic region. Since 1970, mortality rates and the incidence of various diseases as well as traumas have increased several hundred percent. In Arctic Russia, the mortality rate in 1989 for indigenous peoples was 10.4 per thousand, compared to 6.6 per thousand for nonindigenous peoples. At the end of 980, the life expectancy was 54 years for indigenous men and 65 years for indigenous women (among nonindigenous men and women, those numbers were approximately 64 and 75, respectively). In particular, tuberculosis, parasites, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases are common causes of death in Arctic Russia, and many of

these fatal health problems are related to alcohol abuse. Also, infant mortality rates are extremely high among indigenous peoples. The third Arctic Leaders’ Summit was the last of its kind due to limited financial and human resources. MADS FÆGTEBORG See also Aleut International Association; Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC); Lynge, Aqqaluk; Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON); Saami Council Further Reading Fægteborg, Mads, Towards an International Indigenous Arctic Policy (Arctic Leaders’ Summit) (with an English-Russian Conference Dictionary), Copenhagen: Arctic Information, 1993 Fægteborg, Mads & Anna Prakhova, Arctic Leaders’ Summit II (with an English-Russian Arctic Dictionary), Copenhagen: Arctic Information, 1996

ARCTIC MID-OCEAN RIDGE Within the deep basin of the Arctic Ocean, several submarine ridges and plateaus rise above the ocean floor (see the bathymetric map in Arctic Ocean). The largest of these, the Gakkel Ridge, is related to the global system of mid-ocean ridges, formed from the rifting and growth of oceanic crust at a plate tectonic boundary. Exploration of the Arctic Ocean in the 1950s and 1960s by the Russian drifting ice stations and air expeditions led to the discovery of the Lomonosov Ridge in 1951, soon followed by the discovery of two more transoceanic ridges, Gakkel Ridge and the AlphaMendeleev Ridge. While the Lomosonov and Alpha ridges are poorly understood but appear to be of continental origin, the Gakkel Ridge is a true mid-oceanic ridge that forms the most northerly segment of a spreading ridge system that runs from Iceland, Jan Mayen, Mohns Ridge, and Knipovich Ridge, to the Gakkel Ridge. The Gakkel mid-ocean ridge lies about 5 km beneath the Arctic ice cap and open sea, and extends for a length of 1800 km from the Laptev Sea continental shelf to northeast Greenland. The ridge separates the Nansen and Amundsen basins, abyssal plains located at depths of 4000 and 4300 m, respectively. Lomosonov Ridge lies to the east, followed by the Makarov Basin, Alpha-Mendeleev Ridge, then the Canadian Basin, and Chukchi Plateau. The morphology of the Gakkel Ridge is primarily determined by magmatic and tectonic processes at a spreading mid-ocean ridge. However, Gakkel Ridge is the slowest-spreading ridge in the world—less than 1

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ARCTIC OCEAN cm per year, compared to about 6 cm per year for intermediate spreading ridges elsewhere, and the oceanic crust is anomalously thin, less than 3.3 km compared to the more usual 7 km. Along the axis there is a typical deep rift valley, which is up to 4500 m deep, while the rift walls (although asymmetric) have relief up to 2000 m. The rift floor is uneven with evidence of isolated volcanoes up to 2 km in diameter. Dredging has recovered recent basalt lavas in the east and west rift valley and mantle peridotites (but no basalt) in the central 300 km zone. The rift valley is not offset by transform faults, as the spreading rate is perpendicular to the axis. On the top parts of the Gakkel Ridge, sedimentary cover deepens from a thin covering at the axial crest (the youngest) to 300–400 m depth away from the axis. The rift valley has numerous earthquake epicenters at depths of 0–6 km, with the magnitude of earthquakes approximately M=4.5–6. Determining the plate boundaries and transition to the continental margin on the outskirts of the ridge is difficult due to abutment of the end of the Gakkel Ridge with the Laptev Sea continental shelf and the indefinite position of the ridge between Greenland and the Yermak Plateau. Bathymetric contours suggest that, at least along 350 km, the termination of the Gakkel Ridge is situated on the continental margins of Eurasia. Increased sedimentation in the region of this margin and equal distribution of sedimentary cover on the slope has resulted in a smooth, concave surface. In this case, it is impossible to establish the boundaries of the continental shelf. At the other end of the Gakkel Ridge between Spitsbergen and Greenland, where its rift valley reaches a depth of 4300 m, the rift axis shifts 100 km through a series of transform faults over a 50 km segment of ridge to the rift valley of the Knipovich Ridge. Mohns Ridge meets Knipovich Ridge at a highly oblique angle northeast of the Jan Mayen Fracture Zone. Mohns Ridge, also a slow-spreading ridge, has typical ridge features such as a central rift valley 1–2 km lower than the surrounding axial ridge, is seismically active, and has a thin sediment cover that thickens away from the axis. However, it is anomalous, showing spreading centers oblique to the trend of the axis, in en echelon segments of the ridge that might be occupied by transform faults on other ridges. The crustal thickness beneath the ridge is also very low (on average 4 km) compared to typical oceanic crust. VALERY MIT’KO See also Alpha Ridge; Lomonosov Ridge Further Reading Coakley, B.J. & J.R. Cochran, “Gravity evidence of very thin crust at the Gakkel Ridge (Arctic Ocean).” Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 162(1/4) (1998): 81

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Edwards, M.H. et al., “Evidence of recent volcanic activity on the ultra-slow spreading Gakkel Ridge.” Nature, 409 (2001): 808–812 Gorbatskiy, G.V., Physicogeographical Zoning of Arctic. Volume 3, Arctic Basin, Leningrad: Leningrad University Publishing House, 1973 Gramberg, I.S. (editor), Orographic map of Arctic basin. 1:5000000, Helsinki: Karttaneskus, 1995 Jokat, W., O. Ritzmann, M.C. Schmidt-Aursch, S. Drachev & S. Gauger, “Geophysical evidence for reduced melt production on the Arctic ultraslow Gakkel mid-ocean ridge.” Nature, 423 (2003): 962–967 Klingelhöfer, F., L. Géli, L. Matias, N. Steinsland & J. Mohr, “Crustal structure of a super-slow spreading centre: a seismic refraction study of Mohns Ridge, 72° N.” Geophysical Journal International, 141(2) (2000): 509–526 Michael, P.J., C.H. Langmuir, H.J.B. Dick, J.E. Snow, S.L. Goldstein, D.W. Graham, K. Lehnert, G. Kurras, W. Jokat, R. Mühe & H.N. Edmonds, “Magmatic and amagmatic seafloor generation at the ultraslow-spreading Gakkel Ridge, Arctic Ocean.” Nature, 423 (2003): 956–961 Perry, R.K., H.S. Fleming, J.R. Weber, Y. Kristofferson, J.K. Hall, A. Grantz & G.L. Johnson, Bathymetry of the Arctic Ocean; map 1:4,704,075, Washington: Naval Research Laboratory, 1985 Sweeney, J.K, J.R. Weber, & S.M. Blasko, “Continental ridges in the Arctic ocean: Lorex constraints.” Tectonophysics, 89 (1982): 217–238 Weber, J.R., Exploring the Arctic Sea Floor in Selected Lorex Contributions, Ottawa, 1985

ARCTIC OCEAN The Arctic Ocean is unique among oceans in its isolation. All other oceans form part of a single great system centered on the Southern Ocean, while the Arctic, like the Mediterranean Sea, is an almost closed basin with only one deep passage permitting easy exchange of water and heat with its surroundings, the so-called Fram Strait between Svalbard and Greenland. A very narrow passage of lesser depth, the Nares Strait between Greenland and Ellesmere Island, forms a link with Baffin Bay, while all other connections with the Atlantic and Pacific, through the Barents Sea, the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, and Bering Strait, are very shallow.

Bathymetry The Arctic is composed of two deep basins, the Eurasian Basin and the Canadian Basin, each exceeding 4300 m in depth, and separated by a narrow straight ridge called the Lomonosov Ridge, which crosses the Arctic from Siberia to Greenland (see Lomonosov Ridge; Canadian Basin; Amundsen Basin; Nansen Basin). Depths along the ridge crest are typically 1000 m; a shallow peak at 610 m was discovered in 1994. The Lomonosov Ridge is not a spreading center where new crust is being created; instead it is thought to be a narrow strip of former continental crust that split off the edge of Siberia when

ARCTIC OCEAN the Eurasian Basin opened some 100 million years ago. The true spreading center, the Gakkel Ridge or Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge, lies along the axis of the Eurasian Basin and is much deeper than the Lomonosov Ridge, dividing the Eurasian Basin into the Nansen Basin to its south and the deeper Amundsen Basin to its north (see Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge). In the Canadian Basin, there is a complex bottom topography, with the Alpha Ridge (a convoluted

plateau region) possibly representing an ancient spreading center from a much earlier period of geological history (see Alpha Ridge). An important feature of the Arctic Ocean is its wide continental shelves. About one-third of the ocean area is taken up by shelf seas, of typical depth 100 m or less, and with the widest fringing the north of Russia. The East Siberian Shelf is the widest continental shelf in the world, with water less than 50 m deep extending

Figure 1: Bathymetry of the Arctic Ocean. Adapted from the International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean (IBCAO), Jakobsson, M., N.Z. Cherkis, J. Woodward, R. Macnab & B. Coakley, “New grid of Arctic bathymetry aids scientists and mapmakers.” EOS, Transactions, American Geophysical Union, 81(9): 89, 93, 96

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Figure 2: Typical Arctic Ocean salinity and temperature profiles. After Aagaard and Carmack, 1989

out 600 km from shore. Groups of islands divide the Russian shelves into separate seas—the Chukchi, East Siberian, Laptev, Kara, and Barents, moving from east to west (each of these have their own Encyclopedia entry). The result is that the Arctic Ocean as a whole has the least mean depth (1800 m) of any ocean. The outer edges of the shelves are marked by deep canyons or troughs, which are important in providing routes for newly produced dense water in winter to run off the shelves into the deep basin. Figure 1 shows some important canyons—St Anna and Voronin Troughs in the Kara Sea, Barrow Canyon off Alaska, and Herald Canyon in the Chukchi Sea.

Water Structure The water mass structure of the Arctic Ocean (Figure 2) is a three-layer system. The uppermost layer is called polar surface water. It is up to 200 m thick, is at or near the freezing point, and has a very low surface salinity of 27–34 psu, compared to 35 psu as an average for the world ocean. The low salinity is caused by the very large influx of fresh water from huge river systems such as the Ob’, Lena, Yenisey, and Mackenzie which drain vast areas of Asia and North America. Figure 3 shows the annual average freshwa-

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ter fluxes from these rivers, and also shows the watersheds of rivers draining into the Arctic and into Baffin Bay (dashed line); the Arctic drainage basin includes about half of the Asian continent. Figure 4 shows how surface salinity varies over the Arctic, with the lowest values found near the mouths of the great rivers. The river discharge mixes with sea water over the shallow continental shelves and is then able to spread over the central Arctic Ocean as a surface layer. Only in early winter does this situation change, when the formation of new sea ice over the shelves causes the water there to increase in density due to salt rejection; it can then run down into some deeper level of the Arctic Ocean via the canyons, a process known as shelf-slope convection. Figure 2 shows that the depth at which the temperature rapidly increases, the thermocline, does not coincide with the depth at which the salinity rapidly increases, the halocline. Part of the Arctic Ocean, mainly the Beaufort Sea region, is called the cold halocline zone, since the deeper part of the surface water layer, at 150–200 m, remains cold but already has a salinity that is rising toward its deep water value (e.g., profile 2; see Cold Halocline). In the Eurasian Basin and Greenland Sea, the temperature and salinity rise nearly together (e.g., profile 5). The reason is that in the Beaufort Sea the surface water characteristics are affected by an inflow from Bering Strait of cold, highsalinity water, which enters the Arctic Basin at a depth of 150–200 m as it comes off the Chukchi and Alaskan shelves. The influence of this water extends almost to the Lomonosov Ridge. In recent years there is evidence that the cold halocline has retreated far back into the Beaufort Sea (Steele and Boyd, 1998), indicating either a diminution of the range of influence of Bering Sea water as opposed to water of Atlantic origin, or a reduction in the influence of Siberian river water due to a change in its surface circulation pattern (Martinson and Steele, 2001). Since the cold halocline acts as a barrier to upward heat transport, its retreat should result in higher ocean heat fluxes and thus an increased melt rate of sea ice in the Arctic—and there is certainly evidence that the ice has become substantially thinner in recent years (Rothrock et al., 1999; Wadhams and Davis, 2000). Below the polar surface water lies the Atlantic water layer, which is remarkably warm (1–3°C) and saline (about 35 psu; see Atlantic Layer). Part of the water enters the Arctic through Fram Strait (Figures 5 and 7), where the warm North Atlantic Current (a continuation of the Gulf Stream) runs up the west side of Spitsbergen as the West Spitsbergen Current and then sinks as it encounters the less dense polar surface water and spreads around the Arctic at mid-depths. This current follows the shelf break and skirts the

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Figure 3: Annual average freshwater fluxes into the Arctic Basin from major rivers. The Arctic Ocean drainage basin is outlined in black and the Baffin Bay drainage basin in a dashed line. After Macdonald, 2000

western edge of the Barents Sea as it moves north. The rest of the water is from the same source, but enters the Arctic Ocean further to the east via the St Anna and Voronin troughs, having crossed the Barents Sea. From about 800 m to the bottom, the water temperature drops below 0°C again and continues to slowly decrease with increasing depth. This lower water mass is called Arctic Ocean Deep Water. It is again of Atlantic origin, but suffers much modification in its very sluggish circulation around the basin (Rudels, 1995). Because of the sill depth of the Lomonosov Ridge, the deep water of the Eurasian Basin is slightly

different in characteristics from that of the Canada Basin, and also from the deep water of the Greenland Sea, although it is capable of mixing with the latter via Fram Strait.

Currents in the Arctic Ocean The motions of ice and surface water in an ice-covered ocean are similar when averaged over long periods. The surface current system in the Arctic shown in Figure 5 therefore applies both to ice and water. It is largely wind-driven and consists of an anticyclonic (clockwise) gyre in the Canadian Basin, the Beaufort

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ARCTIC OCEAN

Figure 4: Variation of surface salinity (psu) over the Arctic Ocean.

Gyre, and a motion of translation, the Transpolar Drift Stream, in the Eurasian Basin (see Beaufort Gyre; Transpolar Drift). Ice in the Beaufort Gyre requires 7–10 years for a complete circuit. The Transpolar Drift Stream collects ice and water from the Eurasian shelves and transports it across the Pole and down toward Fram Strait, requiring about three years for this drift. The Drift Stream is renamed the East Greenland Current after it passes through Fram Strait and enters the Greenland Sea. This is the route for most of the ice that leaves the Arctic Basin, and so it is through Fram Strait that most water and heat exchange occur between the Arctic Ocean and the rest of the world ocean. Much of the heat exchange occurs in the form of latent heat transported northward as the ice moves southward. The whaling captain and Arctic scientist William Scoresby first postulated the existence of this transpolar current because of his observations of great masses of old ice passing into the Greenland Sea from the Arctic Basin. However, it was Fridtjof Nansen who put the idea to the test by freezing his specially constructed ship Fram into the ice off the New Siberian Islands in 1893, hoping to drift across the Pole. The ship missed the Pole, but in 1896 emerged in what is now known as Fram Strait. Nansen was inspired to carry out this drift by the discovery off south Greenland of wreckage from the exploration ship Jeanette, which had been crushed in the ice off Wrangel Island north of Siberia. The wind system that drives this flow arises from the presence of the polar high over the center of the Beaufort Sea, with a ridge extending over Greenland. Figure 6b shows the long-term average pressure field

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that prevailed over the Arctic Ocean from the 1960s to the 1980s, generated by averaging the air pressures measured by the drifting satellite-tracked buoys that have been deployed by the Arctic Ocean Buoy Program (now known as the International Arctic Buoy Programme). The map shows a high-pressure center over the Beaufort Sea, at about 80° N 140° W, with a ridge of high pressure extending over the high, intensely cold ice sheet of northern Greenland. A rule of thumb for ice drift in unconstrained conditions, developed independently by Nansen and Zubov and thus known as the Nansen Rule or the Zubov Law, is that ice moves parallel to the isobars of a surface pressure field. Thus, the pressure distribution of Figure 6b should give rise to a clockwise circulation of ice in the Beaufort Sea, and a current on the Eurasian side of the Arctic that moves ice from the seas north of Russia across the North Pole and down toward the entrance to the Greenland Sea. This is just what was observed during this era. An extra, but minor, contribution to this circulation comes from the effect of the Earth’s rotation on the surface water of the Arctic Basin. The water forms a low-density surface lens that tries to slump outward (i.e., southward) under centrifugal force, but is turned to the right by Coriolis force to give a clockwise rotation, which is then split by the presence of Greenland into a clockwise gyre and a motion of translation, enhancing the pattern of Figure 5 (Wadhams et al., 1979). During the 1990s, this pattern of air pressure changed, and now resembles that of Figure 6a (with Figure 6c showing the difference field between the two). This is having profound effects on Arctic surface circulation, since the Beaufort Gyre is reduced in scope and squashed against the coast of northeast Siberia, while water from Siberian rivers now makes a longer loop around the Arctic (shown especially by Figure 6c) before emerging from Fram Strait. This may account for the lower surface salinity in the Eurasian Basin, one cause of the destruction of the cold halocline in this region. The switch from one pattern of atmospheric circulation to another appears to be a basic property of the Arctic atmosphere, and has been called the Arctic Oscillation (Thompson and Wallace, 1998), with Figure 6a and b being termed the “cyclonic” and “anticyclonic” patterns (Proshutinsky and Johnson, 1997). This new idea of a switch between two modes ascribes our “traditional” view of the Arctic circulation (Figure 5) to the fact that the circulation happened to remain mainly in the anticyclonic pattern during the critical years of the 1950s–1980s when basic research on Arctic currents was first being done thoroughly. Other current systems cannot carry much water to or from the basin because they occur in shallow water.

ARCTIC OCEAN

Figure 5: Long-term average pattern of ice and surface water circulation of the Arctic in its “anticyclonic” mode.

There is a net influx of about 1 Sv through Bering Strait, and in the Canadian Archipelago a net eastward flux of water from the Beaufort Sea toward Baffin Bay. This is mainly driven by the pressure head between the Pacific Ocean (which stands higher) and the Atlantic. In Baffin Bay itself, a northward current, the West Greenland Current, carries cold water and

icebergs up the western side of Greenland, translating into the southward flowing Baffin Island Current down the east coast of Baffin Island, with an addition of polar water out of the Arctic Basin brought by a southward current through the very narrow but deep Nares Strait. The Baffin Island Current in turn passes its ice or iceberg burden on to the cold Labrador Current

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ARCTIC OCEAN

Figure 6: Average pressure fields over the Arctic, corresponding to (a) cyclonic mode and (b) anticyclonic mode of atmospheric circulation. (c) is the difference field. After Kwok and Rothrock, 1999

which carries it down as far as the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, where the cold water has a sharp front with the warm water of the Gulf Stream. Intermediate and deep currents in the Arctic Basin are difficult to measure and appear to be different in sense from the surface currents. Figure 7 shows present speculation about their nature (Aagaard and Carmack,

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1994; Rudels, 1995). The West Spitsbergen Current branch of the warm Atlantic water sinks northwest of Svalbard, and part of the water turns west and recirculates back through Fram Strait as a lower part of the East Greenland Current. The rest turns eastward and follows the northern edge of the Siberian shelf, joined by the Barents Sea branch of the Atlantic water, until it

ARCTIC OCEAN HYDROGRAPHICAL EXPEDITION, 1909–1915 See also Amundsen Basin; Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge; Atlantic Layer; Beaufort Gyre; Canadian Basin; Cold Halocline; Nansen Basin; Oceanography; Salinity Anomalies; Thermohaline Circulation

Further Reading

Figure 7: Speculative view of intermediate and deep circulation in the Arctic. After Aagaard and Carmack, 1994

reaches the beginning of the Lomonosov Ridge at the edge of the Laptev Sea. Here much of the water turns northward and follows the near side (i.e., European side) of the Lomonosov Ridge, ending north of Greenland where it joins the lower part of the Trans Polar Drift—East Greenland Current system. The rest of the water crosses the Lomonosov Ridge and continues to follow the shelf break until it is joined by water of Bering Strait origin; the combined water masses continue eastward around the edge of the Beaufort Sea shelf, joining the other water mass north of Greenland. The mixing of water masses in the Beaufort Sea causes subsurface eddies to form in this region, as shown in the diagram. The two basic aspects of the picture are the net flow from the Pacific to the Atlantic and the eventual recirculation back into the Atlantic of Atlantic water entering the Arctic from the North Atlantic Current—subject, however, to many modifications and vicissitudes en route around the Arctic Basin. Present predictions of climate change models are that the Arctic Ocean should experience a much greater rate of warming than low-latitude oceans. An early consequence will be the disappearance of sea ice in winter from the northern Barents Sea. By the 2080s, the Arctic Ocean may be ice-free in summer, becoming a seasonal ice zone like the Antarctic is at present, with enormous consequences for ecology, transport, and resource extraction. PETER WADHAMS

Aagaard, K. & E.C. Carmack, “The role of sea ice and other fresh water in the arctic circulation.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 94(C10) (1989): 14485–14498 ———, “The Arctic Ocean and Climate: A Perspective.” In The Polar Oceans and Their Role in Shaping the Global Environment, edited by O.M. Johannessen, R.D. Muench & J.E. Overland, Geophysics Monograph Series 85, Washington: American Geophysical Union, 1994, pp. 5–20. Kwok, R. & D.A. Rothrock, “Variability of Fram Strait ice flux and North Atlantic Oscillation.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 104(C3) (1999): 5177–5189 Macdonald, R.W., “Arctic Estuaries and Ice: A PositiveNegative Estuarine Couple.” In The Freshwater Budget of the Arctic Ocean, edited by E.L. Lewis, E.P. Jones, P. Lemke, T.D. Prowse & P. Wadhams, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000, pp. 383–408 Martinson, D.G. & M. Steele, “Future of the Arctic sea ice cover: implications of an Antarctic analog.” Geophysical Research Letters, 28 (2001): 307–310 Proshutinsky, A. & M. Johnson,. “Two circulation regimes of the wind-driven Arctic Ocean.” Journal of Geophyical Research, 102(C6) (1997): 12493–12514 Rothrock, D.A., Y. Yu & G.A. Maykut, “Thinning of the Arctic sea-ice cover.” Geophysical Research Letters, 26(23) (1999): 3469–3472 Rudels, B., “The thermohaline circulation of the Arctic Ocean and the Greenland Sea.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, A352 (1995): 287–299 Steele, M. & T. Boyd, “Retreat of the cold halocline in the Arctic Ocean.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 103(C5) (1998): 10419–10435 Thompson, D.W.J. & J.M. Wallace, “The Arctic Oscillation signature in the wintertime geopotential height and temperature fields.” Geophysical Research Letters, 25(1998): 1297–1300 Wadhams, P. & N.R. Davis, “Further evidence of ice thinning in the Arctic Ocean.” Geophysical Research Letters, 27(24) (2000): 3973–3975 Wadhams, P., A.E. Gill & P.F. Linden, “Transect by submarine of the East Greenland Polar Front.” Deep-Sea Research, A26(12) (1979): 1311–1328

ARCTIC OCEAN HYDROGRAPHICAL EXPEDITION, 1909–1915 In the early 20th century, especially after Russia’s defeat in the Russian-Japan war of 1904–1905, Russia saw an urgent need to investigate the North East Passage or Northern Sea Route as a transport route between the Atlantic and Pacific. In 1906, the Russian Sea Minister Admiral Aleksei Alekseevich Birilev ordered the creation of a special commission of the Navy’s Hydrographical Department to investigate the Arctic Ocean. Admiral Vladimir P. Verkhovsky headed

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ARCTIC OCEAN HYDROGRAPHICAL EXPEDITION, 1909–1915 this commission. The head of the Hydrographic Directorate Andrei Ippolitovich Vil’kitskii, oceanography professor Yuri M. Shokalsky, shipbuilding professor Alexei Nikolaevich Krylov, Alexander von Bunge, and other polar explorers also took part in its sessions. On August 31, 1909, the Arctic Ocean Hydrographical Expedition (AOHE) was established and Colonel Ivan S. Sergeyev was appointed its head. The main aims were surveying of the Arctic coast of Russia with the creation of new navigation maps, discovering and sounding of places suitable for mooring, and carrying out of oceanographic, biological, and meteorological observations. On October 28, 1909, the two icebreakers Taimyr and Vaigach left Kronstadt near St Petersburg and sailed to Vladivostok via the Atlantic Ocean, Suez Canal, Indian Ocean, and Pacific Ocean. On July 3, 1910, the ships entered Vladivostok’s port, in time for a brief trip into the Chukchi Sea and the Bering Strait. Here they were blocked by heavy ice and returned to Vladivostok for winter. From 1910 –to 1913, the expedition made surveys out of Vladivostok further and further west into the Arctic Seas, each time returning east to winter at Vladivostok (Table 1). Every year new navigation maps were published as a result of the voyages (e.g., the first detailed survey of Wrangel Island in 1911). The main geographical discovery of AOHE in 1913, under Boris Andreevich Vil’kitskii (son of A.I. Vil’kitskii) as the head of the expedition, was Severnaya Zemlya (Northern Land). On August 21 (September 3), the hitherto unknown mountainous land was noticed from both ships simultaneously. On landing the next day, the crews erected the Russian State flag and named it “Emperor Nickolas II’s Land” (since 1926, Severnaya Zemlya). Besides this archipelago, the members of AOHE uncovered some large islands in the Laptev Sea (Maly Taimyr and Starokadomsky’s Island) and in the East Siberian Sea (Vilkitskiisland) in 1913. During the topographical and navigation surveys from 1910 to 1912, the two ships kept close to each other and communicated by radio telegraphy. In 1912, the rock collection gathered by Baron Edward von Toll with companions in 1902 was taken from Bennett Island in the New Siberian Islands. A monument in honor of the dead members of the 1900–1902 Russian Polar Expedition was constructed. During the 1914 expedition, the small Zhokhov’s Island in the De Long Archipelago was discovered. The main aim of this expedition was to pass through the Northern Sea Route from east to west. But heavy ice prevented the ships from completing their task. In the autumn of 1914, the ships became stuck fast in the ice and were forced to winter in Toll’s bay

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(Northern Taymyr) at a distance of 15 miles from each other. The expedition was not well prepared for this overwintering. Air temperature in the inhabited apartments was less than 7°C and, due to the lack of provisions, scurvy was common. In March and April of 1915, lieutenant Aleksey N. Zhokhov and stoker Ivan E. Ladonichev died and were buried on Mogilny’s Cape. In spite of the severe living conditions during the wintering in the ice, meteorological and oceanographic measurements continued to be carried out. The officers made a topographic map of the shore, tying it to the topographic survey made earlier by von Toll. N.I. Evgenov made meteorological observations. The ship’s doctors Leonid M. Starokadomsky and Eduard A. Arngold investigated the marine fauna and made a large collection of Arctic sea animals. Simultaneously with AOHE’s ships, the schooner Eclipse had stopped for overwintering near Vild’s Cape. Otto Sverdrup (the famous Norwegian sailor who was in the crew of Fram in 1893–1896 and 1898–1902) was captain of this ship. The Russian Government had hired Eclipse in 1914 to search for three polar expeditions headed by Vladimir Rusanov, Georgy Brusilov, and Georgy Sedov, which had left Russia in 1912 and been lost without any news. The two AOHE icebreakers got in touch with Eclipse by radio. With the help of Sverdrup as a relay, Vil’kitskii got in touch with St Petersburg by radio and reported on the expedition’s situation, and about his plan to get the weakest and sick sailors from the ships to the Gol’chikha settlement to prevent exposing them to a second overwintering. To help the expedition, the Russian Sea Ministry sent the polar hunter Nikifor A. Begichev (who was boatsman of the schooner Zarya during the Russian Polar Expedition, 1900–1902). Sverdrup (who was then 63 years old) skied to Taimyr to get the sick sailors to the Eclipse. They lived on the schooner till the middle of July, when Begichev could reach Eclipse by reindeer. Begichev took the sailors to Enissey. During the period on the Eclipse, stoker Georgy Mjachin died and was buried on Vild’s Cape. On July 26, 1915, the icebreakers, and on August 11, Eclipse became free from the ice and sailed west. They visited Dixon Island and the new polar station, where they took coal on board from a depot. Then Vaigach went to Gol’chikha and took the group of sick sailors back on board. On September 3 (16), all ships came to Arkhangel’sk, having passed by the Northern Sea Route from the east for the first time in navigational history. In March 1915, the Russian Geographical Society rewarded Vil’kitskii with the Large Konstantin Gold Medal, and in 1926 the Swedish Society of Anthropology and Ethnography rewarded him with

ARCTIC PEOPLES’ CONFERENCE Arctic Ocean Hydrographical Expedition results, 1910–1915 Year

Period of navigation

Taimyr commander

Vaygach commander

Region explored

1910 1911

August 17–October 20 July 22–October 15

B.V. Davydov B.V. Davydov

?.V. Kolchak ?.V. Loman

1912

May 31–October 10

B.V. Davydov

?.V. Loman

1913

June 26–November 12

B.A.Vil’kitskii

P.A. Novopashenny

1914

June 24–September 5 (wintering) July 26–September 3

B.A. Vil’kitskii

P.A. Novopashenny

Chukotka Peninsula, Bering’s Sea Bering’s Strait—Kolyma River mouth, Wrangel Island Kolyma River mouth—Lena River mouth, Lyakhov’s Islands Northern parts of East Siberian Sea and Laptev Sea, Severnaya Zemlya, New Siberian Islands Northern Taymyr (wintering in Toll’s Bay)

B.A. Vil’kitskii

P.A. Novopashenny

Taimyr—Yugorsky Shar—Arkhangel’sk

1915

the Vega Gold Medal for his valuable contribution to geographical exploration. In November 1915, all members of AOHE were rewarded with orders and gold and silver medals for diligence. During the AOHE, an enormous amount of mapping and descriptions of the Arctic shores were carried out, and 26 map positions were determined by astronomic measurements in the most inaccessible places. It was the largest and most successful Russian polar expedition before the Revolution. The scientists who took part (hydrographers Boris V. Davydov, Konstantin K. Neupokoev, Aleksey M. Lavrov, Nikolay I. Evgenov, and others) laid the foundations for later Soviet hydrographic work in the Arctic. World War 1 interrupted the work of AOHE and on October 1, 1915, AOHE was broken up. FEDOR ROMANENKO See also Kolchak, Alexander; North East Passage, Exploration of; Vil’kitskii, Boris Andreevich Further Reading Bor’ba za skvoznoy arktichesky put’ iz Atlanticheskogo okeana v Tikhiy. Gidrographycheskaya ekspeditsiya Severnogo Ledovitogo Okeana (1910–1915) [Fight for the through passage from Atlantic to Pacific Ocean. Arctic Ocean Hydrographical Expedition (1910–1915)]. In Istoriya otkrytiya i osvoeniya Severnogo Morskogo Puti [History of Discovery and Development of the Northern Sea Route], edited by Ya.Ya. Gakkel’ & M.B. Chernenko, Volume II, Chapter 19, Moscow: Morskoi transport, 1962 Evgenov, N.I. & V.N. Kupetsky, Nauchnye rezul’taty polyarnoy ekspeditsii na ledokolakh ““Taymyr” i ““Vaygach” v 1910–1915 godakh [Scientific Results of Polar Expedition on the Ice-Breakers ““Taymyr” and ““Vaygach” in 1910–1915], Leningrad: Izd-vo “Nauka,” 1985 (in Russian) “Russian hydrographical expedition to Arctic ocean.” Scottish Geographical Magazine, 1914: 87–90 Starokadomsky, L.M., “Vilkitsky’s North-East Passage, 1914–1915.” Geographical Journal, 54(6) (1919): 367–375

———, Charting the Russian Northern Sea route: the Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition 1910–1915, edited and translated by William Barr, Montreal: Arctic Institute of North America, 1976 Transehe, N.A., “The Siberian Sea Road: the work of the Russian Hydrographical Expedition to the Arctic 1910–1915.” Geographical Review, 15 (1925): 392

ARCTIC PEOPLES’ CONFERENCE On November 22–25, 1973, representatives of the Arctic Peoples of Canada (Inuit, Indians, Métis, and NonStatus Indians), Greenland (Greenlandic Inuit), and Europe (the Saami) met at an international conference. This was the first time Arctic indigenous peoples organized a conference by themselves and for themselves. The initiative was taken by James Wah-Shee, the president of the Federation of Natives North of 60° and the Indian Brotherhood of the Northwest Territories, together with Joe Jacqueot, vice-president of the Federation of Natives North of 60°, who represented Métis and NonStatus Indians in Northern Canada. Jacqueot and WahShee traveled to Denmark to discuss the idea of an Arctic Peoples’ Conference with the Greenlanders living in Copenhagen. Next, Robert Petersen, assistant professor of the Department of Eskimology at the University of Copenhagen, together with Angmalortoq Olsen, president of the Greenlanders’ Association in Denmark, sent out the invitations to Arctic Peoples in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. The conference was organized by Petersen and his colleague Helge Kleivan at the University of Copenhagen. To express its understanding of the importance of the conference, the Danish Government provided Christiansborg, the Danish Parliament building, as a venue. The Canadian delegation included representatives from the Federation of Natives North of 60°, the Inuit

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ARCTIC PILOT PROJECT Tapirisat of Canada (ITC, now Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami), the Committee of Original Peoples Entitlement, the Indian Brotherhood of Northwest Territories, the Yukon Native Brotherhood, the Yukon Association of Non-Status Indians, and the Métis and Non-Status Association of the Northwest Territories. The Saami people were represented by the Nordic Saami Council, the Nordic Saami Institute, as well as by organizations from each of the Scandinavian countries: the Saami Association of Norway, the Reindeer Breeders’Association of Norway, the Saami Association of Sweden, and the Saami Parliament of Finland. Greenlandic Inuit were represented by the Provincial Council of Greenland as well as three trade organizations: the Workers’ Union, the Fishermens and Hunters’ Association, and the Sheep Farmers Association. The organization for women in Greenland, Arnat Peqatigiit, was also invited. The Greenlanders living in Denmark were represented by two organizations: the Greenlanders’ Association (Peqatigiit Kalaallit) and the Young Greenlanders’ Association. Two resolutions concluded the conference. The first described the need to support and nurture indigenous cultures and their unique features, through recognition of collective ownership of land and waters traditionally used and occupied and through recognition of indigenous rights by the respective governments. A second resolution proposed to form a circumpolar body of indigenous peoples to pursue collective interests. A working committee was established to pursue this second resolution. The committee did not succeed in organizing a new conference. The initiative was not, however, lost. In October 1975, the First World Council of Indigenous Peoples was held in Port Alberta, Canada, and in June 1977 the First Inuit Circumpolar Conference was held at Barrow, Alaska. This second conference followed up the Arctic Peoples’ Conference focus on the culture shared by Inuit and other Arctic peoples. GRO WEEN Further Reading Elis, Wendy (editor), Minutes of the First International Arctic Peoples’ Conference, Christiansborg, Copenhagen, Denmark, November 22–25, 1973, Ottawa: Inuit Tapirisat of Canada Kleivan, Inge, “The Arctic Peoples’ Conference in Copenhagen, November 22–25, 1973.” Études/Inuit/Studies, 16(1–2) (1992): 227–236

ARCTIC PILOT PROJECT The Arctic Pilot Project was a proposal to ship natural gas from the Canadian High Arctic to southern markets using ice-breaking tankers. The project was

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conceived in 1976 by Petro-Canada as a way to stimulate frontier exploration and to increase Canadian energy supplies. The project was proposed formally in 1979 by a consortium comprising Petro-Canada Exploration Inc., as project manager and principal shareholder, Dome Petroleum Ltd., Nova, an Alberta corporation (formerly Alberta Gas Trunk Line Co. Ltd.), and Melville Shipping Ltd. The gas production facilities associated with the Arctic Pilot Project were to be owned and operated by Pan-Arctic Oils Ltd., while TransCanada Pipelines Ltd. was to be responsible for the southern regasification terminal. For economic reasons, the project did not proceed. The plan called for the production of natural gas from the Drake Point gas field, on the eastern side of Sabine Peninsula, Melville Island (76°21′ N 108°26′ W), and its transportation south across Melville Island by a buried pipeline to a shipping terminal at Bridport Inlet, on the south coast of the island and adjacent to Viscount Melville Sound. Here the gas was to be liquefied and shipped in ice-breaking tankers easterly through Parry Channel, across Baffin Bay, and through Davies Strait to a receiving terminal in Atlantic Canada. The liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers were expected to travel year-round, through the pack ice of the Eastern Arctic waters, transporting an average of 6.4 million cubic meters of gas per day (6.4 × 106 m3/day of natural gas). Completion of the project was expected to take almost six years, and to be operational for about 20 years. The estimated cost of the Arctic Pilot Project was $1.5–2 billion. The gas production facilities were to consist of two clusters of four wells each, with gathering lines, gas dehydration and chilling plants, accommodation, workshop and storage buildings, access roads, and an airstrip. The gas was to be chilled to a maximum temperature of −6°C; this would prevent warm gas from thawing the permafrost near the pipeline. The pipeline from Drake Point to Bridport Inlet was to be approximately 160 km long, 0.56 m in diameter, and buried in permafrost, just below the base of the active layer. According to the plan, the gas would be liquefied and stored at Bridport Inlet for shipment south. The gas liquefaction plant and LNG storage facilities were to be built in the south and mounted on three barges. These would have been towed to Bridport Inlet and grounded on gravel pads behind dewatered, protective rock berms on the outer part of the Meacham River delta. Dewatering of the basins was essential to eliminate problems of changing draft as the storage tanks were filled and emptied. To liquefy the natural gas, it would be compressed and cooled to −162°C; 600 m3 of natural gas would yield 1 m3 of LNG, and each storage barge would hold up to 800,000 m3 of LNG. The plant and storage barges would be linked to the pipeline

ARCTIC RESEARCH CONSORTIUM OF THE UNITED STATES (ARCUS) along a causeway; the LNG tankers would berth along the outer face of the berms at a caisson-supported dock. In winter, warm water from the plant (at +8.5°C) would circulate around the docking area to keep ice growth to less than 1 m and so assist in berthing the vessels. Other facilities at Bridport Inlet were to comprise camp, workshop and storage buildings, access roads, and an airstrip. Pipeline repair equipment and supplies would also be held at this location. Two Arctic Class 7 ice-breaking LNG tankers, each making about 15 round trips per year, would have completed the Arctic Pilot Project. Each was to be 470 m long by 43 m wide and capable of carrying 140,000 m3 of LNG in six tanks. The ships would draw 11.5 in open water and 13 m in ice and would be powered by gas turbine engines, fueled by the “boil-off” of natural gas from the LNG cargo. This project was always intended as a pilot project, and was designed at minimum scale, to demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of delivering natural gas from the Arctic Islands to southern markets by ship. The Arctic Pilot Project was sized at about one-tenth the scale of any alternative proposal for the delivery of Arctic natural gas. The northern component of the project was subject to an environmental and socioeconomic impact assessment by a panel from the Canadian Federal Environmental and Review Office, Environment Canada. The panel, which reported in October 1980, concluded that the proposal was environmentally acceptable, subject to certain conditions. The panel’s major concerns related to the shipping component of the project, particularly in the environmentally sensitive area of Lancaster Sound. The panel recommended that a control authority be established by the Minister of Transport to monitor, assist, and regulate ship movements within the environmentally sensitive area. The panel also called for the creation of an advisory committee with representatives from the proponent, the Inuit, and other government agencies to recommend and approve biological studies for guidance in the selection of possible shipping routes. The environmental hearings for the northern component of the project were to have been followed by regulatory hearings before the National Energy Board of Canada and by an environmental and socioeconomic impact assessment of the southern component, the regasification terminal. As the environmental hearings for the northern component proceeded, however, the price of natural gas dropped and the project proponents withdrew the project from the regulatory process. As a result, detailed design of the LNG carriers, in terms of hull shape, ice-breaking bow design, LNG containment systems, etc., were not completed. Similarly, no details for the design and construction of

the southern regasification terminal were ever developed. J.A. HEGINBOTTOM See also Gas Exploration; High Arctic; Lancaster Sound Further Reading Canada, Federal Environmental Assessment Review Office, Arctic Pilot Project (Northern Component): Report of the Environmental Assessment Panel, Ottawa: Environment Canada, Environmental Assessment Panel Report No. 14; available from the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, Environment Canada, Ottawa, Canada K1A 0H3, 1980

ARCTIC RESEARCH CONSORTIUM OF THE UNITED STATES (ARCUS) The Arctic Research Consortium of the United States (ARCUS) was formed in 1988 to identify and bring together the distributed human and material resources of the country’s Arctic research community in order to create a synergy for Arctic research to enable the community to rise to the many challenges facing the region and the United States. ARCUS is a nonprofit corporation consisting of institutions organized and operated for educational, professional, or scientific purposes associated with Arctic research or related fields. The representatives of member institutions constitute the Council of ARCUS and elect the Board of Directors. The purpose of ARCUS is to provide leadership in advancing knowledge and understanding of the Arctic by: 1. serving as a forum for planning, facilitating, coordinating, and implementing disciplinary and interdisciplinary studies of the Arctic; 2. acting as a synthesizer and disseminator of scientific information relevant to state, national, and international programs of Arctic research; and 3. encouraging and facilitating the education of scientists and the public in the needs and opportunities of research in the Arctic. Initially, the consortium focused on the role of the Arctic in global change and the requirements for a national Arctic education program. These two areas are inherently complementary and both serve to unite the community because they cut across the disciplines of Arctic science. They also provided a mechanism to determine the areas of relative strengths and weaknesses within the Arctic research community. From this starting point, ARCUS has been instrumental in facilitating planning processes in several areas of Arctic research, organizing workshops, producing

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ARCTIC RESEARCH AND POLICY ACT numerous reports and recommendations, publishing a regular newsletter, Witness the Arctic, and maintaining a moderated web-based mailing list of news and announcements called ArcticInfo. At present, ARCUS runs, on behalf of the National Science Foundation, the steering committee for the Arctic System Science Program (ARCSS). The organization has three primary long-term goals: 1. To produce identifiable improvements in United States Arctic science. The importance of the Arctic, nationally and internationally, requires developing a consensus among the Arctic research community on pertinent issues and research needs, the transfer and application of cold regions research and technology, increased levels of funding for Arctic science, and improvements in the level of cooperation between the United States and international Arctic research institutions and industries. 2. To build Arctic research communities of scientists and scholars in the United States. New and highly qualified scientists and engineers must be educated and trained in the critical skills required to address the strategic problems of the Arctic. In addition, the need for an expanded social science research program on Arctic topics will require a well-organized and cohesive community of social and behavioral scientists who are interested in the Arctic. 3. To open avenues for interdisciplinary approaches, the introduction of new techniques, and the widening of scientific participation. Although the dispersed nature of the Arctic research community remains an impediment to optimal cooperation across disciplines, increasing regular communication among different Arctic disciplines and science communities is one key to developing Arctic science. HENRY P. HUNTINGTON See also Arctic Research and Policy Act; Office of Polar Programs, National Science Foundation Further Reading Arctic Research of the United States, Special issue on the National Science Foundation’s Arctic Systems Science Program, Volume 11, 2003 ARCUS, Toolik Field Station: The Second Twenty Years, Recommendations on the Science Mission and the Development of Toolik Field Station, Fairbanks, Alaska: ARCUS, 1996 ARCUS, Logistics Recommendations for an Improved US Arctic Research Capability, Fairbanks, Alaska: ARCUS, 1997 ARCUS, People and the Arctic: A Prospectus for Research on the Human Dimensions of the Arctic System, Fairbanks, Alaska: ARCUS, 1997 ARCUS, Toward Prediction of the Arctic System, Predicting States of the Arctic System on Seasonal-to-Century Time Scales by Integrating Observations, Process Research,

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Modeling, and Assessment, Fairbanks, Alaska: ARCUS, 1998 ARCUS, Arctic Social Sciences: Opportunities in Arctic Research, Fairbanks, Alaska: ARCUS, 1999 ARCUS, The Future of an Arctic Resource: Recommendations from the Barrow Area Research Support Workshop, Fairbanks, Alaska: ARCUS, 1999 ARCUS, Marine Science in the Arctic: A Strategy, Fairbanks, Alaska: ARCUS, 1999 ARCUS, Opportunities for Collaboration between the United States and Norway in Arctic Research: A Workshop Report, Fairbanks, Alaska: ARCUS, 2000

ARCTIC RESEARCH AND POLICY ACT The primary objective of the Arctic Research and Policy Act, enacted by the US Congress in 1984 (and amended in 1990), is to define US national priorities and goals in the Arctic and to serve as a comprehensive policy and planning device for the expansion of US federal scientific activities in this region. The Act encompasses applied scientific research on “natural resources and materials, physical, biological and health sciences and social and behavioral sciences,” and cites a wide range of research fields: weather and climate; national defense; renewable and nonrenewable resources; transportation; communication and space-disturbance effects; environmental protection; health, culture and socioeconomic factors; and international cooperation. The legislation designated the National Science Foundation (NSF) as the lead US federal agency in Arctic research. The legislation established two new bodies. The first, an Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee (IARPC), consists of representatives from 12 US federal departments and agencies, which would develop a national Arctic research policy and an Arctic research plan for implementing this policy. On a working level, each of the member departments and agencies appoint staff representatives for IARPC and for any working groups that may be required. The second body was an Arctic Research Commission composed of seven members appointed by the President of the United States to develop recommendations on Arctic research policy. While members of IARPC are all public officials, the membership of the Arctic Research Commission is recruited from academia, indigenous residents, and private industry. The Commission issues a biennial statement outlining goals and priorities that could be used in the development of the plan. Although the United States, through the state of Alaska, has a large geographic presence in the Arctic region, the polar activities of the US government have been divided between the Arctic and Antarctica. Many NSF scientists, for instance, handle both Arctic and

ARCTIC SLOPE REGIONAL CORPORATION (ASRC) Antarctic research; few are dedicated solely to Arctic issues. The passage of the legislation, therefore, created an impetus toward ensuring US federal coordination on Arctic issues, by highlighting such gaps in research as the need for a stronger infrastructure of logistical support. The first United States Arctic Research Plan was published in 1987; this plan is revised every two years. One consistent theme in the reports of both of the above-noted bodies created by this legislation is the need for international cooperation with other Arctic nations. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of avenues to multilateral cooperation, this has presented the United States with a number of opportunities, such as the International Arctic Science Committee, first established in August 1990, the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy established in June 1991, and the intergovernmental Arctic Council established in 1996. IARPC agencies have played a key role in the establishment and work of each of these bodies. The Arctic Research and Policy Act has been an effective instrument in highlighting the need for a coordinated US federal role in Arctic research, in conveying the need for such research to the American public and, as international circumstances changed with the end of the Cold War, for ensuring that the United States has been able to participate effectively with other Arctic nations and nongovernmental organizations in a newly emerging Arctic region. LENNARD SILLANPÄÄ See also Arctic Research Consortium of the United States (ARCUS); Office of Polar Programs, National Science Foundation Further Reading Arctic Research of the United States. This journal, published since 1991 by the National Science Foundation, publishes biennial revisions to the United States Arctic Research Plan as is required by legislation. It also summarizes meetings of the IARPC and the Arctic Research Commission Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee, United States Arctic Research Plan, Washington, District of Columbia: National Science Foundation, 1987

ARCTIC SLOPE REGIONAL CORPORATION (ASRC) Pursuant to the Alaskan Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA), the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation (ASRC) was formed in 1972. An Alaskan Native-owned for-profit company, the ASRC repre-

sents eight villages above the Alaskan Arctic Circle: Pt Hope, Pt Lay, Wainwright, Atqasuk, Barrow, Nuiqsut, Kakotvik, and Anaktuvak Pass. In 1972, representatives from these villages came together to form the ASRC and claim ownership of approximately 5 million acres on Alaska’s North Slope. These lands had known resources and were highly prospective for oil, gas, coal, and base metal sulfides. The ASRC selected this area with the specific intentions to gain title to the lands with the greatest resource potential, to explore and develop these lands, and to produce and market the resources from them. The ASRC stresses that these objectives are to be met without compromising the traditional subsistence values of the region held by ASRC shareholders. This reflects how the passage of the ANCSA brought a mandate to expand traditional ideas of resource use and concepts of land into one that includes corporate land ownership. The ASRC expresses the challenges faced by trying to translate the ANSCA’s entitlement into economic terms, and stresses that these challenges are still being faced today. However, receiving the entitlement was a complex process for the ASRC, and numerous agreements and exchanges were held with both federal and state governments before entitlement was settled. By 1979, the ASRC and the US Department of the Interior signed a complex land exchange, which was ratified in the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which allowed the ASRC to obtain land in the National Petroleum Reserve and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This enabled ASRC to acquire an interest in a small refinery, Petro Star, in the North Pole, and 80% of a pipeline construction and maintenance company called Houston Contracting in 1985. This is a significant point in ASRC history because petroleum refining and energy services now account for twothirds of ASRC’s total annual income. ASRC’s annual revenues from oil fieldwork have increased from approximately $30 million in the early 1980s to $250,000 in 2000. This puts the ASRC in the unique position of being able to export the latest in oil-field technology around the world. Being one of 13 regional native corporations, the ASRC is the largest, employing 6000 people and with a shareholder population of over 9000. Corporate headquarters are located in Barrow, Alaska, with subsidiary offices in Anchorage, Alaska, and around the world. Although the ASRC is said to be a natural resource-based corporation, it extends its companies into many areas, such as engineering, financial management, oil and gas support services, petroleum refining and distribution, as well as civil construction and communications. RACHEL OLSON

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ARCTIC SMALL TOOL TRADITION Further Reading Arnold, Robert D., Alaska Native Land Claims, Anchorage: Alaska Federation of Natives, 1978 Berry, Mary Clay, The Alaska Pipeline: The Politics of Oil and Native Land Claims, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975 Chance, Norman A., The Iñupiat and Arctic Alaska: An Ethnography of Development, Fort Worth, Texas: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1990 Ervin, Alexander M., “The Emergence of Native Alaskan Political Capacity, 1959–1971.” Musk Ox Journal, 19 (1976) Naske, Claus M. & Herman E. Slotnick, Alaska: A History of the 49th State (2nd edition), Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987

ARCTIC SMALL TOOL TRADITION In the 1950s, archaeologists working independently in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland discovered evidence of the earliest peoples to occupy the coast and islands of Arctic North America. At Cape Denbigh, on the east side of Alaska’s Norton Sound, Louis Giddings identified and named the Denbigh Flint complex. In northern Canada, William Taylor, Moreau Maxwell, and Elmer Harp identified sites thought to be earlier than the Dorset culture. They called the culture there PreDorset. At Independence Fjord in northern Greenland, Eigil Knuth identified Independence culture, later termed Independence I following the discovery of the more recent and clearly descendant culture, Independence II; and in western Greenland, Jørgen Meldgaard reported on the Saqqaq culture. The striking similarities in the stone tools of these cultures led William Irving to suggest that they were members of the same cultural tradition, which he aptly termed Arctic Small Tool (ASTt). Current research suggests that these cultures all date to roughly 4200 years ago, with Denbigh possibly a little older. Most researchers regard the members of the ASTt as the first Eskimolike cultures. For this reason, they refer to them as “Paleo-Eskimo” (literally “Old Eskimo”). Cultures of the ASTt are known for their distinctive toolkits and architecture. Stone tools are typically very small and delicately flaked from high-quality raw materials. Characteristic tool types include bipoints, triangular harpoon tips, a variety of mitten-shaped burins, gravers made from retouched burin spalls, microblades, thumbnail scrapers made on thick flakes, and inset sideblades. Organic tools are only rarely preserved in early ASTt sites. During the early ASTt, the emphasis seems to have been on mobility and portability. Permanent dwellings such as the Neo-Eskimo semisubterranean sod house were not known in Arctic Canada and Greenland until around 2500 years ago. Even in winter, early ASTt people seem to have lived in tents or snow houses. ASTt architecture is also very distinctive. ASTt

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dwellings were skin tents, roughly round in shape and typically bisected by two parallel rows of cobbles set on the ground roughly 50 cm apart and running down the center. Termed “axial” or “mid-passage” structures, these rows typically straddle a small hearth made from rocks and divide the space within the dwelling into areas where different domestic activities such as sewing, game processing, and construction and repair of tools were conducted. In forested areas, for example, at Onion Portage on Alaska’s Kobuk River, wooden poles were substituted for stone. Several early Dorset sites have produced snow knives, suggesting that houses built from blocks of snow (“igloos”) may have originated in the ASTt. Cultures of the ASTt are thought to have their origins in the Siberian Neolithic, but archaeological collections from the western side of Bering Strait showing clear relationships with the ASTt have not yet been reported. ASTt sites have been found from the Alaska Peninsula to northern Greenland in some of the richest as well as most impoverished environments in the North American Arctic. In Alaska, sites are most commonly found north of the Kobuk River. In Canada, ASTt people lived north of the treeline—in the Barrenlands, Arctic Archipelago, and along the Labrador coast. Greenlandic sites are found along the narrow strip of land separating the ocean from the great inland ice sheet. Some are on the coast, while others are a little way inland. ASTt people were hunters who harvested and ate what was available where they lived, and chose to live where game could be found. In some areas, they focused on terrestrial resources, taking advantage of migrating caribou as well as secondary species such as small mammals and fish, which formed an economic safety net. ASTt people were also the first North Americans to adapt to year-round life on the Arctic coast, including the frozen oceans of the far north. There they took seals, walrus, and pelagic waterfowl in great numbers, and even caught deep-water fish, including cod. In contrast to more recent Neo-Eskimo peoples, they do not appear to have participated in communal hunting activities requiring large numbers of people such as pursuing large baleen whales. In western Greenland where Bjarne Grønnow excavated Qeqertasussuk, a frozen 4200-year-old ASTt site, 45 different species of animals were found in a trash midden. Plants probably played a relatively minor role in the ASTt diet. What became of ASTt people? The broad outlines of the prehistory of the Eastern Arctic—Canada and Greenland—are relatively straightforward. Early ASTt peoples (Pre-Dorset, Independence I, and Saqqaq) arrived there from the west approximately 4200 years ago. Their tools, houses, and settlement patterns began

ARCTIC WATERS POLLUTION PREVENTION ACT to change fairly rapidly after 3000 years ago. The result was Dorset culture, although of course the distinction between the last Pre-Dorset, Saqqaq, or Independence I person and first Dorset is an arbitrary one, and one that would have eluded the people in question. Most archaeologists still consider Dorset to be the last culture of the ASTt, and it disappeared around AD 1400, shortly after the Thule culture—the ancestors of modern Inuit—arrived in the Eastern Arctic from Alaska. In many ways, we know far more about the later Dorset culture than about their early ASTt ancestors because their sites are more numerous and often yield animal bones and objects of wood, antler, and ivory in addition to stone tools. In contrast to the Eastern Arctic, the culture history and historical relationships between Alaskan cultures from this time are less certain. Few Denbigh Flint complex sites have been reliably dated, and while most archaeologists agree that Denbigh gave rise to the Choris culture around 3600 years ago in northern and northwestern Alaska, there is little consensus about the relationship between Choris and subsequent Norton and Ipiutak peoples. Many archaeologists believe that Norton culture is part of a different tradition, and that the subsequent history of humans in the Western Arctic owes more to the Norton tradition and continued influences from Siberia than it does to the ASTt. DANIEL ODESS See also Choris Culture; Denbigh Flint Culture; Independence Culture; Pre-Dorset Culture; Saqqaq Culture Further Reading Cox, Steven L., “Palaeo-Eskimo occupations of the North Labrador Coast.” Arctic Anthropology, 15(2) (1978): 96–118 Giddings, J. Louis, The Archaeology of Cape Denbigh, Providence: Brown University Press, 1964 Grønnow, Bjarne, “Prehistory in permafrost: investigations at the Saqqaq Site, Qeqertasussuk, Disco Bay, West Greenland.” Journal of Danish Prehistory, 7 (1988): 24–39 ——— (editor), The Paleo-Eskimo Cultures of Greenland, Copenhagen: Danish Polar Center, 1996 LeBlanc, Sylvie and Murielle Nagy (guest editors), “Palaeoeskimo Architecture/Architecture paléoesquimaude.” Études/Inuit/Studies, 27(1–2) (2003) McGhee, Robert, Ancient People of the Arctic, Vancouver: UBC Press, 1996 Maxwell, Moreau S., Prehistory of the Eastern Arctic, New York: Academic Press, 1985 Schledermann, Peter, Crossroads to Greenland, Komatik Series 2, Calgary: Arctic Institute of North America, 1990 ———, Voices in Stone, Komatik Series 5, Calgary: Arctic Institute of North America, 1996 Taylor Jr., William E., The Arnapik and Tyara Sites: An Archaeological Study of Dorset Culture Origins, Society for American Archaeology Memoir 22, 1968

ARCTIC WATERS POLLUTION PREVENTION ACT The Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act (AWPPA) is Canadian legislation that established a maritime environmental protection zone around the waters surrounding the land and islands of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Enacted by the Canadian Government in 1970, it was developed to demonstrate Canadian sovereignty over the North West Passage. It was precedent setting in that Canada was the first coastal nation to claim an extended maritime zone of control in order to protect the marine environment in its surrounding waters. The AWPPA was created following the voyages of the USS Manhattan through the North West Passage in 1969 and 1970. The United States Government has never recognized Canadian claims of sovereignty over the Passage and views it as an international strait. Canada has always maintained that the waters of the North West Passage are internal waters. This is based on historical claims and by virtue of the fact that the waters of the Passage are indistinguishable from land by being frozen for much of the year. Due to the opposing positions, when the United States Government wanted to test the possibility of shipping oil from the North Slope of Alaska to the continental United States by supertanker, it did not request the Canadian Government’s permission. The Canadian Government did not wish to directly challenge the American Government, but did want to take some action to reaffirm its claims of control over the North West Passage. It elected to develop legislation that allowed for a functional form of control by asserting the right to enact unilateral environmental protection. The Act created a set of regulations in a zone extending from the baselines of the Canadian northern territory seaward to a distance of 100 nautical miles 185.3 km. It banned the discharge of all wastes in these waters and regulated the design, construction, and navigation of all vessels that would operate in the waters within the zone.

Impact While the United States Government refused to recognize the AWPPA, the Act has had a significant impact on the international system. Its main influence was felt at the third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea that began in 1974. First, the AWPPA added to the growing demands for coastal states to create a maritime zone of control beyond the traditional limits of the territorial sea. This eventually led to the creation of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which gives coastal states sovereign rights over the resources in waters up to 200 nautical miles (370.6 km) beyond their coasts, including the right to develop domestic laws governing environmental protection. More

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ARCTIC WOODLAND CULTURE specifically, the AWPPA also led to the creation of Article 234 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). This article gives coastal states with ice-covered waters the right to “adopt and enforce nondiscriminatory laws and regulations for the prevention, reduction and control of marine pollution from vessels in ice-covered areas...”

Current Status While the United States has never formally acknowledged the AWPPA, the coming-into-force of UNCLOS in 1982 is generally viewed as representing international acceptance of Canada’s right to enact the legislation. However, the harsh conditions in the North West Passage have meant that few vessels have attempted to enter the Canadian waters protected by the AWPPA. Recently, concerns have been raised that climate change could result in greater accessibility to the entire Arctic region, the Canadian Arctic included. As a result, in 1994, many Arctic nations commenced a process to develop an Arctic Code for possible Arctic shipping. To a large degree, this effort is based on harmonizing the regulations of the AWPPA with the regulations subsequently developed by Russia and other northern states for their Arctic waters. Somewhat ironically, while the Government of Canada took very aggressive action in creating the AWPPA, its implementation of the Act has been more timid. It requests vessels to comply with the regulations through a voluntary reporting system called NORDREG. It does not mandate them to comply. Secondly, while Article 234 of UNCLOS internationally validates the AWPPA, the Government of Canada is one of the few remaining states that has not ratified the Law of the Sea Convention. ROB HUEBERT See also North West Passage; UN Convention on the Law of the Sea

ARCTIC WOODLAND CULTURE Arctic Woodland Culture is the name given by J. Louis Giddings to the 700-year-long archaeological sequence originating in the Kobuk River Valley, northwestern Alaska. The culture, as Giddings defined it, comprises four phases: Ahteut, dating to about A.D 1250; Ekseavik and Old Kotzebue, dating to about AD 1400; Intermediate Kotzebue, dating to about AD 1550; and Ambler Island, dating to between AD 1730 and 1760. Since first defined in 1952, numerous other Arctic Woodland sites have been found in the region dating to between c.AD 1000 and the historic period. Each of the phases is characterized by distinctive styles in antler and ivory weapon parts, pottery, fishing equipment,

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house forms, and the use of particular raw materials such as chert (a flintlike rock), jade, and ground slate. The name of the Arctic Woodland Culture derives from the fact that the people were well adapted to a forested region of the Arctic. Although located above the Arctic Circle, the Kobuk River Valley supports dense stands of white and black spruce throughout the valley and its major tributaries and stands of birch and alder on the surrounding hills. The faunal resources include both tundra species like caribou and willow ptarmigan and taiga species like black bear and spruce grouse, as well as resident fish like shee and whitefish, and anadromous fish like salmon and (in the lower reaches) smelt. In the nearby mountains are sheep and at the mouth of the river, which empties into Kotzebue Sound, seals and beluga thrive. This multiple resource base is represented in most of the sites of the culture, both by faunal remains and by the implements used to harvest them. Stylistically, most of the artifacts relate to forms from the coastal Eskimo cultures: toggle harpoon heads, stone and pottery lamps, pottery vessels, leister prongs, and slate knife and ulu blades. However, many other artifacts, including boulder chip scrapers known as tci thos and birch bark baskets, suggest links to Athapaskan culture. The essential features of the Arctic Woodland Culture are described in the concluding paragraph in Giddings’ monograph, in which he suggests that the culture appears to be “more than a phenomenon resulting from the meeting of two distinct forms of culture [Eskimo and Athapaskan].” Rather, the culture is the predictable combination of sea-river-and-foresthunting wherever it is possible for a single ethnic group to practice these together under the special conditions of the Arctic. It is a material culture that will be practiced by whatever linguistic group happens to live in the particular environment, a culture that will outlive the physical appearance, the speech, and many of the social practices of its participants. (Giddings, 1952)

Perhaps the most significant aspect of the Arctic Woodland construct is an approach that stresses the adaptive and regional aspects of archaeological cultures. By implication, an archaeological culture could look very different, depending on the activities not only carried out at the reference site but at other sites in the annual round. DOUGLAS D. ANDERSON See also Athapaskan; Giddings, Louis Further Reading Giddings, J. Louis, The Arctic Woodland Culture of the Kobuk River, Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, 1952

ARKHANGEL’SK

ARKHANGEL’SK Arkhangel’sk is the economic and cultural center of North European Russia, and since 1937 the center of Arkhangel’sk Oblast’. It is located 1133 km from Moscow on the banks of the Severnaya Dvina River and on its delta reaching into the White Sea. It is an important sea and river port, rail center, and airport, with a population of 362,700 (January 2000). The climate of the city is Subarctic, moderated by marine influences, with a January mean temperature of −13°C and a July mean of +17°C. Annual precipitation is about 500 mm. Formerly blocked by sea ice for five months each winter, the port is now kept open by icebreakers. A settlement was founded in 1584 at the cape PurNavolok (this Finnish name means “Foggy cape”) at the monastery of the archangel Mikhail. Initially it was named Novo Kholmogory (Kholmogory being a smaller town at the mouth of the Dvina), but since 1613 it has been known as Arkhangelskiy town. In the 17th century, it was developed as an important port, the only port through which Moscow could conduct trade with West European countries. Peter I the Great, who visited Arkhangel’sk three times, founded the Novodvinskaya fortress, the Admiralty, and a state shipyard on the island Solombala. Being a significant shipbuilding center, Arkhangel’sk played an important role in the formation of the Russian military and trade fleet. In 1708, it became the administrative center of Arkhangelogorodskaya Province. The prosperity of the town was undermined with the founding of the Baltic port of St Petersburg, especially after the decree on diverting foreign trade to the new town at the Neva River (1722). Since the late 18th century, the importance of Arkhangel’sk has again grown. Foreign commerce especially revived during the continental blockade of British trade enforced by France (1807–1813). The town also became a main base for exploration and development of the Russian Arctic. Expeditions under the direction of Vasily Chichagov, Alexander Sibiryakov, Fedor Litke, Pyotr Pakhtusov, Vladimir Rusanov, and Georgiy Sedov started from Arkhangel’sk. Between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the town became the major timber-exporting port of Russia and the largest sawmill center. In 1898, the railway from Moscow via Vologda reached Arkhangel’sk. In 1897, the town numbered 20,900 residents, its suburb Solombala (which is now encompassed by Arkhangel’sk) having 9000 residents. During the Soviet period, the town grew rapidly because of the development of the Northern Sea Route and exploitation of the natural resources of the North. By 1939, the population of the town amounted to 251,000. During the Great Patriotic War, Allied convoys delivering lend-lease armament, provisions, and

equipment came to Arkhangel’sk and Severodvinsk, 35 km to the west. Today the city’s economy is based on marine industries and timber. Marine industries include shipbuilding and repair, fish industry, algae processing, scientific researches, and naval and merchant seaman training. Timber industries include sawmilling, timber chemistry, pulp and paper industry, and production of logging equipment. The new town of Novodvinsk (48,600 residents), where the Arkhangel’sk pulp and paper plant is located, is situated 20 km south of Arkhangel’sk. Arkhangel’sk is a great cultural, scientific, and educational center. The city has several higher education institutes, including the Pomor State University named after M.V. Lomonosov, State Technical University, a Medicine Academy, branch of the Marine academy, the oldest Naval School, and Scientific and Research Institute of Forest and Chemistry, Central Scientific and Research Institute of Timber Machining. A Philharmonic Society, Academic Northern Folk Chorus, museum of local lore, Northern Marine Museum, and Museum of Fine Art are based in Arkhangel’sk. Arkhangel’sk extends for 40 km along the Severnaya Dvina. In the postwar period, the center of the town expanded to the east, away from the river. Development of the boggy lowland (“Mkhi”—mosses in English) was difficult and required great expense (peat was removed up to a depth of 8 m in some places). A considerable part of the wooden architecture for which Arkhangel’sk was famous was lost in the course of reconstruction of the town, although the street of Chumbarova-Luchinskogo, where interesting patterns of wooden architecture are located, is being preserved. Urban population increased throughout the 20th century and reached its maximum in 1990 (420,400 residents in January 1991). However, it decreased by 14% over the next decade. G. LAPPO See also Arkhangel’skaya Oblast’; Severnaya Dvina Further Reading Arkhangel’sk. In Entcyclopeditcheski Slovar’ Granat [Encyclopaedia by Granat] (7th edition), Volume 3, Moscow: Granat [no date], pp. 622–623 Arkhangel’sk. In Bol’shaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediia [The Big Soviet Encyclopaedia] (3rd edition), edited by A.M. Prokhorov, Volume 2, Moscow: Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya 1970, pp. 275–276 Arkhangel’sk. In Rossiyskaya Federatsiya. Obstchii obzor. Evropeiskii sever (Seriya “Sovetskii Soyuz”) [Russian Federation. General review. European North] (Serias “Soviet Union”), Moscow: Mysl, 1971, pp. 401–407 Arkhangel’sk. In Goroda Rossii. Encyclopediya [The towns of Russia: Encyclopaedia], edited by G.M. Lappo, Moscow: Bolshaya rossiyskaya enciklopedia, 1994, pp. 25–28

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ARKHANGEL’SKAYA OBLAST’ Barashkov, Yu.A., Arkhangel’sk. In Arkhitekturnaya biographiya [Arkghangel’sk. Architectural Biography], Arkhangel’sk, 1984 Letopis’ goroda Arkhangel’ska [Chronicle of Arkhangel’sk city], Arkhangel’sk, 1990 Ogorodnikov, S.F., Ocherk istorii goroda Arkhangel’ska v torgovo-promyshlennom otnoshenii [Review of history of Arkhangel’sk city in trade-industrial aspect], St Petersburg, 1890 Popov, A.N., Gorod Arkhangel’sk. Istoriya. Kul’tura. Economika. Kraevedcheskii ocherk s prilozheniyem plana. [The City of Arkhangel’sk. History. Culture. Economy. Review of local lore with plan attachment], Arkhangel’sk, 1928 Vertyachikh, A.Yu., Arkhangel’skii putevoditel’ [City guide of Arkhangel’sk], Arkhangel’sk, 1996

ARKHANGEL’SKAYA OBLAST’ Arkhangel’skaya Oblast’ of the Russian Federation was created on September 23, 1937. Situated in the northeast of the country, it occupies the northern part of the East European Plain and also includes several islands in the Arctic Ocean Seas (Franz Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya, Solovetskiye Islands, and some others). The administrative center is Arkhangel’sk. The total area of the Oblast’ is 587,400 km2, which incorporates the Nenets Autonomous Okrug having an area of 176,700 km2 and its capital in the city of Naryan-Mar.

Physical Geography The shores of Arkhangel’skaya Oblast’ are washed by the Barents, White, and Kara seas. On land, it is bordered by Karelia, Vologodskaya and Kirovskaya Oblasts, Komi Republic, and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug of Tyumenskaya Oblast’. Arkhangel’skaya Oblast’ is largely a lowland country. A few plateaulike watersheds, sometimes hilly and wet, are elevated 150–270 m above sea level (Konoshskaya and Nyandomskaya Uplands, Belomorsko-Kuloyskoye Plateau). A vast swampy Pechora Lowland comprising Bol’shezemel’skaya and Malozemel’skaya tundras lies east of the Timan Range. The northwestern part of Arkhangel’skaya Oblast’ is occupied by the Vetrenny Poyas Ridge (up to 344 m above sea level). In the east, there are Timan (303 m), Kanin Kamen’ (242 m), and Pay-Khoy (467 m) ranges. The climate of Arkhangel’skaya Oblast’ is severe, with cold winters. The mean January temperature is −12.5oC in Arkhangel’sk and −18.4°C in Amderma. The mean temperature of July is 17°C in the south and 8–10°C in the northeast. Fogs are frequent on the White Sea coast (40–60 days during a year). On the whole, the weather conditions are variable. The mean annual precipitation is

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300–400 mm in Nenets Autonomous Okrug to 500–550 mm in the south. The growth period for vegetation is as long as 50–60 days in the northeast to 150–155 days in the south. Permafrost is common in the northeast part of Arkhangel’skaya Oblast’ north of 66° N. Coastal waters are shallow with numerous banks (“koshki”). Arkhangel’skaya Oblast’ has a dense network of rivers and lakes. All the rivers (except the Ileks) belong to the drainage basin of the Arctic Ocean. The largest of them are the Severnaya Dvina (with the Vychegda, Pinega, and Vaga tributaries), Onega, Mezen’, and Pechora. From 50% to 65% of the annual flow occurs with autumn floods. Outside flood periods, most rivers are shallow. There are about 2500 lakes in Arkhangel’skaya Oblast’ mostly located in the Onega drainage basin and in the northeastern part of the region. The largest are Lakes Lacha, Kenozero, and Kozhozero. A major part of the territory lies in the taiga zone, its northeastern part in the tundra while oceanic islands are covered by Arctic deserts and glaciers. Forests occupy about 40% of Arkhangel’skaya Oblast’. The fauna includes many commercially valuable species, such as ptarmigan and willow grouse, squirrel, alpine hare, red fox, wolf, brown and polar bears, hazel and black grouses, and capercaillie.

Resources and Economy The most important natural resources are oil and natural gas (in the Timan-Pechora province), timber, sodium and potassium salt, coal, bauxites, diamonds, and raw building materials. There are two health resorts at Sol’vychegodsk and Solonikha. The population is about (2003) 1,335,700 including around 41,500 in Nenets Autonomous Okrug. Mean population density is 2.5 people per sq km. The overwhelming majority lives along the railroad (one-third of the total), in the lower reaches of the Severnaya Dvina (almost two-fifths), in the Vaga River basin, and in the middle course of the Severnaya Dvina (over one-tenth). The lowest population density is recorded in the Mezen’ and Pinega basins and in Nenets Autonomous Okrug. The urban population accounts for 74% of the total. Arkhangel’skaya Oblast’ has 11 cities and 37 urban settlements. The largest cities are Arkhangel’sk (population 362,700), Severodvinsk (234,500), Kotlas (66,000), Novodvinsk (48,600), and Koryazhma (44,300). In terms of ethnic composition, the population consists of Russians (92.1%), Ukrainians (3.4%), indigenous northern peoples (0.5%), and other groups (4.0%). The economy is dominated by industry (54.9%). In 1998, it accounted for 33.2% of GDP whereas agriculture accounted for 5.3%, building for 4.8%, transport for 10.6%, and trade for 9.2%.

ARKHANGEL’SKAYA OBLAST’

Main cities and rivers in Arkhangel’skaya Oblast’.

The most advanced industries in Arkhangel’skaya Oblast’ are machine construction, metal processing, fuel and energy production, and fishery. The timber industry with wood and cellulose processing is of utmost importance. It accounts for 53% of the total industrial production in Arkhangel’skaya Oblast’ and for a significant part of all lumber, saw-timber, cellulose, and paper produced in Russia. Animal husbandry plays a leading role in the agriculture of Arkhangel’skaya Oblast’. Its most developed lines are dairy farming and reindeer herding. Major products of plant cultivation are vegetables, potato, cereals, and technical crops. Other economic activities are traditional hunting and fur farming. Arkhangel’skaya Oblast’ has a well-developed transport infrastructure. The total length of railroads is 18,000 km, that of hard-surfaced roads is 10,000 km, and inner navigable waterways is 3800 km. Arkhangel’sk sea port is the largest on the White Sea and one of the most

important in the Russian Arctic. Other large ports are Onega, Mezen’, Naryan-Mar, and Amderma. A unique installation of national importance is the Plisetsk space center. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it is the sole site of operation for the Russian space program equipped with complete facilities for launching space vehicles. Another unique object is the chief nuclear weapons testing ground on Novaya Zemlya, where nuclear tests have been conducted since the 1950s. In 1990, Russia announced and still observes the moratorium on nuclear testing. However, the Novaya Zemlya test site continues to be used for basic and applied research. Belushiya Guba, founded in the late 19th century, is the administrative center of the testing ground and in fact the “capital” of Novaya Zemlya. The high level of industrialization is responsible for a relatively heavy environmental pollution. Arkhangel’skaya Oblast’ is the 16th region in Russia in terms of discharge of industrial wastes into the atmosphere and the 14th one in terms of the amount of contaminated runoff into rivers and water bodies (1999). The major sources of environmental pollution are large paper and cellulose mills in Koryazhma, Novodvinsk, and Arkhangel’sk and power stations in Severodvinsk and Arkhangel’sk. An extensive network of protected territories has been created to exercise nature conservation. The largest of them are Pinezhsky (51,100 ha) and Nenetsky (313,400 ha) nature reserves, Vodlozersky (469,900 ha, partly in Karelia) and Kenozersky (139,700 ha) national parks, and federal nature sanctuary Zemlya Frantsa Iosifa (Franz Josef Land, 445,000 ha). In addition, there are 34 nature sanctuaries of regional importance, two botanical gardens, and 70 natural monuments. It is proposed that two more areas in Arkhangel’skaya Oblast’ be designated as national parks: “Onezhskoye Pomorye” (300,000 ha) and “Russkaya Arktika” (5,200,000 ha), the first national park in the Russian Arctic. Arkhangel’skaya Oblast’ has over 2500 historical and cultural monuments (without archaeological monuments) and two open-air museums (Solovetsky and Kargopol’sky). The museum of folk architecture Malye Karely near Arkhangel’sk is widely known both in Russia and abroad for its numerous 16th–20th-century buildings, which were brought from various regions of the Russian North (Kargopol’-Onega, the Severnaya Dvina, the Vaga, the Pinega, the Mezen’, the White Sea). The Solovetsky museum is on UNESCO’s List of World Cultural Heritage as featuring outstanding specimens of Russian monastic culture. YURI MAZOUROV See also Arkhangel’sk; Franz Josef Land; Nenets Autonomous Okrug; Novaya Zemlya; Pechora River; Severnaya Dvina; Solovetski Islands

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ARMS CONTROL Further Reading Ebbinge, B.S. et al. (editors), Heritage of the Russian Arctic: Research, Conservation and International Co-operation, Moscow: Ecopros Publishers, 2000 Economicheskaya I Sotsial’naya Geographiya Rossii: Uchebnik dlya Vuzov. Pod Red. Prof. A.T. Khruscheva (A.T. Khruschev (editor), Economic and Social Geography of Russia), Moscow: Drofa, 2001 Gosudarstvennyi Doklad “O Sostoyanii i ob Okhrane Okrushayuschei Prirodnoy Sredy Rossiiskoi Federatsii v 2002 godu” [State Report: State of Environment and Conservation in the Russian Federation in 2002], Moscow: MPR, 2003 Regiony Rossii: Statisticheskii Sbornik (Regions of Russia: Statistical Handbook, 2 volumes), Moscow: Goscomstat of Russia, 2000 The Demographic Yearbook of Russia: Statistical Handbook, Moscow: Goscomstat of Russia, 2000 Yablokov, A.V. (editor), Rossiiskaya Arctika na Poroge katastrofy (Russian Arctic: On the Edge of Catastrophe), Moscow: Tsentr Ecologitcheskoi Politiki Rossii, 1996

ARMS CONTROL The history of arms control and the various fora that have been created to provide for negotiations in this field are a reflection of the scope and complexity of the issues involved. Arms control deals essentially with two broad categories of proposals: those for measures that build confidence and those that result in reductions and limitations of military manpower and equipment. Along with the global, multilateral discussions in the United Nations and at the Committee on Disarmament in Geneva and the bilateral US -Soviet negotiations, the third major focus of arms control negotiations has been in Europe. Soviet interest in arms control for the far north was first articulated by Premier Nikolai Bulganin in a 1958 proposal for a zone in Northern Europe “free of atomic and hydrogen weapons.” In the Breznev era, the avowed military doctrine of the Soviet Union at the political level, and the actual Soviet policy as well, generally reflected a defensive orientation. In the 1970s, the Soviets, in giving precedence to mutual deterrence over war-waging capabilities at the intercontinental level, signed agreements with the United States virtually banning antiballistic missile (ABM) defenses and stabilizing strategic offensive arms at high levels (all that the United States was then prepared to do). But the same criteria, seen by both the Soviet Union and the United States as appropriate for ensuring deterrence and defense, also helped to assure a continuing arms race, which was mitigated only to a limited extent by negotiated strategic arms limitations. Both sides also settled for protracted Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction (MBFR) conventional arms talks without agreements—and with conventional arms proposals that sought only to stabilize existing levels. After the

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onset of the “new cold war,” from 1980 to 1985, all progress in Soviet-American arms control was placed on hold. Bilateral negotiations in this period were unproductive; by 1984, not even the ritual of bilateral talks was observed. Meanwhile, in the early 1980s, three negotiations were actively under way, though all with uncertain prospects. These were negotiations between the Warsaw Pact and the NATO on the Reduction of Armed Forces and Armaments and Associated Measures in Central Europe; the US-Soviet negotiations on intermediaterange nuclear forces in Geneva; and the discussions of confidence-building measures (CBM) and general disarmament in Europe, which was part of the follow-up to the 1975 Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE). Under General Secretary and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leadership adopted the position that New Thinking was an imperative, and then Moscow began to translate it into policy positions and actions. Although proposals for a “Nordic nuclearweapons-free zone” have been the most prominent and continuing feature of the Soviet arms control policy for the Arctic, Gorbachev’s new proposal advanced in his Murmansk speech (1987) was much broader, calling for an Arctic “zone of peace.” This “Murmansk initiative” has been reiterated by Soviet diplomats abroad and was emphasized by Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov on his trip through Scandinavia (1987). The arms control portion of the Murmansk speech in reality would limit NATO military activity in Scandinavia and the adjacent seas to a greater degree than Warsaw Pact activity. The original address failed to include the Kola Peninsula—the largest concentration of military power in the world—in the framework of the talks, as well as the Barents and Kara seas, in which the Soviet Northern Fleet and much of the Soviet sea-based strategic nuclear force operated. Later on, the Kola and Barents have been mentioned by Soviet officials, but no details have been provided concerning what limitations or reductions in force strength and activities would be considered for them. There was, in fact, very little that was really new in the specific arms control proposals made at Murmansk, although more detail has been given than in the past. Since 1958, the Kremlin has consistently promoted a Nordic nuclearfree zone, and the Soviet Union has periodically attempted to extend the confidence- and securitybuilding measures to be discussed in the CCSBMDE to naval and air maneuvers. In accordance with the START-II disarmament treaty, the number of strategic missiles on board Northern Fleet submarines will be reduced to a total of 1750 by the year 2003. Most likely the number will be even smaller. Here a strategic nuclear missile is removed from a Delta-II class submarine at a naval

ARMS CONTROL TABLE 1 Missile type

Number of warheads (Soviet Union)

Number of warheads (USA)

Number permitted: START-I

Number permitted: START-II, by 2003

Number permitted: START-II, at 2007

Ballistic missiles Intercontinental missiles Submarine launched missiles Total

9416 5958 2804 18,178

8210 2000 5760 15,970

4900 1540 Not specified

Not specified 1200 2160

Not specified 0 1750

base on the Kola Peninsula. Once their missiles have been removed, the nuclear submarines are then laid up. Assuming that the terms of START-II (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) are fulfilled, by the year 2003 over 50% of Russia’s strategic nuclear warheads will be carried on nuclear submarines as opposed to just under 25% today. According to START-II, a maximum of 1750 nuclear warheads may be placed on Russian submarines. This means that the number of nuclear weapons onboard submarines as a total will decrease, but the strategic position of the Northern Fleet will be far more important in Russian nuclear strategy than it is today. According to Russian military experts, the Russian Navy in the future will need to retain a maximum of 16 strategic nuclear submarines, 21 attack submarines, and 12 tactical submarines. Western experts maintain that even fewer submarines will be required. If the number of permitted strategic nuclear warheads per submarine is decisive for the number of submarines Russia chooses to maintain in service, the six Project 941—Typhoon class submarines in combination with seven submarines from the Project 667 BDRM—Delta-IV class should prove sufficient. These 13 nuclear submarines can carry 1750 nuclear warheads between them; however, it seems unlikely that Russia would choose a defense system based solely upon strategic nuclear submarines. A new Project 971—Akula class attack submarine was delivered in 1996. Furthermore, there are three nuclear submarines of the new Project 885— Severodvinsk class currently under construction, a type that can be used both as a strategic and attack submarine. The reduction in the number of nuclear warheads as a result of START-I and START-II is shown in Table 1. The table also compares the nuclear balance between the United States and Russia, as well as the distribution of nuclear warheads on land and at sea. A significant role in confidence building in the Arctic during the Cold War was played by Norway and Denmark. in 1961, Norway (and Denmark) announced that no nuclear weapons would be introduced on their territories, that no NATO bases would be hosted, and that no large-scale NATO exercises would be permitted

near the Soviet border. Nor, it announced in early 1978, would large numbers of West German forces participate in NATO exercises on Norwegian soil. Norway has also kept force levels in Finnmark at a low threshold and has been slow to develop radar facilities and military bases there to avoid arousing undue Soviet alarm over its defensive and missile capabilities. The affairs of the Arctic region are still, to a considerable extent, characterized by overhang from the Cold War. During the past 50 years, relations in military affairs within the region were entirely encapsulated in Cold War diplomacy. That is to say, inter-Nordic cooperation, always active during this period, hardly ever extended to the area of security and defense. In these matters, relations were strictly formal, and the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) was the only framework in which the Nordic and indeed Northern states could associate more freely, if still quite formally. Here, various confidenceand security-building measures were worked out during the latter part of the Cold War, continuing into the 1990s. The Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE) was part of this process. This Treaty, agreeing to significantly reduce and put under surveillance five categories of ground-fighting equipment (tanks, artillery, armored personnel carriers, combat helicopters, and combat aircraft), was concluded between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in 1990 and implemented between 1992 and 1996, with some Russian delays authorized until 1999. The CFE Treaty has had a rather special role in the relations of the Arctic region, in part because of its flank feature that restricts the freedom of deployments in the far northwest and the far southwest (Norway and Turkey), and in part because five states in the region are not signatories and thus only implicitly part of the regime (three Baltic states, Finland, and Sweden). The revision of the Treaty (completed in November 1999) has brought it into line with the post-Cold War setting and the expanded NATO. The possibility that one or more of the five Northern non-CFE members may accede to the Treaty is one of the intriguing aspects of the politics surrounding the Treaty as it enters its second decade.

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ARMSTRONG, TERENCE The role of Confidence and Security Building Measures (CSBMs) in the region has not been developed to its maximum potential. The main obstacle to regional arrangements is the preservation of a “genuine link” between the regional level and the allEuropean level. Several states in the region object to any military arrangements, which is not of an allEuropean agreement. The current climate of amity in the Arctic region provides an opportunity to put confidence-and security-building measures in place in the Arctic, as a hedge against any future decline in political relations, or the growth of instability in Russia. Military activity in the Arctic is anything but over. In particular, the Arctic Ocean continues to be the site of underwater cat-andmouse games between the nuclear submarines of the US and Russian navies. NIKITA A. LOMAGIN See also Militarization of the Arctic; Murmansk Speech (1987); Thule Air Base Further Reading Arctic Council website: www.arctic-council.usgs.gov “Arms Control and Disarmament.” In The North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Facts and Figures, Brussels, Belgium: 1989 Blacker, Coit D. and Gloria Duffy (editors), International Arms Control. Issues and Agreements (2nd edition), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984 Bonvicini, Gianni, Tapani Vaahtoranta & Wolfgang Wessels (editors), The Northern EU. National Views on the Emerging Security Dimension. Programme on the Northern Dimension of the CFSP, Volume 9, The Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 2000

ARMSTRONG, TERENCE During the post-World War II era, a handful of scholars outside the Soviet Union attempted to study and understand the vast development and extraordinary changes taking place in the Soviet North. Such research was complex and rarely orderly because nearly all of the Soviet Arctic (Western Siberia, Eastern Siberia, and the Far Northeast) remained a controlled and closed region to Soviet citizens as well as foreign nationals. Foremost among these dedicated scholars was Terence Armstrong of the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, who was much admired and respected throughout the circumpolar world. Armstrong’s Russian linguistic abilities, travels in Siberia and elsewhere in the Arctic (Greenland, the Canadian Arctic, and Alaska), and understanding of social and economic geography combined to make him a leading figure not only in knowledge of Soviet activities in the Arctic but also as an influential

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contributor to the broader issues of human adaptation and change in the circumpolar north. Early in his career Armstrong focused his dissertation research on the history of the Northern Sea Route. He published an expanded version of this doctoral work as The Northern Sea Route, Soviet Exploitation of the North East Passage. This volume remains the seminal work in English on the history of the Northern Sea Route from the 16th century to 1949, and it is based principally on Russian language sources. Armstrong followed this with The Russians in the Arctic (1958) and Russian Settlement in the North (1965), an authoritative treatise focusing on Russia’s advance into the north from the 11th century to Soviet settlement during 1917–1959. Later, in 1975, he edited an equally important volume in the Hakluyt Society’s series, Yermak’s Campaign in Siberia. Interwoven with these scholarly activities were his visits to the Soviet North. By the early 1970s, Armstrong had made seven visits to the USSR, including three to northeast Siberia. He usually conducted these trips as an exchange visitor under the Anglo-Soviet Cultural Agreement in place during the Cold War period. An example of the access he was afforded came in July 1967 when he spent a week on a field expedition with the Soviet botanist Professor V.N. Andreyev on the upper Yana River, a remote region of Yakutia. One of his most notable visits to the Soviet Union was the first (May 28 to June 9, 1956). Armstrong and Brian Roberts of Scott Polar Research Institute visited the Arctic Institute in Leningrad (today the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute) and other organizations in Leningrad and Moscow concerned with polar research. An exchange of visits had been proposed by Scott Polar in July 1955, and during April 18–28, 1956 Aleksey Feodorovich Treshnikov and I.V. Maximov of the Arctic Institute visited Cambridge. Armstrong and Roberts returned with more than 100 Russian polar publications, which formed the nucleus of the Institute’s unmatched Russian Arctic collection. During the next three decades, Armstrong established publication exchanges with a wide network of organizations and institutes throughout Russia. Terence Armstrong also had early opportunities to fly over the North Pole with the Royal Air Force (1953) and sail aboard the Canadian icebreaker HMCS Labrador on its maiden voyage through the North West Passage (1954). These expeditions led to imaginative and pioneering contributions to the study and identification of Arctic sea ice. Armstrong devised a set of symbols to indicate the extent to which sea ice was an obstacle to shipping, a classification scheme he used in a 1958 atlas titled Sea Ice North of the USSR published by the British Admiralty’s Hydrographic Department. With support from UNESCO, he later

ARNASSON, INGOLFUR collaborated with Brian Roberts and Charles Swithinbank on the Illustrated Glossary of Snow and Ice (1966), which included equivalent terms and indexes in Danish, Finnish, French, German, Icelandic, Norwegian, Russian, and Spanish. One of Armstrong’s lasting legacies remains his scholarship for the Polar Record (the Scott Polar Research Institute’s journal), to which he contributed for more than 40 years. The breadth of his research was remarkable: annual reviews of Northern Sea Route activities; ice atlases; northern agriculture and mining; northern peoples; railways; education, employment and wage differences in the Arctic; polar drifting stations and Arctic climatology; Arctic place names; ethical problems of northern development; as well as scores of polar historical notes and obituaries of prominent polar personalities. He collaborated with George Rogers of Alaska and Graham Rowley of Canada to write a standard reference, The Circumpolar North: A Political and Economic Geography of the Arctic and Sub-arctic (1978). This influential work on Northern affairs described in a single volume the range of differing political, economic, and social systems in the North. During Armstrong’s career and travels throughout the circumpolar world, he took great care to visit with the indigenous residents of each region. From the mid-1970s to the end of his life, he worked closely with Frank Darnell of Alaska to improve the education of Arctic and Subarctic indigenous peoples.

Biography Terence Edward Armstrong was born in Oxted, Surrey, England, on April 7, 1920. His parents were linen merchants in Northern Ireland, but the family had moved back to England prior to his birth. He attended Winchester School, where he began his lifelong study of the Russian language. In 1939, he attended Magdalene College, University of Cambridge, where he attained first class honors in Russian (1940) and was mentored by Professor (Dame) Elizabeth Hill, a wellknown scholar of Slavonic studies. World War II interrupted his university life, and he saw action during 1940–1946 with the British Army Intelligence Corps and First Airborne Division in North Africa, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and Germany. Armstrong married Iris Forbes in 1943, and they had two sons and two daughters. For nearly his entire academic life, the family lived in Harston House, a large home in the village of Harston, South Cambridgeshire, where they warmly entertained legions of polar scholars and northerners for more than four decades. He earned degrees at the University of Cambridge, including his Ph.D. in 1951 for a dissertation entitled The Development of the

Northern Sea Route. Following World War II, he returned to Cambridge and in 1947 was appointed a fellow in Russian at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge. He subsequently served the Institute as Assistant Director of Research (1956–1977), Reader in Arctic Studies (1977–1983), and Acting Director (1982–1983). Armstrong played leading roles as a founder (in 1964) and early tutor in Clare Hall, a new college at the University of Cambridge. He also made important contributions to the Hakluyt Society in the United Kingdom, serving as secretary for 25 years and guiding to press more than 50 scholarly volumes of the records of significant voyages and expeditions. Armstrong was a fellow of the Arctic Institute of North America and the Royal Geographical Society, and was awarded the Society’s Cuthbert Peek Award (1963) and Victoria Medal (1978) in recognition of his many contributions to geography and a greater understanding of the Arctic. Armstrong died at his home in Harston, England, on February 21, 1996. LAWSON W. BRIGHAM See also Northern Sea Route; Treshnikov, Aleksey Feodorovich; Yakutia Further Reading Armstrong, Terence E., The Northern Sea Route, Soviet Exploitation of the North East Passage, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952 ———, The Russians in the Arctic, Aspects of Soviet Exploration and Exploitation of the Far North, 1937–1957, London: Methuen, 1958 ———, Russian Settlement in the North, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965 ——— (editor), Yermak’s Campaign in Siberia, London: The Hakluyt Society, 1975 ———, “In Search of a Sea Route to Siberia, 1553–1619.” Arctic, 37(4) (1984): 429–440 Armstrong, T., G. Rogers & G. Rowley, The Circumpolar North, London: Methuen, 1978 Heap, J. (compiler), “Polar profile, Terence Edward Armstrong.” Polar Record, 32(182) (1996): 265–270 Speak, P., “Terence Edward Armstrong 1920–1996.” In Geographers, Bibliographical Studies, Volume 18, edited by P. Armstrong & G. Martin, London: Mansell, 1998

ARNASSON, INGOLFUR According to the first historian to write in Icelandic, Ari fróði (Ari the Learned, 1067–1148), Iceland was settled around 870. This chronology fits well, if not exactly, with archaeological evidence that suggests that the settlement of Iceland began shortly before 871, when a volcanic eruption produced the so-called settlement layer. Ari further states that the first settler of Iceland was a man called Ingólfr (Ingolfur

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ARNASSON, INGOLFUR Arnasson) who came from Norway. Ingólfr is also mentioned briefly by Norwegian historians of the 12th century in Historia Norwegiae (c.1150) and Historia de antiquitate regum Norwagiensium by Theodricus (c.1180). The patronymic Arnasson (or Arnarson) does not appear until the 13th century in family sagas such as Egils saga and Eyrbyggja saga. Although Ingólfr was the first settler of Iceland, he was not the first person to inhabit the country. Apart from the Irish monks reported to have lived in Iceland, at least three persons of note had visited before and at least one of them left behind peoples who remained. Ingólfr (Arnasson) was, however, the first person of note to settle permanently in Iceland. Around 1100, the earliest version of Landnámabók or Landnáma (The Book of Settlements) is believed to have been composed, but scholars disagree as to whether it pre- or postdated Ari’s writing. This version is now lost, but in later manuscripts, especially Sturlubók (composed by Sturla Þórðarson, 1214–1284) and Hauksbók (composed by Haukr Erlendsson, d. 1334), the story of Ingólfr is told in detail. According to these sources, Ingólfr came to Iceland around 874 CE along with his foster-brother Hjo¸rleifr, who was subsequently slain by Celtic slaves whom he had captured during his raids in Ireland. Ingólfr then killed the slaves in Vestmannaeyja (the Westmann Islands). The Sturlubók version of Landnáma is thought to be more extensive than older versions because Sturla Þórðarson added considerable material from the family sagas. But scholars believe that even if the story in its basic outline might still derive from some older version of Landnámabók, it would nevertheless be suspect. Legends of two brothers who founded a community are common (e.g., Romulus and Remus in Rome, Hengist and Horsa in Anglo-Saxon England), and in these legends, one of the brothers invariably gets killed whereas the other becomes the mythical founder of the community. Scholars have also noted the moralistic aspect of such mythical stories. According to the legends, the amorous quarrels of his foster-brother Hjo¸rleifr led to his and Ingólfr’s flight from Norway. Following this, Ingólfr explored the new land recently discovered in the North Atlantic while his foster-brother plundered throughout the British Isles, gathering a large booty as well as the Irish slaves who later caused his death. The brothers then went on separate ships to Iceland, where Hjo¸rleifr met his fate. Ingólfr, who was a great believer in the heathen religion, blamed his foster-brother for his own negligence in religious matters. Furthermore, the legends maintain that when Ingólfr arrived in Iceland from Norway, he threw the pillars of his high seat overboard and asked the gods to

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wash them ashore where he should settle. He landed in southeast Iceland and spent three years searching the shore until he found his lost pillars in a place he named Reykjavík (Smoky Bay), perhaps because of the geothermal steam he saw rising there. He built a farm there in what is now the heart of downtown Reykjavík. A number of place-names on the southern coast of Iceland are connected with Ingólfr (Arnasson), including Ingólfshöfði (the cape of Ingólfr) in southeastern Iceland and Ingólfsfell (the mountain of Ingólfr) in the O ¸ lfus region. The third version of the Landnámabók, which dates from this period, Melabók is only known in fragments; however, the story it tells appears somewhat different from previous versions. In the Melabók version, Ingólfr has a different patronym; he is not Arnarson but Bjo¸rnúlfsson. As scholars generally believe Melabók to stem from an older version of Landnáma than the Sturlubók or Hauksbók versions, it is quite probable that the generally known patronym of Ingólfr is incorrect, and that there was no Ingólfr Arnarson. After all, in the oldest narratives, he is simply called Ingólfr. The question of Ingólfr’s ancestry remains significant because he may have been connected to the family of Bjo¸rn buna that produced many prominent settlers in Iceland. Researchers and historians know little about the life of Ingólfr after he settled in Iceland. According to Landnámabók, he helped organize a settlement in the region closest to his farm in Reykjavík. There he laid claim to vast tracts of land, which included the entire region between Hvalfjo¸rðr in the west and O ¸ lfussá in the south, but he later gave most of it away to other settlers. Ingólfr’s son, Þorsteinn, founded the first parliament in Iceland, called Kjalarnesfling. Ingólfr therefore most likely died before social organization in the region was complete. His kin remained prominent in the public sphere of Iceland for the first decades after settlement, and his grandson Þorkell máni Þorsteinsson held the dignified position of speaker at the parliament from 970 to 984. Subsequently, the clan faded into obscurity. Reykjavík lost its position as an important farm area in Iceland, and did not regain it until the Danish government established its protoindustrial workshops there during the 18th century. In 1924, a statue of Ingólfr, by the sculptor Einar Jónsson (1874–1954), was erected at the mound of Arnarhóll in Reykjavík.

Biography Ingólfur Arnasson was born c.850 at Fjalir in Norway. According to the earliest known tradition, his family came from Hjo¸rðaland. His father was either named O¸rn or more probably Bjo¸rnúlfr. Arnasson traveled to

ARON FROM KANGEQ Iceland c.870, where he founded a settlement. He subsequently lived at a farm in Reykjavík, Iceland. He married Hallveig Fróðadóttir; they had a son, Þorsteinn. The date of Arnasson’s death is unknown. SVERRIR JAKOBSSON See also Iceland; Reykjavík Further Reading Ellehøj, Svend, Studier over den ældste norrøne historieskrivning, Copenhagen: 1965 Íslendingabók. Landnámabók (Íslenzk fornrit, I), edited by Jakob Benediktsson, Reykjavík, Iceland: 1968 Jóhannesson, Jón, Gerðir Landnámabókar, Reykjavík, Iceland: 1941 Monumenta Historica Norwegiae. Latinske kildeskrifter til Norges historie i middelalderen, edited by Gustav Storm, Kristiania, Norway: 1880 Líndal, Sigurður, “Sendiför Úlfljóts ásamt nokkrum athugasemdum um landnám Ingólfs Arnarsonar.” Skírnir, 143 (1969): 5–26 Pálsson, Hermann, “Vesturvíking Hjörleifs.” Saga, 2 (1954– 1958): 309–315 Rafnsson, Sveinbjörn, Studier i Landnámabók. Kritiska bidrag till den isländska fristatstidens historia, Volume XXXI, Lund, Sweden: Bibliotheca Historica Lundensis, 1974 Sørensen, Preben Meulengracht, “Sagan um Ingólf og Hjörleif.” Skírnir, 148 (1974): 20–40 Matthíasson, Haraldur, Landið og landnám, 2 volumes, Reykjavík, Iceland: 1982

ARON FROM KANGEQ Aron from Kangeq, an indigenous figure in Greenland in the 19th century, is considered a forerunner among Greenlandic pictorial artists. His illustrations of the oral storytelling tradition have gained status as a symbol of the new artistic tradition developed in Greenland in the mid-19th century. In addition to his oeuvre of watercolors, woodcuts, and drawings, Aron was also a dedicated writer of the oral tradition. Crucial to Aron’s life as an artist and the development of the art of painting in Greenland was Hinrich Johannes Rink (1819–1893), the governor of the Southern District of Greenland from 1855 to 1868. Rink was aware that in spite of the cultural suppression on the part of the Danish and German missions, Greenlanders secretly kept alive their traditional oral songs and stories. Amid rapid social and cultural changes within the Greenlandic community, Rink recognized the importance of preserving the knowledge about indigenous cultural traditions. On April 22, 1858, influenced by various projects of collecting folklore in Denmark, Rink sent out an “invitation” to the settlements on the West Coast, the colonized area of Greenland. Rink encouraged the Greenlanders to record their knowledge of the oral traditions, and to contribute maps and drawings. Rink had brought a

small, wooden printing press to Godthåb from Copenhagen, with which he intended to print the written material in Danish and Greenlandic. His initiative was met with great enthusiasm among the Greenlanders all along the West Coast who sent him their written manuscripts of the oral traditional folktales and stories. The collected material resulted in the four small volumes of Kaladlit Oqalluktualliait/ Grönlandske Folkesagn [Greenlandic Folktales], printed by Rink between the years 1859 and 1863. Rink’s invitation likewise spurred the work of Aron. Aron came from Kangeq, a small settlement a few miles outside of the colonial administrative center of Godthåb (presently Nuuk, Greenland’s capital) where residents eagerly responded to Rink’s project. Aron began contributing to the collection of folktales by illustrating stories that other people had written down. Samuel Kleinschmidt (1814–1886), a DanishGreenlandic missionary and teacher in Godthåb, who knew Aron from collaborating with the artist on map drawings, had shown Rink one of Aron’s drawings. It was an illustration of the settlement Kangaamiut, and it must have engendered the idea of encouraging indigenous documentation of cultural knowledge. Rink published his invitation only a couple of weeks later with the specific invitation to Aron to illustrate the collection of manuscripts. Another illustrator, Jens Kreutzmann from Kangaamiut, also sent Rink his works, but Rink used Aron as the primary illustrator. Rink probably selected a key group of manuscripts and sent them to Aron so that the artist might choose which stories to illustrate. Scholars know from the two men’s correspondence that Rink provided Aron with his materials, which were scarce in Greenland at that time. Rink supplied paper, pencils, and pigments from Godthåb to Kangeq via kayak. In late 1858, Rink introduced Aron to wood carving as a printmaking method. The first two volumes of Kaladlit Oqalluktualliait/Grönlandske Folkesagn (published in 1859 and 1860) as well as the newspaper Atuagagdliutit (started in 1861) featured Aron’s woodcut illustrations. He earned national recognition for these and the picture book Prøver af Grønlandsk Tegning og Trykning 1857–61 [Examples of Greenlandic Drawing and Printing], a gift to King Frederik VII of Denmark. Although the woodcut medium represented a significant portion of Aron’s work, he subsequently concentrated on watercolor, with which he developed a characteristic style. The watercolors effectively witnessed Aron’s intimate relationship with Greenlandic landscape and its colors, people, and their culture. He often executed several illustrations for one manuscript in order to visualize the key scenes of a narrative and elucidate plot. In addition to illustrating other people’s

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ART AND ARTISTS (INDIGENOUS) stories, Aron began to write his own texts, eventually distinguishing himself as an indigenous writer. Aware of the essential differences between the oral and the written medium, Aron remained sensitive to the written context and focused on creating comprehensible and coherent narratives as compared to many of the other writers who contributed to Rink’s collection. Aron sensitively described his characters’ inner life; moreover, his descriptions were also often more detailed than was the case with the other writers. The recording of oral narratives necessarily entailed the loss of important elements of traditional storytelling, such as the storyteller’s use of voice and body language, which could not be relayed in writing. Through the combination of text and image, Aron nevertheless managed to relay a sense of the vitality and the dynamics of the oral storytelling tradition. The oral tradition included both legends from ancient times and tales of contemporary events. Aron represented both types in his art, and several manuscripts and illustrations described the seminal meeting of the Inuit and the European cultures; these cultural conflicts comprised some of Aron’s first artistic motives. His fascination with material from ancient times (pre-European contact) remained a frequent and enduring theme. A devout Christian, Aron expressed difficulties with the Inuit’s “heathen” past; in contrast with other writers such as Jens Kreutzmann, who claimed that the ancient material belonged to the past and Christianity to the present, Aron often tried to adjust the ancient Inuit worldview to comply with Christian morals. When Rink and his wife Signe left Greenland in 1868, they brought the collected material, including Aron’s works. Signe Rink (1836–1909) held a stronger sense of the ethnographic value of the illustrations than her husband, who had primarily been interested in the written manuscripts and regarded the illustrations as a curiosity. In 1905, Signe Rink donated the bulk of Aron’s watercolors to the National Museum in Copenhagen, excluding a selection of illustrations that she found either improper or not belonging to the ancient tradition of storytelling, such as the cultural meeting between the Europeans and the Inuit. These were given to the University Museum of Ethnography in Oslo by relatives after Rink’s death. The main collection of Aron’s watercolors in Copenhagen remained hidden until 1960, when Eigil Knuth rediscovered the museum collection and presented them to the public. This portion of the collection was transferred from Copenhagen to the National Museum of Greenland in 1982.

Biography Aron was born in Kangeq, a hunting society in South Western Greenland in 1822, the son of Ane Benigna

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(1798–1875) and Christian Heinrich (1801–1859). Aron’s father was a catechist for the German Herrnhuter mission in Kangeq, just like his father Abraham had done. Aron had three younger brothers who all died at a young age. Aron married his wife Persita in 1843; their only son Apollo died at the age of one year. Aron suffered from tuberculosis, and during the long periods when he was bedridden, he made illustrations and wrote down oral traditional stories. Aron achieved national recognition among his contemporaries for his woodcuts and drawings. Although Aron did not receive any formal education in pictorial art, he succeeded in transforming oral and written narratives into visual form, especially painting, a unique medium in Greenland in the mid-19th century. Aron’s artistic production consisted of over 300 watercolors and drawings, about 40 woodcuts, and 56 written manuscripts. Aron died from tuberculosis in Kangeq in 1869 at the age of 47. JENNY FOSSUM GRØNN See also Art and Artists (Indigenous); Rink, Hinrich Johannes Further Reading Knuth, Eigil, Aron fra Kangeq, Grønlands Guldaldermester, København: Nationalmuseets Arbejdsmark, 1960 ———, Aron of Kangeq—The Norsemen and the Skraelings, Godthåb: Det Grønlandske Forlag, 1968 ———, The Art of Greenland, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983 ———, Aron fra Kangeq, 1822–1869, København: Brøndum, 1997 Meldgård, Jørgen, Aron—En af de mærkværdigste Billedsamlinger i Verden, København: Nationalmuseet, 1982 Thisted, Kirsten, Således skriver jeg, Aron, Nuuk: Atuakkiorfiq, 1999

ART AND ARTISTS (INDIGENOUS) The term “Arctic art” is used here to refer to the material culture of the Eskimo/Inuit and Aleut, and Northern Indians of North America, the Siberian Yupik of St Lawrence Island and the Chukotka Peninsula, and the Saami populations of Scandinavia. In the present as in the past, such small-scale societies have made objects that Westerners often classify as “art,” although none of them appear to have used the term aboriginally. Thus, any survey of indigenous art of the Arctic must begin with an explanation of how and why the term is used. Until recently, indigenous and westernized cultures conceptualized material objects differently with respect to aesthetics and function. As a rule, Westerners stopped making functional objects with an

ART AND ARTISTS (INDIGENOUS) aesthetic dimension after the Industrial Revolution. In fact, the two have become so conceptually separate that historians, artists, and critics devised a special category of objects made solely for aesthetic purposes, that is, “art.” By contrast, Arctic peoples continued to make objects that were functional as well as aesthetic for much longer. Until recently, the two were inseparable and the discrete category “art” —though by no means aesthetic sensibility—was unknown among aboriginal peoples. If Arctic peoples did not separate function and aesthetics, how can we call their objects “art?” The anthropologist Jacques Maquet has provided a helpful definition as it is used in this sense. Maquet argues that art falls into two classifications according to the intentions of its makers: (1) art by metamorphosis or (2) art by destination. Art by metamorphosis refers to objects made for “nonart” purposes and later appropriated by Euroamericans and reclassified as “art.” Art by destination, on the other hand, is used to mean objects whose makers intended them to be art all along (Maquet, 1971). In the case of Arctic art, then, the material objects made by earlier generations of Arctic artists are art by metamorphosis, whereas most of those made today are art by destination. The concept of art was first applied to the material objects of indigenous peoples by the discipline of native (indigenous) art history, which emerged in the mid-20th century. Anthropologists and archaeologists have always marveled at the distinguished beauty of Arctic material culture, but they were more interested in functional dimension than formal (or aesthetic) properties. Arctic archaeologists looked to these objects as a source of evidence for now-extinct cultures or for the earlier adaptations of extant groups (e.g., Collins, 1937), and anthropologists approached material culture as one in a set of cultural categories to list in 19th and early 20th century ethnographies (e.g., Nelson, 1899). Initially, art historians focused on description and formal analysis of objects from indigenous peoples and paid little attention to their cultural context (e.g., Goldwater, 1986). In the 1960s, however, with the rise of structural and symbolic anthropology, material culture came to be viewed as the most tangible of a set of similarly organized cultural domains whose analysis could reveal the underlying thought processes of a group (e.g., Lee, 1985). Structural and symbolic anthropology in turn gave rise to poststructuralism and postmodernism, which emphasized context including the perspective of indigenous peoples. Alternative, often conflicting, lines of evidence such as oral history are used to create a more balanced view (e.g., Fienup-Riordan, 1998). Archaeologists and Native art historians (e.g., Phillips, 1998) have borrowed structural, poststructur-

Inuit hunter figure carved out of walrus bone (artist unknown), Greenland. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

al. and other related anthropological theories and applied them to their own investigations. As a result, the lines separating the three disciplines have grown increasingly blurred.

Prehistoric Period For organizational purposes this survey will be divided chronologically into three periods: archaeological, historical, and contemporary. The earliest examples of prehistoric Siberian and northern North American art are from the pre-Eskimo groups of Chukotka and St Lawrence Island, Alaska. Among the best known are the small female figures from the Okvik culture (200 BC–AD 100) excavated at Ekven, Siberia, on St Lawrence and Punuk islands, Alaska. Carved from walrus ivory, the figurines are detailed with slashing geometric lines and the circle-and-dot motif. Because the figures have articulated breasts and

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ART AND ARTISTS (INDIGENOUS) genitalia, archaeologists think that they may have served in fertility rites. In addition to female figures, sophisticated renderings of polar bears, sea mammals, and birds are also known for Okvik. Slightly later, objects from the Old Bering Sea period (AD 100–300) excavated in these same locations register a stylistic shift to a more curvilinear style with the addition of raised bosses (Collins, 1937). Art objects from the Ipiutak culture (AD 100–600; see Ipiutak Culture; Norton Culture), centered at Pt Hope, Alaska, mainly highly decorated ivory “death” masks and small animal figures, seem to be more closely related to the ScythoSiberian animal style of Eurasia than to the art of Bering Strait and Chukotka (Larsen and Rainey, 1948). Along the North Pacific Coast, the earliest artistic object from the Aleutian Islands is an ivory humanoid figure thought to be about 3000 years old excavated from the Chaluka Mound on Umniak Island. The figurine, about 12 inches high and hung by a thong inside the house where it was uncovered, suggests that it was associated with rituals. The Aleuts also made magnificent masks, which have been found in archaeological deposits in caves, usually in association with burials of important head men rituals (Black, 1982). In Canada and Greenland, the earliest examples of artistry are the miniature ivory or wood carvings from the late phases of the Dorset Period (1000 BC–AD 1300). Most typically 2–3 inches in size, Dorset carvings include humanoid masks, polar bears with skeletal detail, and bird imagery. The function of the pieces is unknown but one miniature wood mask is tinged with red, which may be ochre, a substance often used in shamanic ceremonies across the Arctic. Another hint at the function of Dorset objects is the skeletal markings on the Dorset carvings of polar bears. Polar bears were the most common helping spirit during Thule culture. Furthermore, to access the spirit world shamans had to reduce themselves mentally to a skeletal state (McGhee, 1996). The Thule period (900–1200 AD), the immediate predecessor of modern Inuit/Eskimo culture, succeeded the early cultures of Bering Strait in the west and Dorset in the east. Arising between 900— and 1300 in northern Alaska and spreading rapidly eastward, Thule art shows some relationships with the earlier Alaskan cultures but little stylistic continuity with Dorset. Compared to the artistic output of earlier populations of Bering Strait, Thule-style art is greatly simplified in shape, and not so artistically detailed or sophisticated. Figures are more simply—sometimes more crudely—rendered. When surface decoration is present, the most characteristic motif is segmented lines and the circle-and-dot motif seen earlier in Okvik and Old Bering Sea objects. Among object types characteristic of the Thule period, small combs some 2½ inches high, most having female

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imagery, are known from numerous sites across the Arctic, as are the so-called “Thule Birds,” small ivory game pieces used by the Inuit and Eskimo groups from Siberia to Greenland (McCartney, 1979). Early prehistoric Saami art consists mainly of pictographs of hunters pursuing reindeer, moose, and other prey dating from as early as 4200. Later finds include asbestos-tempered red pottery, iron and bronze implements with simple decorative detail, and wooden sculptures of animals, birds, and humans appear to have been used in conjunction with religious ceremonies dating from about AD 1200 to 1400 (Molk, 1991: 8–11; 1997: 28–32).

Historic Period The dates of the historic period vary according to when a group first encountered non-Natives. These are relatively meaningless in any case because most groups had received European goods in trade well before the arrival of Euroamericans. Certainly among the greatest changes affecting Arctic art during and immediately preceding the historic period was the availability of iron tools such as knives, saws, awls, and burins. Not only do the marks on objects made with steel tools differ, but more importantly they enabled artists to create objects that were more intricate in conception or had more elaborately rendered surface detail. One example of the new possibilities that steel tools brought to Arctic artists is the shift from pictographic to realistic engraving styles on walrus tusks from the Bering Strait Iñupiaq region at the turn of the 20th century. Before about 1890, artists in this area made drill bows, snow beaters, and other such objects out of bone or ivory and decorated them in a delightful pictographic, almost cartoonlike style. In 1892, however, Happy Jack (his Iñupiaq name was either Amaguaq or Angokwazhuk), an Eskimo living on Little Diomede Island, sailed aboard a whaling ship to San Francisco. En route he encountered the scrimshaw work of the Yankee whalers. When he returned to Nome, Happy Jack began copying naturalistic imagery from magazines, advertisements, post cards, and the like onto full walrus tusks. He marketed the tusks to the gold rushers around Nome and taught others his technique. Happy Jack’s work, which inspired a generation of ivory carvers both in Alaska and Chukotka, is an excellent example of the creativity that comes of the fusion of two cultures, a theme that runs through Arctic art of the historic and contemporary periods (Ray, 1984; Mitlyanskaya, 1976). Even today, collectors of indigenous art persist in their disdain for art that they perceive as “contaminated” by Euroamerican influence, a perspective that perhaps arises from the unconsciously patronizing wish to exoticize the creativity of

ART AND ARTISTS (INDIGENOUS) indigenous peoples. This is unfortunate because as often as not the cross-fertilization has resulted in explosions of creativity. The work of Happy Jack is but one example (Mitlyanskaya, 1976; Ray, 1984). One feature unifying Arctic art of the historic period is its close links to religion and ceremony. This persisted unevenly, depending upon the determination and policies of the Christian missionaries and government officials in a given area. Well into the 20th century in some areas, religious ritual served as an important source of art objects. Masks, drums, and regalia, to name just a few, all belonged to the rich ceremonial life that characterized Arctic cultures from Scandinavia to Siberia. Most Arctic groups had a religious specialist, or shaman, who derived his/her powers from communication with helping spirits. When illness or bad fortune struck, the shaman donned special regalia and embarked on a journey to determine the cause. Usually such ceremonies were public and consisted of performances lasting several nights. Among the Yup’ik Eskimos of southwestern Alaska, for example, the annual Bladder festival or ceremony culminated in a rite out on the ice in which a year’s accumulation of sea-mammal bladders were the focus of a shamanistic séance, after which the bladders were removed from the ceremonial house and returned to the spirit world through a hole in the ice. The haunting, complex masks used during the Bladder ceremony and other annual mid-winter ceremonies are among the most powerful art objects known for the Arctic (Fienup-Riordan, 1998: 38–40). The Inuit of Greenland, who were in intensive contact with Europeans from the mid-18th century onward, developed an artistic tradition more closely modeled along European lines. In the late 18th century, Danish missionaries and colonial administrators encouraged the development of an orthography of the Greenlandic language. As a result, the Greenlanders became literate well before other Inuit groups. In the mid-19th century, the Danish administrator and amateur ethnologist Hinrich Johannes Rink founded Atuagagdliutit, the first indigenous-language newspaper in the Arctic. In addition to articles, the paper published prints and drawings. Aron of Kangeq (1822–1869), one of the artists, became known throughout Greenland and Denmark for his lively watercolors of village life and Inuit tales in West Greenland. Similar to Happy Jack in Alaska, Aron was among the first Inuit artists to achieve name recognition beyond his Native settlement. Also like Happy Jack and many other artists of the historic period, Aron suffered from a disability (tuberculosis), and art provided him with an alternative source of livelihood when he was unable to support himself as a subsistence hunter (Kaalund, 1983).

Canadian Inuit art of the historic period was simple and small-scale. Around Baffin Island, men made scrimshandered walrus tusks—the result of contact with Scottish whalers—and women created magnificently sewn and beaded parkas, mittens, and boots. When the soapstone lamps characteristic of this area broke, men often carved small animals for the amusement of children out of the pieces, an activity that foreshadows Inuit soapstone carving of the contemporary period. Throughout the historic and into the contemporary period, the northern North American Indians bordering the Inuit and Eskimos have been known for their magnificent beadwork on moose and caribou skin. They produced moccasins, pouches, and pin cushions, a significant proportion of which were made for the non-Native souvenir market from the late 18th century onward. A creative synthesis of earlier porcupine quillwork with European-style embroidery, floral beadwork was introduced among the Eastern Woodland groups by Ursuline nuns. By the end of the 19th century, the floral-beadwork tradition had spread northwestward as far as the Arctic and Subarctic Athapaskans of Alaska (Duncan, 1989). In the east, the Naskapi-Montagnais Indians created tailored, European-style frock coats from caribou hide, which they painted with intricately patterned geometric designs that are unique among Native American art styles (Burnham, 1995). The Saami, like the Inuit/Eskimo groups, employed the tambourine drum in religious rites, but Saami drums, unlike those of the other Arctic groups, were decorated with pictographs of prey animals, humans, and cosmological events. Carved and elaborately decorated bone knives as well as intricate silverwork also characterized Saami art in the historic period. Women sewed the characteristic curled-front boots from reindeer skin. They also made handsome, well-executed basketry and did masterful sewing of the characteristic blue, red, and yellow cloth costumes and the distinctive four-pointed men’s hat (Kihlberg, 1999).

Contemporary Period At the turn of the 21st century, artists across the North, while maintaining their ethnic distinctiveness, are adjusting to a set of circumstances different from those faced by previous generations. Perhaps the most farreaching change is that whether they make functional/aesthetic art (more exactly replicas of functional/aesthetic art) or embrace conventional fineart media and techniques, almost all indigenous art from the Arctic today is created for consumption in a culture economically and politically more powerful than theirs. Around this central axis of change revolves a host of related issues—appropriation, authenticity,

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ART AND ARTISTS (INDIGENOUS) thematic, and creative constraint to name a few—common to indigenous artists across the Arctic. To illustrate these developments, it will be helpful to focus on the art making of a single group, the Canadian Inuit, and to use their history as a lens through which to view more general trends. Arguably the most successful of any modern-day indigenous art form anywhere, the story of Canadian Inuit art brings to light many of the triumphs and pitfalls facing Arctic artists today. The history of Canadian Inuit soapstone sculpture and printmaking is so well known that it needs no more than a brief summary here. In the summer of 1948, James Houston, a young Canadian artist, traveled north to the settlement of Port Harrison (modernday Inukjouac) on the Ungava Peninsula (today Nouveau Québec) on the eastern side of Hudson Bay for a sketching trip. Houston befriended the local Inuit, who had recently come in off the land and had settled in makeshift camps near the Hudson’s Bay Company trading posts. Coveting Houston’s cigarettes and other scarce commodities, the Inuit brought him in trade small soapstone models similar to those that were made for children out of broken or disused soapstone lamps. Moved by the Inuit’s extreme poverty and charmed by the models, Houston carried a sampling south to the Canadian Handicrafts Guild in Montreal at the end of the summer, hoping to find a market for them. The carvings sold immediately, and the next summer Houston persuaded the Canadian government to send him north again, where he traveled from settlement to settlement encouraging the Inuit to make salable carvings. The experiment was so successful that two years later the lines outside the Handicrafts Guild for the now annual Inuit carving sale stretched around the block. In 1951, the National Gallery of Canada opened the first of many exhibitions of Inuit carving, and not long after, the work of some of the great early sculptors like Kiurak Ashoona, Usuituk Ipeeli, and Pauta Saila (all of Cape Dorset) and Davidialuk Amittuk and Charlie Sivuarapik (both of Puvirnituk) was exhibited internationally alongside the work of European modernists such as Henry Moore. Before long, art cooperatives subsidized by the government but run by the Inuit with help from non-Native art advisers like Houston, managed the carving—and later the printmaking—operations. At about this time, cooperative associations took root in northern Canada, and the first one to handle Inuit art was founded in 1960 by Father André Steinmann in Puvirnituk (Graburn, 1987; Martijn, 1963; Vallee, 1967). Fueled by the demand for Inuit art in the south, co-ops were an important first step in restoring economic and political autonomy to the Inuit. A decade after launching Inuit soapstone carving, Houston (by now living in Cape Dorset as the govern-

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ment representative for Baffin Island) repeated the same success story with printmaking. In Cape Dorset, artists from the community submitted drawings to Houston (later to his successor, Terry Ryan, and still later to Inuit art buyers), who in consultation with the trained printmakers at the co-op, purchased those that lent themselves to printmaking and, undoubtedly, those that would appeal to non-Native collectors in the south. Later in the year, Houston and the printmakers would select ten drawings out of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, they had purchased, and these would be transformed into a limited annual edition of Cape Dorset prints. The prints were marketed in metropolitan Canada and the United States and, as was the case with the soapstone sculptures, the demand soon outstripped the supply. Artists such as Kenojuak Ashevak, Pitsiulak Ashoona, Kananginak Pootoogook, and Pudlo Pudlat became household names in the lucrative world of indigenous art collectors. Cape Dorset prints, thanks to worldwide media coverage, are now to be found in museums, art galleries, and private collections around the globe (Garburn, 1987; Houston, 1988). Cape Dorset’s spectacular success stimulated other Inuit communities to take up printmaking. Puvirnituk, Baker Lake (Qamani’tuaq), Pangnirtung, and Holman soon joined in, producing prints by equally competent artists such as Jessie Oonark of Baker Lake and Joe Talirunilik, and Josie Papialuk of Puvirnituk. Of particular note in the spread of printmaking is the printmaking process at Puvirnituk, which deviates markedly from that of Cape Dorset. In the Puvirnituk co-op, instead of using trained printmakers to transform artists’ drawings into prints, artists are issued their own print blocks and create their images directly on them. This gives the Puvirnituk prints a freshness and immediacy lacking in the more refined, sometimes studied, Cape Dorset prints (Graburn, 2000; Vallee, 1967). The history of Canadian Inuit so-called tourist art (Graburn, 1976) raises a wealth of issues that touch on the art-making situation, the North generally. First, in a pattern characteristic of the development of indigenous art forms the world over, behind soapstone sculpture and printmaking was the guidance of an intelligent and world representative of the first-world art system. Based on indigenous prototypes though they may be, the formal relationship of both the prints and the sculptures to mid-20th-century modernism is probably no accident. A skilled artist with a trained eye, Houston wielded considerable (some would argue absolute) power as a gatekeeper. Thus, the question of whether Cape Dorset art is Inuit art has been hotly debated by the Inuit, by other indigenous artists throughout the North, and by anthropologists and art historians ever since.

ART AND ARTISTS (INDIGENOUS) Whatever its influence, the Cape Dorset story raises many issues affecting indigenous artists across the Arctic. First, it demonstrates the difficulties facing indigenous artists who want to market their art from remote bush communities, whether in Alaska, Canada, Siberia, or Greenland. Without Houston’s guidance, Cape Dorset art probably would never have gotten off the ground. The obstacles are such that even the most well-connected among them would be defeated by the task. This is one reason why so many serious artists have left the North for metropolitan areas like Anchorage or Montreal. For those who leave to attend art school, it is the critical first step toward entering the world art system. For the artists left behind—and these are still in the majority in Canada though not in Alaska—except in strong art-making communities like Cape Dorset there is little infrastructure to fall back on. The result is that most market their work too cheaply to the slow if steady trickle of outsiders— teachers, health care providers, and construction workers—who pass regularly through rural communities. In Alaska, the Alaska State Council on the Arts has made marketing in remote locations a priority and provides support services such as marketing workshops for indigenous artists in rural areas. It is too soon to assess their impact, but the language barrier, the expense of travel, and the problems of organizing a career with such few local resources would seem to stack the odds against them. For artists choosing to stay in the North and working in traditional media such as ivory, feathers, and sealskin, marketing their work presents another problem. In recent decades, indigenous artists in both the Canadian and American Arctic have been severely impacted by government regulations such as the Migratory Waterfowl Act and the Marine Mammals Protection Act, both of which severely restrict the uses they can make of traditional materials (Becker, 2001). In short, art making is a hard way to earn a living under the best of circumstances, but it is particularly difficult in the Far North. Not surprisingly, those who wish to remain in rural areas often take wage-labor jobs when they are available. This is a common-enough pattern that it is probably safe to suggest that in these communities there is a negative correlation between art making and the availability of wage-labor jobs. The Cape Dorset case also raises the issue of authenticity, a long-standing concern both for artists and consumers. In Alaska and coastal British Columbia, which host a million or more tourists every summer, gift shops routinely sell copies of Native art mass produced in Indonesia and other parts of Asia where labor is cheap. To some extent, the authenticity of both Saami and Alaska Native art is protected by subsidized programs that provide artists with a sticker guaranteeing the

authenticity of their work (Holowell-Zimmer, 2001; Lincoln, 2001). However, this does not solve the problem for gift-shop owners catering to mass tourism. Even under the best of circumstances, Alaska Native artists cannot hope to compete with the mass-produced fakes. To do so would mean lowering the very standards that distinguish them as authentic artists. Realistically, the only possible compromise is for gift-shop owners to cease representing their mass-produced wares as authentic, and for indigenous artists to continue the slow and painful process of making genuine Native art for the small but devoted coterie of consumers—most of whom are locals in any case—willing to pay its deservedly high prices. Another trend illustrated by the Canadian Inuit case is the problems that stem from the restrictions in subject matter that the nonindigenous consumers impose on indigenous art and artists. As a rule, both soapstone carvings and prints past and present depict a way of life that has long since vanished: hunters harpoon seals instead of using rifles, families travel by dog sled instead of by snow machine, and mothers cook over seal oil lamps in a snow iglus and not on a range or Coleman stove in the prefabricated government-issue houses that have replaced them. This is a past almost as exotic to present-day artists as it is to their consumers. Whereas carvers and printmakers in Houston’s day communicated through their art a life they lived or at least remembered, when artists of today sit down to work they draw on the memories of their grandparents, on TV re-runs, and on the same glossy exhibition catalogs found on the coffee tables of art collectors. If their work sometimes falls flat, it is unnecessary to look any farther than this simple truth for an explanation. The obligation to create an art about life in the past is by no means confined to soapstone sculpture or printmaking. In Alaska, serious social problems such as drug and alcohol abuse are rarely explored through art. Of today’s well-known artists, only Ronald Senungetuk (In˜upiaq), Jack Abraham (Central Yup’ik), and Susie Silook (Siberian Yupik) have openly dealt with social issues in their work. The simple truth is that it is much easier to sell what one artist referred to as “kayak-culture art” than to attract buyers for works that wrestle with painful realities. On the brighter side, the hard-fought ethnic awareness of the 1960s has not been without its gains for indigenous artists. The recent repatriation laws in the United States and Canada have shifted the balance of power between indigenous peoples and the governments that have held them hostage in the past. And in 2001, it is a rare museum exhibition about the art of the Arctic that does not engage the appropriate artists in the process. Then, too, indigenous art has achieved a greater political presence in recent years. In 1970, 30

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ARUTYUNOV, SERGEI years ago, Enchanted Owl, a print by Keojuak Ashevak, was selected for use as a Canadian postage stamp (Blodgett, 1985). For those whose glass was half empty, the honor was dampened by the irony of Canada’s choice to pay homage to the art of a people whose needs they had long ignored; for those whose glass was half full, this appropriation and the many that have followed it are the first halting steps toward recognizing northern indigenous peoples as participants in the real world of land claims, subsistence battles, and repatriation negotiations, not a false present in which caribou are still felled with stone-tipped arrows. MOLLY LEE See also Aron from Kangeq; Bladder Ceremony; Clothing; Cooperatives; Dorset Culture; Handicrafts/Tourist Art; Inuit Art Foundation; Ipiutak Culture; Ivory Carving; Kenojuak; Masks; Norton Culture; Old Bering Sea Culture; Rink, Hinrich Johannes; Scrimshaw; Shamanism; Thule Culture

Further Reading Becker, Chuck, Use of Wildlife in Arts and Crafts: An Overview of Federal Laws and Regulations by the US Fish & Wildlife Service, unpublished paper (available from the Alaska Export Assistance Center, US Commercial Service, Alaska), 2001 Black, Lydia T., Aleut Art, Anchorage: Aleut/Pribilof Native Association, 1982 Blodgett, Jean, Kenojuak, Toronto: Firefly Books, 1985 Burnham, Dorothy, To Please the Caribou, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995 Collins Jr., Henry B., Archaeology of St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 96(1), 1937 Duncan, Kate C., Northern Athapaskan Art: A Beadwork Tradition, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1989 Fienup-Riordan, Ann, The Living Tradition of Yup’ik Masks: Agayuliyararput: Our Way of Making Prayer, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998 Goldwater, Robert, Primitivism in Modern Art, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 1986 Graburn, Nelson H.H., Ethnic and Tourist Arts, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976 “The discovery of inuit Art: James Houston—animateur.” Inuit Art Quarterly, 2(2) (1987): 3–4 “Canadian Inuit Art and Co-ops.” Museum Anthropology, 24(1) (2000): 14–25 Hollowell-Zimmer, Julie, “Intellectual property protection for Alaska Native arts.” Cultural Survival Quarterly, 24(4) (2001): 55–57 Houston, Alma, Inuit Art: An Anthology, Winnipeg, Manitoba: Watson & Dwyer, 1988 Kaalund, Bodil, The Art of Greenland, translated by Kenneth Tindall, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983 Kihlberg, Kurt, Giehta Dáidu (The Great Book of Saami Handicrafts), Rosvik, Sweden: Forlagshuset Nordkalotten, 1999 Larsen, Helge E. & Froelich Rainey, “Ipiutak and the Arctic whale hunting culture.” Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, 42 (1948)

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Lee, Molly, “Objects of Knowledge: The Communicative Dimension of Baleen Baskets.” In Native American Basketry: A Living Legacy, edited by Frank W. Porter, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1989, pp. 319–334 (Reprinted from Etudes/Inuit/Studies, 9(1) (1985): 163–182) Maquet, Jacques, Introduction to Aesthetic Anthropology, Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1971 Martijn, Charles A. “Canadian Eskimo carving in historical perspective.” Anthropos, 59 (1963): 549–596 McCartney, Allen P.(editor), Thule Eskimo Culture: An Anthropological Retrospective” Archaeological Survey of Canada, 8 0317-2244 (Mercury Series 0316–1854), Ottawa: National Museums of Canada, 1979 McGhee, Robert, Ancient People of the Arctic, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1996 Mitlyanskaya, Tamara, B., Khudozhniki Chukotki (The Artists of Chukotka), Moscow: Izobrazitel’noe Iskusstvo, 1976 Molk, Inga-Maria, Sámi Cultural Heritage, Jokkmokk, Sweden: Ájtte, Swedish Mountain and Sámi Museum, 1997 Nelson, Edward W., “The Eskimo about Bering Strait.” 18th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology for the Years 1896–1897, 1899, pp. 3–518 Phillips, Ruth B., Trading Identities, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998 Ray, Dorothy Jean, Eskimo Art: Tradition and Innovation in North Alaska, Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press, 1977 ———, Aleut and Eskimo Art: Tradition and Innovation in South Alaska, Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press, 1981 “Happy Jack: King of the Eskimo Ivory Carvers.” American Indian Art, 10(1) (1984): 32–47, 77 Vallee, Frank G., Povungnetuk and its Co-operative, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Northern Coordination and Research Center, NCRC-67-2, 1967

ARUTYUNOV, SERGEI Sergei Arutyunov (Sergei Aleksandrovich Arutiunov) is a contemporary distinguished Russian scholar in the field of Arctic archaeology and anthropology. His primary research focus has been Arctic studies, although he has also conducted research on Japanese culture and history and the anthropology of Asia. Arutyunov, along with native anthropologist Dorian Sergeev, excavated several important archaeological sites on the Chukchi Peninsula, combining this research with studies of contemporary Siberian ethnography. The most prominent of the sites he and Sergeev excavated included Old Bering Sea Culture burial grounds Uelen and Ekven in East Asia. With his colleagues Igor Krupnik and Mikhail Chlenov, Arutyunov conducted research at Whale Bone Alley, an equally significant site on Yttygran Island, off the southeastern shore of the Chukchi Peninsula. These three sites yielded rich material of tremendous importance for the understanding of developmental trends of Neo-Eskimo culture, the social structure of the people who left them, and their artistic creativity. The chief focus of Arutyunov’s publications on Siberian archaeology, many of which he published

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Ceremonial site of Arutyunov’s excavations, Whale Bone Alley, Yttygran Island, Chutkotka, Siberia. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

with Sergeev, was the evolution of sea-mammal harpoon hunting. Arutyunov argued that this technology derived from the earlier techniques of spear hunting for fish and for reindeer at river crossings, which often utilized microblades inserted into the spear points. He also proposed connections between early Eskimo traditions and those of the Ymyyakhtakh Culture circles, mainly in the North of Yakutia, particularly as represented by remains found at the Burulgino site near the Yana River mouth. Another of Arutyunov’s essential contributions was his charting the development of harpoon-head construction by means of the cultural mutations caused by the search for increasingly productive modifications of harpoon heads and other related technology. In addition to extensive fieldwork in the Chukchi Peninsula, the Arctic and Subarctic areas, Arutyunov conducted ethnographic research in the lower basins of Pechora, Ob, and Yenisei rivers, and on the island of Hokkaido, the northernmost of the four islands of Japan. In 1987, Arutyunov accompanied an archaeological team from the Museum of Oriental Arts in Moscow conducting fieldwork on the Chukchi Peninsula, principally at the ancient burial ground of Ekven. That summer, he formally handed over his leadership of archaeological studies on the Chukchi Peninsula to this team led by Kirill Dneprovsky and Mikhail Bronshtein. The collections from Arutyunov’s excavations prior to 1987 were deposited at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in St Petersburg; those from the 1987 and subsequent excavations are housed jointly in the Museum of Oriental Arts in Moscow and the Chukchi District Museum in Anadyr.

Biography Sergei Arutyunov was born on July 1, 1932, in Tbilisi (Republic of Georgia). He graduated from the Moscow Institute of Orientology in 1954 with a master’s degree in Japanese literature and history. He subsequently began his doctoral research on Japanese archaeology in Moscow’s Institute of Ethnology, the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, where he assumed the position of research fellow the same year. Arutyunov received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Archaeology, Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1962. His dissertation was entitled “Ancient Northeastern Asiatic and Ainu Components in the Ethnogenesis of the Japanese.” He has been a full professor at Moscow State University since 1986 and was elected as a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1990. In addition to his doctoral research on ancient Asiatic and Ainu archaeology in Japan, Arutyunov has studied the archaeology of the Russian Far North. Beginning in 1957, he participated in excavations carried out by archaeologist Maxim Levin on the Chukchi Peninsula. Since 1962, Arutyunov has served on the faculty of the Institute of Ethnography, Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow (renamed in 1990 the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology) and most recently as the head of the Caucasian department. MIKHAIL BRONSHTEIN See also Chukchi; Ethnohistory; Old Bering Sea Culture; Yakutia Further Reading Arutyunov, Sergei, “Nekotorye itogi istoriko-etnologicheskikh i populjacionno-antropologicheskikh issledovanii na Chukotskom poluostrove” [Some results of ethnohistorical

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ASSOCIATION INUKSIUTIIT KATIMAJIIT and anthropological research on the Chukchi Peninsula]. In Na styke Chukotki i Aliaski [On the border between Chuchki Peninsula and Alaska], edited by V.P. Alekseev, T.I. Alexseeva & D.A. Sergeev, Moscow: Institut etnografii imeni N.N. Miklukho-Maklaia, 1983 ———, U beregov Ledovitogo Okeana [At the shores of the Arctic Ocean], Moscow: Russkii iazyk, 1984 ———, Narody i kultury: razvitie i vzaimodeistvie [Peoples and cultures: their development and interaction], Moscow: Nauka, 1989 Arutyunov, Sergei & Regina Holloman (editors), Perspectives on Ethnicity, The Hague: Mouton and Chicago and Canada: Aldine, 1978 Arutyunov, Sergei & D.A. Sergeev, Drevnie kultury aziatskikh eskimosov (Uelenskii mogilnik) [Ancient cultures of Asiatic Eskimos (Uelen cemetery)], Moscow: Nauka, 1969 ———, Problemy etnicheskoi istorii Beringomoriia (Ekvenskii mogilnik) [Questions of ethnohistory of the Bering Sea Area], Moscow: Nauka, 1975 ——— , “Nauchnye resultaty rabot na Ekvenskom drevneeskimosskom mogilnike (1970–1974)” [Scientific results of excavation ancient Eskimo Ekven Cemetery (1970–1974). In Na styke Chukotki i Aliaski [On the border between Chuchki Peninsula and Alaska], Moscow: Institut etnografii imeni N.N. Miklukho-Maklaia, 1983 Arutyunov, Sergei & V.G. Shcheben’kov, Drevneishii narod Iaponii: sud’by plemeni ainov [The most ancient people of Japan: The destiny of the Ainu tribe], Moscow: Nauka, 1992 Arutyunov, Sergei, A.V. Aleksandrov & D.L. Brodianskii, Paleometall Severo-Zapadnoi chasti Tikhogo Okeana [Paleometall of the North-Western Pacific], Vladivostok: Izd-vo DVGU, 1982 Arutyunov, Sergei, I.I. Krupnik & M.A. Chlenov, Kitovaia alleia. Drevnosti ostrovov proliva Seniavina [Whale Alley. Antiquities of Seniavin Strait Islands], Moscow: Nauka, 1982

ASSOCIATION INUKSIUTIIT KATIMAJIIT Inuksiutiit Katimajiit (“the group of those who have to do with Inuit”) is a private nonprofit Canadian corporation founded in Québec City in 1974 by two professors from the Université Laval, Bernard Saladin d’Anglure and Louis-Jacques Dorais, and a researcher from the same university, Jimmy Innaarulik Mark. The objective of the association is to promote research and contribute to the dissemination of knowledge about the culture, language, society, and history of the Inuit and Yupiit peoples, from Chukotka in the west to Greenland in the east. It is managed by a six-person board of directors, elected annually by the general assembly of members. New members are proposed and accepted by the general assembly. The incentive for founding Inuksiutiit came when the Northern Québec Inuit Association (NQIA), which was then negotiating the James Bay Agreement, asked Université Laval researchers to share data they had previously collected on traditional land use and occupancy in Arctic Québec. Unwilling to deal with large academic institutions, NQIA preferred to work with smaller, independent nonprofit corporations.

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Besides conducting various applied research projects, Inuksiutiit has published more than 15 specialized volumes on Inuit language and culture, including Inuksiutiit Allaniagait (Reading Material about the Inuit), a series of texts in Inuktitut syllabic characters by authors from Nunavik (Arctic Québec). One of the first novels written in Inuktitut (one of the EskimoAleut languages), Sanaaq (the name of its principal character), by Salome Mitiarjuk was published in this series in 1984. Another publication is Taamusi Qumaq’s Sivulitta Piusituqangit (The Long-Standing Customs of our Ancestors, 1988), an encyclopedia of traditional Inuit life. In 1991, Inuksiutiit also acted as copublisher (with the Avataq Cultural Institute of Inukjuak, Nunavik) for Qumaq’s Inuit Uqausillaringit (The Real Inuit Words), the first dictionary of definitions ever published in Inuktitut. To further its objective of disseminating knowledge, Inuksiutiit launched a scholarly journal on the Inuit, Études/Inuit/Studies, whose first issue appeared in 1977. This bilingual (English-French) multidisciplinary periodical has been published twice a year since. It has an international readership and is now recognized as a major source of information on Inuit and Yup’ik culture, society, history, and language. From 1989 on, Études/Inuit/Studies has been published in collaboration with the Université Laval’s Groupe d’études inuit et circumpolaires (GETIC). In October 1978, Inuksiutiit organized the first Inuit Studies Conference in Québec City, which was followed by a second conference in 1980. Inuit Studies conferences have since been held every two years. Their organization is generally entrusted to an academic institution with a special interest in the Inuit, including, as often as possible, northern colleges and universities. In 1990 for instance, the 7th Inuit Studies Conference took place at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. The 9th conference (1994) was organized by Nunavut Arctic College in Iqaluit, and the 11th one (1998) by the University of Greenland in Nuuk. The 12th conference (2000) was held at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, the 13th in Anchorage in 2002, and the 14th is planned in Calgary in 2004. These conferences, which are generally attended by 150–300 participants, enable all those interested in fundamental or applied research on the Inuit, including an increasing number of Inuit and Yupiit scholars and students, to share and discuss their findings. LOUIS-JACQUES DORAIS Further Reading Dorais, Louis-Jacques, “Le point sur l’Association Inuksiutiit Katimajiit Inc.” Recherches amérindiennes au Québec, 5(3) (1975): 76–77

ASSOCIATION OF WORLD REINDEER HERDERS ———, “La recherche sur les Inuit du Nord québécois: bilan et perspectives.” Études/Inuit/Studies, 8(2) (1984): 99–115 Dorais, Louis-Jacques & Bernard Saladin d’Anglure, “L’anthropologie des Inuit à l’Université Laval.” Association of Canadian Studies Newsletter, 8(1) (1986): 10–11 Vézinet, Monique & Louis-Jacques Dorais, “L’équipe Inuksiutiit.” Études/Inuit/Studies, 1(1) (1977): 165–170

ASSOCIATION OF CANADIAN UNIVERSITIES FOR NORTHERN STUDIES (ACUNS) The Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies (ACUNS) represents Canada’s northern and polar researchers working at member universities and colleges. Founded in 1977, in Churchill, Manitoba, as a nonprofit organization, the Association is a charitable organization with six important functions: (1) to represent interests of members by promoting policies and practices that support northern scholarship, (2) to establish mechanisms through which resources can be allocated to members so as to increase knowledge of the north and ensure northern training, (3) to enhance opportunities for northern people to become leaders and promoters of excellence in education and research important to the north, (4) to facilitate the understanding and resolutions of northern issues, (5) to initiate programs that will increase public awareness of northern sciences and research, and (6) to cooperate with other organizations, public, private, and international, concerned with northern studies. ACUNS is organized as a Council consisting of a single representative from each of the 35 member institutions. The representatives provide a liaison between ACUNS and its individual institutional members. Once a year, the Council meets in an Annual General Meeting to determine the policy and practices of the Association. Every second year, the Council elects a Board of Directors for a two-year term, which ensures that the six mandated functions are fulfilled. The Board consists of a President, Vice-President, and Secretary-Treasurer, who are the executive officers, and a set of Directors-atlarge. A salaried Executive Officer oversees the operation of the Ottawa office, including supervision of a small support staff and occasional contract positions To promote northern scholarship, ACUNS established the Canadian Northern Studies Trust (CNST) in 1982 as an arms-length committee of ACUNS charged with the administration of a set of special awards, bursaries, and studentships from endowed funds and annual donations. Members of the Committee are appointed by ACUNS for three-year terms and represent a cross section of disciplines and regions. ACUNS also organizes the National Student Conference every three years. This conference

contributes to the development of new northern researchers by offering students a forum to discuss their work. There have been six conferences to date, with the most recent being at the University of Laval (2000) and Simon Fraser University (1997), and the seventh at the University of Alberta in 2003. ACUNS promotes the concept that research should be a positive component of the northern social and physical environment and should respect and involve, where practical, northern residents in appropriate and ethical ways. Guidelines for doing so were developed in the Association’s statement of Ethical Principles for the Conduct of Research in the North. Since the first edition in 1982, the Ethical Principles has become one of the most widely disseminated and reproduced documents for ethical research that is consulted in Canada. Revised in 1997 to take into account changing political and economic realities in the north, the 20 principles promote the new spirit of partnership between northerners and researchers that is emerging in northern research. Information about northern studies is disseminated by ACUNS through such mechanisms as the ACUNS web site, the NorthSci list serve, the Annual General Meeting, the Directory of Northern Studies Courses by University/College, and a variety of meetings and liaison functions. These functions include counseling government and granting agencies on policy related to northern affairs. The work of ACUNS is sponsored by annual fees from its members, the federal government’s department of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, as well as special contracts and other minor sources of funds. JAMES ANDREW MCDONALD Further Reading Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies website: http://www.cyberus.ca/~acuns/

ASSOCIATION OF WORLD REINDEER HERDERS Reindeer-herding peoples inhabit a number of areas in the Northern Hemisphere, including Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Mongolia, China, Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Scotland. Most of these peoples are indigenous and have long traditions as reindeer herders. The Association of World Reindeer Herders was founded recognizing the similarities in reindeer husbandry both as industry and as a cultural, environmental, and economical phenomenon. The idea to form an association with this purpose surfaced in September 1993 during the Reindeer Peoples’ Festival in Tromsø, Norway, where reindeer peoples from all over the world convened for the first

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ATASSUT time. The festival participants appointed a working committee in order to establish a new organization. In 1997, representatives from Norway, Sweden, Finland and China met with representatives of 15 reindeer husbandry regions of the Russian Federation, in the town of Nadym in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, and agreed to establish the Association of World Reindeer Herders. The Association is a nongovernmental organization representing about 95% of world reindeer peoples. The organization admits as members persons engaged in reindeer husbandry, their families, reindeer husbandry companies, units and organizations, such as national reindeer husbandry organizations. The collective nature of reindeer husbandry in many places complicates assessment of the total number of association members. However, the organization estimates its membership to be 45,000 and 60,000. The purpose of the Association is to promote professional and commercial contact among reindeer peoples and to facilitate exchange of information about the reindeer industry. The organization collects information about reindeer husbandry in the different regions of the world, such as social and technical infrastructure (ranging from education and health to fences, slaughter, production lines, and transport), the production and the potential of the industry. Moreover, the organization provides a forum for the exchange of cultural information, such as local husbandry-related traditions, knowledge, language, and handicrafts. The Association of World Reindeer Herders also recognizes that reindeer herders across the world suffer from similar difficulties: loss of reindeer due to predators, loss of pastures, restrictions imposed by national borders upon transhumance, and contamination of the environment. The Association aims to offer through its network a unity that will strengthen the position of reindeer husbandry. The Association publishes an international newsletter, The Reindeer Herder, in Norwegian, English, Russian, and Finnish, which deals with issues of husbandry, herding, and management of reindeer. The main office is located in Tromsø, Norway. The organization also has a representative in Moscow. Johan Mathis Turi, a reindeer herder from Kautokeino, Norway, serves as the current president. Since 2000, the Association has had observer status at the Arctic Council. GRO WEEN See also Arctic Council; Caribou; Reindeer; Reindeer Pastoralism Further Reading Beach, Hugh, A Year in Lapland: Guest of the Reindeer Herders, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993

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Collinder, Bjorn, The Lapps, Princeton, Princeton University Press for the American Scandinavian Foundation, New York, 1949 Ingold, Tim, Hunters, Pastoralists and Ranchers: Reindeer Economics and Their Transformation, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980 Krupnik, Igor, Arctic Adaptions: Native Whalers and Reindeer Herders of Northern Eurasia, translated and edited by Marcia Levenson, Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1993 Paine, Robert, Herds of the Tundra: A Portrait of Saami Reindeer Pastoralism, Smithsonian Series in Ethnographic Inquiry, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994

ATASSUT Atassut is one of several Greenlandic political parties. Atassut means “togetherness,” and the party dates to the years surrounding the transfer to Home Rule government in Greenland (1979) when more liberal and conservative politicians wanted to establish an alternative to Siumut (the Social Democratic party). Atassut began in 1976–1977 as a political movement and was officially inaugurated on April 29, 1978. Atassut Nuuk was already established in the fall of 1977 (with Daniel Skifte as chair) and the party spread down the coast of Greenland from there. In the first election, the party gained a large vote (41.7%) and this pattern continued until 1991, when Atassut’s voter support dropped significantly. In 1981, the party had 59 local party-cells and around 3000 members. The atmosphere and the position of Atassut were shaped very much by the first early years of conflict and disagreement surrounding the debate about the transition to a Home Rule government. The politicians of Atassut defended the Rigsfællesskabet (political union) with Denmark and were against any radical break with Denmark or those values that the Greenlandic-Danish partnership represented. Atassut regarded special ties to Denmark as something natural and positive and worth protecting. In this regard, the party argued for “250 years of human values, which shape[d] Greenlanders and Danes into one community.” In the party program of 1977, Atassut declared explicitly that it fought against secession from Denmark. In this way, the party articulated a policy of loyalty to the Danish heritage in the Greenland tradition based on an attitude of toleration and moderation. The general political outlook of Atassut is liberalism, cosmopolitanism, and support for private interests. The party supports the process of privatization of Greenland’s public enterprises. The party also wants to lower the taxes and introduce a system where the citizens pay for certain services from the state. The party stresses Greenland’s international connections and warns against Greenland isolating itself. It supports

ATHAPASKAN Greenland’s membership of the European Union (EU) and the premises regarding fishery politics, which was the main argument against the EU no longer being valid. Atassut argues that the lack of membership of the EU has been expensive for Greenland because it has denied Greenland’s access to EU regional funds. Generally, the party finds it natural to copy good ideas and administrative practice from Denmark or elsewhere. On the issue of military security politics, Atassut supports NATO through the Danish membership and finds it therefore natural that the United States is stationed in the Thule Air Base as an integral part of the NATO defense. In the Danish parliament, Atassut collaborates with Venstre, Denmark’s Liberal Party, and the party has persistently held one of the two Greenlandic mandates in the Danish parliament. Generally, Atassut has had a stable, persistent influence on Greenlandic politics and has been the second largest party in the Greenland parliament. However, the party has twice become the largest party, once in the election of 1983, where it gained 46.6% of the votes, and again in 1987. However, the Atassut voter base has decreased since 1983. In 1999, the party reached its lowest result so far with 25.2% of the voters, in part because of the emergence of a new populist party Kattusseqatigiit. Atassut’s first chairperson, Lars Chemnitz, a teacher, was born in 1925. He graduated from the teacher’s seminar in Nuuk in 1946, and was armed with a solid political experience as the chairperson for Greenland’s national council from 1971 to 1979. He remained chairperson of the party in its first years (1979–1984) and was instrumental in shaping the party’s main ideological atmosphere. Otto Steenholdt, born in 1936, the son of a hunter, was another prominent figure, who became one of the Greenlandic representatives in the Danish parliament in 1977. He served as the chairperson of the party from 1985 to 1989. His brother Konrad Steenholdt was also an active force in the party and served as its chairperson from 1989 to 1993. Another important politician in the history of Atassut is Daniel Skifte, who served as a school director in Nuuk. Skifte, the son of a hunter, was born in Maniitsoq in 1936 and was one of the founders of the party; he became its chairperson in 1993. Among the new generation of Atassut politicians is Ellen Kristensen, who received an extraordinarily high vote to the election to the Danish parliament and became known as a “vote catcher.” In later years, Atassut was marked by a personal feud between Ellen Kristensen and Otto Steenholdt, which came to an end when Steenholdt was excluded from the party in the spring of 2000. The party excluded Steenholdt, in part, because of his views on Greenlandic language politics, which the party considered antiliberal and a violation

of the party’s devotion to human rights and for equal opportunities for all inhabitants of Greenland. An active member of the Atassut and member of the Greenlandic Parliament (Landsting) elected in 1995 was Anders Nilsson, who has now left Greenlandic politics. Atassut has persistently been an opposition party and it has only once participated in the government, from 1995 to 1999, when Skifte was minister (Landsstyremedlem) of economic affairs and housing. The closest call to power occurred in April 1983 when the party actually received 1000 votes more than Siumut but the same numbers of mandates as Siumut, because Siumut was sitting on four out of the five “cheap” villages mandates. In this situation, the one mandate from Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA) was decisive and IA supported a government of Siumut. Atassut has perhaps enjoyed the most persistent political profile within Greenlandic party politics. In 1994, the party adopted a new program, which contained a loyal confirmation of the old fundamental political principles that shaped the party at its origination. During the 1990s, Atassut witnessed an increasing turn in Greenland’s political life toward the liberalization politics that it has been advocating for years. JENS KAALHAUGE NIELSEN See also Chemnitz, Lars; Greenland Home Rule Act; Inuit Ataqatigiit; Siumut Further Reading Lauritzen, Philip, Glimt af en arktisk revolution—120 måneder med Grønlands Hjemmestyre (Flashes of an Arctic revolution—120 months with Greenland’s Home Rule Government), Nuuk: Atuakkiorfik, 1989 Skydsbjerg, Henrik, Grønland 20 år med Hjemmestyret (Greenland, 20 years with the Home Rule Government”), Nuuk: Atuagkat, 2000

ATHAPASKAN The Athapaskans are the Native North American populations who belong to the Athapaskan linguistic family. This group occupies a vast territory that extends from the northwestern tip of the American continent (Alaska) to west of Hudson Bay, and, on a north-south axis, from the Arctic Circle to the north of the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. For the purposes of this article, only the northern Athapaskan populations will be discussed, that is, those located slightly below and slightly north of the 60th parallel. However, it is worth noting that populations of the Athapaskan linguistic family can also be found in the southwest United States. Keren Rice (1998) has made a list of the

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ATHAPASKAN various Athapaskan languages and divided them into three major groups: 1. Languages of the West Coast: Kwalhioquatlatskanai (dialects of Willapa, Kwalhioqua, Tlatskani), Upper Umpqua, Athapaskan of the Rogue river (dialects of Upper Coquille, Sixes, Euchre Creek, Tututni, Chasta costa, Chetcotolowa, Galice-Applegate), northwest California (Hupa, Chilula/Whilkut, Mattole, Bear River, Eel River, Sinkyone, Nongatl, Wailaki, Lassik, Kato). 2. Languages of the North: Ingalik (Deg xit’an), Holikachuk, Koyukon, Upper Kuskokwim (Kolchan), Tanana (Minto-nenana, Chena, Salcha-goodpaster), Tanacross, Upper Tanana, Tutchone, Han, Gwich’in (Kutchin), Ahtna, Dena’ina (Tanaina), Babine-Witsuwit’en, Carrier, Tsilhqot’in (Chilcotin), Tagish-tahltan-kaska, Sékani-castor, Slave (South, mountain, Bear Lake, Hares), Dogrib, Tchippewayan, Sarci. 3. Apachean: Navajo, Western Apache, ChiracahuaMescaléro, Jicarilla Apache, Lipan Apache, Great Plains Apache (Kiowa). For an in-depth study of the northern Athapaskan languages, the reader can refer to the work of linguists such as Keren Rice, Leslie Saxon, and Gillian Story, as well as to the dictionaries of missionary Émile Petitot or his monograph on the Dene-Dindjié written in 1876, works that count among the first on the Athapaskan languages of the north. Aboriginal population (Athapaskan and other groups) in these regions is not a majority, as the Inuit are in Nunavut; however, they form a significant proportion of the population. In 2001, there were 5600 Indians in Yukon for a total of 28,520 inhabitants in the territory (20%). In the Northwest Territories in 2000, there were 10,615 Indians for a total of 37,100 inhabitants in the territory (29%). In Alaska in 2000, there were 15.6% American Indian and Alaska Native persons for a total of 634,892 habitants in the state (US census bureau). The overall territory inhabited by northern Athapaskans covers several ecological zones, from tundra to boreal forest, mountainous (Subarctic mountain range), and the plateaus of Alaska. The northern Athapaskans are generally divided into eastern and western groups (anthropologists who have worked on the northern Athapaskans do not all register the same number of populations, and spellings of names vary according to authors). These are principally: in the west—the Ingalik (western Alaska), the Koyukon (western Alaska), the Kolchan (western Alaska), the Tanaina (southwest Alaska), the Tanana (central western Alaska), the Ahtna (southwest Alaska—Copper

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River basin and Wrangler mountains), and the Nabena (Yukon-Alaska); and in the east—the Witsuwit’in (northern British Columbia), the Gwich’in (YukonAlaska), the Han (central Alaska), the northern and southern Tutchone, the Hares (Yukon), the Montagnards (Mackenzie), the Kaska, the Tlingit of the interior, the Tagish, the Tsetsaut, the Tahltan (northwestern British Columbia), the Yellowknife (Northwest Territories), the Dogrib (Northwest Territories), the Déné Tha (Slavey) (northwestern Alberta—southern Northwest Territories), the Chipewyan (Northwest Territories), and the Dune Za (Beaver) (Alberta and British Columbia—Peace River basin). This division between East and West is made according to social organization and lifestyles, although within each group there is great cultural diversity. The boundary between the two groups is the Mackenzie River. The Athapaskans of Canada are designated by the ethnonym Déné or, more commonly, Dene. Traditionally, northern Athapaskans living in the eastern part of the region considered here were seminomadic populations whose staple diet was caribou. They show great similarities with general eastern Subarctic populations such as Allgonquin. They followed a seasonal cycle of movement on their home territory in accordance with the migrations of the caribou. Hence, winters were spent in the woodlands and summers in the tundra. In summer, different bands regrouped and caribou were hunted in extended family groups. The animal was either driven into enclosures or killed from a canoe with a spear as it crossed a river. In the West and in the forests, moose and deer were hunted in preference to caribou, and salmon represented a substantial source of food. The large summer catches coincided with a period of settlement and intense social activity.

Social Organization and Kinship Systems In most areas, the northern Athapaskans traditionally lived in autonomous bands with their own hunting, fishing, and gathering grounds. However, there exist variations in the social organization of these groups. In the West, we find varied systems of social framework traditionally based on the division of clans into two exogamous moieties or phratries (e.g., Raven or the Wolf in Tlingit society). Marriage within the moiety was forbidden. The clans were mostly made of groups traced from a common ancestor (matrilineal descent). Potlatch-type ceremonies, similar to those of the coastal Alaskans, were carried out. The organization of society rested upon a social stratification dependent on the control of wealth. Society was thus traditionally divided between rich and poor, with the occasional

ATHAPASKAN addition of slaves. This probably comes as a manifestation of the influence of the population of the West Coast, for instance, Tlingit. The Athapaskan bands of the East had greater flexibility in their marital alliances, and clans or descent groups were also less important for living at camps or settlements. Their leader is named according to his personal qualities and skills and does not hold absolute power in the East.

always been simply adopted or transposed directly; they have also been modified and adapted. Hence, “Dene prophets” have reinterpreted Biblical stories in order to integrate them to Dene thought and more specifically to mythical accounts. By the same token, this process allows for a certain cultural dynamism to express and manifest itself by the possibility of maintaining cultural beliefs without having to give way to a status quo that would ultimately prove destructive.

Religion Traditional religions throughout Athapaskan territory are shamanistic. However, they present differences from one population to another. In certain societies, most members have a variety of powers, whereas elsewhere shamanic powers are held only by a specific category of individuals, such as healers. Intimately linked to shamanism, dreams occupy a significant place within the different northern Athapaskan societies. Because their content is of prime importance for their interpretation (something that may vary from one individual to another), a number of techniques are still used to influence dream content. Through dreams, we communicate with spirits, with the dead as well as with the living. Dreams transform human beings into spirits capable of communicating with all that is living in the spiritual sense of the term (Irimoto and Yamada, 1994: 86). Individuals who master their dreams the best, those whose spirit is strong, are therefore identified as “dreamers,” “prophets,” or more simply shamans. Again, although the practices of influence, the methods of interpretation, and the uses of dreams are generalized for the entire Athapaskan territory, the modes and degrees of importance vary from one population to the next. Much like dreams, visions play a fundamental role. Quite often, an individual’s spirit helper or patron animal is revealed after a vision quest in the forest. With this knowledge of the patron animal, a song and a power are granted, and certain ritual instructions are ascribed (such as prohibitions regarding food). Among some Athapaskans, every individual is endowed with such an animal helper, provided the quest is carried out. It is not only through visions but also through dreams that certain people’s reincarnation (either voluntary or involuntary) in the body of children already born or yet to be born can be identified or foreseen. Following such an identification, the most appropriate term of kinship is used to refer to the reincarnated individual. Therefore, if one’s brother is reincarnated in one’s granddaughter, one calls the latter “my brother.” All these societies were at one point subjected to Christianization (whether Anglican, Catholic, or Orthodox), but the various Christian elements have not

First Contacts The first contacts between Europeans and Athapaskan populations took place both progressively and in different places. To the east of the region, contact was essentially with fur traders and missionaries, while the Russians came to the Alaskan shores in 1741. At first such contacts remained sporadic, and even though more and more Europeans ventured into the North, it took an event the magnitude of the 1898 Klondike gold rush (with its 30,000 prospectors) to accelerate the process. One of the major transformations and disruptions wrought by these contacts was the participation of Amerindian populations in the fur trade. In 1717, the Hudson’s Bay Company established the trading post of Fort Prince of Wales in Churchill in order to trade directly with the Chipewyans. Then around 1858, it created the post of Brochet in the hope of extending this trade to other Dene tribes. In the beginning, the Chipewyans (the largest group among eastern Athapaskans) played the role of intermediary between the Company and other Amerindian populations, or even at times Inuit. The entry of the Chipewyans into this market drove them to progressively abandon the tundra for the wooded forests, where they could trap the fur animals sought by the Hudson’s Bay Company. Little by little, starting in the 18th century, the Chipewyans only went into the tundra for summer expeditions, a period during which they continued to go caribou hunting in order to build up large amounts of food stocks for the winter. The meat of the killed game could then be dried, smoked, or transformed into pemmican (a meat dried and then ground to powder, to which fat was added, turning it into a very rich food). The Chipewyans therefore adapted to the fur market to the point of changing their lifestyle, one that went back to their arrival in the region. Indeed, from 650 BCE until the 18th century, the Chipewyans (at the time, it would be more appropriate to speak of a Talthéiléi tradition) lived in the tundra, where they hunted caribou several hundreds of kilometers north of the forest limits. However, even though the modes of occupying the territory changed, it seems that their hunting techniques

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ATHAPASKAN remained the same, the Chipewyans always using tracking corridors (of which archaeological remains exist) to hunt caribou (Irimoto and Yamada, 1994: 93). With the western progress of the fur market, similar consequences impacted with greater or lesser intensity on other Athapaskan populations. When the fur market collapsed in the 1980s, the Athapaskans found themselves without a source of income to obtain the manufactured products and basic foodstuffs on which they had become dependent. In general, the oil and mining developments employed mainly inward migrants, not indigenous peoples. After the difficult years preceding the signing of the treaties with the government in Ottawa, the Athapaskans, like most native populations in Canada, followed the classic pattern of family allowances and mandatory schooling of children (which in many cases meant going to boarding schools), elements that incited these nomadic populations to settle in small communities. There they would be more exposed to western culture and its series of social problems. Athapaskan populations have thus gone through many changes following the arrival of Europeans. But because these contacts came at a later date than on the eastern part of the American continent, some of these populations still exhibit, or at least they did so up until the beginning of the 19th century, certain cultural characteristics that they possessed at the time of the first encounter. Without denying the importance of these transformations, it is worth noting that for some of these communities hunting-related activities still remain central in the 20th century. Thus, at the beginning of the 1970s, the Dene still generated half of their income from resources taken from the forest. Another consequence of contact with Europeans for native people was the introduction of particularly deadly diseases. During the 18th century, epidemics, most notably that of smallpox at the start of the 1780s, caused heavy losses among the Athapaskans in general and among the Chipewyans in particular, as more than two-thirds of these populations were decimated.

Relationships with Neighboring People The Inuit The neighboring populations to the north and the east of the Athapaskan territory are Inuit. In certain cases their hunting grounds can overlap, especially with the interior Inuit whose primary means of support is also caribou. Ethnography has often recorded the hostile relations between the Inuit of the western Hudson Bay and the Dene. The great frequency of these testimonies of conflict can no doubt be explained by the fact that they reflect particularly striking events in the collective memory of both populations. However, peaceful

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encounters also took place and relationships of an economic nature could bind the protagonists. These encounters could either be fortuitous or voluntary. In the case of the latter, it concerned mostly individuals who knew each other personally. Meetings could also be organized in order to exchange goods (such as snowshoes, dogs, and clothing), and sometimes the Dene even acted as brokers for the Inuit in the fur trade. Certain elements, such as knowledge of the Inuit language on the part of Dene individuals or knowledge of an Athapaskan language on the part of Inuk, or meetings that followed a precise ritual, lead us to believe that these types of encounters took place on a regular basis. They could even be fairly long-lasting as camp grounds could be set up near one another for a long period of time, even an entire season. During these periods of contact, songs, dances, games, techniques, as well as goods were exchanged and transmitted. Nonetheless, it is important to note that the quality and intensity of these relations varied according to the populations. Thus, for instance, it appears that the Paalarmiut generally maintained poorer relations with the Dene than the Ahiarmiut. The question of whether these peaceful relationships between different groups fostered an exchange of individuals other than through abductions (through marriages or adoptions for example) remains to be clearly determined. A few isolated cases are reported, but it seems almost certain that the establishment of kinship networks between both populations was not a common practice, although not a nonexistent one. The Métis Relations between the Métis and the Athapaskans vary according to place. Cultural and social distinctions can be observed, sometimes extremely pronounced, sometimes insignificant. The Métis had to choose, when signing Treaty 11 in 1921, between being considered Indians and acquiring that status as defined by the Indian Act, or obtaining a status of their own that materialized in the form of a “Métis certificate.” Yet the majority of the Métis on Dene territory are of Euro-Dene origin. Today, Athapaskans and Dene live together in various communities.

The Treaties When the Hudson’s Bay Company sold its rights to the British Crown in 1869, Rupert’s Land (a vast interior region encompassing most of northern Ontario and north Québec, all of Manitoba, most of Saskatchewan, the southern half of Alberta, and a large part of what is now the Northwest Territories and Nunavut) and the Northwest Territories entered the Canadian Dominion.

ATHAPASKAN But even before it took the full measure of the richness of the northern territories, the government of Ottawa refused to take charge of these regions’ native populations, much in need of assistance following famines, or to sign treaties with them. Since 1873 (when the Canadian Parliament passed a bill authorizing the creation of a horseback police for the Northwest Territories), only a few detachments of the Mounted Police have maintained order and a governmental presence in the region. After the discovery of gold deposits in the Klondike in 1896 and oil fields in Norman Wells in the Mackenzie basin in 1920, Ottawa realized the potential of these territories and signed two treaties with the region’s Indians: Treaty 8 in 1899 and Treaty 11 in 1921. The areas covered by the first treaty included northwestern Saskatchewan, northern Alberta, northwestern British Columbia, and part of the southern Northwest Territories (south of the Great Lake of Slaves); the areas covered by the second treaty were the Northwest Territories north of the Great Slave Lake. In retrospect, it seems obvious that the Indians did not realize the full consequences of these treaties. As a matter of fact, a 1973 ruling of the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories confirmed that the Dene never consciously gave up their territory. This ruling is an important moment in the history of Dene claims, because even if the Supreme Court of Canada somewhat contradicted it, it nevertheless marked a major change in the importance granted to the Amerindian point of view. Indeed, Judge Morrow’s ruling states that: “… there is enough doubt as to whether the full aboriginal title has been extinguished, certainly in the minds of the Indians, to the caveators attempt to protect the Indian position until a final adjudication can be obtained” (Indians Claims Commission, 1977: 19). Their chief preoccupation was the protection of their hunting and fishing rights and the wave of non-Native populations that crossed or settled on their land (at its high point, Klondike’s main center of activity, Dawson City, reached a population of approximately 10,000). As elsewhere in Canada (even if the situation was not identical everywhere), there was a difference of interpretation between the Dene and the Canadian government with resepct to the purpose and the function of these treaties. The Dene considered the treaties as an opportunity to maintain their lifestyle in a changing environment (exploitation of natural resources, arrival of settlers), and mostly as an opportunity to preserve their autonomy and freedom of movement on their territory. In their eyes, the treaties represented a sharing of the land with settlers and other exploiters, not a transfer of their rights of use. The Ottawa government’s aims were simply to put an end to the rights of Indians over these territories because the promise of

mineral and oil wealth suddenly enhanced the value of these so far neglected northern regions. The end of native rights allowed for the legal exploitation by the government of natural resources and the opening of lands to settlement, in exchange for financial compensation in the form of yearly sums of money distributed to each individual. To a certain extent, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 had protected the rights of Indians against settlers as far as their land was concerned, until these rights were handed over to the Crown. But the treaties were not fully honored by the government. Laws restricting game hunting were passed and extended to the Dene (who should have been exempt), no reservations were created, and the government did not take charge of education. In Alaska (which the United States obtained from Russia in 1867), things were different since the American government abolished its system of treaties in 1871. The General Allotment Act (or Dawes Act) promulgated in 1887 by the American Congress considerably reduced the area of reservations. The process was the following: the government granted a certain number of acres to each Amerindian of the United States, and then took for itself whatever was left of the lands of the former reservations. In this way, the Indians lost two-thirds of their lands or nearly a hundred million acres. The law was repealed in 1934 by the Indian Reorganization Act created by John Collier. In addition, in 1906, the Alaska Allotment Act permitted Alaska natives to own land. Natives could gain 160 acres of nonmineral land as an “inalienable and nontaxable” homestead. In 1936, the Alaska Native Reorganization Act extended the Indian Reorganization Act to Alaska. Around the 1960s, Alaska became coveted for its underground wealth, especially for oil. Inspired by the Indian movement, the Alaska Natives banded together to defend their rights. In 1966, the Alaska Federation of Natives was created. For more than 10 years the Alaska Natives fought to defend their interests. But once again, in 1971, the Native’s rights were modified by a new Act. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act changed aboriginal rights to economic benefits. This new situation created some cultural and economic problems. In consequence, this Act was amended in 1988.

The Demands While there had existed competition and rivalry among the First Nations of the region up until then, the 1970s marked a desire for cultural renewal and the realization on the part of the Dene of the need for unity and cooperation. In 1970, the 16 Dene clan chiefs created the Northwest Territories Indian Brotherhood with the intention of defending their rights and developing their

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ATLANTIC LAYER communities. New leaders such as Georges Erasmus, Steve Kakfwi, Jim Antoine, Frank T’Seleie, and Nellie Cournoyea raised their voice in defense of the Dene claims. It was also during this decade, following the recommendations of the Berger commission, that the attitude of the Canadian government toward Native people changed. Without ever questioning the validity of treaties 8 and 11, the government nonetheless recognized that it did not respect all of their terms. After the failure of their demands, the Dene decided to reaffirm their determination, and in 1978 adopted the name of “Dene Nation.” In its quest for self-determination, the Dene Nation, in conjunction with the Métis association of the Northwest Territories, suggested in 1981 to the entire population of the western Arctic the creation of “Denendeh” (the Land of the Dene), a territorial entity comparable to a Canadian province. Beyond the question of the Natives’ territorial rights, their campaigns also focused on the construction of oil pipelines along the migration routes of caribou, something to which the Dene were fiercely opposed. There was also the question of damages caused by dams, for which the Dene demanded compensation (such as the claim by the Chipewyan First Nation of Athapaska regarding the Wac Bennett dam and the damages caused to reservation 201). During the negotiating process, the Dene joined forces with the Métis. However, in the course of the 1990s, faced with the failure of a common settlement with both nations, Ottawa agreed to negotiate with each nation separately. Five regions emerged from this, for which certain agreements were signed and others are still pending: the Mackenzie delta (Gwich’in agreement signed in 1991), the Sahtu settlement area (agreement signed in 1993), the Deh Cho, the North Slave, and the South Slave (negotiations under way). Overall, the agreements settled questions of creation of reservations, land management, participation in the decision-making process, and financial compensations. STÉPHANIE EVENO See also Dene; Dogrib (Tlicho); Gwich’in; Gwich’in Settlement Area; Land Claims; Métis; Northern Athapaskan Languages; Sahtu Settlement Area; Tutchone Further Reading Bissonnette, Alain, Denendeh: luttes et conjonctures, M.A. Université de Montréal, département d’anthropologie, 1982 Clark, McFayden (editor), Northern Athapascan Conference, 1971, National Museum of Man, Mercury Series, Ottawa: National Museum of Man, 1975 Fumoleau, René, As Long As this Land Shall Last: A History of Treaty 8 and Treaty 11: 1870–1939, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1975

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Irimoto, Takashi & Takako Yamada (editors), Circumpolar Religion and Ecology: An Anthropology of the North, Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, c.1994 Legros, Dominique, “Postmodernité du corbeau dans la tradition tutchone athapascane.” Recherches Amérindiennes au Québec, 28(3) (1998): 27–39 Rice, Keren, “Les langues athapascanes du Nord.” Recherches Amérindiennes au Québec, 28(3) (1998): 75–92

ATLANTIC LAYER The Atlantic layer is a stratum of relatively warm and saline water of Atlantic origin observed across the entire Arctic Basin and even upwelled onto Arctic shelves. The Atlantic layer is, perhaps, the most important feature of the Arctic Ocean vertical structure, which consists of four principal layers: (1) Arctic surface water (cold, low-salinity), (2) halocline (a layer in which salinity and temperature sharply increase with depth), (3) Atlantic water (warm, high-salinity), and (4) bottom water (cold, high-salinity). Thus, the Atlantic layer is sandwiched between the halocline and bottom water. In the Makarov and Canadian basins, the Atlantic layer is also capped by a layer of low-salinity Pacific water. The Atlantic layer core can be easily detected on vertical temperature profiles by the attendant temperature maximum. Indeed, while the Arctic surface water is cold, typically between −1°C and −1.9°C (freezing point), the maximum Atlantic layer temperature (north of Svalbard) is +3°C (Rudels et al., 1994; Woodgate et al., 2001), a huge contrast for the Arctic Ocean, where the temperature gradients are small compared with the rest of the world’s oceans. The Atlantic layer salinity is quite uniform, around 34.9 parts per thousand. The Atlantic layer upper and lower boundaries are arbitrarily associated with the 0°C isotherm. The typical depths of the upper and lower boundaries are approximately 200 and 700–900 m, respectively. The Atlantic layer thickness gradually decreases from more than 800 m north of Svalbard and Franz Josef Land to less than 500 m north of the Laptev Sea and north of Ellesmere Island (Treshnikov, 1977).

Origin, Distribution, and Transformation The warm temperatures in the intermediate layer of the Arctic Ocean were first reported in 1902 by Fridtjof Nansen from observations made in 1893–1896 during his famous expedition aboard Fram. The Atlantic origin of this layer was soon recognized and reported on in 1909 by B. Helland-Hansen and Nansen. Until the 1980s, Atlantic water inflow into the Arctic Ocean was associated exclusively with the West Spitsbergen Current in the eastern Fram Strait, following the continental shelf break. Then, another route was found farther to the east, via the Barents Sea (see the figure).

ATLANTIC LAYER Now both inflows are considered equal, transporting about 2 Sv each (1 Sverdrup = 106 m3 s−1) and merging north of the Kara Sea (Rudels et al., 1994). The West Spitsbergen Current transport is extremely variable, from 0 to 9 Sv (Woodgate et al., 2001). The Barents Sea transport varies seasonally from 1 to 3 Sv. The latest estimates of the long-term mean transport of these branches are 1–1.5 Sv for the West Spitsbergen Current and 2 Sv for the Barents Sea route (Rudels and Friedrich, 2000). Thus, the latest appreciation of the importance of the Barents Sea inflow marks a return to the views of Helland-Hansen and Nansen. Farther downstream, the propagation of Atlantic water has never been reliably measured and is rather assumed, largely from the Atlantic layer core temperature distribution. In general, the Atlantic water is believed to move cyclonically (counterclockwise) around the Arctic Ocean and exit via the western Fram Strait with the East Greenland Current. Within the Arctic Basin, the Atlantic water circulates around the Nansen, Amundsen, Makarov, and Canadian basins in boundary currents. The primary Arctic Ocean Boundary Current splits at the junction of the Lomonosov Ridge and Siberian shelf. One branch crosses the Lomonosov Ridge and flows along the East Siberian continental slope, while the other flows along the Lomonosov Ridge. From the first long-term (year-long) moorings at the junction of the Lomonosov Ridge with the Eurasian continent, the Arctic Ocean Boundary Current transport was estimated to be 5±1 Sv (Woodgate et al., 2001). There are substantial differences between the Atlantic layer in the Eastern and Western Arctic. The Eastern Atlantic layer is much warmer, with the

core temperature between 2°C and 3°C, whereas the Western Atlantic layer core temperature is generally below 0.5°C (McLaughlin et al., 1996). The boundary between these two regimes is termed the Atlantic/Pacific front. In the past, this front was located over the Lomonosov Ridge. The 1990s data revealed a large-scale shift of this front, which is presently located over the Mendeleyev and Alpha ridges (McLaughlin et al., 1996; Morison et al., 1998).

Heat Flux The Atlantic layer contains an enormous amount of heat, enough to melt 20 m of ice (Aagaard and Coachman, 1975). As it progresses around the Arctic Ocean, Atlantic water becomes colder and fresher, partly because of heat loss to the overlying halocline and Arctic surface water, partly because of mixing with colder, fresher shelf waters, and partly because of the Atlantic water entrainment into sinking density flows of cold shelf water (Rudels et al., 1994). The Atlantic layer heat content decreases as Atlantic water moves around the Arctic Basin, from 125 kcal cm−2 north of Svalbard down to 12 kcal cm−2 in the northern Canada Basin (Treshnikov, 1977). The upward heat flux from the Atlantic layer toward the sea surface is important in the heat balance of the sea ice cover.

Long-term Variability There were large changes in the thermohaline regime of the Arctic Ocean in the 1990s, including the Atlantic layer thickening (by more than 100 m at its lower

Inferred circulation of the Atlantic Layer and Upper Polar Deep Water in the Arctic Ocean. After Rudels et al., 1994

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ATLASOV, VLADIMIR boundary) and warming (as much as 1°C) in the Nansen, Amundsen, and Makarov basins (Carmack et al., 1997). As a result, the temperature gradient between the Atlantic layer and surface layer, as well as the upward heat flux, has increased. These changes are consistent with the observed reduction in the sea ice cover and sea ice thickness in the Arctic Ocean (Rothrock et al., 1999). IGOR BELKIN See also Arctic Ocean; Cold Halocline; Oceanography; Thermohaline Circulation Further Reading Carmack, E.C., K. Aagaard, J.H. Swift, R.W. Macdonald, F.A. McLaughlin, E.P. Jones, R.G. Perkin, J.N. Smith, K.M. Ellis & L.R. Killius, “Changes in temperature and tracer distributions within the Arctic Ocean: results from the 1994 Arctic Ocean section.” Deep-Sea Research II, 44(8) (1997): 1487–1502 Coachman, L.K. & K. Aagaard,“Physical Oceanography of Arctic and Subarctic Seas.” In: Marine Geology and Oceanography of the Arctic Seas, edited by Y. Herman, New York: Springer, 1974, pp. 1–72 McLaughlin, F.A., E.C. Carmack, R.W. Macdonald & J.K.B. Bishop, “Physical and geochemical properties across the Atlantic/Pacific water mass front in the southern Canadian Basin.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 101(C1) (1996): 1183–1197 Morison, J., M. Steele & R. Andersen, “Hydrography of the upper Arctic Ocean measured from the nuclear submarine USS Pargo.” Deep-Sea Research I, 45(1) (1998): 15–38 Rudels, B. & H.J. Friedrich, “The Transformations of Atlantic Water in the Arctic Ocean and Their Significance for the Freshwater Budget.” In The Freshwater Budget of the Arctic Ocean, edited by E.L. Lewis et al., Boston: Kluwer, 2000, pp. 503–532 Rudels, B., E.P. Jones, L.G. Anderson & G. Kattner “On the Intermediate Depth Waters of the Arctic Ocean.” In The Polar Oceans and Their Role in Shaping the Global Environment, edited by O.M. Johannessen, R.D. Muench & J.E. Overland, Washington, District of Columbia: American Geophysical Union, 1994, pp. 33–46 Rothrock, D.A., Y. Yu & G.A. Maykut, “Thinning of the Arctic sea-ice cover.” Geophysics Research Letters, 26(23) (1999): 3469–3472 Treshnikov, A.F., “Water Masses of the Arctic Basin.” In Polar Oceans, edited by M. Dunbar, Calgary: AINA, 1977, pp. 17–31 Woodgate, R.A. et al., “The Arctic Ocean Boundary Current along the Eurasian slope and adjacent Lomonosov Ridge: water mass properties, transports and transformations from moored instruments.” Deep-Sea Research, 48(8) (2000): 1757–1792

ATLASOV, VLADIMIR The Russian explorer Vladimir Vladimirovich Atlasov made the first exploration and description of the Kamchatka Peninsula in 1697. Atlasov’s first tour resulted in a new line of geographical discoveries in the Pacific Ocean and joined vast areas of the Far East to the Russian state.

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A Cossack in the czarist army from the 1680s to the 1690s, Atlasov served in the southern borders of the Yakutia military establishment near the rivers of Maya, Uchur, Tugir, Gonama, and Ul’ya, where he collected Russian fur taxes (yasak) and built the winter quarters and fortresses. In August 1682, Atlasov joined I. Zhirkov’s command, setting off for Uchur in southern Yakutia. The Cossacks’ march was deemed successful because in January 1683, Atlasov had already delivered taxes that he had collected among the Uchur Tungus people to Yakutsk. From 1684 to 1687, Atlasov served in the Maysky, Tugirsky, and Udskoi winter quarters, and in 1688–1694 he took his service on the northeastern rivers Indigirka, Kolyma, and Anadyr. On August 31, 1694, Atlasov arrived in Yakutsk. He presented a report on his five-year trip through Kolyma and Anadyr along with information about the Chukchi Peninsula. On October 11, 1694, the Yakutia military leader I.M. Gagarin made Atlasov a Cossack pyatidesyatnik (a military leader of 50 or more soldiers). In August 1695, Atlasov received the appointment of a commander on the Anadyr River, and the same month he went to the Anadyr fortress for service. In mid-December 1696, Atlasov began his tour from Anadyrsk to Kamchatka along with 60 other Cossacks and a similar number of the Yukagir. They first reached Penzhina Bay by reindeer, where they imposed a fur tax on the Koryaks. In February 1698, the army subdued the Olyutor Koryaks and collected taxes from them. Before returning to Anadyrsk in July 1699, Atlasov’s group moved along various routes throughout Kamchatka and reached the most southern part of the peninsula, the district where the Kuriles lived. Upon his return to the Anadyrsk fortress, Atlasov reported on his tour to Dorofey Traurnicht, the Yakutia military leader. He wrote that Kamchatka was populated by peoples unknown in Russia and that the region was rich in sable, fox, and beaver furs. He also reported on the Kuril Islands. During his tour to Kamchatka, Atlasov heard from the indigenous people of Kamchatka, the Itel’men, about a prisoner-foreigner whom he wanted to contact. Atlasov did not, however, get his wish, as the foreigner spoke a language unfamiliar to both the aboriginals and the Russians. The Cossacks only understood that the prisoner’s name was Denbei. Atlasov decided that he was “an Indian of the Uzakinsky State of the Indian kingdom.” He subsequently brought the prisoner to the Anadyr fortress and then to Yakutsk. Later they ascertained that the foreigner lived in Osaka, a Japanese town, and was engaged in trade. A storm had carried his ship to the Kamchatka Peninsula where indigenous tribes captured him and his crew. Atlasov’s report prompted Czar Peter I to order more Cossack tours to

AUK new uninhabited lands. The Czar further ordered Traurnicht to search for the silver and copper ores that the Russians coveted. Peter I wanted to meet the prisoner, and he sent a decree asking for the delivery of Denbei to Moscow. Atlasov’s narratives about the Kamchatka lands and islands, its nature and population, as well as the existence of the Japanese prisoner drew Peter’s attention primarily because he was interested in conquering the Far Eastern borderlands of Russia. Atlasov was quickly fit out for return journey in which he led a new tour for Kamchatka. He earned the rank of Cossack leader for the first and successful Kamchatka tour. In April 1701, he left Moscow for Yakutsk. Along the way he was arrested for robbing a merchant’s trade caravan and was imprisoned for five years. After a not-guilty verdict in 1706, Atlasov arrived in Yakutsk and traveled to Kamchatka the following year. Great changes had taken place during his seven-year absence: new fortresses had been established and the number of officials and trade people had increased. Cossacks routinely robbed civilians. Atlasov did everything possible to stop the tyranny and coercion, but such measures to bring order only enraged the Cossacks. In 1711, Atlasov was killed during the Cossacks’ rebellion in Nizhne-Kamchatsk. Shortly before his death, the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin was writing an essay entitled “About the Russian conquest of Kamchatka,” in which he compared Atlasov to a conqueror of Siberia, “Ermak of Kamchatka.” Atlasov’s name is commemorated in Northeast Asia as Atlasov Island in the Kuril archipelago.

Biography Vladimir Vladimirovich Atlasov was born in the town of Yakutsk, Russia, in 1661. Conflicting information exists about the date of his birth in Russian historical literature. His father was Vladimir Timofeevich Atlasov, a Yakut Cossack-explorer, who married a Yakut woman, a representative of the Sakha aboriginal people. Atlasov was admitted to the Cossack service in the czarist army on the day of his father s death on July 3, 1682. He served on the southern frontiers of Yakutia and was subsequently appointed as a tax collector among the Yakut, Evenk, Even, and Yukagir. In 1698–1699, he traveled to Kamchatka. In 1701, in Moscow, he received the rank of a Cossack leader. On his return to Yakutsk, he was arrested for robbery and imprisoned for five years. In 1706, Atlasov was discharged and was sent to Kamchatka as a ruler of this region. Atlasov died in 1711 during a Cossacks’ and hunters’ rebellion. PANTELEIMON PETROV

See also Anadyr; Chukchi; Itel’men; Kamchatka Peninsula; Koryak; Tungus; Yakuts; Yakutsk; Yukagir Further Reading Belov, M.I., “Novye dannye o sluzhbakh Vladimira Atlasova i pervykh pokhodakh russkikh na Kamchatku” [New data about Vladimir Atlasov’s service and the first Russian tours to Kamchatka].” In The North Annals, 2 volumes, Moscow: 1957, p. 103 Mostakhov, S.E., Russkie puteshestvenniki: issledovateli Yakutii [Russian travelers: explorers of Yakutia], Yakutsk: Iakutskoe Knizhnoe izdatel’stvo 1982 Polevoi, B.P., “Vladimir Atlasov—urozhenets Yakutska [Vladimir Atlasov is a native of Yakutsk], The Polar Star, No. 3 (1974): 128 Safronof, F.G., Tikhookeanskie okna Rossii [Pacific Ocean windows of Russia], Khabarovsk: Khabarovsk Book Publishing House, 1988, pp. 28–30, 56–57

AUK Auk is a common name for any member of the auk family (Alcidae). Auks are compact, duck-shaped birds with very dense plumage. Coloring is austere, either two-colored with black upperparts and white underparts, or dark. The most colorful and bright are the bare parts such as the bill, mouth, and legs. The male and female species are alike. Recent species vary in size between 100 g and 1.3 kg. Auks are true seabirds, inhabiting oceanic and coastal waters of the Arctic, boreal, and temperate zones. During the nonbreeding season, they may move further south, but some remain to winter over in the High Arctic among ice. All auks are superior swimmers; while on land they walk with a waddle on their tarsal bones. The legs are typically positioned toward the rear of the body, which accounts for the bird’s upright posture and often a comical appearance of human expression. Ecologically, they are counterparts of the penguins in the Northern Hemisphere. Both groups have much reduced wing size, resembling oars and specialized to swim underwater. Auks are thought to have originated from gulls during the process of adaptation to explore the ocean’s depths in pursuit of prey. They not only show an example of parallel evolution with penguins but also demonstrate the way in which penguins have evolved. Finally, penguins have lost their ability to fly in air and can only swim underwater, whereas auks retain flying and swimming capabilities in both elements. Auks have wing-loading close to the maximum permitted to fly, and hence their flight is headlong, slightly maneuverable with rapid wing-beats. The wings are the only underwater advancer, while the webbed feet are used as a rudder.

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AUK Auks come ashore only to breed. They settle typically in colonies, often in great numbers, along the seacoasts. No nest is constructed, and eggs are laid in the open on rock ledges; in species seeking shelter in crevices or burrows, a very simple nest is built. Most auks breed at a considerable distance from their feeding grounds, and typically are able only to provide enough food for a single chick. Incubation lasts for three to five weeks, and both parents incubate in turn. The time that chicks stay at the nesting sites may vary considerably between species, ranging from 2 to 50 days. Auks feed at sea only. The diet consists of a variety of small fishes and invertebrates (mainly crustaceans). Twenty-two recent species with greatest variety are found in Beringia, which is thought to be the center of auk origin. Nearly a third of the auks are common in the Arctic, including little auk, guillemots, puffins, and razorbill. The overall number of alcids is assumed to be 100,000,000 birds; the little auk followed by guillemots are the most abundant.

Little Auk Alle Alle The little auk is also known as dovekie (American), alkekonge (Norwegian), and lyurik (Russian). It is a small, short-necked auk with a weight of about 160 g and a wingspan of 32 cm. The black and white coloration lacks any decoration. The little auk is the only true Arctic auk species endemic to the Arctic Basin. The breeding range stretches through the archipelagos chain from Baffin Island to Severnaya Zemlya and it has recently been reported to nest in north Bering Sea. Some birds winter within the breeding range in ice-filled waters and polynyas; most shift southwards with the majority off the Grand Bank and Nova Scotia.

Little auk (Alle alle) at a breeding colony near Savissivik, northwest Greenland. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

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Little auks are highly gregarious. Thousands of birds are seen flying around occupied slopes, and up to three nests can be found on two square meters under the stones. Large flocks form at sea when prey is abundant. The birds lay a single large egg in open spaces underneath stones or in rock crevices. Incubation lasts for a month, and the chick stays in the nest almost a month longer. In spite of nesting in shelter, eggs, chicks, and adults can be preyed by larger gulls, Arctic foxes, and polar bears. The parents bring food to their chicks in the throat pouch 5–15 times a day from a distance of 10–100 km. Each meal consists of hundreds of small shrimplike crustaceans. The little auk is the only plankton-eating auk in the Atlantic, but, outside breeding, young fishes are also consumed in largenumbers. Little auks readily exploit specific sympagic fauna developing underneath old pack ice-floes. A rough estimate of the world population gives 15 million pairs, hence, these small birds play an important role in High Arctic ecosystems. For instance, in Spitsbergen they bring ashore up to 1000 t of zooplankton during the chick-rearing period. Little auks are most vulnerable to oil spills, while fishery and bycatch do not represent major threats. Little auks wintering off southwestern Greenland are important food resources for local Greenlanders. The population trend appears to be stable all over the range except for the small populations in Iceland and southern Greenland, which have declined during the past century. Climatic changes, resulting in warmer waters around these southernmost settlements, are thought to affect dramatically one of the most Arctic bird species.

Great Auk Pinguinus Impennis Only 5–10 pairs of little auk breed in Iceland today; ironically, they nest on Eldley Island, where the last pair of great auks was killed in June 1844. There are some 80 skins and 20 skeletons, about 75 eggs housed in collections around the world, and much of what we know about this species is recent reconstruction or mere speculation, with clues supplied by extant auks and penguins. The great auk was the largest representative of the family, weighing 4.5–7.3° kg. In appearance, they resembled their recent relatives—razorbills. The great auk went further than other auks en route underwater exploration, and so lost their flying ability, becoming the closest analogs of penguins. The great auks gave southern flightless birds their name. During the last century before extinction, the great auks bred in Atlantic boreal waters, and penetrated Arctic sites in Greenland following warm tongues of the Gulf Stream.

AURORA When at sea, the great auks kept to shallow offshore fishing banks, and preyed in near-bottom waters on fishes up to 150 g in size. The scientific name of the great auks— Pinguinus—originates from Latin pinguis, and means “fatty.” And the stout, defenseless birds paid in full for their superior culinary quality. Specialized harvesting expeditions were equipped to kill these birds for food, and their feathers were also widely used. MARIA GAVRILO See also Guillemot; Puffins; Razorbill

Further Reading Bateson, P.P.G., “Studies of less familiar birds: Little Auk.” British Birds, 54 (1961): 272–277 Belopolski, L.O., Ecology of Sea Colonial Birds of Barents Sea, Israel Progr. Sci. Transl., 1961 Bradstreet, M.S.W., “Pelagic feeding ecology of dovekies, Alle alle, in Lancaster Sound and western Baffin Bay.” Arctic, 35 (1982): 126–140 Cramp, S. (editor), The Birds of the Western Palearctic, Volume IV, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985 Flint, V.E. & A.N. Golovkin (editors), Ptitsy SSSR. Chistikovye [Birds of the USSR, Alcids], Moscow: Nauka, 1990 (in Russian) Fuller, E., The Great Auk, Private Pub., 1999 Kaftanovski, Yu.M. Chistikovye ptitsy Vostochnoy Atlantiki [Alcids of Eastern Atlantic], MOIP (Moscow Soc. Nature Explorers) New Series, Branch of Zoology, No. 28 (43), Moscow, 1951 (in Russian) Kozlova, E.V., Rzhankoobraznye: podotryad Chistikovye [Charadriiformes: Suborder Auks], Fauna SSSR, novaya seria [Fauna of the USSR, new series], Moscow-Leningrad: Akademia Nauk SSSR, Volume 65, 1957 (in Russian) Krasnov, Yu.V., G.G. Matishov, K.V. Galaktionov & T.N. Savinova, Kolonial’nye ptitsy Murmana [Murman’s colonial seabirds], St Petersburg: Nauka, 1995 (in Russian) Nettleship, D.N. & T.R. Birkhead, The Atlantic Alcidae, Orlando: Academic Press, 1985 Norderhaug, M., “The role of the little auk, Plautus alle (L.), in Arctic ecosystems.” In Antarctic Ecology, Volume 1, edited by M.W. Holdgate, London: Academic Press, 1970, pp. 558–560 Stempniewicz, L., “Breeding biology of the little auk Plautus alle (L.) in the Hornsund region, Spitsbergen.” Acta Ornithological, 18 (1981): 141–165 Stempniewicz, L., M. Skakuj & L. Iliszko, “The little auk Alle alle polaris of Franz Josef Land: a comparison with Svalbard Alle a. alle populations.” Polar Research, 15 (1996): 1–10

AURORA An aurora is a luminous glow in the sky, most frequently found in the polar regions. It varies in brightness from a faint glow at quiet times to approaching that of the full moon during active periods. The aurora is a permanent optical feature of the upper atmosphere, and appears as an oval encircling the Earth at a height

of about 100 km or more. Its position varies with geomagnetic activity. During moderate activity, the aurora is located about 23° from the magnetic pole on the nightside of the Earth and 15° on the dayside. This belt runs over Alaska, across Hudson Bay and southern Greenland, and over northern Norway and Siberia. During magnetically quiet times, the oval shrinks poleward by as much as 5°, significantly reducing the size of the “polar cap,” the region enclosed by the auroral oval. The aurora is caused by particles, mainly electrons, bombarding the gases of the Earth’s upper atmosphere. These gases become excited and lose energy by emission of light. The visible spectrum of auroral emissions is characteristic of the particular gases present at that atmospheric height. Higher altitude auroras, above about 150 km, appear red due to radiation from atomic oxygen. Auroras more commonly occur in the 100–150 km height region and tend to be mainly due to emissions from oxygen (green and red) and nitrogen (violet and pink). To observe these colors the aurora must be bright, as during auroral substorms. More commonly, auroras are faint and look gray or colorless. While spectacular displays have been recorded throughout history as early as 500 BC, it has been through major research efforts, such as the International Geophysical Year, 1957–1958, and following in situ rocket and satellite investigations, that most understanding of the phenomenon has emerged. The auroral emission spectrum extends over a wide wavelength range extending from X-rays to radio emissions. Some major emissions are in the extreme ultraviolet region and are absorbed by the atmosphere, but can be detected from above. Orbiting satellites such as the Dynamics Explorer, Viking, and Polar have been used routinely since 1981 to photograph the aurora globally, even in the presence of full sunlight. They have verified that the aurora is a permanent, full halo encircling the Earth. Viewed around this “24-hour oval,” there are typically quiet arcs in the evening sector, dynamic brighter auroras in the midnight sector, diffuse auroral remnants in the morning sector, and faint, red auroras throughout the noon sector. Auroral activity is controlled to a major degree by solar activity and the solar wind, a continuous stream of electrons and protons emanating from the Sun trapped by the Earth’s magnetosphere. The energy of these particles determines the depth to which they can penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere and thus the nature (and color) of the aurora produced. Major auroras are due to coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from the Sun, while auroral substorms are usually triggered by changes in the solar wind. Auroral substorms occur periodically and typically last for about 3 h. The first sign of a substorm is the sudden brightening of the

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AURORA

Aurora borealis, Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada. Copyright Paul Nicklen/National Geographic Image Collection

quiet auroral arc in the midnight sector. This brightening spreads westward along the auroral oval, and then the aurora expands poleward (termed the expansive phase of the substorm). During this time, the aurora is most active and colorful, with draperies, transient rays, and rapidly moving arcs. After this explosion of activity and color, which may last up to 20 min, the aurora fades and recedes to lower latitudes and is replaced by fainter patches, often pulsating with a period of a few seconds. This recovery phase lasts for up to 2 h. Great auroras expanding to low latitudes and lasting up to two days occur very occasionally, and have been marveled at through the ages. They are marked by their unusual brightness, near-global extent, and long duration. Global power inputs via particle precipitation have been estimated as high as 1000 GW during the peak of such auroral displays. They tend to occur at, or following, the peak of the 11-year cycle of solar sunspot activity. Some such recent great auroras were the February 10–11, 1958 display, which drove instruments off-scale and was seen as far south as New Mexico, one on March 13–14, 1989, which caused

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major power disruptions along eastern North America, and the November 8–9, 1991, aurora which was first observed at the magnetic pole and gradually extended down to midlatitudes. A January 10–11, 1997 display viewed from the magnetic pole down to the middle United States and Europe was noteworthy in that its full evolution was recorded from “the cradle to the grave” by well-located spacecraft. The orbiting Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) observed the solar CME, which caused it. The progress of the cloud and the solar wind streaming earthward were monitored by the WIND satellite, and the aurora resulting some 80 h later (the Sun-Earth transit time) was photographed by the POLAR satellite. While there may be something special causing these very unusual auroras, evidence so far suggests that they are just much bigger than the usual substorms and not very different. There have been written accounts of auroras through the ages as far back as nearly 600 BC, with explanations often invoking heat and fire. Folklore emerged as early peoples sought to explain the unique phenomenon in familiar terms. Scandinavians often associated the northern lights with wildlife—swans caught in the ice, a fox running across mountains, whales threshing through waves, or reflections from fish. Most Inuit attach spiritual significance to the lights, believing them to represent the souls of the dead that are waiting to be reborn. To the Ottawa Indians the aurora was the Creator igniting the skies to see how his peoples were faring. Perhaps more generally it was “the gods dancing across the firmament,” with the Scots describing the northern lights as the Merry Dancers. But to many societies aurora evoked fear—that it could descend and grab up children or the old, or that it presaged impending disasters such as fires, plagues, or wars. Early literature abounds with picturesque or fanciful outpourings of feelings inspired by auroras. Polar auroras, first noted by early Arctic explorers, are of similar origin to lower altitude auroras but are somewhat different in character. They are seen poleward of the auroral zone and occur only under quiet magnetic conditions when auroral oval activity is minimal. They consist of very narrow arcs, usually faint and always aligned along the Sun-Earth line. They are usually seen to split off the poleward edge of the auroral oval and drift across the polar cap, or linger for hours, depending on the state of the solar wind. Auroras occur both in the Arctic and Antarctic and are near identical, according to simultaneous observations. In northern latitudes they are called aurora borealis or northern lights, while in the south they are called aurora australis. This symmetry is due to the Earth’s magnetosphere and the manner in which it deflects and traps the solar wind particles that produce

AXEL HEIBERG ISLAND auroras. Auroras occur on other planets that have a magnetic field and an atmosphere. They are observed on Saturn and Jupiter. DONALD J. MCEWEN See also Space Weather; Substorms Further Reading Akasofu, S.-I., Aurora Borealis: The Amazing Northern Lights, Anchorage: Alaska Geographic Society, 1979 Brekke, Asgeir and Alv Egeland, The Northern Lights, Their Heritage and Science, translated by James Anderson, Oslo: Grondahl og Drewers Forlag AS, 1994 Eather, Robert, Majestic Lights, The Aurora in Science, History and the Arts, Washington: American Geophysical Union, 1980 Savage, Candace, Aurora, The Mysterious Northern Lights, Vancouver: Greystone Books, 1994

AUSUITTUQ—See GRISE FJORD AXEL HEIBERG ISLAND The uninhabited Axel Heiberg Island is located in the High Arctic within the Canadian territory of Nunavut. With an area of approximately 37,185 km2 (14,357 square miles), it is the fourth largest island in the Queen Elizabeth Islands. Axel Heiberg Island extends from 78°08′ N to 81°21′ N and from 85°00′ W to 96°00′ W and is the second most northerly island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The island measures 380 by 220 km and is roughly oval-shaped and deeply indented by several long fjords. The climate of Axel Heiberg Island is a combination of polar tundra and polar ice climates, resulting in cold polar desert and semidesert conditions. The mean annual air temperature at the Eureka weather station is −19.7ºC and the mean annual precipitation is 58 mm. Eureka is the nearest long-term weather station, only 20 km from east central Axel Heiberg. These climate data are probably typical of the east side of the island, but seasonal data from the west side (McGill Arctic Research Station) indicate higher levels of precipitation. Axel Heiberg’s topography is predominantly alpine, characterized by a central mountain range (Princess Margaret Range) 915–1830 m (3000–6000 ft) high and a dissected plateau. The highest point is White Crown Mountain (2120 m above sea level). The perimeter of the island is marked by rugged hills, extensive eastern coastal lowland, and several large fjords (Li, Middle, Strand, Expedition, Glacier, Wolf, and Skaare fjords) and bays (Good Friday, Sand, and Whitsunday bays). Two large ice caps (Müller and Stacie ice caps), several smaller highland ice caps, and

many glaciers dominate the interior. About 31% (roughly 11,734 km2) of the island is covered by approximately 1100 glaciers. Accordingly, glacial and glacial fluvial deposits are widespread. Most valley glacier systems have well-developed terminal moraine complexes. At the last glacial maximum (c.9000 years BP), ice cover was far more extensive. Widespread glacial drift deposits mark the former glacier positions. Axel Heiberg lies in the Eureka Sound Fold Belt on the eastern side of the Sverdrup Basin, an area of sedimentary rocks reflecting alternating periods of nonmarine and marine deposition ranging from lower Pennsylvanian to the early Tertiary Age. Periods of intensive folding and faulting during the early Tertiary produced the mountainous topography that characterizes much of the island. Evaporite deposits of upper Paleozoic age were tectonically intruded into the overlying Sverdrup Basin sediments during early Tertiary mountain building to form more than 80 anhydrite diapirs (domes). These domes are frequently the target of oil and gas exploration, although no hydrocarbons have yet been found on Axel Heiberg Island. Areas free from ice and snow (approximately 70%) are characterized by either unvegetated rock, regolith and frost-weathered debris, or sparsely vegetated tundra. The mountainous nature of the landscape limits vegetation primarily to valleys and lowland areas. The vegetation communities are typical of polar deserts and polar semideserts. Approximately 137 species of vascular flora and 131 species of mosses and liverworts have been reported for Axel Heiberg. The major plant communities include hummocky sedge-moss meadow, frost boil sedge-moss meadow, cushion plant-moss, moss-herb (polar desert), and wet sedgemoss meadow. The greatest diversity and species richness exists in and adjacent to sheltered tundra wetlands while exposed ridges and recent glacial deposits remain relatively barren. The fauna of Axel Heiberg is typical of the High Arctic polar desert. There are roughly 23 species of birds, including snow goose (Chen caerulescens), gyrfalcon (Falco rusticolus), rock ptarmigan (Lagospus mutus), turnstones (Arenaria interpres), jaegers (Stercorarius longicadus, S. parisiticus), Arctic tern (Sterna paradisaea), snowy owl (Nyctea scandiaca), snow bunting (Plectrophenax nivalis), and three species of gull. Eight species of terrestrial mammals exist on the island, including Arctic hare (Lepus arcticus), lemming (Dicrostonyx groenlandicus), Arctic wolf (Canus lupus arcticus), Arctic fox (Alopex lagopus), polar bear (Thalarctos maritimus), ermine (Mustela erminea), muskox (Ovibos moschatus), the endangered Peary caribou (Rangifer sp), and various marine mammals.

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Aerial view of Axel Heiberg, Nunavut, showing ice-covered Mokka Fjord, May 1987. Copyright David R. Gray

Ice-free surfaces are underlain by continuous permafrost. A deep temperature record from an abandoned oil well at Mokka Fjord indicates a permafrost depth of approximately 540 m. Ice wedge polygons 8–14 m in diameter are common on most tundra surfaces. Patterned ground, mainly poorly sorted and nonsorted circles and stripes are common on sparsely vegetated surfaces. Ground ice is a common constituent of permafrost, and pore ice, segregated ice lenses, pingo, wedge, vein, and massive ice all occur throughout the island. Several pingos have been documented; most occur in glacier floodplains and are probably hydraulic system in nature. Massive ice may be either buried glacier ice or intrasedimental in origin. Three groups of perennial springs have been documented on Axel Heiberg and associated hydrologic phenomena include icings, icing mounds, icing blisters, and frost blisters. Small palsa mounds occur in organic-rich wetlands. Despite the very cold climate of the region, it appears that many of the largest glaciers are wet-based and do not have welldeveloped permafrost. This has significant implications for subglacial erosional and hydrologic regimes. Axel Heiberg was first explored and mapped during the Second Norwegian Polar Expedition between 1898 and 1902, and named by Otto Sverdrup after Count Axel Heiberg, one of the sponsors of his expedition (Sverdrup, 1904). Several years later Robert Peary disputed Sverdup’s claim, stating that in July 1898 he had observed an island beyond Nansen Sound from Ellesmere Island that he named Jesup Land (Peary, 1907). Later research demonstrated that what Peary had observed was actually an extension of the west coast of Ellesmere Island. Limited explo-

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ration by Frederick Cook (1911), Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1917), Donald MacMillan and Fitzhugh Green (1918), Royal Canadian Mounted Police patrols (1920s and 1930s), and Christian Vibe (1940) occurred prior to World War II. Following the war, issues centered on national security and sovereignty stimulated a new era of intense interest in the Canadian Arctic. Widespread mapping and aerial photographic surveys were undertaken for much of the High Arctic, including Axel Heiberg. As part of a major reconnaissance mapping project in the Queen Elizabeth Islands (“Operation Franklin”) in 1955, two geologists from the Geological Survey of Canada made two traverses across the island. A series of general reports describing the ice cover and geography of the island from aerial photographs were produced during the 1950s. In the late 1950s, a McGill University (Montreal) scientific expedition led by Fritz Müller established a research base on Color Lake at Expedition Fjord (79°26′ N 90°46′ W) on the west central side of Axel Heiberg. The McGill Research Station on Axel Heiberg was built in 1960 following an exploration field season in 1959. From 1959 to 1963, the expedition undertook detailed investigations on the glaciology, geology, geomorphology, climatology, and biology of Axel Heiberg with a focus on the Expedition Fjord region. The McGill Arctic Research Station is still in operation and supports an international program of research, providing one of the most impressive environmental databases in the Arctic. Axel Heiberg is uninhabited. The nearest community is Grise Fjord on southern Ellesmere Island. The McGill University Arctic Research Station (MARS) is the only scientific facility on the island. Researchers

AXEL HEIBERG ISLAND know little regarding the island’s historical occupation, although they have documented a number of Thule sites at Buchanan Lake and along Eureka Sound on the east side of Axel Heiberg. WAYNE POLLARD See also Amund Ringnes Island; Queen Elizabeth Islands; Sverdrup, Otto Further Reading Cogley, J., W. Adams, M. Ecclestone, F. Jung-Rothenhausler & S. Ommanney, “Mass balance of Axel Heiberg Island gla-

ciers 1960–1991,” NHRI Science Report No. 6, Ministry of Supply and Services Canada, Ottawa, February 1995 Müller, F., “Preliminary Report 1961–1962,” Axel Heiberg Island Research Reports, Montreal, Québec: McGill University, December 1963 ———, The Living Arctic, Agincourt, Ontario: Methuen, 1983 Ommanney, S., “A study in glacier inventory. The ice masses of Axel Heiberg Island, Canadian Arctic Archipelago.” Glaciology, No. 3, Axel Heiberg Research Reports, Montreal: McGill University, December 1969 Peary, R., The Nearest to the Pole: A Narrative of the Polar Expedition of the Peary Arctic Club in the S.S. Roosevelt, 1905–06, New York: Doubleday, 1907 Sverdrup, O., New Land: Four Years in the Arctic Regions, London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1904

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B BACK RIVER

river Thlew-ee-choh-dezeth (“Great Fish River”). After George Back explored the river in 1834, the area came to be known as “Back’s Great Fish River” and then later shortened to simply Back River. Back accompanied Sir John Franklin’s Arctic expeditions in 1818, 1819–1822, and 1824–1827 and was subsequently asked to conduct an overland expedition to the Arctic coast in search of the missing Captain John Ross. Ross had led a private expedition to the North West Passage and had apparently vanished near the mouth of the Back River. Despite the safe return of Ross’s expedition, Back, along with a crew of ten men, set out to explore the waterway and successfully navigated the river to the Arctic Ocean at Chantrey Inlet. Back’s account of his expedition—Narrative of the Arctic Land Expedition—was published in 1836. JÖRG TEWS

Extending 974 km from the outlet of Muskox Lake to Chantrey Inlet on the Arctic Ocean, Back River is the longest river in Canada located entirely within the Barrenlands of the Canadian Arctic. British explorer Sir George Back, the first European to descend the river in 1834, gave the Back its name. The actual headwaters are at Sussex Lake in the Northwest Territories, approximately 380 km northeast of Yellowknife and 580 km east of the Inuit community of Baker Lake (Qamani’tuaq). The three most notable tributaries draining from the south include the Baillie River, the Morse River, and the Meadowbank River. The Back River system comprises a drainage area of 106,500 km². Rising in the western Barrens of the Canadian Arctic, the Back flows northeast through Beechey Lake, Pelly Lake, Upper Garry Lake, Garry Lake, Lower Garry Lake, Buillard Lake, and MacDougall Lake, and then turns north, passing through Franklin Lake before flowing into Chantrey Inlet on the Arctic Ocean, south of the Boothia Peninsula. The nearest Inuit settlement to the estuary is Gjoa Haven on the southeastern coast of King William Island. A relatively low relief with glacial substrates of silts, sands, and gravels characterizes the tundra landscape of the Back River area. The topography varies from rugged to gentle, rolling hills and long, sand eskers. Low Arctic tundra with sedge meadows, lichen-moss vegetation, and shrub tundra comprise much of the vegetation of the Back River area. The barren-ground caribou of the Beverley-Kaminuriak herd graze throughout the region. Grizzly bears and muskox are also common. The Caribou Inuit originally inhabited the upper Back River area. Another Inuit group, the Netsilik Inuit, lived downstream of Pelly Lake and near the mouth of the river. The Dene of Great Slave Lake, who occasionally traveled to the Back River area, called the

See also Back, Sir George Further Reading Back, Captain George, Narrative of the Arctic Land Expedition to the Mouth of the Great Fish River and Along the Shores of the Arctic Ocean in the Years 1833, 1834 and 1835, Edmonton: M.G. Hurtig Ltd., 1970

BACK, SIR GEORGE George Back, a British born admiral and explorer, took part in five Arctic expeditions during the 19th century. Yet he is little known even in Canada, where his record matches that of any other Arctic explorer. Bumptiousness, exacerbated by his five-foot stature, often caused prickly relationships. The derring-do of Viscount Horatio Nelson’s navy lured Back to sea at the young age of twelve-anda-half, first as a class volunteer on HMS Arethusa

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BACK, SIR GEORGE cruising the western coasts of France and Spain seeking prizes. England then ruled the waves, keeping Napoleon landlocked. Back insinuated himself on a cutting out expedition that went awry in Deba harbor near San Sebastian. Under escort as a prisoner of war, Back marched for three months across 1000 km of France to Verdun fortress on the Belgian border. He spent his next five teenage years in prison. To distance himself from the roguery of his dissolute midshipman companions, Back studied mathematics and drawing, and became fluent in French, skills that would enrich his future. In the winter of 1813, a retreating Napoleon emptied his prisons and Back zigzagged across France to Dieppe, and so to London. Soon Back was appointed midshipman on HMS Akbar serving the North American station out of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Being dismasted off Cape Hatteras was the first of his several brushes with death. He joined HMS Bulwark at Chatham as an admiralty mate, a period of boredom that he combated by drawing, reading, and studying. Back volunteered as midshipman under Lieutenant John Franklin on HMS Trent, together with Captain David Buchan’s sloop Dorothea, under orders to find a route to the Orient via the North Pole. After several weeks wedged in the pack ice off Spitsbergen, they returned to England, leaking dangerously. Back joined Franklin’s first Arctic expedition, which was sent overland to map the so-called Polar Sea and with the intention of meeting Sir William Edward Parry’s ship searching for a North West Passage. Tribulation and ultimate disaster marked the years 1819–1821. During the expedition’s second winter, at Fort Enterprise north of the Great Slave Lake, Franklin dispatched Back to Fort Chipewayan to trace supplies that had been delayed by hostilities between the fur trading Hudson’s Bay Company and the North West Company. He also wanted to distance Back from Robert Hood, his rival over an Indian chief’s daughter, Greenstockings. The two midshipmen had prepared a duel, but John Hepburn, an English sailor, defused their pistols. After acerbic exchanges with George Simpson of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Back expedited the essential supplies. This epic 1100 mile midwinter snowshoe journey saved the expedition and Franklin was grudgingly impressed. The next summer the expedition descended the Coppermine River in canoes. The naval contingent delighted in the Arctic Ocean, while the Canadian voyageurs quailed at paddling their disintegrating birch bark canoes. The officers mapped the coast eastward beyond Bathurst Inlet to Point Turnagain before heading on foot back to Fort Enterprise. During the trek, the party gradually starved because Indian

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hunters had failed to supply promised caribou meat. They survived on lichen and old leather clothing for nearly a month. With a pistol Dr. John Richardson executed Michel, an Indian hunter, who had apparently killed some dying companions and eaten them, and was preparing to murder both officers. Hood died of starvation soon after. Franklin sent Back ahead to find the Indians. He did so and sent supplies to Fort Enterprise, thereby saving the surviving half of the expedition. England extolled their bravery and their maps of a vast area of northern Canada’s wilderness. Back, having passed for lieutenant, joined HMS Superb on the West Indies station, a dangerous site known for yellow fever. There he heard of plans for a second overland expedition, which this time was carefully planned. Franklin and Richardson reluctantly accepted Back by default when their appointed midshipman died. The crew’s journey down the Mackenzie River and along the Arctic coast, both west and eastward with a split party, was mundane apart from a fracas with some Inuit. Despite unqualified success, their return to England was far less jubilant than before. Back was now promoted to commander and put on half pay (along with a legion of redundant British naval officers). He toured Europe and while in Italy, in 1833, he learned of the reported loss of James Ross, unheard of after three Arctic winters. Back offered to lead an overland search expedition down the Thlewee-choh River (later named for Back himself). With Dr. Richard King as his assistant officer, Back’s crew constructed Fort Reliance at the east end of Great Slave Lake. After a miserable winter during which many Indians starved around their camp, they descended the 83 rapids in a boat built by English carpenters on Artillery Lake. At Chantrey Bay, pack ice prevented their progress westward; hence, to King’s disgust, they turned round and tracked the heavy boat upriver. After an easier winter at Fort Reliance they returned home triumphant, and Back was promoted as postcaptain. As if the hardships he had endured on three land expeditions were not enough, in 1836 Back commanded HMS Terror hoping to winter at Repulse Bay and travel overland to complete mapping the coast west to Point Turnagain. But the ship, trapped in pack ice and unable to land on Southampton Island, drifted southeast continually in danger of being squeezed to death by erratic ice. Eventually, Terror was disgorged, and only by wrapping chains around its leaking hull did it reach Ireland just before sinking. With Back’s health deteriorating, he was retired and showered with honors—a knighthood from young Queen Victoria and a fellowship of the Royal Society.

BADIGIN, KONSTANTIN SERGEYEVICH The Royal Geographical Society awarded him medals and its vice-presidency, and he was appointed to the Arctic Council, directing searches for the lost Franklin expedition. Mellowed in old age, Back appeased many disparagers who had emerged during his career. No vocal dissent, however, can belie his achievements and the feats of strength of will and body that made him one of the Arctic’s most prestigious explorers and one of its finest artists.

Biography Admiral Sir George Back was born on November 6, 1796 in Stockport, Cheshire, England, the second son of Ann and John Back. He was educated at Shaw’s Grammar School in Stockport, and was a prisoner of war until the age of 18. He joined HMS Trent as midshipman under Lieutenant John Franklin on an exploration of Spitsbergen trying to find a passage over the North Pole to the Orient. Back was artist midshipman on Franklin’s fateful first Arctic Land Expedition in 1819–1821 and again went with Franklin on the second Arctic Land Expedition in 1825–1827. He made the first descent of the Great Fish River, later named the Back River. Back was knighted on March 18, 1839. He married Theodosia Elizabeth Hammond on October 13, 1846 and became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1847. He retired as an admiral in 1876 and died on June 23, 1878 in London at the age of 82. PETER STEELE See also Parry, Sir William Edward Further Reading Back, George, The Arctic Land Expedition to the Mouth of the Great Fish River 1833–35, London: John Murray, 1836 ———, Narrative of an Expedition in H.M.S. Terror Undertaken with a View to Geographical Discovery on the Arctic Shores in the Years 1836–37, London: John Murray, 1838 Berton, Pierre, The Arctic Grail: The Quest for the North West Passage and the North Pole, 1818–1909, New York: Penguin, 1988 Fleming, Fergus, Barrow’s Boys, London: Granta Books, 1998 Houston, C. Stuart (editor), Arctic Artist: The Journal and Paintings of George Back, Midshipman with Franklin, 1819–1822, Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994 MacLaren, I.S., George Back; Profiles in Canadian Literature, edited by Jeffrey Heath, Toronto: Dudurn Press, 1991

BADIGIN, KONSTANTIN SERGEYEVICH Russian-born Konstantin Sergeyevich Badigin was best known as the captain of the steamer Georgyi Sedov—a vessel beset and drifting in the ice of the

Arctic Ocean—in the years preceding World War II. Near the end of the 1937 navigation season, due to an unfortunate combination of unusually difficult ice conditions and poor decisions as to the deployment of the available Russian icebreakers, 26 ships were forced into an unplanned wintering beset in the ice at various points along the Soviet Northern Sea Route. Among them were the icebreaking steamers Sedov, Malygin, and Sadko, all locked in the ice of the Laptev Sea. Badigin, age 27, served as first mate aboard the Sadko. When by October 23, 1937 the three vessels failed to make any progress under their own steam, they faced a grave, enforced wintering adrift in the ice of the Laptev Sea. Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen’s experience on the Fram in 1893–1896 led the crew to believe that they would drift north or northwest. The three ships housed a total of 217 people. In addition to the regular crews, 22 students from the Leningrad Hydrological Institute were on board Malygin; 20 scientists of the Third High Latitude Expedition were on board Sadko. Other passengers included carpenters who were trained to erect weather stations, engineers knowledgeable in the establishment of light beacons, and the staff (men and women) of several weather stations who fondly believed they were heading home. The crew and passengers initiated a program of scientific work including studies of meteorology, astronomy, and oceanography. New Year’s Day and various Soviet red-letter anniversaries were celebrated with great enthusiasm. Ice ridging and bouts of pressure frequently plagued the vessels, the worst occurring on January 1, 1938. The Sedov fared worst of all: a massive pressure ridge engulfed the stern, although the ship’s hull survived the assault intact. Moscow alerted the drifting ships that an aerial evacuation of superfluous personnel would be attempted as soon as it became light. Badigin was charged with choosing sites for and building the necessary airstrips. His work began on January 30. At the cost of enormous effort, four strips were ultimately cleared, since they were repeatedly wrecked by bouts of ridging. Flying from Tiksi, with an intermediate base on Ostrov Kotel’ny Island, three aircraft reached the ships on April 3 and in a series of flights evacuated 184 of the ships’ personnel, leaving only 11 men on each ship. Prior to the arrival of the aircraft, on March 20, 1938, Badigin received orders to command the Sedov, replacing Captain D.I. Shvetsov, who was sick, elderly, and ordered south. With reduced crews, the ships continued their drift and the scientific program continued as usual. As the spring melt began, in anticipation of getting free of the

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BAER, KARL ERNST VON ice, Badigin decided to investigate the damage to Sedov’s rudder. An inspection by divers revealed that the lower half of the rudder was bent sharply to starboard, rendering it useless. In late August, the veteran icebreaker Yermak headed north from Tiksi, having the distinction of freeing 23 other ships that had been forced to winter at various sites in the Arctic. Yermak reached the three drifting ships on August 28 and broke them free. Taking Sedov in tow, and with Sadko and Malygin following astern, Yermak started south. However, Sedov’s damaged rudder kept causing the ship to yaw wildly and the towlines parted repeatedly. The denouement arrived when Yermak lost one of its three propellers in the ice, dashing any hopes of towing Sedov clear of the ice. Officials in Moscow decided to leave Sedov in the ice as a “drifting high-latitude station.” With Badigin still in command, a crew of 15 “volunteers” remained on board, and the ship was provisioned and fueled for 18 months. Then Yermak and the other two ships headed south. Badigin and his companions resigned themselves to at least one more winter in the ice, although in reality they stayed for almost two full winters. As the ship drifted north and west, their scientific studies continued unabated. Badigan’s crew impressively maintained a program of soundings that they took in the central Arctic Basin. Sedov possessed no sounding wire, but scientists on board improvised a practical substitute that involved the tedious unlaying of strands of mooring cables, anchor cables, and spare wire ropes for the standing rigging. Repeatedly the cable would break and lengths of cable and weights were lost, but several soundings of over 4500 m were obtained. At one point no bottom was reached at 5180 m, at a point some 375 nautical miles (600 km) northwest of Franz Josef Land. Toward the end of the drift, the soundings confirmed the existence of the Nansen Ridge located between Svalbard and Northeast Greenland. Temperature profiles also revealed the presence of a layer of relatively warm Atlantic water (the product of the North Atlantic Drift diving under the colder surface water of the Arctic Ocean). In preparation for reaching open water (to the west of Svalbard), Badigin and his crew invested an enormous effort to get the crippled rudder to function. Over a period of four days, crew members cut the rudder and rudderpost horizontally, using the most primitive of tools, and thereby allowing the upper half of the rudder to function almost normally so that the captain could steer the ship again. By December 1940, Sedov was located to the northwest of Svalbard and drifting south toward the edge of the ice. With the expectation of encountering severe ice movement and ridging as the ship approached the

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ice edge, the icebreaker Iosif Stalin was sent to assist the floundering Sedov and reached it on January 13, 1940. Iosif Stalin towed Sedov to open water where a collier was waiting, and once the ship had bunkered, Sedov continued south under its own steam. On January 28, Badigin and his crew reached Murmansk to a wildly tumultuous welcome, repeated again for the ship’s crew in Leningrad and Moscow. The survival of Badigin’s ship during its drift across the Arctic Ocean was a tremendous feat. Additionally, Badigin and his crew are credited with the collection of significant scientific data such as the speed and direction of drift, meteorological data that were transmitted regularly to the south, and oceanographic data, in particular the soundings, all of which represented vital contributions to the knowledge of the Arctic Ocean.

Biography Relatively little is known of Konstantin Sergeyevich Badigin’s life and career, apart from his role as captain of the steamer Georgii Sedov during its remarkable drift. Born in 1910, he spent his entire working life at sea. During World War II Badigin served in the Red Navy, and thereafter continued to sail aboard merchant vessels in the Arctic. In later life, he turned his hand to writing and became a member of the Union of Writers. Badigin wrote historical novels and stories about the Arctic, which attracted quite a wide following in the Soviet Union. He died on March 16, 1984 at the age of 73. WILLIAM BARR See also Nansen, Fridtjof Further Reading Armstrong, Terence E., The Russians in the Arctic. Aspects of Soviet Exploration and Exploitation of the Far North 1937–1957, Methuen: London, 1958 Badigin, Konstantin S., Tri zimovki vo l’dakh Arktiki [Three winterings in the Arctic ice], Moscow: “Molodaia gvardiia,” 1950 Belov, M.I., Nauchnoe i khoziaystvennoe osvoenie Sovetskogo Severa 1933–1945 g. Istoriia otkrytiia i osvoeniia Severnogo morskogo puti, IV [Scientific and economic development of the Soviet North 1933–1945. The history of the discovery and exploitation of the Northern Sea Route, IV], Leningrad: Gidrometeoizdat, 1969 Buynitskii, Viktor Kh., 812 dney v dreyfuisshchikh l’dakh: dnevnik [812 days in the drifting ice: a diary], Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Glavsevmorputi, 1945

BAER, KARL ERNST VON Among the accomplishments of Baltic-German scientist Karl Ernst von Baer was the founding of the science of modern embryology. Baer’s interest in the

BAER, KARL ERNST VON Arctic, however, had become evident during his medical studies from 1810 to 1814 at the University of Tartu in Estonia, Russia. By the time he began teaching biology and anatomy at the University of Königsberg in Germany (1820–1825), Baer dreamed of a short expedition to the coast of the White Sea. His first expedition, however, did not occur until 1837 when he was a member of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences in Russia. Baer’s expedition to Novaya Zemlya lasted from June 24 to September 11, 1837 (in Novaya Zemlya from July 19 to August 31). In addition, Baer carried out investigations on the Kol’skii Poluostrov (Kola Peninsula) and on the islands Tri Ostrova. Accompanying Baer’s expedition team was a Russian polar explorer of Polish nationality, captain A. Ciwolka, the Baltic-German geologist A. Lehmann, a preparator, and a painter. A brief but successful expedition, it marked the first time in the history of Arctic exploration wherein the primary goal of the expedition was not to discover new territories but to conduct complex investigations into the natural conditions of Novaya Zemlya. The first scientist-explorer to describe the flora and fauna, climate, geology ,and the physical geography of the islands, Baer further distinguished himself by analyzing the hydrology of the Barents and Kara seas as a result of the expedition. His articles on the nature of Novaya Zemlya remained for over 30 years signal studies for other surveys on the island group (Tammiksaar, 2000). As Baer did not succeed in carrying out all the investigations he had planned in Lapland, he began preparations for another expedition. Baer carefully planned to launch an expedition to Russian and Norwegian Lapland as early as 1839, but the trip was delayed and took place between June 16 and September 12, 1840. Baer’s traveling companions included Alexander T. von Middendorff, a BalticGerman zoologist, among other noteworthy participants from St Petersburg University. During the expedition, Baer investigated the zoology of the coastal areas of the Kol’skii Poluostrov (in particular, fish biology) as far as the Norwegian border. However, Baer did not publish any substantive scientific papers from this expedition. One of the many crucial outcomes of Baer’s organizational activities conducted in Russia and abroad included the expedition of Alexander T. von Middendorff to East Siberia (1842–1845), which he helped initiate, arrange, and popularize. The Middendorff expedition aimed to investigate the physical peculiarities and geographical distribution of permafrost in Siberia. Baer not only formulated the goals of the expedition but also compiled critical instructions for Middendorff, and authored a special study on permafrost, defining the general directions within this

field of investigation (Baer, 2001). Proceeding from the physical, geological, and geographical suppositions accepted at that time, and using a comparative-historical method, Baer put forward a conception of permafrost as an independent natural object. Furthermore, Baer laid the basis for geocryology as a nascent discipline (Tammiksaar, 2002). Among the first to investigate the glacial era in Russia, Baer nonetheless did not consider the theories he developed to be proven even in the last years of his life (Baer, 1986). Owing to Baer’s precedent and talents, the tradition of organizing geographical expeditions (for which the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences had been famous in the 18th century) was revived at the Academy at the end of the 1830s and the early 1840s. In addition to the awakening of Russian Arctic research, Baer succeeded in linking the activities of separate ministries and departments in the geographical investigaton of Russia, which until then had been scattered. Correspondingly, his initiative led to the establishment of the Russian Geographical Society in 1845. The serial publication Beiträge zur Kenntniss des Russischen Reiches und der angränzenden Länder Asiens (26 volumes, 1839–1872), founded by Baer, provided the European scientific public with new geographical investigations on the Russian Empire. Four of these volumes (numbers 1, 4, 7, and 9) treated the natural history and economy of Russia’s Arctic as well as broad ethnographic studies of the native peoples of Siberia. Although the biologist Baer never intended to become a geographer, his expeditions to Novaya Zemlya and Lapland—intended as zoological expeditions—greatly extended the framework and development of physical geography not only in Russia but throughout Europe.

Biography The Baltic-German Karl Ernst von Baer (in Russian, Karl Maksimovich Bér) was born on February 28, 1792 (new calendar) on the Estate of Piep in the province of Estonia of the Russian Empire. In 1807–1810, Baer attended Tallinn (Reval) Cathedral School, and in 1810–1814 he studied medicine at the University of Tartu (Dorpat). After graduating, Baer continued his studies at the universities of Vienna, Würzburg, and Berlin (1815 to 1817). From 1817–1834, Baer taught at the University of Königsberg and received a full professorship in zoology in 1822. In 1826, Baer was elected a full professor of comparative anatomy at Königsberg. In 1828, St Petersburg Academy of Sciences elected Baer as an academician (and a second time in 1834). Until 1846, Baer worked as a zoologist at St Petersburg Academy, and from then until 1862 as a comparative

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BAFFIN BAY anatomist and physiologist. In 1835–1862, Baer headed the second department of the Library of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences, and in 1841–1852 he also served as professor of comparative anatomy in the St Petersburg Medico-Surgical Academy (military academy). In 1837, Baer conducted an expedition to Novaya Zemlya, and in 1840 to Lapland. In 1838–1842, he made several trips to the northern coast of the Gulf of Finland and its islands, in 1851–1852 to Lake Peipsi and the Baltic Sea, in 1853–1856 to the River Volga and the Caspian Sea, and in 1862 to the Sea of Azov. In addition to these activities, Baer worked for several ministries, including the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of State Property, and the Ministry of Education. Baer spent the last years of his life (1867–1876) in Dorpat (Tartu), where he mainly wrote articles on theoretical biology, criticizing the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin. Baer wrote over 400 scientific papers and was a member of many (nearly 100) scientific institutions, among them the Austro-Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1865), an honorary member of the University of Tartu, the Royal Society of London (1854), the Belgian Royal Academy of Sciences (1858), the Academy of Sciences of Paris (1858), the Prussian Academy of Sciences (1861), and a founder and the first president of the Russian Entomological Society (1860–1861). Seven different geographical objects on different continents of the world bear the name of Baer. He died on November 28, 1876 in Tartu (Dorpat) in Estonia. ERKI TAMMIKSAAR See also Middendorff, Alexander Further Reading Baer, K.E. von, Autobiography of Dr. Karl Ernst von Baer, edited by Jane M. Oppenheimer, Science History Publications USA Canton: Watson, 1986 ———, Materialien zur Kenntniss des unvergänglichen BodenEises in Sibirien Die erste Dauerfrostbodenkunde, Hrsg. von Lorenz King, Giessen: Universitätsbibliothek, 2001 Tammiksaar, E., Geograficheskie aspekty tvorchestva Karla Béra v 1830–40 gg [Geographical aspects in the scientific research of Karl Ernst von Baer in the 1830–40s], Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus (Dissertationes geographicae Universitatis Tartuensis, 11), 2000 ———, “The contributions of Karl Ernst von Baer to the investigation of the physical geography of the Arctic in the 1830s–1840s.” Polar Record, 38(205) (2002): 121–140

BAFFIN BAY Baffin Bay is a semi-enclosed sea between Greenland and the Canadian islands of Ellesmere, Baffin, and Devon. It is connected to the North Atlantic through Davis Strait and to the Arctic Ocean through Nares

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Strait, Jones Sound, and Lancaster Sound. Baffin Bay is approximately 1200 km (746 mi) by 500 km (300 mi) in size with an area of approximately 700,000 sq km (290,000 sq mi).

Geology and Oceanography The average depth of Baffin Bay is approximately 725 m (2379 ft), reaching a maximum depth of over 2700 m (8858 ft) in the Baffin Basin. The slope on the Canadian side is particularly steep. Communication to other ocean areas is limited by a shallow sill across Davis Strait of about 600 m (1969 ft) depth and even shallower sills across Nares Strait, Jones Sound, and Lancaster Sound of 150–200 m (492–656 ft) depth. The Baffin Basin is a remnant of the formation of the bay during the early Tertiary period (approximately 56 million years ago) when the bay was the site of an active spreading zone. The spreading left behind numerous normal and transform faults, and Baffin Bay and its environs are one of the most geologically active areas in the Arctic. The strongest earthquake ever recorded north of the Arctic Circle (magnitude 7.3) occurred in Baffin Bay off the coast near Pond Inlet in November 1933. The floor of Baffin Bay is composed mainly of Quaternary sediments. The ocean water in Baffin Bay is highly stratified. The surface water, of Arctic origin, is cold and fresh. Below the Arctic layer is a layer of Atlantic origin, which is warm and saline. Below the Atlantic layer are Baffin Bay Deep Water and Baffin Bay Bottom Water, both of which are cold and saline. Two major ocean currents influence the water in Baffin Bay. The West Greenland current, a subsurface warm current, flows north along the West Greenland coast. The Baffin Current, a surface cold current, flows south along the east coast of Baffin Island. On a net annual basis, approximately 1.7 Sv (Sverdrup) flows out of the Arctic Ocean through Baffin Bay, making the bay the second most important conduit between the Arctic Ocean and the rest of the world’s oceans.

Climate and Ice Cover Lying entirely north of the Arctic Circle, Baffin Bay has a cold and dry polar climate. Annual average temperatures range from −12°C (10°F) in the northwest to −5°C (23°F) in the southeast. Precipitation is low; however, fog is a common occurrence in coastal areas and near openings in the ice cover. Along the Greenland coast, offshore katabatic winds (cold air flowing off inland mountains or icefields) are frequent. The usual track for cyclones is from west to east just south of Davis Strait; however, cyclones occasionally follow troughs north into the bay.

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Baffin Bay is covered by sea ice from October through May. Ice cover in Baffin Bay is almost entirely first-year ice (less than 1.6 m thick), although some multiyear ice enters the bay through Smith, Jones, and Lancaster Sounds. Because of wind and ocean currents, sea ice may pile up in places to a thickness of 3–4 m (10–13 ft). Off the southwestern coast of Greenland, ice cover tends to be reduced because of the warm ocean currents. At the northern end of the bay, in Smith, Jones, and Lancaster Sounds, episodic openings in the ice (called polynyas) form under the influence of winds and upwelling warm water. Collectively, these polynyas form what is called the North Water. The North Water is known to influence climate for hundreds of kilometers in all directions, and the large amount of heat pumped into the atmosphere through the polynyas sometimes triggers the formation of local cyclones. A stream of icebergs passes through Baffin Bay, originating primarily from glaciers in northwestern Greenland. The typical track for the icebergs is north along the Greenland coast and south with the Baffin Current, after which the bergs join the Labrador Current and move out into the North Atlantic. Between 10,000 and 15,000 icebergs pass through Baffin Bay annually, creating a significant hazard for shipping.

Ecology As is typical of Arctic marine environments, the Baffin Bay ecosystem is characterized by low productivity,

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Baffin Bay and surrounding islands and seas.

low populations, and few trophic levels. Plankton are the primary producers, while primary consumers include crustaceans, molluscs, fish (char, turbot, Arctic cod), and bowhead whales. Secondary consumers include ringed seals, harp seals, walrus, narwhal, killer whales, and beluga whales. The Baffin Bay whale population remains very low as a result of excessive harvesting before 1900. Polar bears can be found along the shores of Baffin Bay.

Exploration and Mapping Humans first arrived in the Baffin Bay area around 4500 years ago in the first of three distinct migrations of Inuit from the west. The Inuit were attracted by the open water areas, which served for both food and transportation. The first Europeans to explore Baffin Bay were Norse, who established settlements in West Greenland in the 10th century and explored the Canadian side of the bay, perhaps as far south as Newfoundland. With the collapse of the Norse Greenland colonies in the 13th century, European knowledge of the bay was lost until 1587 when John Davis passed through what is now called Davis Strait searching for a North West Passage to Asia. William Baffin and Robert Bylot further explored the bay in 1616 and charted the positions of Jones, Lancaster, and Smith Sounds. Whaling in Baffin Bay developed rapidly after these voyages, although the treacherous ice and weather conditions in the bay claimed many ships. The 19th century was another period of

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BAFFIN ISLAND exploration, including the voyages of John Franklin (1819), William Parry (1819), and John Ross (1829). A dramatic expansion of knowledge of Baffin Bay began in the mid-1800s with the loss of a large expedition led by John Franklin and the subsequent rescue efforts. Baffin Bay and Lancaster Sound formed part of the route taken by Roald Amundsen, who finally completed the North West Passage in 1903–1905.

Economic and Social Importance Today, the land on both sides of the bay is inhabited primarily by Inuit peoples. Sovereignty over Baffin Bay is divided between Canada (Nunavut) and Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat), with a line of demarcation running roughly through the middle of the bay. Although fish catches are limited on the Canadian side to avoid damage to the marine ecosystems, fishing is an important part of the Inuit subsistence economy and the basis of a small, but growing, industry. Turbot, char, and Arctic cod are the major commercial species. Communities on the Greenland side rely on fishing as the primary economic activity. Shrimp production and fishing for Greenland halibut are also very important along the Greenland coast. Commercial shipping in Baffin Bay is limited to a few months in the summer. Possible oil reserves in Baffin Bay have been estimated at 400 million barrels, and exploration for these resources is beginning. JOHN HEINRICHS See also Arctic Ocean; Baffin Island; Davis Strait; Devon Island; Ellesmere Island; Lancaster Sound Further Reading Melling, Humfrey, Yves Gratton & Grant Ingram, “Ocean circulation within the North Water polynya of Baffin Bay.” Atmosphere-Ocean, 39 (2001): 301–325 Mowat, Farley, The Polar Passion: The Quest for the North Pole with Selections From Arctic Journals, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1967 Ziegler, Peter, Evolution of the Arctic-North Atlantic and the Western Tethys, AAPG Memoir 43, Tulsa, Oklahoma: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 1988

BAFFIN ISLAND Located in eastern Nunavut, Baffin Island is the largest in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and the fifth largest island in the world with an area of 507,451 sq km (195,927 sq mi). Almost connected to the Melville Peninsula, the island is separated from the continent by the Foxe Channel and the Gulf of Boothia, from northern Québec by the Hudson Strait, and from Greenland by Baffin Bay.

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Baffin Island is part of the Canadian Shield, an old erosion surface of Precambrian rocks. The southwest coast and inland comprises the Koukdjuak Great Plain, part of the Arctic lowland. Lakes Nettilling and Amadjuak, the largest lakes of Baffin Island, lie on this plain. Lake Nettilling is the largest lake in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and the tenth largest lake in Canada (5066 sq km or 2140 sq mi). The northeastern coast is mountainous and framed by numerous fjords, inlets, cliffs, eroded sandstone valleys, and intricate alpine glaciers flowing to the sea. Active erosion from ice and water creates moraines, hoodoos (towers of erosion-resistant rock), sharp mountain ridges, and peaks. Hundreds of small islands surround the coast, especially on the southeastern coast around Cumberland, Hall Meta Incognita, and Fox Peninsula. Baffin Island possesses two major ice caps. The Barnes Ice Cap in the center north of the island and the Penny Ice Cap in the Cumberland Peninsula are about equal in size, 5935 and 5960 sq km (2292 and 2301 sq mi), respectively. Vegetation is diverse but sparse and dwarfed. Sedges, saxifrages, dryas, Arctic willows, cottongrass, broad-leafed willows, herbs, and Arctic poppies are some of the most common plants of the 350 species recorded on the island. From open water in summer, new ice builds in fall, invades the island for winter, and gradually moves away in early summer with the help of powerful currents and the world’s highest tides (11.6 m or 38 ft on the south coast). There is continual summer daylight and winter darkness in the north, but in the south, summer nights and winter days are about 5 h each. Iqaluit’s temperature in January ranges between −28°C and −39°C (−18°F and −38°F) and 4–12°C (39–54°F) in July (Environment Canada). The average annual precipitation on the island is 424 mm (Environment Canada). Between Devon and Baffin Island, Lancaster Sound is the eastern entrance of the North West Passage, and one of the richest marine areas in the Arctic Ocean. Seals (bearded, ringed, harp, hooded, harbor), walrus, and whales (beluga, narwhal, orca, bowheads) are common in the Sirmilik National Park. The essential food source for all these species is the abundant and diversified marine life (fish, plankton, algae) and the presence of polynyas (open, unfrozen water in winter pack ice) in Lancaster Sound and Baffin Bay. The Sirmilik National Park, officially opened in 1999, covers 22,000 sq km (8494 sq mi) and includes the Borden Peninsula, Bylot Island, and upland surrounding Oliver Sound. Caribou, wolf, Arctic fox, lemming, Arctic hare, and polar bear are the most common land mammals in the park. Over 70 bird species (of which more than 40 breed in the park), such as murres, kittiwakes, snow geese, knot, ringed plovers, sandpipers, peregrine falcons, and hawks, have been recorded on the territory.

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Tarr Inlet, southern Baffin Island, near Iqaluit, Nunavut. Copyright David R. Gray

The Auyuittuq National Park, in the Cumberland Peninsula, is the second largest of Baffin’s national parks with 19,500 sq km (7529 sq mi). The other parks in the island are the National Wildlife Area at Qaqalluit (Cape Searle) and Akpait (Reid Bay), Kekerten Territorial Park (Cumberland Sound), Sylvia Grinnell Territorial Park, Katannilik Territorial Park, and Katannilik Territorial Park (Cape Dorset). The Dewey Soper Migratory Bird Sanctuary west of Nettilling Lake is designated as a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention, and covers a 250 km intertidal strip of the Koukdjuak Great Plain. The largest breeding colony of snow geese (Anser c. caerulescens) in the world is found here. About 10,000 years ago, ice entirely covered Baffin Island. The ice sheet began to clear from the Gulf of Boothia and Hudson Strait 1000 years later, and from the Foxe Basin about 7000 years ago. The island was released from the ice 5000 years ago, leaving only an ice sheet between the actual Barnes Ice Cap and Penny Ice Cap. According to archaeological evidence found in Lake Harbour, Frobisher Bay, and Pond Inlet, the first humans on the island, the Paleo-Eskimos, colonized the island in approximately 2000 BC. Southwestern Baffin Island is considered, with Melville Peninsula, Southampton Island, and the extreme north of Québec, to be part of the core area of Pre-Dorset and Dorset Culture development. Dorset Culture sites were principally found in the Sirmilik Park, Foxe Peninsula, Cape Dorset, Lake Harbour, and Frobisher Bay. The ancestors of the present-day Inuit, the Thule, arrived after AD 1000 and became

established in most parts of the island. The Norse possibly explored the northeastern coast, but there is no proof of their presence. Martin Frobisher landed in Frobisher Bay and was the first official European to explore the island during his search for the North West Passage in 1577–1578. In 1585–1587, John Davis navigated the Davis Strait and entered Cumberland Sound. Robert Bylot and William Baffin (who gave his name to the island) followed the northeastern coast in 1616 and entered Lancaster Sound. Finally, James Clark Ross skirted the entire northeastern coast and entered Prince Regent Inlet in 1848. Two Inuit groups are known to have occupied the island, and although they shared a similar dialect they considered themselves historically distinctive. The Iglulik occupied northern Baffin Island, adjacent islands, and Melville Peninsula while the Baffinland Eskimo (Nunatsirqmuit) lived in the island’s middle-south. Since the 1950s, all the inhabitants of the island have been grouped in small towns or villages. Iqaluit, situated at the tip of Frobisher Bay, near the Becher Peninsula, is the main agglomeration and capital of Nunavut. This former American airbase has become an influential administrative center of over 4000 people with an important airport and necessary facilities. It was given city status in April 2001. Some of the greatest Inuit leaders come from Iqaluit. The island’s population comprises over 10,200 people with an Inuit majority of 8000. Nanisivik, where lead and zinc mining is conducted, is the only village where Inuit are a minority (16% Inuit out of 287). Inuktitut and English

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BAFFIN, WILLIAM are the primary languages, with about 400 French speakers in Iqaluit. Pangnirtung, Pond Inlet (Mittimatalik), and Cape Dorset (Kingait) are the other major villages with approximately 1000 people each (Statistic Canada: Census 1996). Roman Catholic and Anglican missions are present. The Canadian and Nunavut government and local town halls are the chief employers. Tourism, mining, handicraft arts, fishing, and hunting are other economic activities in the area. PIERRE DESROSIERS See also Baffin Bay; Baffin, William; Bylot Island; Frobisher, Sir Martin; Iqaluit; Melville Peninsula; Nanisivik; Nunavut; Pond Inlet Further Reading Andrews, J.T., “Quaternary Geology of the Northeastern Canadian Shield.” In Quaternary Geology of Canada and Greenland, edited by R.J. Fulton, Ottawa: Canadian Government Publishing Center, 1989 Boas, Franz, “The Central Eskimo.” In 6th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology for the Years 1884–1885, Washington: Bureau of Ethnology, 1888 Hall, Charles F., Arctic Researches and Life Among the Esquimaux: Being the Narrative of an Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin, in the year 1860, 1861, and 1862, New York: Harper, 1865 Kemp, William B., “Baffinland Eskimo.” In Arctic, Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 5, edited by David Damas, Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1984 Lepage, Denis, David N. Nettleship & Austin Reed, “Birds of Bylot Island and adjacent Baffin Island, Northwest Territories, Canada, 1979 to 1997.” Arctic, 51(2) (1998): 125–141 Mary-Rousselière, Guy, “Iglulik.” In Arctic, Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 5, edited by David Damas, Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1984 Maxwell, Moreau S., Prehistory of the Eastern Arctic, London: Academic Press, 1985 Soubliere, Marion (editor), Nunavut Handbook, 1999, Iqaluit: Nortext, 1998 Stirling, I., W. Calvert & D. Andriashek, “Population ecology studies of the polar bear in the area of Baffin Island.” Canadian Wildlife Service Occ. Paper No. 44, 1980

BAFFIN, WILLIAM During England’s protracted 16th-century war with Spain, no effort was made to follow up John Davis’s Arctic discoveries of 1585–1587 until 1602, when companies of London merchants launched a renewed search for the North West Passage. In 1612, four merchants of the North West Company sponsored James Hall’s voyage to pursue trade, rumored silver deposits, and the ever-elusive North West Passage. William Baffin first appeared in records as chief pilot aboard Patience, which was dispatched from Hull on April 22, 1612 to the coast of Greenland, with Andrew Barker’s Heart’s Ease. On July 8 at Cockin Sound

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(Sukkertoppen, 65°45′ N), Baffin became the first English mariner to calculate and record his longitude by celestial observation. The expedition reached 67° N, but was curtailed by Hall’s death at the hands of Inuit at Ramel’s Fjord (Amerdloq) on July 22, and returned to England on September 11. Baffin’s account includes descriptions of the Inuit. Baffin was next in the service of the Muscovy Company for two of its annual whaling expeditions to Spitsbergen. From May 13 to September 6, 1613, he piloted Captain Benjamin Joseph’s Tiger, which protected a small English fleet of whalers, and drove numerous foreign vessels from the region. On April 16, 1614, Baffin and Joseph again embarked for Spitsbergen aboard Thomasine, with a still larger fleet, which also included Heart’s Ease, now commanded by Thomas Maramaduke. Thomasine and Heart’s Ease undertook exploration of Spitsbergen’s northern coast. Ice retarded progress, but shallops were launched to press eastward beyond Woodfjorden and Wijdefjorden. Baffin and Robert Fotherby reached the western shore of Hinlopen Strait (80° N 17° E). The fleet returned to London on October 4, 1614. On March 15, 1615, Baffin sailed as pilot of the 55ton Discovery, commanded by Robert Bylot. Both ship and captain had formerly served on expeditions by Henry Hudson (1610–1611), Sir Thomas Button (1612–1613), and William Gibbons (1614), and were now sent to continue their search via Hudson’s Strait, spurred by the promise of triple wages for the crew of 14 men and two boys if a North West Passage were found. Greenland was sighted on May 6, Discovery rounded Cape Farewell on May 10, and Resolution Island at the mouth of Hudson Strait was attained on May 27. Baffin’s skill as a scientific navigator was employed surveying the south coast of the island which later bore his name, as well as Salisbury, Nottingham, Mill, and Southampton islands, astride the Foxe Channel. Landing often to take celestial fixes and record his position, he also recorded compass variations and closely observed the currents, tidal flows, and ice movement. While en route on April 26, 1615, he recorded the first lunar calculation of longitude to be made by a ship under way, by measuring the occultation of a star by the moon. Using yet another technique to calculate longitude, he fixed his position on June 21 at 74°05′ W, which was confirmed to be within a degree of accuracy by Parry in 1821. Although Baffin’s calculations of longitude were not always this accurate, those for latitude later revealed errors of no more than five to ten minutes. Discovery made landfall at Plymouth on September 8, 1615, and Baffin rewarded the expedition’s sponsors with his log and a chart—the only one of his to survive—which accurately located the discoveries of Hudson and Button as well as his own.

BANG, JETTE Based on his tidal observations, Baffin concluded that no viable westward passage would be found in Hudson Bay or the Foxe Basin, but suggested that it might lie north of Davis Strait. As a result, on March 26, 1616, Bylot and Baffin were again dispatched aboard Discovery, bound for Davis Strait. After foul weather delays, they cleared Plymouth on April 19, reached the west coast of Greenland (65°20′ N) in mid-May, and proceeded northward up the coast. On May 30, they passed Davis’s furthest north, “Sanderson’s Hope,” explored the nearby Upernavik (“Women’s”) Islands (72°47′ N), and described the Inuit in some detail. In quick succession, they reached and named Sir Dudley Digges Cape and Wolstenholme Fjord (76°35′ N) on July 3, Whale Sound (Hvalsund, 77°30′ N) on July 4, and on July 5 reached the mouth of Smith Sound (77°45′ N), which they named for Sir Thomas Smythe. This exceeded Davis’s furthest north by more than 360 miles, thus setting a record only broken 236 years later by Edward A. Inglefield. Sailing onward, past the Cary Islands, around Baffin Bay, and charting the east coasts of Ellesmere and Devon Islands, on July 10 and 12 Discovery reached two wide, eastward-running sounds, choked with ice, which were christened for Alderman Jones and Sir James Lancaster. Failing to recognize Lancaster Sound as the gateway to the true North West Passage, Baffin and Bylot continued south, past the islands that bear their names, to about 65°40′ N, near the entrance to Cumberland Sound. They judged their mission a failure, and since they were no longer in unexplored waters and crew members were falling ill with scurvy, they made for Cockin Sound on the Greenland coast, and reached Dover on August 30, 1616. This voyage, achieved without loss of life, represented a triumph of navigation and Arctic discovery. Unfortunately, Purchas parsimoniously published only an abbreviated version of Baffin’s account, and omitted altogether his navigation tables and detailed chart, publishing instead a map by Henry Briggs, which preserved the illusion of a North West Passage through Hudson Bay. This led to the dismissal of Baffin’s discoveries, until they were corroborated by Sir John Ross’s expedition in 1818, the very year Sir John Barrow published his own skeptical views of Baffin’s claims, while acknowledging Purchas’s culpability as an editor. Although the results of his expeditions discouraged further pursuit of a North West Passage, and despite his own skepticism, Baffin’s subsequent service with the East India Company has been attributed to his desire to seek out the Passage from the west. Although he never returned to the Arctic, he had established himself as England’s most skillful navigator prior to James Cook.

Biography Born c.1584 of unknown parentage, and probably resident in London, Baffin’s early life is pure conjecture, while details of his last decade are largely those recorded in Purchas’s work. His surviving texts reveal more than a little formal schooling, and he demonstrated his familiarity with the most advanced theories and techniques of celestial navigation. Baffin’s principal expeditions included Hall’s 1612 voyage to Greenland, two whaling voyages to Spitsbergen for the Muscovy Company in 1613 and 1614, Bylot’s 1615 and 1616 expeditions for the North West Company in search of the North West Passage, and two voyages for the East India Company. Scholars only know that Baffin had married because his widow pressed a claim against the East India Company for his wages and other compensation and received £500 in 1628. They appear to have been childless. Baffin died on January 23, 1622 of a gunshot wound to the stomach, suffered while taking sightings for artillery on the island of Qeshm, during the siege of Hormuz. MERRILL DISTAD See also Baffin Bay; Baffin Island; Bylot, Robert Further Reading Dodge, Ernest S., Northwest by Sea, New York: Oxford University Press, 1961 Pennington, L.E. (editor), The Purchas Handbook: Studies of the Life, Times and Writings of Samuel Purchas, 1577–1626: With Bibliographies of His Books and Works About Him, 2 volumes, London: Hakluyt Society, 1997 Thomson, George Malcolm, The North-West Passage, London: Secker and Warburg, 1975 Waters, David W., The Art of Navigation in England in Elizabethan and Early Stuart Times, London: Hollis and Carter, 1958

BANG, JETTE Jette Bang was a Danish photographer who documented Greenlandic culture in film and photography. Initially hired by the Danish state in 1936 to document all aspects of Greenlandic life, she traveled throughout Greenland in six long journeys beginning in 1936. Bang published her travel experiences in several books of her photography, including Grønland (1940), 30,000 Kilometer med Sneglefart’ [30,000 kilometers at a snail’s pace] (1941), Grønlænderbørn [Children of the Greenlanders] (1944), and Grønland igen [Greenland Again] (1961). Bang’s films included Den yderste ø [The Outmost Island] (1937), Inuit (made in 1938/1939 and shown to the public in 1948), Ad lange veje [Along Long Roads]

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BANKS ISLAND (1952), Et nyt Grønland [A New Greenland] (1954), Beduiner [Bedouins] (1959), and Trommedans i Thule [Drum Dance in Thule] (1964). Sixteen thousand of her negatives are kept at Arktisk Institut (Danish Arctic Institute) in Copenhagen, managed under the auspices of the Danish Polar Center, a governmental institution established in 1989. Bang’s images and texts invoked a sympathetic picture of the Greenlanders who she depicted in their daily life or, in some cases, in posed and arranged compositions such as portraits of mothers and children, seal hunters, and related scenes. Her photographic work and films function as a cultural and historical documentation of the Inuit culture on the edge of modernity. Her work provided audiences with a complex and often profound understanding of the Greenlandic mind and body. Moreover, it has been argued that Bang’s representation of a well-nurtured, well-dressed, pleasant, picturesque people under Danish tutelage probably bolstered the Danish pride in Greenland during the German occupation of World War II, a difficult time in that country’s history. The romantic, even nostalgic and mythic, images of Greenland functioned not only as social documents but also as subjective narratives.

Biography Jette Bang was born on February 4, 1914 in Frederiksberg (Copenhagen) as daughter of tobacco dealer Thomas Andreas Bang and his wife Margrethe Severine Haae Laub. She was married on August 5, 1944 to Ole Jensinius Bording, and later divorced. She died on February 16, 1964 in Copenhagen. Bang spent her childhood at Christianshavn, a district in Copenhagen, close to the office of the Royal Greenland Trade Company. In 1932, she passed the General Certificate of Education (in modern languages) and thereafter attended the introductory course in philosophy at the University of Copenhagen. She held an apprenticeship at a reputed photo atelier Jonas Co., run by photographer Herman Bente. AXEL KJÆR SØRENSEN See also Art and Artists (Indigenous) Further Reading “Jette Bang.” In Dansk Biografisk Leksikon (Danish Biographical Encyclopedia on Women), Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1979; Dansk Kvindebiografisk Leksion, 2000

BANKS ISLAND Banks Island is the westernmost island of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The fifth largest island

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in Canada, the island’s area covers over 70,000 km2. In late summer, the southern coasts are accessible by sea, although McClure Strait on the north is usually blocked by thick ice. At the south end of Banks Island is a small plateau of sedimentary and volcanic rocks, from which the bold cliffs of Nelson Head rise to 425 m. In the north, a larger plateau rises sharply from the northeast coast as limestone cliffs. Between the two plateaus sits a vast rolling land that rises along the east coast to about 300 m and then slopes gradually to the west coast. Three major rivers flowing west from the watershed dissect this lowland. Sand bars and braided river mouths characterize the low west coast of Banks Island. The largest river, the Thomsen, flows north to McClure Strait. The few large lakes are all located on the east side of the island, and the west side of Banks Island was never glaciated. Approximately 40,000 muskoxen populate Banks Island, which boasts an abundant wildlife. Peary caribou, however, are in decline and considered a threatened species. Polar bears commonly thrive along the coasts and Arctic foxes live throughout the island. Huge flocks of lesser snow geese nest and molt on the western side. Rough-legged hawks, brant, and eider ducks are among the many birds that breed on the island. Trout, Arctic char, and whitefish inhabit the rivers. Although archaeological sites representing several different cultural groups are located throughout Banks Island, historians have found no indications of permanent settlements. In 1820, Sir William Parry named “Banksland” for Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820), explorer and head of the Royal Society of London. During the search for Sir John Franklin’s lost expedition, Robert McClure, commander of HMS Investigator, charted most of the Banks’ coastline. McClure sailed up the west coast to Mercy Bay in 1851, but abandoned the ship when it locked with the ice. Inuit from Victoria Island (of the Arctic Archipelago) later found the Investigator and used it as a source of wood and iron for many years. The Canadian Arctic Expedition—led by Vilhjalmur Stefansson, aided by local and Alaskan Inuit, and supported by expedition schooners Mary Sachs and North Star—explored much of Banks Island between 1915 and 1917. After 1917, the trapping of Arctic foxes drew people to Banksland. The 1930s and 1940s were known as “The Schooner Days,” during which families traveled to Banks Island to spend the winter trapping at camps along the coasts. By the early 1950s, a store and houses were established at Sachs Harbour on the south coast, the lone settlement on the island. The 1950s witnessed an increase in scientific and military exploration on Banks Island. In the 1970s, seismic exploration in the northern part resulted in the

BARENTS REGION drilling of several wells. Fox trapping, fishing, and hunting over much of the island remain an important part of life for Bankslanders. The establishment of Aulavik National Park on northern Banks in 1992 led to increased tourism that continues today. DAVID R. GRAY See also Beaufort Sea; McClure, Sir Robert; Northwest Territories; Sachs Harbour Further Reading Dunbar, Moira & Keith R. Greenaway, Arctic Canada From the Air, Ottawa: Defence Research Board, 1956 Gray, David R. & Bea Alt, The Natural and Cultural Resources of Aulavik National Park, Metcalfe: Prepared for Parks Canada by Grayhound Information Services, 1997 Harington, C. Richard (editor), Canada’s Missing Dimension: Science and History in the Canadian Arctic Islands, Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Nature Parks Canada, New Parks North, Newsletter No. 10, 2001, 36pp Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, The Friendly Arctic, New York: MacMillan, 1921 Taylor, Andrew, Geographical Discovery and Exploration in the Queen Elizabeth Islands, Ottawa: Department of Mines and Technical Surveys, 1955 Usher, Peter J., The Bankslanders: Economy and Ecology of a Frontier Trapping Community, Ottawa: Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, 1970

BARENTS COUNCIL The Barents Euro Arctic Council (BEAC) aims to ensure stability and prosperity in the Barents Region through intergovernmental cooperation. The formation of the council was stimulated in the late 1980s and early 1990s when contacts and cooperation between the people in the northern parts of Finland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden increased. Norway’s foreign minister Thorvald Stoltenberg initiated the formalization of the cooperation in the Barents Region. The “Kirkenes Declaration,” signed on January 11, 1993, describes the aims of the cooperation, which include security, stability, and prosperity in the area. The declaration also emphasizes the cooperation on environment, economic cooperation, scientific and technological cooperation, regional infrastructure, strengthening of communities of indigenous people, cultural exchange, and tourism. The cooperation also aims to support the reform process in Russia, which aims at strengthening democracy, market reforms, and the local institutions. The member countries include Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden. Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, United Kingdom, and United States of America are observers. The European Union also participates in the BEAC. The BEAC consists of the six participating

countries’ foreign ministers. Ministerial meetings are held for other ministers on an ad hoc basis. The chairmanship rotates annually among the four geographically involved nations of Finland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden. A secretariat is established to serve the chairperson. A CSO level prepares the tasks for the BEAC, the practical arrangements for the ministerial meeting, discusses relevant topics, and coordinates the work of seven working groups. The working groups under the CSO level are established when needed. The present working groups include the Economic Working Group, Task Force on Environment, Ad Hoc Working Group on Energy, and Steering Committee of the Barents Euro-Arctic Transport Area. Previous working groups have included The North East Sea Route. The BEAC cooperates with the Barents Regional Council, bringing local and regional concerns and priorities up to an international level. The Regional Council, formed at the same time as BEAC, includes regional representatives, county governors, and their equivalents from Finland (Kainuu, Lapland, and Oulu), Norway (Finnmark, Nordland, and Troms), Russia (Arkhangel’sk Oblast’, Karelia, Komi Republic, Murmanskaya Oblast’, and Nenets Autonomous Okrug), and Sweden (Norrbotten and Västerbotten). The organization works in close connection with relevant bodies, especially the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS), the Arctic Council (AC), and is one of the regional bodies mentioned in the European Commission’s documents on the EC’s Policies for a Northern Dimension. The BEAC has contributed to a closer cooperation between the participating nations on interregional cooperation, and brought several items of regional importance on the international agenda. SYLVI JANE HUSEBYE See also Barents Region; Barents Regional Council Further Reading Barents Euro-Arctic Council, www.beac.st/ Joenniemi, Pertti, “The Barents Euro-Arctic Council.” In Subregional Co-operation in the New Europe. Building Security, Prosperity and Solidarity from the Barents to the Black Sea, edited by Andrew Cottey, Hampshire: Macmillan Press, 1999

BARENTS REGION The Barents Region was originally defined as the part of Europe north of the Arctic Circle, as it was made up by the member counties of the Barents Regional Council. The Council, formed in 1993, was enlarged by three more counties bordering the region, and consists today of all these counties. The Euro-Arctic

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Barents Region, for short “the Barents Region,” consists of the county members of the Barents Regional Council. Although a geographical unit, the northern European parts of Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Russia have significant differences in climate, geology demographics, government, and economic patterns. The Barents Region covers approximately 1,347,000 km2 of Arctic and Subarctic areas, and contains these climate types but with differences. The region borders the Northern sea in the west, where the Gulf Stream gives humid and relatively warm winters and cool summers. The northeast of the region borders the Arctic Ocean, and has large areas of permafrost. The inland areas of the region have usually long, cold winters and hot, short summers. Most of the Barents Region lies on the Fennoscandian crystalline shield. Other geological structures are found on its fringes. The inland of the region has Europe’s largest forested area. In the north, there are large areas with tundra, and in the south, large areas of forest, mainly coniferous species. The Barents Region is Europe’s most sparsely populated area; the population density varies from 1.7 to

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8.3 inhabitants per square kilometer. The largest concentration of inhabitants is found in the large Russian cities, especially Murmansk and Arkhangel’sk. The Barents population of approximately five million inhabitants consists of four nations, and the indigenous peoples: Saami and Nenets people. The Barents Region has a relatively high percentage of indigenous people. The Saami live in the Nordic countries, and Saami and Nenets in Russia, most of whom live in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug. Fishing, reindeer breeding, and farming form the base of the Saami’s settlement and culture, although assimilation to the national cultures continues. The authorities’ new policy and treatment of the Saami as indigenous people have contributed to the revitalization of the Saami culture, language, and identity. In several northern districts, the Saami language has official language status. The Barents Region is one of Europe’s richest areas in natural resources. Productive forests are found in the southern part of the region. The region contains a great diversity of flora and fauna. The Barents Sea bordering the region has the world’s richest fish stocks,

BARENTS REGIONAL COUNCIL with 144 species of marine fish, and is one of the most important fishing areas in the world. The region has a large number of rich mineral deposits, many of them in commercially interesting quantities. Several rich oil and gas deposits are located in the region, most of them offshore along the Norwegian coast and in the Barents Sea. The mountainous parts of the region have height differences suitable to produce hydropower. The region’s nature is for the largest part kept unspoilt, and there are good recreational areas, Europe’s best salmon rivers included. Serious environmental problems are concentrated to some areas of metallurgic industries and nuclear activities. The governmental and educational systems in the region are country specific. In Sweden, the governor represents the central Swedish government. The county council is responsible for health care and cultural issues. The Finnish governors take care of the interior matters and police. The county administration manages the regional foreign policy under the direction of the government. In Norway, the county council develops policies and long-term strategies. The head of the council, the county mayor, is head of the county administration. In the Russian Oblasts Murmansk and Arkhangel’sk, the democratically elected regional duma approves the regional budget and controls it, and makes decisions on the regional level. The governor, democratically elected, heads the county administration. A local representative of the President of the Russian Federation supervises the executions of presidential decrees. The Republic of Karelia has its own constitution, government, and parliament, which is the legislative assembly. The Nenets Autonomous Okrug manage their separate budget, and its governmental system is similar to the Oblasts. Each nation has two or more regional administrative centers as well as universities in the region. The common economic activity throughout the region is extraction and processing of raw materials. In some areas, tourism and the service sector are growing. The transportation of goods from the region mainly goes to the south within the national borders. The unemployment rates in the region are often each nation’s highest. The export of goods goes mostly out of the region and, to a large extent, out of the country. The natural resources have traditionally been exported as raw materials out of the region. The lack of east-west transportation and communication possibilities still make trade and transportation within the region between the nations difficult. Different standards and official procedures between the member countries make huge trade barriers. Finland has industrial production from forestry and metal, mostly for export markets. The importance of tourism is growing. In Norway, fishing and fisheries are

the common economical activity, although further north, service, tourism, and public sector are more important. The Russian territories have faced a privatization of state industrial enterprises, transferring the power and influence from the region to the national center. Murmansk Oblast’ depends heavily on mining and fishing. Forestry is the dominating industry in Arkhangel’sk, with the others being fishing and fish processing. The oil and gas sector is growing in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug. Karelia’s main economic sectors are forestry and mining. In the Swedish counties, the public sector is of great importance, together with forestry and industry. In the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, reindeer husbandry is the main livelihood. This is also an important way of living for the Saami in Finnmark, Norrbotten, and Lapland. The indigenous people in the area have lived, traveled, and traded across the Barents Region. Increased population during the last millennium resulted in extensive trade and communications in the area, especially in connection with the waterways. The Soviet time put a restraint on these contacts. The sharp division between eastern and western Europe went through the Barents Region, making the area a highly militarized zone. In the 1980s, contacts across the Soviet border were again established. In 1993, the increasing cooperation was formalized in the Barents cooperation, through the fora Barents Euro Arctic Council and the Barents Regional Council; hence, the expression the Barents Euro Arctic Region, for short the Barents Region, was established. SYLVI JANE HUSEBYE See also Barents Council; Barents Regional Council; Finland; Norway; Russia; Sweden Further Reading Flikke, G. (editor), The Barents Region Revisited, Oslo: Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, 1998 Stokke, Olav Schram & Ola Tunander (editors), The Barents Region: Cooperation in the Arctic Europe, London: Sage, 1994

BARENTS REGIONAL COUNCIL The aim of the Barents Regional Council (BRC) is to increase regional cooperation in a broad field of activities in the Barents Region. The council was established on January 11, 1993 as the regional pillar to the Barents Region, the Barents Euro Arctic Council being the central pillar. The founding members of the BRC included the regional leaders in the Barents Region (Lappland län, Finland, Nordland, Troms and Finnmark county, Norway, Arkhangel’sk and Murmansk Oblast’, Russia, and Norrbotten län,

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BARENTS SEA Sweden). A representative for the Saami Council was also present. Karelia Oblast’ participated as an observer, and was adopted as a member in April 1993. Nenets Autonomous Okrug has its own representative in the council. In 1998, the BRC expanded to include Oulo län (Finland) and Vesterbotten län (Sweden). The Barents Regional Council consists of the leaders of the participating counties, and meets four to six times a year. The new chairperson is elected biennially, rotating among the countries and counties. Under the BRC, the Regional Executive Committee (REC) prepares the tasks for the council, including preparation of an annual consensus-driven Barents Program. The REC works with and through regional coalitions of officials and specialists in the relevant field. The groups currently active involve industrial and commercial development, infrastructure, education, environment, health, welfare, culture, and indigenous peoples. The consensus-driven working groups propose projects and evaluate external project proposals for the Barents Program. Some of these projects elaborated regional action plans that have been adopted by the BRC and forwarded to the Barents Euro Arctic Council. National secretariats assist the national members in the REC and the regional working groups. Regional Barents Information offices have been established in Arkhangel’sk, Naryan-Mar (Nenets Autonomous Okrug), and Petrozavodsk (Karelia). Regional autonomy of the practical cooperation has been achieved on the Norwegian side, where the Norwegian members of the REC manage the Norwegian state funds granted to the regional cooperation projects. The Barents Regional Council forwards local priorities and larger-scale projects to the BEAC. The BRC maintains operational cooperation with Eurasia Foundation (US) and the Nordic Council of Ministers. The BRC maintains close contacts with the regional level of the Baltic cooperation and the EU’s regional cooperation program Barents Interreg. Under the BRC, cross-border cooperation, emphasizing people-to-people contacts, has been established. The cross-border regional infrastructure has been developed from east to west in the region, especially within telecommunications. Extensive educational and competence transference programs have been conducted. Health cooperation has been established between professionals and institutions and public health programs conducted. Cultural exchange has increased. Cooperation between the indigenous peoples in the Barents Region has been established and develops into legal affairs, cultural and business cooperation, and development. SYLVI JANE HUSEBYE See also Barents Council; Barents Region

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BARENTS SEA The Barents Sea, named after Dutch navigator Willem Barents, is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, and is bounded by the Kola Peninsula of Murmanskaya Oblast’, the northern coast of Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the island of Novaya Zemlya, and loosely to the north by Franz Josef Land and Svalbard. Its marine borders are with the Kara Sea to the east and the Norwegian Sea to the west (see the map in Barents Region). The sea overlies the north Russian continental shelf and is thus relatively shallow (10–100 m), with the seafloor sloping gently toward the central Arctic Ocean in the north and toward the GreenlandNorwegian Sea in the west, to depths of 200–300 m. West of Svalbard, the shelf ends and the ocean depth rapidly increases to more than one thousand meters. The Barents Sea has a total area of about 1.4 million square kilometers (540,000 square miles). The Barents Sea is a major ocean front area, with waters meeting from the North Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic Ocean. Cold Arctic water in the form of sea ice enters the Barents Sea from the northeast, and warm Atlantic surface water (the Atlantic Drift current) enters from the Norwegian Sea in the west. The southern part of the sea, and the ports of Murmansk and Vardø remain ice-free year round due to the warm Atlantic Drift current. Freshwater input to the sea is mainly from the Pechora River and the Kola River. The climate in the Barents Sea is much milder as compared to the continental climate conditions on the east Siberian shelves, with warm air masses from cyclones (atmospheric low-pressure systems) from the Greenland-Norwegian Sea passing westward through the southern Barents Sea. The Barents Sea has a very high biological productivity for such a high latitude (see Large Marine Ecosystems), and is an important feeding area for cod, capelin, haddock, redfish, and herring. Cod and capelin are major fishery resources exploited by both Norway and Russia. There is also a rich population of seabirds and marine mammals that feed on the dense phytoplankton blooms in spring and early summer. Large colonies of breeding seabirds are found along the coasts, particularly of Novaya Zemlya: a breeding population of 10–15 million seabirds has been estimated for the Barents Sea region as a whole. Common birds are fulmars, cormorants, Arctic terns, and brent geese. The ringed seal, bearded seal, walrus, and minke whale are all found at sea, and polar bears on Svalbard and Novaya Zemlya. The Greater Barents Region is one of the most densely populated regions of the circumpolar Arctic, and has a large industrial base. Oil and gas accumulations are actively being explored in the northern Barents Sea off the Norwegian shelf, and oil and gas

BARENTS, WILLEM fields are being exploited in the Pechora basin offshore of Nenets Autonomous Okrug. The Barents Sea has suffered persistent organic pollutant contamination and heavy metal discharge from chemical factories into Russian rivers, air pollution from industrial activities such as smelting, and radioactive contamination from dumped nuclear waste from Russia’s Northern Fleet’s ballistic-missile submarines from the 1960s to the 1980s. Nuclear tests were carried out on or near Novaya Zemlya between 1955 and 1990, and there is also a nuclear reactor on the Kola peninsula. Hydrocarbon spills from future offshore drilling and shipment of oil from terminals such as Varandei on the Nenets Autonomous Okrug shore also threaten commercial fisheries. GILLIAN LINDSEY See also Arctic Ocean; Barents Region; Barents, Willem; Gas Exploration; Kara Sea; Murmanskaya Oblast’; Nenets Autonomous Okrug; Novaya Zemlya; Oil Exploration Further Reading Bergesen, Helge Ole, Arild Moe & Willy Ostreng, Soviet Oil and Security Interests in the Barents Sea, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1987 National Oceanographic Data Center (US), Climatic Atlas of the Barents Sea 1998: Temperature, Salinity, Oxygen, Washington, District of Columbia: US Dept. of Commerce, National Oceanographic Data Center, 1998, http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/barsea/bardoc.html Tikhonov, Sergey, Konstantin Sjevljagin, Harald Loeng, Geir Wing Gabrielsen, Salve Dahle, Ole Jørgen Lønne & Roald Sætre (editors), Status Report on the Marine Environment of the Barents Region, The Joint Norwegian-Russian Commission on environmental cooperation, The working group on the marine environment of the Barents Region, 1997 World Wide Fund for Nature (The Barents Sea—A Sea of Opportunities), http://www.panda.org/downloads/arctic/barentsreport.pdf

BARENTS, WILLEM Although the name of Willem Barents is renowned, historians know little of his life and family. From his atlas Nieuwe Beschrijvinghe ende Caertboeck van de Middellandtsche Zee (New Description and Atlas of the Mediterranean Sea) published by Cornelis Claesz in 1595, historians know that Barents nurtured an interest in maps during his childhood. He shared this passion with his later teacher, the Dutch reformed preacher, and geographer Petrus Plancius (1552–1622). Plancius was interested in the discovery of a North East Passage to China and Japan, and when an expedition to search for such a northern sail route was organized in 1594, Plancius placed Barents in command of the Amsterdam portion of the discovery fleet.

The Dutch organized three successive voyages to search for such a sail route. Olivier Brunel, a Dutchman who at that time lived in Kholmogory in the north of Russia, played a significant role in the preparations of these voyages. Brunel made several voyages from Kholmogory to the Samojed country and to Siberia and, as the first West-European there, he finally reached the River Ob. In 1584, he succeeded in fitting out a ship at the expense of Balthasar de Moucheron, a merchant from Middelburg in the province of Zeeland in the Netherlands and the first Dutch expedition to try to reach Cathay in China via the north. Unfortunately, Brunel’s vessel shipwrecked in the mouth of the River Pechora and he most likely died on that journey. When Barents, on his first trip, arrived in Novaya Zemlya, he recognized the Strait of Kostin Shar from Brunel’s description of it published in Lucas Jansz Waghenaer’s Tresoor der Zeevaart (1592). Cornelis Cornelisz Nay served as commander of the entire fleet on Barents’s first voyage, which was financed by the city of Amsterdam and the states of Holland and Zealand. The 1594–1595 expedition was considered a success because the participants were convinced that they had discovered the entrance of the North East Passage to China. The following year, an expedition of merchant ships set sail with the intention of traveling through the newly discovered sailing route to China and Japan. Barents commanded the ship Winthont in the capacity as leader of the Amsterdam portion of the expedition. However, their ships became locked in ice in the southern Kara Sea and trapped until the following summer. While the expedition was not too promising, the Dutchmen decided to send another expedition in 1596. This time Barents led the entire fleet, which consisted of two ships—one commanded by Jacob van Heemskerck and the other commanded by Jan Cornelisz Rijp. For the first time, this expedition took a northern direction and subsequently discovered Bear Island and Spitsbergen. However, when it became clear that there was no passage in the northern pack ice, Barents decided to sail without Rijp, again to the northeast. Barents’s ship got stuck in the ice of the northern Kara Sea to the east of Novaya Zemlya. Together with Jacob van Heemskerck and 15 crew members, Barents was forced to spend the winter of 1596–1597 on the desolate east coast of the Arctic island. There Barents and his crew used the wood of the ship to build housing; they called it Behouden Huys or the “safe house.” Barents was among the first Europeans to survive a wintering in the Arctic. In June 1597 when their ship was still blocked in the ice, the survivors decided to return southward toward the Netherlands in open boats. Barents, however, did not survive this return voyage; on June 20, 1597, he died

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BARENTSBURG and most probably was buried at the sea that today bears his name. He left behind a wife and five children under destitute circumstances. Soon after his death, his widow was forced to ask the administrative state of Holland for financial support, which she did not, unfortunately, receive. An impressive diary of the wintering written by one of the crew members, Gerrit de Veer, was published shortly after Barents’s third voyage and was quickly translated into several languages. In 1598, Cornelis Claesz of Amsterdam published the geographical information gathered during Barents’s expeditions in the form of the “Willem Barents Polar Map.” This remarkable map changed the picture of the polar area completely, as it described an open polar sea surrounded by continents. In 1871, the Norwegian seal hunter Elling Carlsen rediscovered the remains of Barents’s Behouden Huy. Inside the wintering house on Novaya Zemlya, Carlsen found many well-preserved objects left behind by the Dutch crew and a farewell note that Barents had written. These objects, Barents’s maps, and diaries are today part of the permanent collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Biography Little is known of Willem Barents (Barentsz), including his exact date of birth (c.1500) and location. Scholars believe he was likely born either in the Dutch province North Holland or in Formerum at Terschelling, an island to the north of the Netherlands. Barents was educated as a steersman in Amsterdam. He was married with five children. In 1594, Barents left Amsterdam with two ships to search for the North East Passage to eastern Asia. He reached the west coast of Novaya Zemlya and followed it northward before he was forced to turn back near its northern extremity. Barents’s second expedition, during which he commanded a total of seven ships, took place in 1595 and traveled the strait between the Asiatic coast and Vaigach Island. In a third journey the following year, he traveled as far as Bear Island and Svalbard (or Spitsbergen). This also failed and resulted in his death on June 30, 1597. The Barents Sea was named after him. LOUWRENS HACQUEBORD See also Barents Sea; North East Passage, Exploration of Further Reading Alexander, Philip F., The North-West and North-East passages 1576–1611, England: Cambridge University Press, 1915 Barentsz, Willem, Nieuwe beschryvinghe ende caert-boeck vande Middellandtsche Zee, Amsterdam: Cornelius Claesz, 1595

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Hacquebord, L. & P. van Leunen, 400 jaar Willem Barents, Harlingen: Flevodruk BV, 1996 Jansma, T.S. & Olivier Brunel te Dordrecht, “De Noordoostelijke doorvaart en het Westeuropeesch-Russisch contact in de zestiende eeuw.” Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 59 (1946): 337–362 Unwin, Raynar, A Winter Away From Home: William Barents and the Northeast Passage, London: Seafarer Books, and New York: Sheridan House, 1995

BARENTSBURG Barentsburg (78°03′ N 14°20′ E) is a coal-mining settlement on the eastern coast of Grønfjorden (Green Harbour) in the Norwegian High Arctic Svalbard archipelago. Grønfjorden is a southern branch of Isfjorden, the largest fjord on the western coast of Spitsbergen. The mining settlement is owned by “Trust Arktikugol,” a Russian-based mining company; therefore, the inhabitants of Barentsburg are predominantly Russian or Ukrainian citizens. The mining settlement is on Norwegian territory, however, and it is governed by Norwegian law and regulations. The mining settlement was originally established by a Norwegian company in 1900, but sold to a Russian syndicate in 1915 that resold the claim to a Dutch company “Nederlandsche Spitsbergen Compagnie.” In 1922, this company named the settlement “Barentsburg” after Willem Barentsz, the pilot of the Dutch ship that discovered Spitsbergen in 1596. Barentsburg was sold to Trust Arktikugol for 1.25 million guilders in 1932. The inhabitants were evacuated in 1941, because of World War II, to Arkhangel’sk (Russia), and in September 1943 Barentsburg was completely destroyed by a German naval attack, and first rebuilt after the war. The number of inhabitants in Barentsburg has varied in recent years. In 1993, there were 1500 residents, but in 1994, due to financial difficulties in Russia, the local school was closed and children and housewives had to leave. By 1998, the population had been reduced to 800; this has gradually increased and by 2001 was almost 1000. A kindergarten has opened and the primary school is planned to reopen. Barentsburg is based industrially on mining Tertiary age coal. The yearly production varies; 390,000 tons were mined in 1999. Approximately 10% is used in the local power plant and the rest is exported. Barentsburg is a typical company town, and was only opened up to visitors in the 1990s. A hotel opened in 1989, and there was a cafeteria and a souvenir shop in the town. There is a hospital; a textile company that employed 30–40 seamstresses; a research station that specializes in geophysics, geology, and archaeology; a meteorological station; a museum; and a Russian Consulate. There is no road connection between Barentsburg and other parts of Svalbard.

BARNACLE GOOSE At Heerodden, 3 km (1.9 mi) north of Barentsburg, there is a small heliport, established in 1978, to shuttle personnel between Barentsburg and the international airport in Longyearbyen. Transportation within Svalbard, if not by air, has to be by boat or snowmobile. IAN GJERTZ See also Svalbard Further Reading Arctic Pilot: Sailing Directions Svalbard-Jan Mayen, Stavanger: Norwegian Hydrographic Service and Norwegian Polar Research Institute, 1988 Orheim, Olav (editor), The Placenames of Svalbard, Oslo: Norsk Polarinstitutt, 1991

BARNACLE GOOSE The barnacle goose (Branta leucopsis, known as Nerlernarnaq in Greenlandic) breeds in the Arctic region only in East Greenland, Svalbard (Spitsbergen), and Novaya Zemlya, Russia. The barnacle goose is not divided into subspecies, but three “flyway” populations have been recognized that correspond to the three breeding areas. In the early 1970s, the Russian population started to breed in the temperate Baltic Sea region. The barnacle goose is a rather small goose 60–70 cm (24–28 in) long and weighing of 1–2 kg. The face is yellowish, with the rest of the head, neck and breast, as well as bill and feet, in black. The underparts are white and the back and upper wings are bluish-gray. Young birds are similar, but more drab and with a white face. The nesting habitats of the barnacle goose are cliff ledges on coastal cliffs and canyons, rocky outcrops, and small offshore islands. the most important breeding sites are on Svalbard and in Russia coastal islands, some holding 1000 nests. In Greenland the colony size varies from ten to 150 pairs. The barnacle goose migrates to wintering grounds in Ireland and northwest Scotland (Greenland population), the Solway Firth in southwest Scotland (Svalbard population), and the Netherlands (Russian population). The winter habitats are mainly salt marshes on offshore islands, in fjords or in the Wadden Sea, but intensively managed grasslands are also important feeding areas. All three flyway populations are increasing in numbers, and according to the 1994–1997 population estimates the total wintering population numbers around 330,000 birds. Of these the Russian population is by far the largest with about 270,000 birds, while the Greenland population holds 40,000 birds and the Svalbard population 23,000 birds. The Greenland and Svalbard populations both have long migration routes across sea, and they leave their wintering grounds during mid-April and early May to

stop over at sites in northern Iceland and the Helgeland archipelago off the Norwegian coast, respectively. During a two- to three-week period, they build up energy stores before continuing their migration to the breeding areas. In mild winters, the Russian population leaves the Netherlands wintering grounds in January and moves slowly northeast. The staging areas in the Baltic Sea region are reached in early April, and the geese proceed to the breeding grounds around midMay. All three populations have migration routes of 3000–4000 km (2000–2500 mi). The geese start breeding in late May to early June. The nest is a shallow depression lined with down, moss, and grass. Here the female incubates a clutch of four to five eggs for 23–25 days. The goose leaves the nest for an average of 3% of her time on short feeding trips. These feeding trips are not sufficient to maintain her body mass and about 40% of her body mass may be lost by the end of incubation. Females that are able to find high-quality food during their short absence from the nest breed more successfully. During incubation, the males defend the nest against predators such as the glaucous gull Larus hyperboreus, the rough-legged buzzard Buteo lagopus, and the Arctic fox Alopex lagopus. When the goslings hatch, the male has lost about 20% of his weight, but this weight loss continues because he must stay vigilant in order to protect the goslings from predators. Goslings that jump from cliff ledges suffer losses of about 50% when they disappear in the scree or are taken by Arctic foxes, gulls, and falcons. The breeding success of the Russian population varies considerably, with anything from a few percent to 50% young birds surviving to reach the wintering grounds. This variation is linked to the production of lemmings (Lemmus sibiricus and Discrostonyx torquatus), which in turn controls the Arctic fox population. When the fox population peaks, the lemming populations have often collapsed, which forces the foxes to predate on goslings. Wetlands in the high Arctic tundra are selected for the rearing of young. These wetlands include sedge and moss marshes, with cotton grasses Eriophorum in drier areas. The goslings are able to fly when about six weeks old. Like other goose species, the barnacle geese have only one body molt every year, and the most conspicuous is the wing molt. The duration of the wing molt is three to four weeks, and the development of the flying feathers is more rapid than in many duck species, indicating an adaptation to the short Arctic summer in the Arctic-breeding goose species. Immature geese and failed breeding birds molt in July, while breeding birds molt about two weeks later. No molt migration out of the breeding range has been observed in the Svalbard and Russian populations. A southward molt migration, unusual in Arctic geese, takes place in the Greenland population, where 5000–6000 geese congregate in the

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BARROW southernmost breeding range. Here, the barnacle goose is competing with the pinkfooted goose Anser brachyrhynchus for the limited food resources. The molting sites contain refuge lakes or rivers, and abundant food resources. During molt, up to one-third of the total body protein content is lost. Despite this loss over a relatively short period, geese are able to meet their energy and protein demands through moderate feeding, and do not have to deplete their energy and nutrient reserves. During this period, proteins are degraded from the breast muscles and built into leg muscles. These changes are ascribed to disuse-use of the muscle groups. The autumn migration starts in late August and early September and wintering grounds are reached in October and November. All three populations have stopover sites where they stay for about three weeks, building up energy reserves and waiting for favorable tailwinds: the Greenland population stopover in southeast Iceland, the Svalbard population at Bjørnøya, 250 km (150 mi) south of mainland Svalbard, and the Russian population in the Baltic Sea region. Since 1950–1980, the barnacle goose has been protected from hunting throughout its range, except for Iceland and Greenland, where about 4000 geese are legally shot annually. Local people used to gather eggs and down. In Greenlandic myths, geese have the ability to return sight to blinded people by squirting people’s eyes with their feces. CHRISTIAN M. GLAHDER See also Brent Geese Further Reading Batt, B.D.J., A.D. Afton, M.G. Anderson, C.D. Ankney, D.H. Johnson, J.A. Kadlec & G.L. Krapu (editors), Ecology and Management of Breeding Waterfowl, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1992 Cramp, Stanley & K.E.L. Simmons (editors), Handbook of Birds of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa: The Birds of the Western Palearctic, Volume 1, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977 del Hoyo, Josep, Andrew Elliott & Jordi Sargatal (editors), Handbook of the Birds of the World, volume 1, Barcelona: Lynx Edicions, 1992 Madsen, Jesper, Gill Craknell & Tony Fox (editors), Goose Populations of the Western Palearctic. A Review of Status and Distribution, Wetlands International Publ. No. 48, The Netherlands, Wageningen: Wetlands International; Denmark, Rönde: National Environmental Research Institute, 1999 Owen, Myrfyn, Wild Geese of the World. Their Life History and Ecology, London: B.T. Batsford Ltd., 1980 Rose, P.M. & D.A. Scott (compilers), Waterfowl Population Estimates (2nd edition), Wetlands International Publ. No. 44, The Netherlands, Wageningen: Wetlands International, 1997 Salomonsen, Finn, “The moult migration.” Wildfowl, 19 (1968): 5–24 ———, Grønlands Fugle. The Birds of Greenland, København: Munksgaard, 1950

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BARROW Barrow, Alaska, is the northernmost community in the United States, located on the coast of the Chukchi Sea at 71°17′ N 156°47′ W. According to the 2000 US Census, its population, was 4581, 2620 of whom are Alaska Native, primarily Iñupiat Eskimo. Barrow is the seat of the North Slope Borough, a county-like regional government incorporated in 1972 and encompassing the northern fifth of Alaska. The Iñupiat name for Barrow is Utqiagvik. Pt Barrow, a few kilometers north of the city, marks the divide between the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. A prominent coastal feature, the point is biologically significant for the passage of migratory birds and marine mammals. Due to the reliability of these migrations, Barrow has been a favorable site for human settlement for millennia. The current city sits atop prehistoric house sites, and related village sites are found from Pt Barrow itself southwest along the Chukchi Sea coast past the present city. The Birnirk Culture, which flourished around AD 600, is named after a village site halfway between Pt Barrow and Barrow. The first Europeans to reach Barrow were members of the British Royal Navy expedition (1825–1828) under Frederick Beechey on the Blossom. The crews of the HMS Plover, commanded by Rochfort Maguire, were the first Europeans to overwinter at Barrow from 1852 to 1854. In the 1880s, the International Polar Expedition established a base at Barrow, and Yankee whalers set up shore stations at Barrow to take bowhead whales during the spring migration, before ships were able to reach the area. The 20th century witnessed a great increase in the presence of non-Iñupiat, beginning with missionaries, school teachers, and government officials, and increasing in the 1940s and 1950s with the creation of the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory north of Barrow, the building of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line across the top of North America, and the exploration of the surrounding area for oil and gas. At the same time, the Iñupiat of Barrow have played a large part in perpetuating their culture and protecting their rights to the land and its resources. In 1961, Barrow residents staged a “Duck-In,” protesting the enforcement of a ban on spring hunting of migratory birds, which resulted in enforcement officials agreeing to ignore traditional harvests. The Arctic Slope Native Association and the Iñupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, both based in Barrow, were instrumental in the debate leading to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1972. The North Slope Borough created the Iñupiat History, Language, and Culture Commission, which has sponsored Elders’ Conferences, research, and other activities. The Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission was founded in Barrow in 1977 to fight a ban on bowhead whaling

BARROW, SIR JOHN imposed that year by the International Whaling Commission. The Inuit Circumpolar Conference started at a meeting organized in 1977 by Eben Hopson, then Mayor of the North Slope Borough. Today, Barrow enjoys many of the amenities of a modern city, although its connection to the land and the surrounding sea remains vital and visible. Subsistence production averages over 100 kg per capita, and bowhead whaling is a focal point for community activities throughout the year. Barrow’s current economic base is the property tax revenue from North Slope oil development infrastructure, which has declined in recent years. Future prospects depend on the scale of oil development and the ability of the region to find alternative sources of income. HENRY P. HUNTINGTON See also Birnirk Culture; Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line; North Slope Further Reading Blackman, Margaret B., Sadie Brower Neakok: An Iñupiaq Woman, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1989 Bockstoce, John (editor), The Journal of Rochfort Maguire, 1852–1854, 2 volumes, London: The Hakluyt Society, 1988 Bodenhorn, Barbara, “The Iñupiat of Alaska.” In Endangered Peoples of the Arctic: Struggles to Survive and Thrive, edited by Milton M.R. Freeman, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000 Brower, Charles D., Fifty Years BelowZero, New York: Dodd Mead, 1942 Ford, J.A., “Eskimo prehistory in the vicinity of Point Barrow.” In Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, 47 (1959): 1–272 Huntington, Henry P., Wildlife Management and Subsistence Hunting in Alaska, London: Belhaven Press, 1992

BARROW, SIR JOHN Although Sir John Barrow only made one brief trip to the Arctic himself, sailing to Svalbard for a summer on board a whaler during his teenage years, his name is inextricably linked with the exploration of the Arctic through his role as the prime figure in the mapping of Arctic Canada that took place in the first half of the 19th century. Coming from humble origins in rural north Lancashire, Barrow was a bright child who impressed his teachers in mastering Latin and mathematics, and made his way by a combination of talents and a natural sense of diplomacy that enabled him to enlist and maintain the support of increasingly influential patrons. Through a series of such connections, he found himself attached to Lord George Macartney’s embassy to the imperial court of China in 1792–1794, during which he learned some Chinese and was an

energetic observer of Chinese life. In 1797, Macartney was appointed the first British governor of Cape Colony, and Barrow accompanied him as comptroller of his household, becoming Auditor General of Public Accounts for the colony in 1799 as his reputation for probity and efficiency spread. When Cape Colony was returned (temporarily) to the Dutch in 1803, Barrow returned to Britain, and his patrons and accomplishments alike recommended him for the post of Second Secretary to the Admiralty. In this position he proved himself an able administrator during the latter stages of the Napoleonic Wars, when the Royal Navy was at its largest, and then in the period of massive contraction in ships and personnel that followed the final defeat of Napoleon (whose place of incarceration, St Helena, was Barrow’s own suggestion, having visited it on his way back from China). Barrow’s interest in geographical questions and historical research, together with his concern to find some activity for otherwise unemployed naval officers, came together after the war in his proposals for a series of expeditions that would complete “those details of geographical and hydrographical science of which the grand outlines have been boldly and broadly sketched by Cook, Vancouver, and Flinders…,” as he put it in his introduction to the published account of the first of these voyages, undertaken in 1816 to sail up the River Congo. As a civil servant rather than a politician, he had no formal way of actually initiating policy, so he approached the task indirectly by using his formidable connections. In the Royal Society (of which he was a fellow), he gained the support of its president, Joseph Banks, for a renewed program of exploration. As a contributor to the influential Quarterly Review, he promoted the need for it, and in the Admiralty he would certainly have offered suggestions as to how the morale of a shrinking navy could be improved and the energies of its officers directed. The arguments he used in support ranged from maintaining Britain’s prestige as an exploring nation (saying that national honor should not allow the world’s largest navy to stand idle while other countries forged ahead) to maintaining its security as an imperial nation, noting that control of strategically placed bases on major waterways was the key to peace and prosperity for a maritime empire. In 1818, Barrow also published his Chronological History of Voyages into the Arctic Regions, which, by reminding his contemporaries of the strides already made by British mariners from Martin Frobisher onwards, and ending with the first two Arctic expeditions sent out under his own instructions, amounted to a manifesto for a renewed exploratory effort on a grand scale. Once the initial proposals were approved, the selection of officers would largely have been within

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BARROW, SIR JOHN Barrow’s direct control, so as First Lords of the Admiralty came and went, Barrow himself, as the more permanent fixture, became the center of power to which ambitious naval officers with an interest in exploration were attracted. The Arctic was to prove his strongest and most enduring passion, and between 1818 and 1845 he sent out 13 expeditions to Svalbard or the North American Arctic, the overarching aim of which was to find a sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, whether that be by a North West Passage or by a polar route through what he imagined to be an open polar sea. Barrow began with a two-pronged attack in 1818, sending two ships under David Buchan and John Franklin to Svalbard in an attempt to get into the pack ice that had defeated Constantine Phipps’s voyage in 1773. At the same time two other ships under John Ross and William Parry were sent to Baffin Bay to confirm Bylot and Baffin’s report of its outlets to the north and west. Both were unsuccessful: Buchan and Franklin found the North Atlantic pack as impenetrable as earlier and later explorers, while Ross fell victim to a mirage that convinced him Lancaster Sound was an enclosed bay. The following year Barrow sent Parry back again, in command this time. In an exceptionally lucky year for ice conditions, Parry pushed through Lancaster Sound for some 1040 km (650 mi) before he was turned back by the permanent pack of the Beaufort Sea, spending the winter on the southwest coast of Melville Island (the first ship-borne expedition ever to winter deliberately in the High Arctic). Barrow conceived of this expedition too as part of a pincer movement, the other arm of which was John Franklin’s overland expedition (1819–1822) to map the continental coastline of North America eastward from the mouth of the Coppermine River, in the (vain) hope that he would meet up with Parry. Plotting the discoveries from these expeditions on the Admiralty’s charts began to give Barrow an inkling that a North West Passage would not be found in an open arena of drifting icebergs through which a ship could pick its way, but would be one of many possible paths through a labyrinth of islands separated by channels that might be choked with standing ice-floes. The point he never seems to have grasped, or at least acknowledged, was that channels that were blocked by ice one year might be open the next, and vice versa, rendering the route only occasionally and unpredictably passable and thus, for practical purposes, unusable. Since the logic of this would effectively have closed down Barrow’s project—something he would have wanted to avoid for other strategic reasons—it is perhaps not surprising that he chose to ignore it. Parry’s next attempts were at finding a more southerly route, closer to the continental coastline (1821–1823 and 1824–1825), while Franklin was sent

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back on a second overland expedition to chart more of its length (1825–1827). The latter nearly connected with Frederick Beechey (1825–1828), who had been despatched through Bering Strait in the opposite direction. Barrow did not forget his open polar sea either. In 1827, he sent Parry on his fifth and final expedition to make an attempt on the pack ice north of Svalbard by foot. Dragging heavy boats over the ice (since they expected to encounter open water ahead), his men only succeeded in exhausting themselves as the current pushed the floes south almost as fast as they could move north. They had not traveled far enough to show that the ice extended all the way to the North Pole, so the theory of the open polar sea survived until another day, but it did give Barrow important information, later exploited by Fridtjof Nansen, about currents that confirmed the idea of large-scale flows of water across the entire polar basin. When the Hudson’s Bay Company expedition under Thomas Simpson and Peter Dease (1836–1839) completed the survey of the northern continental coastline, Barrow thought he had assembled enough information to ensure that one more push could make the final link through the North West Passage to the Pacific. He therefore persuaded the Admiralty to back a lavishly equipped two-ship expedition under Franklin, which sailed in 1845. Its failure, the mystery of its fate, and the long search for its remains by more than a dozen further expeditions became the central, abundantly mythologized event of the 19th-century exploration of the Arctic. However, Barrow knew of none of this, as he retired a few months before the expedition sailed, and died three years later when the chances of a successful outcome were still considered high. The chaotic and densely packed Canadian Arctic archipelago made its exploration all the more difficult by constantly changing ice conditions. That a task suited to aerial reconnaissance and satellite photography was accomplished at all in the age of wooden sailing ships is due to a combination of political, economic, cultural, and other factors, but the crucial thread that linked them was Barrow’s social and professional position at the focus of these overlapping forces, and his singular determination over three decades to push the search for a North West Passage through to its conclusion. When in his retirement he added to his earlier text of 1818 by writing Voyages of Discovery and Research Within the Arctic Regions, From the Year 1818 to the Present Time, the achievement he surveyed was, in its inspiration and organization, largely his own.

Biography Born near Ulverston in Lancashire (now in Cumbria) on June 19, 1764, John Barrow was the son of

BARTLETT, ROBERT smallholders Roger Barrow and Mary Dawson. He was educated at the local Town Bank Grammar School, then worked as a surveyor, bookkeeper, and tutor, before accompanying his employer on a diplomatic mission to China in 1792–1794, and on colonial service in Cape Colony in 1797–1803. In 1803, he was appointed Second Secretary to the Admiralty, a post in which he remained, apart from a few months in 1806–1807, until 1845. From 1815, he initiated and organized a series of naval expeditions to many parts of the world, including the Arctic expeditions commanded by David Buchan (1818), Sir John Ross (1818), Sir John Franklin (1819–1822, 1825–1827, and 1845–1848), Sir William Parry (1819–1820, 1821–1823, 1824–1825, and 1827), George Lyon (1824), Frederick Beechey (1825–1828), and Sir George Back (1833–1835 and 1836–1837). He married Anne Maria Trüter in Cape Town in 1799, and they had several children. He was an active member of the Royal Society, and was one of the founding members of the Geographical Society of London (later the Royal Geographical Society) in 1830. He died in London on November 23, 1848. JONATHAN DORE See also Back, Sir George; Beechey, Frederick; Exploration of the Arctic; Franklin, Sir John; Lyon, George Francis; North West Passage, Exploration of; Open Polar Sea; Parry, Sir William Edward; Ross, Sir John; Royal Geographical Society; Simpson, Thomas Further Reading Barrow, Sir John, An Account of Travels into the Interior of Southern Africa, 2 volumes, London: Cadell and Davies, 1801–1804, and (Volume 1) New York: G.F. Hopkins, 1802; reprinted, New York: Johnson Reprint, 1968 ———, Travels in China, London: Cadell and Davies, 1804, and Philadelphia: W.E. M’Laughlin, 1805; reprinted, Taipei: Ch’eng Wen, 1972 ———, A Chronological History of Voyages into the Arctic Regions, London: John Murray, 1818; reprinted, Newton Abbot, Devon: David and Charles, and New York: Barnes and Noble, 1971 ———, The Eventful History of the Mutiny and Piratical Seizure of H.M.S. Bounty, London: John Murray, 1831; reprinted, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989; reprinted as Mutiny!: The Real History of the H.M.S. Bounty, New York: Cooper Square Press, 2003 ———, Voyages of Discovery and Research within the Arctic Regions, From the Year 1818 to the Present Time, London: John Murray, and New York: Harper, 1846 ———, An Autobiographical Memoir of Sir John Barrow, Bart., Late of the Admiralty: Including Reflections, Observations, and Reminiscences at Home and Abroad, From Early Life to Advanced Age, London: John Murray, 1847 Bartlett, Christopher John, Great Britain and Sea Power, 1815–53, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963; reprinted, Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 1993

Berton, Pierre, The Arctic Grail: The Quest for the North West Passage and the North Pole, 1818–1909, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1988, New York and London: Viking, 1989; reprinted, New York: Lyons Press, 2000 Dawson, Warren R., The Banks Letters, London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1958 Fleming, Fergus, Barrow’s Boys, London: Granta Books, 1998; New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000 Lewis, Michael, The Navy in Transition, 1814–1864: A Social History, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1965 Lloyd, Christopher, Mr Barrow of the Admiralty: A Life of Sir John Barrow, London: Collins, 1970

BARTLETT, ROBERT Robert Abram Bartlett, one of the most significant Arctic sailing masters of his era, was born in Brigus, Newfoundland, in 1875. As a young man, he shipped out on a series of sealing vessels in the polar regions, where he learned to handle vessels under extreme conditions. In 1898, Bartlett became the first mate on the Windward, the ship that Robert Peary used in his first attempt to reach the North Pole in 1898–1899. Peary offered Bartlett command of the Roosevelt, Peary’s primary exploration ship, in 1905. Bartlett agreed under the condition that he be permitted to accompany Peary on his attempt to the North Pole. The 1905–1906 expedition sailed along the eastern shore of Ellesmere Island to Cape Sheridan, where the group wintered. In February 1906, Bartlett and a crew of Inuit prepared trails and laid supply depots for the push north. They were stopped by the “Big Lead,” open water that could not be navigated. Bartlett returned to the United States with the Roosevelt badly crippled and in danger of sinking after a harrowing three-month voyage from Etah, Greenland. Bartlett traveled again to the north with Peary and the Roosevelt in 1908, reaching Cape Sheridan, Ellesmere Island, at the very end of the sailing season. In February of the following year, Bartlett led members of the expedition north to break trail. When others turned back, he continued to a point only 150 miles from the North Pole before returning. On March 31, Peary began his final attempt of the Pole, taking Matthew Henson with him and informing Bartlett that he would not be permitted to join in the attempt. Historians speculate that Bartlett was prevented from joining the attempt because he might either upstage Peary if they were successful or that Bartlett, a superior navigator, could challenge the accuracy of Peary’s calculations and determine whether the North Pole had actually been reached. Bartlett returned to New York at the end of the expedition and spent the following year lecturing in Europe. He did not, at any time, publicly comment on Peary’s decision to leave him behind. In 1913, Bartlett captained the Karluk for Vilhjamur Stefansson on a voyage of three vessels to the Canadian 207

BARTLETT, ROBERT Arctic via the Bering Strait. In 1913, Stefansson convinced the Canadian government to sponsor an expedition to solidify the nation’s claim to its Arctic regions, and to explore and map these regions. The venture was divided into a northern and a southern division, the latter of which Stefansson commanded. Bartlett sailed Karluk from Victoria, British Columbia, with Stefansson, the scientific members of the division, and supplies and equipment. The vessel was beset in ice on August 12, 1913 off the Alaskan coast. Stefansson left the ship on September 20, ostensibly to hunt for meat, and walked with a small group of men to Herschel Island where he met with members of the Southern Division and remained in the Canadian Arctic for five years. The Karluk remained fast in the drifting ice until it was crushed in January 1914. Four members of the ship’s company were lost almost immediately, while Bartlett led the remainder under his command to Wrangel Island, north of the Siberian coast. Bartlett then traveled over 700 miles on foot through snow and ice to get assistance for the Wrangel Island survivors. He succeeded in July 1914. However, an investigation was held after Bartlett’s return and he was found to be partially responsible for the disaster. Recent accounts, including that of expedition survivors MacKinlay and Niven, have exonerated Bartlett and instead blamed the disaster on Stefansson. After returning from the Canadian Arctic Expedition, Bartlett moved to the United States and became an American citizen. During that country’s brief involvement in World War I, he worked for the US Navy. In 1917, Bartlett commanded a relief expedition the Crocker Land Expedition, which under Donald Macmillan seeked to attempt to locate the land that Bartlett and Peary believed they had seen in 1906, but with unsuccessful results. Bartlett proposed several other expeditions in the next eight years, but none were financed. The purchase of a ship, the Effie M. Morrissey, in 1925 by a friend allowed Bartlett to embark on nearly two dozen expeditions and voyages to the Canadian Arctic in the next two decades. The results of these voyages included large amounts of geographical and scientific data. The first of the voyages was to supply Knud Rasmussen at Thule, Greenland. In 1927 and again in 1933, Bartlett explored Foxe Channel and Basin as well as the Fury and Hecla Strait between the mainland and Baffin Island. In 1930, 1931, and 1939, he gathered oceanographic and atmospheric data along the coasts of northeast Greenland for a number of organizations, including the US Navy. Eight trips to Ellesmere Island and northwest Greenland between 1932 and 1941 allowed Bartlett to improve mapping and charting of those areas as well as to gather data on oceanic and atmospheric conditions. His exploits in

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this period were the subject of a number of essays, including several in National Geographic. During World War II, Bartlett aided the war effort by supplying military bases in northern Canada and Greenland. He moved to New York City immediately after the war. In 1946, Bartlett caught pneumonia and died on April 28. His beloved Effie M. Morrissey, now named the Ernestina, has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places and is berthed at New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Biography Robert Abram Bartlett was born in Brigus, Newfoundland, Canada, on August 15, 1875. After boarding school in St John’s, Newfoundland, he went to sea as a sealer. He was hired in 1898 as first mate on the Windward, one of Robert Peary’s ships used in the attempt on the North Pole. Peary purchased the Roosevelt in 1905 and asked Bartlett to be its captain. They sailed to the north shore of Ellesmere Island and Bartlett took the ship back, although badly damaged, to New York the following year. Peary again asked Bartlett to captain the Roosevelt on his next attempt at the North Pole in 1908–1909. Only 150 miles from the pole, Bartlett was informed that he would not be permitted to continue. Bitterly disappointed, Bartlett nevertheless did not complain publicly of this slight. In 1913, Vilhjalmur Stefansson hired Bartlett to captain the Karluk during the Canadian Arctic Expedition. In 1917, as a US citizen, Bartlett commanded a ship sent north to attempt to find Crocker Land. After a struggle with alcohol, Bartlett was given the Effie M. Morrissey, a schooner that he used to make 20 scientific voyages, beginning in 1925, to the Arctic including several for the US Navy. Bartlett caught pneumonia in New York and died there on April 28, 1946. PHILIP N. CRONENWETT See also Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913–1918; Peary, Robert E. Further Reading Bartlett, Robert, The Last Voyage of the Karluk, Boston: Small, Maynard, and Co., 1916 ———, The Log of Bob Bartlett: The True Story of Forty Years of Seafaring and Exploration, New York: G.P. Putnam, 1928 ———, Sails Over Ice, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934 Horwood, Harold A., Bartlett, the Great Canadian Explorer, Garden City: Doubleday, 1977 McKinlay, William Laird, Karluk: The Great Untold Story of Arctic Exploration, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1977 Niven, Jennifer, The Ice Master: The Doomed 1913 Voyage of the Karluk, New York: Hyperion, 2000 Putnam, George Palmer, Mariner of the North: The Life of Captain Bob Bartlett, New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1947

BATHURST ISLAND

BATHURST ISLAND Located in the center of Canada’s High Arctic, Bathurst Island has an area of about 15,500 km2. With an irregular coastline and several long inlets reaching inland, no part of the island is more than 40 km from the sea. Bathurst Island is of low relief with few mountain ranges. Several peaks reach 300 m in the north, but much of the central part is below 100 m. The highest hills in the southern half are of volcanic origin and reach a height of 335 m. The geological structure is mainly sedimentary and most rocks are limestone or dolomite. Bathurst Island was covered by glacial ice from about 35,000 years ago until about 10,000 years ago. The climate is typically Arctic with cold temperatures, frequent but moderate winds, and low precipitation. The yearly mean temperature is about −7°C. The low precipitation gives Bathurst Island a polar desert climate and much of the island has virtually no vegetation. In some lowlands, especially Polar Bear Pass, grasses and sedges form a lush growth around ponds and lakes. These wet meadows feature frost mounds, polygons, and patterned ground. Wildlife is abundant in the lowland areas with large numbers of breeding birds, muskoxen, wolves, and Arctic foxes. Once numerous, the threatened Peary caribou utilize northern Bathurst for rutting and calving. Archaeological sites of the Independence, Dorset, and Thule Cultures are found on southern Bathurst. The first European to see Bathurst Island, Sir William Parry, named it in 1819 after a sponsor, the Earl of Bathurst. Expeditions in search of the missing Franklin expedition charted much of the unknown coastline between 1850 and 1853. In 1909, Captain

J.E. Bernier landed on Bathurst Island and formally took possession for Canada. After 1953, when several Inuit families moved from Arctic Québec to neighboring Cornwallis Island, people began hunting caribou on southern Bathurst, known to them as “Tuktuliarvik.” The Inuit own lands on the southern and northeastern coasts, but there is no permanent settlement on the Island. Modern exploration dates from 1955 when the Geological Survey of Canada surveyed the Island. In the winter of 1963–1964, one of the first exploratory oil wells in the Arctic islands was drilled in central Bathurst. Following extensive seismic exploration, two wells were drilled in the winter of 1970–1971. The potential for lead-zinc mineral deposits exists in northeastern Bathurst. The establishment of a Research Station in 1968 provided a base for extensive biological and ecological research into the 1990s. In 1983, Polar Bear Pass received protection as Canada’s first Arctic National Wildlife Area. In 1996, northern Bathurst Island was reserved for a proposed national park (Tuktusiuqvialuk) to represent the western High Arctic and to preserve important Peary caribou range. DAVID R. GRAY See also Beaufort Sea; Nunavut; Parry, Sir William Edward; Queen Elizabeth Islands Further Reading Dunbar, Moira & Keith R. Greenaway, Arctic Canada From the Air, Ottawa: Defence Research Board, 1956

Thule Culture whalebone house foundation at Brooman Point, Bathurst Island, Nunavut, July 1968. Copyright David R. Gray

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BATHURST MANDATE Gray, David R., The Muskoxen of Polar Bear Pass, Markham: National Museum of Natural Sciences/Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1987 Harington, C. Richard (editor), Canada’s Missing Dimension: Science and History in the Canadian Arctic Islands, Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Nature, 855pp Parks Canada, New Parks North. Newsletter No. 10, 2001, 36pp Taylor, Andrew, Geographical Discovery and Exploration in the Queen Elizabeth Islands, Ottawa: Department of Mines and Technical Surveys, 1955

BATHURST MANDATE The Bathurst Mandate (Pinasuaqtavut, translated as “that which we’ve set out to do”) is an eight-page document that sets out the Nunavut government’s priorities for the first five years of its existence (1999–2004) and also includes a vision for Nunavut in the year 2020. The document was developed by the 19 elected members of the Nunavut Legislative Assembly and tabled at the Nunavut Legislative Assembly on October 21, 1999. The Bathurst Mandate outlines the social, political, and economic direction of the Nunavut government. The document will have a significant impact on policy development in Nunavut since all policies will be reviewed according to criteria set down by the Bathurst Mandate. The contents of the Bathurst Mandate are organized under four broad headings: Inuuqatigiittiarniq (healthy communities); Pijarnirniqsat Katujjiqatigiinnirlu (simplicity and unity); Namminiq Makitajunnarniq (self-reliance); and Ilippallianginnarniq (continuing learning). Each section contains some principles, a vision for Nunavut in the year 2020, and objectives to be met during the first five-year term of the government (1999–2004).

Inuuqatigiittiarniq: “Healthy Communities” The Nunavut government vision is that by the year 2020, it will respond to all the basic needs of individuals and families to ensure that all Nunavut communities are “healthy.” Thus, by the year 2020 it is expected the Nunavummiut (the people of Nunavut) will have improved health and social conditions equal to or better than the Canadian average, while present social housing deficiencies will be resolved. To achieve these long-term goals, the government intends to put additional funding to train nurses and to build over 200 new houses by the year 2004. There is a shortage in health human resources. Nunavut only has about 130 nurses for a population of 28,000 residents (85% are Inuit). There is also a high turnover among medical personnel and no Inuit nurses. This makes it difficult to provide for an efficient and culturally sensitive health care. The government intends

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to train around 30 new nurses, most of them Inuit, and build two new regional hospitals by the year 2004. Housing is one of the two primary commitments (along with education) of the government. Crowded housing conditions have contributed to social and health problems. The number of persons per dwelling was higher for Nunavut (3.84) compared to the Canadian average (2.65) (2000 estimate, CBC). There were about 1100 families (15% of the population) waiting for some form of housing (2000 estimate, CBC). To keep up with housing demands, about 260 new homes need to be built each year for the next five years (1999–2004). At this juncture, the government objective is to improve the conditions of existing homes and to construct over 200 housing units between 1999 and 2004. A housing Strategy Committee has been created (year 2001) to coordinate all housing challenges. However, the demand for new housing will still be high by the year 2005.

Pijarnirniqsat Katujjiqatigiinnirlu: “Simplicity and Unity” By the year 2020, the Nunavut government will reflect Inuit culture and traditions. Inuktitut, the Inuit language, will be the working language of the government. Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (“the Inuit way of doing things,” and often translated to mean Inuit traditional knowledge) will provide the context under which government programs, policies, and legislation will be drafted. Achieving these goals will make the government friendlier to the majority of the Inuit population, simplify access by the public to government services, and reinforce unity among all Nunavummiut. To make sure that Nunavut eventually operates with Inuit norms and values, a policy to hire more Inuit government employees has been put forward (in 2001, only 43% of the 2700 government employees were Inuit). Further, a Workshop Report released by the Nunavut government in September 1999 recommends that non-Inuit staff attend Inuktitut language lessons and that mandatory orientation sessions, with Inuit elders, be provided to all government employees. Another important initiative put forward to answer the visions expressed in this section was the creation of Maligarnit Qimirrujiit in October 1999 (“The Nunavut Law Review Commission”), whose task is to make recommendations so that Nunavut’s laws will be more in tune with Inuit values.

Namminiq Makitajunnarniq: “Self-Reliance” By the year 2020, the government of Nunavut expects to be economically self-reliant. Nunavummiut will enjoy a growing economic prosperity. It is hoped that

BEAR CEREMONIALISM unemployment figures will be reduced considerably and that Nunavummiut will enjoy low levels of dependency on government income support programs. During its first term (1999–2004), the government intends to help build local employment through continuing government decentralization, to ensure an increased number of Inuit employees within the government, and to start talk with the federal government in order to obtain a fairer share of resource royalties coming from Nunavut’s lands and waters. The unemployment rate in Nunavut is about 28% (1999 estimate, Nunavut Bureau of Statistics). The Nunavut government is by far the largest single employer in Nunavut (40% of all jobs). In an effort to improve the local economy, the Nunavut administration is being decentralized so that government employment can benefit as many communities as possible. Nunavut hopes to have achieved full decentralization by the year 2004. However, the success of decentralization and the increased representation of Inuit employees in the government will depend heavily on the availability of Inuit trained personnel, who are still significantly lacking. As for resource royalties, the land in Nunavut is mostly owned by the federal government and all resource royalties flow to the Canadian government. Talks have yet to start between federal and Nunavut officials on this issue.

Ilippallianginnarniq: “Continuing Learning” By the year 2020, there will be a full range of education programs in Inuktitut, while the education curriculum will reflect Inuit culture and values. To achieve these goals, Nunavut intends, during its first five-year term, to train an increased number of Inuit elementary and high school teachers while the Nunavut Education Act will be reviewed to emphasize Inuit cultural relevance in the school curriculum. By 2004, the government wants a new Education Act in place. Education is the second major commitment of the government (the other is housing). Inuit need to be trained urgently to run the government. In 1999, only 4% of Inuit had a high school diploma and only about 15 Inuit from a population of 21,000 held a university degree (1996 estimate, Statistics Canada). The Nunavut government wants more students to graduate and to have Inuktitut taught more regularly in classes. A working group has been created (September 2000) to consult with the population and to bring forward its recommendations by 2003.

Conclusion The Bathurst Mandate outlines the social, political, and economic direction of the Nunavut government,

sets long-term goals to be achieved by the year 2020, and establishes objectives to be fulfilled during the first five-year term of the government (1999–2004). The vision of the government is to reverse the current trend and to have a territory where unemployment is low, education levels are high, and social and health issues have significantly improved. ANDRÉ LÉGARÉ See also Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit; Nunavut Further Reading CBC (Conference Board of Canada), Nunavut Economic Outlook, Ottawa: CBC, 2000 Government of Nunavut, The Bathurst Mandate Pinasuaqtavut: That Which We’ve Set Out to Do, Iqaluit: Nunavut Legislative Assembly, 1999 ———, Throne Speech, Third Session, First Assembly, Iqaluit: Nunavut Legislative Assembly, 1999 Jull, Peter, “Indigenous self-government in Canada: the Bathurst Mandate.” Indigenous Law Bulletin, 4(27) (2000): 14–18 Légaré, André, “Our land: the challenges of an Inuit government in Nunavut.” Hemisphere, 9(3) (2001): 28–31

BEAR CEREMONIALISM The term “bear ceremonialism” refers to a complex of ritual practices and beliefs found in conjunction with the bear hunt in many areas of the circumpolar North. The older notion of “bear cult”—rarely used today— refers to the same basic set of phenomena. On the other hand, the terms “bear feast” or “bear festival,” have a more restricted meaning, confined to elaborate forms of ceremonies that have been historically documented in the Amur River region as well as on Sakhalin and Hokkaido islands, and involve the raising of bear cubs for ritual purposes. Typically, bear ceremonialism is found in the boreal-forest zone, the main habitat of the various subspecies of brown, grizzly, and black bear. The tundra zone and the coastal regions of the Arctic Ocean, where humans encounter polar bears, are marginal areas as far as bear ceremonialism is concerned. The most typical elements of bear ceremonialism come into play during and after a bear hunt. These include gendered speech and food taboos, the ritual disposal of bear skulls and bones, etc. In addition to holding ceremonies during and after the bear hunt, the Ainu, the Nivkh, and the Tungusic peoples of the AmurSakhalin area captured and raised bear cubs specifically for ritual use. These peoples ceremoniously killed and “returned” bears to their spiritual owners in the course of elaborate multiday festivals. Both simple and elaborate bear festivals are rooted in a worldview of hunters, which conceptualizes the killing of animals as both necessary and spiritually dangerous.

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BEAR CEREMONIALISM Ethnographic reports about various aspects of bear ceremonialism (e.g., Gondatti, 1888; Schrenck, 1881–1895) were abundant during the 19th century. Still, the comparative study of these phenomena is mainly an artifact of the 20th century. Sir James George Frazer made one of the first attempts to place Ainu and Nivkh bear festivals in a broader anthropological perspective. In The Golden Bough, Frazer analyzes bear festivals as a form of “animal worship,” thus equating the ritual killing of bears with “killing the god” (Frazer, 1994[1890]: 524–532, 548–549), a central aspect of Frazer’s overall approach to magic and religion, which nonetheless had little to do with Ainu and Nivkh views of the bear. A. Irving Hallowell’s (1926) classical treatise “Bear Ceremonialism in the Northern Hemisphere” is undoubtedly the most well-known comparative study of bear ceremonies. The author, who had limited experience of fieldwork among northern Algonkian speakers at the time, analyzed most of the available ethnographic literature, primarily focusing on ceremonies conducted after a bear hunt and the disposal of the bear’s remains. Hallowell also provided information about the hunt itself, linguistic and cultural conventions of addressing the bear, and folk beliefs associated with bear hibernation. He found a striking number of resemblances among the various practices, especially between northeastern North America and most areas of northern Eurasia. Hallowell also noted that the distribution of bear ceremonialism does not coincide with the geographical distribution of bears, since the latter are also found in areas where bear ceremonialism is absent. From this he concluded that bear ceremonialism cannot be explained psychologically (i.e., by reference to universal modes of human behavior toward bears) or economically (i.e., by reference to the usefulness of bears for humans). Instead, he proposed a “historico-geographical” interpretation, which postulated that bear ceremonialism originated with an Old World “boreal culture” of reindeer/caribou hunters and eventually spread into northern North America. Hallowell’s diffuse explanation clearly shows the influence of Franz Boas’s anthropology. Hallowell’s study remains the standard work on bear ceremonialism, but there have been several subsequent contributions providing new details or new perspectives. Some of these have added new ethnographic data on individual peoples already known to have practiced bear ceremonialism (e.g., Kitagawa, 1961; Kreinovich, 1969; Vasilevich, 1971; Zolotarev, 1937), while others have documented bear ceremonialism in regions for which Hallowell had little data (for the Turkic peoples of Siberia, see Dyrenkova, 1930; for Inuit groups, see Larsen, 1969/70). The Soviet anthropologist B.A. Vasil’ev (1948) was among the few who placed his own data on the Oroch bear

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festival into a wider comparative perspective. He concluded that different forms of bear ceremonialism in the circumpolar North represented two different “cultural layers.” He argued that the ritual complex tied to the bear hunt was chronologically older than the socalled “Ainu type” of bear ceremonialism, and proposed that the latter form emerged under the influence of Southeast Asian ritual practices. Finally, Vasil’ev considered that the specific Ob-Ugrian (Khanty, Mansi) forms of bear ceremonialism had been triggered by the horse cult from the steppe zones of western Siberia and Eastern Europe. Chichlo (1981) compared bear ceremonialism and shamanism and— unlike other scholars of northern religions—interpreted their relationship as complementary instead of mutually exclusive. The most recent comprehensive study of bear ceremonies in the circumpolar North was carried out by the German anthropologist and historian of religion Hans-Joachim Paproth. His “Studies of Bear Ceremonialism” focuses on the Tungusic peoples of Siberia, but nonetheless provides the best available summary of sources ranging from Russian to Hungarian and Japanese (Paproth, 1976). With a far superior database than Hallowell had at hand, Paproth was able to conclude that bear ceremonialism is a more or less homogeneous cultural complex covering most areas of the circumpolar North. As far as the ceremonies involving captured and “domesticated” bears in the Amur-Sakhalin-Hokkaido area were concerned, Paproth concluded that their religious basis coincides with circumpolar bear ceremonialism and that it also includes certain southern or agricultural elements (such as keeping the bears in cages). Practitioners of bear ceremonialism in general— and of bear festivals in particular—experienced severe attacks by Christianity and state authorities during the 20th century. Nevertheless, even the openly hostile attitudes of antireligious Soviet authorities could not suppress all aspects of bear ceremonialism (e.g., Balzer, 1996; Chichlo, 1985). More recently, there have been attempts to actively revive bear ceremonies and festivals in different parts of Siberia and the Russian Far East. At the same time, a growing number of nonindigenous northern residents have come to understand that bears demand awe and respect, whether for religious reasons, because of ecological considerations, or out of the shear instinct for survival. PETER P. SCHWEITZER See also Ainu; Boas, Franz; Mythology of the Inuit Further Reading Balzer, Marjorie M., “Sacred genders in Siberia: shamans, bear festivals, and androgyny.” In Gender Reversals and Gender

BEAR ISLAND Cultures: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives, edited by S.P. Ramet, London: Routledge, 1996 Chichlo, Boris, “L’ours-chamane.” Études mongoles, 12 (1981): 35–112 ———, “The cult of the bear and Soviet ideology in Siberia.” Religion in Communist Lands 13(2) (1985):166–181 Dyrenkova, N.P., “Bear worship among Turkish tribes of Siberia.” In Proceedings of the Twenty-Third International Congress of Americanists, New York, 1930, 411–440 Frazer, James George, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994 [1890] Gondatti, N.L., “Kul’t medvedia u inorodtsev Severo-Zapadnoi Sibiri (The bear cult among the natives of northwest Siberia).” Trudy etnograficheskogo otdela Imperatorskogo obshchestva liubitelei estestvoznaniia, antropologii i etnografii, 8 (1888): 74–87 Hallowell, A. Irving, “Bear ceremonialism in the Northern Hemisphere.”American Anthropologist (n.s.), 28(1) (1926): 1–175 Kitagawa, Joseph M., “Ainu bear festival (Iyomante).” History of Religions, 1 (1961): 95–151 Kreinovich, E.A., “Medvezhii prazdnik u ketov (The bear festival among the Ket).” In Ketskii sbornik. Mifologiia, etnografiia, teksty, edited by V.V. Ivanov, V.N. Toporov & B.A. Uspenskii, Moscow: Nauka, 1969 Larsen, Helge, “Some examples of bear cult among the Eskimo and other northern peoples.” Folk, 11–12 (1969/70): 27–42 Paproth, Hans-Joachim, Studien über das Bärenzeremoniell. I: Bärenjagdriten und Bärenfeste bei den tungusischen Völkern, Uppsala: Tofters tryckeri, 1976 Schrenck, Leopold von, Die Völker des Amur-Landes, 3 volumes, St Petersburg: Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1881–1895 Vasil’ev, B.A., “Medvezhii prazdnik (The bear festival).” Sovetskaia etnografiia 4 (1948): 78–104 Vasilevich, G.M., “O kul’te medvedia u evenkov (About the bear cult among the Evenk).” In Religioznye predstavleniia i obriady narodov Sibiri v XIX-nachale XX veka, edited by L.P. Potapov &S.V. Ivanov, Leningrad: Nauka, 1971 Zolotarev, Alexander M., “The bear festival of the Olcha.” American Anthropologist, 39(1) (1937): 113–130

BEAR ISLAND Bear Island is the English name for Bjørnøya (74°30 N 19° E), the southernmost island in the Norwegian High Arctic Svalbard archipelago. This 178 km2 (69 sq mi) island is 20 km (12 mi) north-south with a maximum width of 15 km. It is the most isolated of Svalbard’s islands, lying approximately mid-way between mainland Norway and the rest of the archipelago. Almost the entire coastline consists of steep cliffs, and there are no good harbors. The northern part is a flat, lake-covered, lowland. The southern third of the island is mountainous, the highest peak being Miseryfjellet (536 m). The southern tip consists of cliffs some 400 m high rising straight from the sea. The rock pillars and weathered caverns here are well-known local landmarks. There are more than 740 lakes and ponds on Bear Island, comprising about 11% of the total area. Most lakes are shallow, and less than ten are deeper than 5 m. The deepest lake, Ellasjøen, is 43 m deep.

Less than a quarter of the island is basement rock. The rest is mostly dolomite, sandstone, limestone, and shale. The northwestern part is Carboniferous and Permian, the northeastern part Devonian, and the southern part Silurian and older. The presence of coal and lead deposits has been known since the 17th century. The only large-scale mining conducted on the island was for Late Devonian coal at Tunheim from 1916 to 1925. A total of 116,094 tons of coal was exported. In addition, small-scale mining for lead ore (galena) was conducted in 1925–1930. For most of the year, Bear Island is south of the drift-ice limit. From February to April, the drift ice usually reaches Bear Island, and there is a 50% chance of encountering it there in late March. The climate is Arctic-oceanic. The median temperature for March, the coldest month, is −7.0°C. August is the warmest month with a median temperature of 5.2°C. There is a high frequency of fog at the island especially in July (22%). Yearly precipitation is less than 400 mm, and for 178 days of the year wind speeds are Beaufort 6 (strong breeze) or higher. Bear Island has one of the largest bird cliffs in the North Atlantic. The most numerous species are Brünnich’s guillemot (Uria lomvia), common guillemot (Uria aalge), kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla), and fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis) with between 123,000 –and 50,000 breeding pairs of each species. The only land living mammal is the Arctic fox (Alopex lagopus). Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) often visit the island in winter. Arctic char (Salvelinus alpinus) are found in the largest lakes. Bear Island was discovered onJune 10, 1596 by a Dutch expedition piloted by Willem Barents. They killed a polar bear there and therefore named the island “t’Beeren Eyland” on Barents’s map from 1598. In 1603, an English expedition renamed it Cherry Island, after Sir Francis Cherry. Bear Island was unclaimed until 1925 when it became Norwegian through the Svalbard Treaty. All land is today owned by the Norwegian state-owned company Bjørnøen A/S. The island is uninhabited, apart from a meteorological station on the northern part of the island. Bear Island will most likely be made into a nature reserve in the early 21st century. IAN GJERTZ See also Svalbard; Svalbard Treaty Further Reading Arctic Pilot. Sailing Directions Svalbard-Jan Mayen, Stavanger: Norwegian Hydrographic Service and Norwegian Polar Research Institute, 1988 Gunnar, Horn & Orvin Anders, Geology of Bear Island, Oslo: Skrifter om Svalbard og Ishavet 15, 1928 Orheim, Olav (editor), The Placenames of Svalbard, Oslo: Norsk Polarinstitutt, 1991

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BEARDED SEAL

BEARDED SEAL Bearded seals (Erignathus barbatus), also known as square-flipper and udjuk (Inuit), are the largest of the northern phocid (true seals, family Phocidae) seals. Adults measure 2–2.5 m long and are gray-brown in color. Some individuals have irregular light-colored patches. The weight of bearded seals varies dramatically on an annual cycle, but the average weight is 250–300 kg. Females, which are somewhat larger than males in this species, can weigh in excess of 425 kg in the spring. The sexes are not easily distinguished. Pups are approximately 1.3 m long at birth and weigh an average of 33 kg when they are born. At birth they have a partial coat of fuzzy gray-blue “lanugo,” but have already commenced molting into a smooth dark-gray coat, with a light belly, that is their pelt by the time they are a few weeks old. Their shed lanugo is passed in the form of small, tight disks, along with the placenta. The pups’ faces have white cheek patches and white eyebrow spots that give them a “bandit” or “teddy-bear” appearance. Yearlings look very similar to pups, but the facial patterns are somewhat less distinct and they often have dark spots on their bellies. Bearded seals have several distinctive physical features: their bodies have a very rectangular shape; their heads appear to be small compared to the size of their bodies; they have squareshaped front flippers with very strong claws; and they have an extremely elaborate, long set of whiskers that tend to curl when dry. It is these whiskers (or vibrissae) that give the species its common name. Bearded seals have a patchy distribution throughout the circumpolar Arctic. Their preferred habitat is drifting pack ice in areas over shallow water shelves. Juvenile animals wander quite broadly, occurring along the coast of Europe quite regularly, and in the winter of 2002/2003 a young male bearded seal took up residency in a river near Tokyo. In most parts of their range, adult animals remain in coastal waters much of the year, moving northward in the summer and fall to remain relatively close to the drifting pack ice. Bearded seal movement patterns are highly dependent on local and annual ice conditions. Bearded seals give birth in the spring, with peak birthing occurring in many parts of their range in early May. Females give birth to their single pup on small, drifting ice-floes in shallow areas. The pups enter the water very quickly, only hours after birth, which is likely a response to heavy predation by polar bears. The pups become proficient divers during the 18–24 days they are cared for by their mothers. During this time they consume about 8 l of milk per day and grow rapidly at an average rate of 3.3 kg per day. Pups usually weigh about 100 kg when they are weaned. Mating takes place toward the end of the lactation period. During the breeding period, male bearded seals

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Bearded seal (Erignathus barbatus). Photo by Mike Spindler, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

“sing” to attract females. They defend small patches of ocean where they perform their vocal displays over a period of some weeks. Territorial males occupy these same areas from one year to the next. It is not possible to provide accurate abundance estimates for bearded seals because they are very difficult to survey. However, this species probably numbers in the hundreds of thousands globally. Bearded seals eat a wide variety of different types of prey, but are predominantly benthic feeders, eating clams, shrimps, crabs, squid, fishes, and a variety of other small prey that they find on, in, or near the ocean floor. They can search soft bottom sediments using their whiskers to find hidden prey that they get at using suction or water-jetting. Bearded seals are not deep divers; they feed in shallow coastal areas and hence are normally not required to dive to depths of more than 200–300 m. Pups dive to considerable depths during their first year of life (up to 450 m), but older, experienced animals remain in shallow water where most of their benthic prey resides. Polar bears and walruses are the top two predators of bearded seals, but killer whales and Greenland sharks may also take bearded seals, particularly pups. Bearded seals are found in association with drifting pack ice, but they do come ashore to rest on occasion. Bearded seals are a very calm species that can be approached by humans to within a few meters quite easily in areas where they are not routinely hunted. However, even in these areas this species is always found at the ice edge when hauled out, ready to escape

BEARS into the water if the need arises. Bearded seals shed their hair diffusely most of the year, but they do have a concentrated period of molting in June, when they prefer not to go into the water. During this period, they prefer to remain hauled out on the ice. At this time of year, there is not a lot of ice available in coastal areas, so bearded seals occur in small groups on the remaining early summer ice. Beyond the loose social aggregations that occur during breeding and molting, bearded seals are largely solitary animals. Female bearded seals reach sexual maturity when they are about five years old, whereas males are a bit older, usually six or seven years, when they reach maturity. Bearded seals live to an age of 20–25 years. The only country to have ever had commercial harvesting of this species is Russia, where in the Sea of Okhotsk and Bering Seas annual catches exceeded 10,000 animals in some years during the 1950s and 1960s. Quotas were established to reduce hunting, and catches dropped to a few thousand bearded seals annually in the 1970s and 1980s in these regions. However, bearded seals are an important subsistence resource for coastal peoples throughout much of the Arctic. Their meat is a favorite food in some northern communities, and their thick leather has in the past been used for covering kayaks and making rope. KIT KOVACS See also Marine Mammal Hunting Further Reading Burns, J.J., The Pacific Bearded Seal, Anchorage: Alaska Department of Fish and Game Bulletin, 1967 ———, “Bearded seal.” In Handbook of Marine Mammals, Volume 2, New York: Academic Press, 1981, pp. 145–170 Burns, J.J. & K.J. Frost,The Natural History and Ecology of the Bearded Seal (Erignathus barbatus), Outercontinental Shelf Environmental Assessment Program Final Report (OCSEAP), 1979 Chapskii, K.K., The Bearded Seals of the Kara and Barents Seas, Fisheries and Marine Translation Series of the United States, Washington, No. 3162, 1974, 145pp (original published in 1938 in Russian) Gjertz, I., K.M. Kovacs, C. Lydersen & Ø. Wiig, “Movements and diving of bearded seal (Erignathus barbatus) mothers and pups during lactation and post-weaning.” Polar Biology, 23(8) (2000): 559–566 Hjelset, A.M., M. Andersen, I. Gjertz, C. Lydersen & B. Gulliksen, “Feeding habits of bearded seals (Erignathus barbatus) from the Svalbard area, Norway.” Polar Biology, 21(3) (1999): 186–193 Kovacs, K.M., C. Lydersen & I. Gjertz, “Birth-site characteristics and prenatal molting in bearded seals (Erignathus barbatus).” Journal of Mammalogy, 77(4) (1996): 1085–1091 Lydersen, C., M.O. Hammill & K.M. Kovacs, “Diving activity in nursing bearded seal (Erignathus barbatus) pups.” Canadian Journal of Zoology, 72(1) (1994): 96–103 Lydersen, C., K.M. Kovacs, M.O. Hammill & I. Gjertz, “Energy intake and utilization by nursing bearded seal (Erignathus

barbatus) pups from Svalbard, Norway.” Journal of Comparative Physiology B—Biochemical Systemic and Environmental Physiology, 166(7) (1996): 405–411 Van Parijs, S.M., C. Lydersen & K.M. Kovacs, “Vocalisations and movements suggest alternative mating tactics in male bearded seals.” Animal Behaviour, 65 (2003):, 273–283

BEARS The bears worldwide consist of eight species of the family Ursidae, of which three species are found in Arctic areas. The first bearlike ancestor was the small doglike carnivore Ursavus that was common in the Pliocene (5 to 2 million years ago). Similar in size to a racoon, this ancestral bear eventually gave rise to the modern bears and another branch that resulted in the now extinct giant short-faced bear (Arctodus simus). During the Pleistocene epoch or Ice Age (2 million to 10,000 years ago), the giant short-faced bear ranged over much of North America and into the Arctic. This bear was likely the most powerful predator in North America during the Ice Age and the largest individuals would have reached 700 kg (1500 pounds). In the late Pliocene, the first member of the genus Ursus evolved: Ursus minimus. In this period, bears grew in size in response to a sudden change in climate that included greater seasonality. Larger body size would have aided regulation of body temperature. The next bear to evolve was Ursus etruscus (about 2.5 million years ago), and this bear gave rise to the modern bears of the Northern Hemisphere. The most northern bear is the polar bear (Ursus maritimus) that is restricted to the Arctic and Subarctic areas. The brown or grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) has the widest distribution of any bear: from the northern edges of North America, Europe, and Russia south to Italy, Spain, Turkey, and historically as far south as Mexico. The third and smallest species is the black bear (Ursus americanus), whose range is restricted to North America and reaches the Arctic in Alaska, Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, northern Québec, and Labrador but is also found as far south as Mexico. Where brown and black bears overlap, the brown bear is dominant and black bears can become prey. Black bears are only found in tundra areas in northern Labrador. Exclusion of black bears from other tundra areas is thought to be due to the presence of brown bears. Black bears are the only Arctic bear species capable of climbing trees as adults. In most areas, they rarely wander above the treeline where they cannot escape brown bears. Polar bears and brown bears overlap along the southern coast of the Beaufort Sea, but they do not interbreed in the wild. However, in zoos, brown and polar bears can interbreed and produce fertile young that are intermediate in traits. Brown bears will sometimes wander out onto the sea ice to utilize seal carcasses left by polar bears.

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BEARS In evolutionary terms, polar bears and brown bears are very closely related with black bears branching off earlier. All bears share some common traits: stocky build, massive shoulders, strong limbs, short fur, plantigrade (walk with the sole on the ground), five toes, strong nonretractable claws, large canine teeth, a small tail, males have a baculum (penis bone), small ears, a heavy skull, a well-developed sense of smell, and good vision. Other mammals seldom prey on bears, so a heavy body and slow gait are not detriments. However, bears are capable of attaining speeds of 30–35 km h−1 for short periods. Over longer distances, bears rapidly overheat and can suffer hyperthermia. All bears are good swimmers and can swim long distances if required. In body size, polar bears are the largest with weights in the 200–600 kg range. Brown bears are the next largest with weights in the Arctic about 150–400 kg. Black bears weigh about 60–150 kg in the Arctic part of their range. Both brown and black bears can be substantially heavier in the southern parts of their range. All species are sexually dimorphic, with males typically 30–100% heavier than females. The large size and strength of bears likely evolved to avoid predation, digging for food, making shelter, and preying on other animals. Bears live a solitary life for the most part. Bears are only found in groups in families, during the breeding season, or at sites with abundant food. Brown and black bears maintain defined home ranges or territories that overlap and may be defended against intruders. In contrast, polar bears use the same areas year after year but do not defend these areas from other bears. The areas used by males are typically 2–5 times larger in area than that used by females. The exception may be polar bears where the size of areas used may be similar in both sexes. The reproductive ecology of bears is similar across all species. There can be intense competition between males for access to breeding females. Broken bones, teeth, and substantial wounding can occur during fights. It is believed that larger males are more dominant and thus sexual dimorphism is favored. The mating system can be considered polygynous or serially monogamous. Males do not contribute to the rearing of young. Females mature at 3–6 years of age and males at about 4–9 years. The breeding season is in the spring and, following fertilization, the egg develops up to a multicelled state called a blastocyst. At this stage of development, the blastocysts stop developing and enter a state of suspended growth until the autumn when implantation in the uterus occurs. Pregnant females of all species stop feeding and enter dens at this point. The embryos develop while the female is fasting and the mother gives birth to young in the den

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during winter. The young are born very altricial (poorly developed) with little hair, eyes closed, and weighing less than 600 g. The litter sizes are largest in black bears (up to six cubs) followed by brown bears with up to four cubs, and then polar bears with a maximum of three. The mother nurses the cubs with fat-rich milk (up to 50% fat). By the time cubs emerge from the den at 3–5 months of age, their weights have increased many fold, reaching up to 10 kg. Cubs remain with their mothers for 1–3 years depending on species. Upon emergence from the den, the mother has undergone an extended fast of upwards of 7 months in some areas. All age and sex classes of bears can enter dens to avoid inclement weather and lack of food over winter. However, nonpregnant polar bears only den for shorter periods. Specialized fasting physiology conserves muscle mass by recycling nitrogenous body wastes. Bone strength is also maintained so that the bear can emerge from the den ready for renewed foraging. Whether the winter sleep of bears is hibernation or a state of torpor is debated and is largely dependent upon the definition used. When bears are in dens, the body temperature drops, the heart rate slows, and metabolism is reduced. The net result is conservation of energy. During this state, bears do not feed, drink, urinate, or defecate. The energy used while in dens is largely derived from fat stores and bears can lose up to 50% of their body mass over winter. However, in contrast to smaller hibernating mammals, the body temperature of bears does not drop more than a few degrees. This allows bears to arouse much faster than a deeply hibernating animal. In addition, if a bear allowed its body temperature to drop to very low levels, storing enough energy to rewarm would be difficult. The small size of bear cubs at birth may in part relate to the fasting physiology of their mothers that must undergo pregnancy and early lactation without any dietary intake. The polar bear is the most carnivorous of all the bears and most of the diet consists of ringed and bearded seals. However, similar to all bears, polar bears will even prey on reindeer and feed on berries. The diet of brown and black bears varies greatly by region, but they are omnivores (eat a mix of plant and animal material). Berries, roots, grasses, insects, small mammals, fish, and bird eggs can form the bulk of caloric intake in black and brown bears in some areas. However, some brown and black bears are active predators and prey on moose, caribou, muskox, and other mammals. Often, newborn ungulates are taken. All bears will scavenge carrion and will take prey from other predators. If a large kill or carcass is available, bears will often spend several days feeding on it. Over 50 polar bears have been observed feeding on a dead bowhead whale frozen into the ice. A seasonal pattern of feeding means that

BEAUFORT GYRE bears typically reach their peak condition in late summer or early autumn. This means that they will have stored sufficient fat to assist with food shortages or denning over winter. Reflecting their carnivorous ancestry, bears do not have the elaborate digestive system of ungulates nor an elongated intestinal tract to assist with digesting plant material. The dentition of bears is that of a generalist (not specialized to meat or plants), and because they are unable to digest plant materials very well, they rely on the flattened molars to crush vegetation that helps release the contents to aid digestion. Therefore, bears must be more selective than a moose or reindeer when feeding on plants and restrict themselves to the most energy-rich parts. The population dynamics of all bear species is hallmarked by low reproductive rates due to the prolonged mother-offspring bond and small litter sizes. Adult survival rates are high (80–98%), but juvenile survival varies widely between years. These factors result in low population growth rates but stable population sizes that do not fluctuate widely. In comparison to other mammals, the density of bears is typically low. The main sources of mortality are food shortages, disease, intraspecific aggression (cannibalism and infanticide are known in all three species), and harvest by humans. For many areas of the Arctic, humans regulate population numbers through harvest. Habitat loss in the Arctic is not as threatening to bears as it is for southern populations. Bears are a prominent element of biodiversity wherever they are found. Through prehistoric and historic times, bears have affected human art, folklore, mythology, and culture. To a large degree, the influence of bears on humans is tied to occupation of a similar niche: both bears and humans are omnivores, often feed on the same vegetation or prey, and occupy the same habitats. That bears can prey on humans and humans can prey on bears created a close relationship that predates history. Bears are formidable prey, and in many locations bears were hunted by groups of people often with dogs aiding in the control of the bear. Dogs are well able to locate a bear, harass a bear, and keep it occupied while hunters shoot arrows or use spears to kill the animal. Today, polar bears rarely kill humans, with one or two people killed every few years. In Arctic areas, black and brown bears are responsible for one or two human deaths every year. Tourism to see polar bears and brown bears is an important element of the developing tourist trade in Arctic regions. The economic returns of tourism to see bears are rapidly increasing. In addition, the economic returns of sports hunting can be substantial in small communities and provide employment for guides and those associated with hunting. Selling of hides is an additional source of income in some areas.

The main threat to bears comes from loss of habitat due to encroachment of human activities such as mining, oil development, agriculture, forestry, and urbansuburban expansion. Human encroachment results in refuse dumps that bears feed in and can habituate bears to humans. Habituation can result in bears becoming less wary. Often, habituated bears are killed when they approach humans in search of food. Climate change is also a threat to all three Arctic species, but perhaps more so for polar bears. Pollution represents another threat to polar bears. The distribution of polar bears is largely intact. Globally, the distribution of brown bears is vastly reduced but the Arctic maintains large populations. The range of brown bears in the European and Russian Arctic is reduced, particularly in Europe. Black bears still occupy most of their range in the Arctic. Bears are often drawn into human settlements. Dozens of bears are destroyed every year in defense of life and property in the Arctic. Overharvesting in some populations may result in local declines for all three species. Poaching of bears (particularly gall bladders, paws, and baculum) for the Asian medicinal market is a threat to all bear species. International trade in bears and their parts is covered by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). ANDREW E. DEROCHER See also Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES); Polar Bear Further Reading Lynch, W., Bears: Monarchs of the Northern Wilderness, Toronto: Douglas and McIntyre, 1993 Murie, A., The Grizzlies of Mount McKinley, Washington, District of Columbia: US Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1981 Servheen, C., S. Herrero & B. Peyton (compilers), Bears. Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan, IUCN/SSC Bear and Polar Bear Specialist Groups, Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK: IUCN, 1999 Stirling, I. (editor), Bears: Majestic Creatures of the Wild, Sydney, Australia: Weldon Owen Publishing, 1993 Stirling, I. & A.E. Derocher, “Factors affecting the evolution and behavioral ecology of the modern bears.” International Conference on Bear Biology and Management, 8 (1990): 189–204

BEAUFORT GYRE The Beaufort Gyre is a large (approximately 1000–1500 km across) quasistationary anticyclonic (clockwise) circulation that encompasses the entire Canada Basin, a part of the Arctic Ocean between Alaska and Canada in the south and the Mendeleyev and Alpha ridges in the north. The Beaufort Gyre is most intense along its southern limb, in the Beaufort

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BEAUFORT GYRE Sea, the latter named after Sir Francis Beaufort (1774–1857), a British admiral. The Beaufort Gyre is almost completely covered by sea ice year round, except for its southern part, which becomes icefree in summer, typically in August and September. The anticyclonic circulation is typical for the upper 40–50 m and is driven by the persistent atmospheric high-pressure system (Beaufort anticyclone) centered over the Beaufort Sea. Since the surface circulation is largely wind driven, the Beaufort Gyre location and other characteristics are strongly dependent on the atmospheric pressure distribution over the Arctic Ocean. Particularly intriguing are annual late-summer reversals of Beaufort Gyre and the overlying sea cover, documented first with the help of drifting buoys and ice stations and confirmed later with satellite imagery. These reversals usually occur in August and are apparently caused by the reversed atmospheric circulation pattern (Ledrew et al., 1991; Warn-Varnas et al., 1991). The circulation in the southern Beaufort Gyre is more intense than elsewhere around the gyre. This southward intensification of the Beaufort Gyre along the north coast of Alaska is dynamically similar to the well-known western intensification of the Gulf Stream and other western boundary currents in midlatitude oceans, the major difference being that bathymetric variations take over the significance that variations in the Coriolis parameter assume in midlatitude cases (Galt, 1973). The southern Beaufort Gyre is also strongly influenced by the Mackenzie River runoff. The Mackenzie River freshwater plume was observed to extend far north from the river mouth, well into the Beaufort Gyre. The freshening of the southern Beaufort Sea, especially of its shelf waters, might be partially accountable for the southward intensification of the Beaufort Gyre because the influx of fresh, warm (hence less dense) river water increases the density contrast between the onshelf and offshelf waters, which in turn leads to the intensification of geostrophic currents along the density front. Like any other large-scale anticyclonic gyre, the Beaufort Gyre circulation is virtually closed: the gyre is capable of retaining drifting objects for many years and even decades. This circumstance was especially beneficial for long-term drifting ice stations such as T3, ARLIS-II, and North Pole (NP)-22. The ice islands T-3 and NP-22 completed two circulations in the Beaufort Gyre before they left the gyre. Each circulation took approximately ten years. Most drifting objects that escape from the Beaufort Gyre get caught in the Transpolar Drift and eventually leave the Arctic Ocean via Fram Strait into the Greenland Sea.

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Below the upper 50 m wind-driven layer with the anticyclonic circulation, the Beaufort Gyre circulation is cyclonic (counterclockwise) (Rudels et al., 1994). The southern limb of the cyclonic subsurface circulation is adjacent to the Beaufort undercurrent that flows eastward along Alaska’s shelf break and slope (Aagaard, 1984). This undercurrent is approximately 70 km wide and extends down to at least 2500 m depth. Although its dynamics is not understood yet, the Beaufort undercurrent appears similar to the eastern boundary poleward undercurrents observed in other oceans and likely has similar dynamics. Dramatic changes have been observed in the 1990s in the Arctic Ocean circulation and frontal structure that have profoundly influenced the Beaufort Gyre (McLaughlin et al., 1996; Steele and Boyd, 1998). A front between Atlantic and Pacific waters, previously located over the Lomonosov Ridge, shifted to the Mendeleyev and Alpha ridges. Associated with this shift, a major reorganization of the large-scale surface circulation occurred, including a shrinkage of the Beaufort Gyre and an eastward deflection of the Transpolar Drift (Kwok, 2000; Maslowski et al., 2000). These changes are believed to be caused by semiglobal scale atmospheric variability described as the Arctic Oscillation or the North Atlantic Oscillation or, more generally, the Northern Hemisphere Annular Mode (see Climate Oscillations). While the observed shift might have been just one realization of a cyclical process and thus could be reversed in the future, other changes seem to be caused by the global climate change, which is known to amplify in the Arctic (Morison et al., 2000). In particular, the sea ice extent in the Beaufort Gyre decreased at a rate of about 5% per decade between 1979 and 1996 (Parkinson et al., 1999), accompanied by a thinning of the sea ice cover (Rothrock et al., 1999). The Beaufort Gyre is populated by a multitude of mesoscale subsurface lenses with anomalous temperature and salinity (Manley and Hunkins, 1985). These lenses have a diameter of 10–20 km and are largely confined to 50–300 m depth. Most lenses have warm cores and rotate anticyclonically (clockwise), with maximum current speeds up to 30 cm s−1. Such eddies are quite ubiquitous in the Beaufort Sea, where they may occupy up to 25% of the available surface area, supplying 32% of kinetic energy in the upper 200 m of the Beaufort Sea. Cold-core eddies, albeit rare, have also been observed, having dimensions and kinematic characteristics similar to the warm-core eddies, but with different thermohaline signatures (Manley and Hunkins, 1985; Muench et al., 2000). IGOR BELKIN See also Arctic Ocean; Drifting Stations; Sea Ice; Transpolar Drift

BEAUFORT SEA Further Reading Aagaard, K., “The Beaufort Undercurrent.” In The Alaskan Beaufort Sea: Ecosystems and Environment, edited by P.W. Barnes, D.M. Schell & E. Reimnitz, New York: Academic Press, 1984 Galt, J.A., “A numerical investigation of Arctic Ocean dynamics.” Journal of Physical Oceanography, 3(4) (1973): 379–396 Kwok, R., “Recent changes in the Arctic Ocean sea ice motion associated with the North Atlantic Oscillation.” Geophysical Research Letters, 27(5) (2000): 775–778 Ledrew, E.F., D. Johnson & J.A. Maslanik, “An examination of atmospheric mechanisms that may be responsible for the annual reversal of the Beaufort Sea ice field.” International Journal of Climatology, 11(8) (1991): 841–859 Manley, T.O. & K. Hunkins, “Mesoscale eddies of the Arctic Ocean.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 90(C3) (1985): 4911–4930 Maslowski, W. et al., “Modeling recent climate variability in the Arctic Ocean.” Geophysical Research Letters, 27(22) (2000): 3743–3746 McLaughlin, F.A. et al., “Physical and geochemical properties across the Atlantic/Pacific water mass front in the southern Canadian basin.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 101(C1) (1996): 1183–1197 Morison, J., K. Aagaard & M. Steele, “Recent environmental changes in the Arctic: a review.” Arctic, 53(4) (2000): 359–371 Muench, R.D. et al., “An Arctic Ocean cold core eddy.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 105(C10) (2000): 23997–24006 Parkinson, C.L. et al., “Arctic sea ice extent, areas, and trends, 1978–1996.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 104(C9) (1999): 20837–20856 Rothrock, D.A., Y. Yu & G.A. Maykut, “Thinning of the Arctic sea-ice cover.” Geophysical Research Letters, 26(23) (1999): 3469–3472 Rudels, B., E.P. Jones, L.G. Anderson& G. Kattner, “On the Intermediate Depth Waters of the Arctic Ocean.” In The Polar Oceans and Their Role in Shaping the Global Environment, edited by O.M. Johannessen, R.D. Muench & J.E. Overland, Washington, District of Columbia: American Geophysical Union, 1994 Steele, M. & T. Boyd, “Retreat of the cold halocline layer in the Arctic Ocean.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 103(C5) (1998): 10419–10435 Wallace, J.M. & D.W.J. Thompson, “Annular modes and climate prediction.” Physics Today, February (2002): 28–33 Warn-Varnas, A., R. Allard & S. Piacsek, “Synoptic and seasonal variations of the ice-ocean circulation in the Arctic: a numerical study.” Annals of Glaciology, 15 (1991): 54–62 Weingartner, T.J., “A Review of the Physical Oceanography of the Northeastern Chukchi Sea.” In Fish Ecology in Arctic North America, edited by J.B. Reynolds, Bethesda, Maryland: Amer. Fish. Soc., 1997

BEAUFORT SEA The Beaufort Sea is a regional sea of the Arctic Ocean situated off the north coast of Canada and Alaska with its northern boundary defined by a line extending from Pt Barrow to Cape Lands End on Prince Patrick Island. It is about 590,000 km² (227,800 sq mi) in area and connects freely with the Chukchi Sea to the west and

the Arctic Ocean to the north. Banks Island and Victoria Island of the Canadian Archipelago form the eastern boundary. The continental shelf (<200 m), which comprises about 30% of the region, is narrow off Alaska (40–100 km), widens in the Canadian sector (150 km), and is cut by four major valleys: Barrow Canyon at the western edge, Mackenzie Canyon, Amundsen Gulf, and the entrance to McClure Strait at the northeastern edge. Shelf sediments exhibit frequent gouges in shallow water (10–50 m) where ice keels have scoured the bottom, and submerged pingolike features (mounds) on the eastern Canadian Beaufort shelf. At the shelf edge, the ocean bottom drops steeply to 3700 m (12,140 ft) in the Canada Basin. The Mackenzie River (with an annual discharge of 330 km³ fresh water and 130 million tons of sediments) forms the largest North American Arctic delta, second only to the Lena Delta, and is a dominant influence on the regional oceanography and sediment composition. Coastlines are retreating rapidly in many locations along the Alaskan and Canadian shorelines (up to 20 m per year) due to rising sea level during the Holocene (~65 m during the past 9000 years), low coastal relief, poorly bonded ice-rich soils, and storm surges that may exceed 2 m. Climate is described as harsh; only from June to September do mean temperatures exceed freezing, with July means from 6.2°C to 13.8°C and January means from –24.0°C to –29.9°C. Annual precipitation ranges from 130 to 260 mm, about half of which falls as snow. The dominant wind direction varies seasonally, ranging from northeast to southeast, and there are typically four to six storms per year (winds exceeding 37 km h−1). Ice in the interior ocean circulates in the large clockwise Beaufort Gyre centered in the vicinity of 80º N 150º W, but the size and center of the gyre vary on the decadal scale with atmospheric pressure fields. Over the shelves, ice cover is seasonal, breakup occurs in early June, and freezeup occurs in mid-October. Landfast ice, which grows to about 2 m by the end of winter, forms inshore of the 20 m isobath. The discontinuity between the landfast ice and offshore ice, which drifts to the west, forms a flaw lead system where open water may be observed intermittently throughout winter. At the entrance to Amundsen Gulf, the Bathurst Polynya provides an important location for marine life and may encompass over 150,000 km² (57,900 sq mi) of open water during winter. Western bowhead whales (about 8200) and Beaufort Sea beluga whales (20,000 or more) are seasonal migrants from the Bering and Chukchi seas to Beaufort Sea summer open water. The resident polar bear population is estimated at 3000 and their major prey, ringed

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Beaufort Sea and surrounding islands and territories.

seals, at about 650,000. Bearded seals are less numerous (about 40,000), occurring solitarily within about the 100 m isobath where they feed on benthos. Walruses are seen only rarely in the Canadian Beaufort and more frequently to the west of Herschel Island. Fish include marine species such as sculpins, cod, flounders, smelt, herring and eelpouts, and anadromous fish such as broad whitefish, ciscoes, Arctic char and grayling. The coastal corridor, which is freshened by inflow from the Mackenzie River and numerous smaller rivers, is an important habitat for anadromous fish. Flaw leads and the Bathurst Polynya provide important staging and feeding areas for hundreds of thousands of migratory birds, including king eiders, common eiders, oldsquaw, glaucous gull, and loons. Major coastal communities include Barrow (population 4580 in 2000) in Alaska, and Tuktoyaktuk (population 940 in 1996), Paulatuk (population 300 in 1996), Sachs Harbour (population 135 in 1996), and Holman (population 400 in 1996) in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region of the Northwest Territories of Canada. Paleo-Eskimo occupation likely occurred in waves starting in about 4500–4000 years before present (BP) with migration from the Bering Strait region.

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Pre-Dorset people (3700–2800 BP), who inhabited the low Arctic lowlands, were followed by the Dorset people (2800–000 BP) whose sudden disappearance coincided with the onset of warming. The Thule people, who developed from the Birnirk culture of north Alaska (1500–1000 BP), followed the bowhead whales, probably displacing the Dorset people to produce a uniform Inuit population from Bering Strait to Greenland. A cooling trend that ultimately became the “Little Ice Age” (350–150 BP) led to a fragmenting that produced locally the Mackenzie Inuit, predecessors to the modern Inuvialuit. Presently within the Beaufort Sea margin, native groups include the Iñupiat in Alaska and the Inuvialuit and Gwich’in in the Canadian Beaufort region. European exploration began when Alexander Mackenzie established the location of the Mackenzie Delta in 1789. Subsequent mapping of the shoreline was conducted predominantly by John Franklin and John Richardson during 1825–1827 and by Robert M’Clure (1850–1854) and Richard Collinson (1850–1855) who were searching for the lost Franklin expedition. Peter Dease and Thomas Simpson completed the westernmost mapping of the Beaufort coast in 1836–1839. In the 1870s, the Pacific whaling fleet

BEECHEY, FREDERICK began sailing east of Pt Barrow, and with steam power the hunt was extended to the farthest reaches of the Beaufort Sea by the late 1880s. 1899 was the last good year for the whaling fishery. Coastal communities of the Beaufort Sea rely predominantly upon subsistence hunting and fishing. Important marine mammals include the bowhead whale, of which about 70 are harvested annually, almost all in Alaska. Beluga harvest during the 1990s averaged 111 per year by Inuvialuit and about 60 by Iñupiaq in Alaska. Ringed seal and, to a lesser extent, bearded seal are important local sources of food and pelts. The predominant food fish varies with location but includes broad whitefish, Arctic char and, where available, Pacific herring and cisco. Of the mineral natural resources, oil and gas have had and will continue to have the greatest economic importance. Offshore oil was discovered at Prudhoe Bay in 1968 with original reserves estimated at 1.1×109 m3 (35 billion cu ft) and a further 0.3×109 m3 in the adjacent Kuuparuk River field. At 0.18×106 m3/day, Prudhoe accounts for 20% of US domestic oil production. Exploration since the 1970s has discovered 0.16×109 m3 of oil and 255×109 m3 of gas in the Mackenzie Delta and nearshore, the largest oil discovery being at Amauligak. Shipping is limited primarily to supply of small communities and to servicing oil industry when active. The lack of natural deep-draft harbors together with ice cover during eight months of the year severely limits the potential for destination shipping. ROBIE W. MACDONALD See also Arctic Ocean; Barrow; Beaufort Gyre; Chukchi Sea; Inuvialuit Settlement Region; Mackenzie River; Oil Exploration; Prudhoe Bay Further Reading Ayles, B. & N. Snow (editors), Special Issue of the journal Arctic, Beaufort Sea 2000, 2002 Bockstoce, J.R., Whales, Ice and Men: The History of Whaling in the Western Arctic, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986 Burns, B.M., The Climate of the Mackenzie Valley-Beaufort Sea, Volume II, Toronto: Atmospheric Environment Service, Climate Studies No. 24, 1974 McGhee, R., Ancient People of the Arctic, Vancouver: UBC Press in association with Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1996 Pilot of Arctic Canada, Volume 1 (2nd edition), Ottawa: Canadian Hydrographic Service, Department of Energy Mines and Resources, 1970 Stegerwald, M.B. & D.E. McAllister, List of the Canadian marine fish species in the National Museum of Natural Sciences, National Museums of Canada, Syllogeus 41, 1982 Stirling, I. & N.A. Øritsland, “Relationships between estimates of ringed seal and polar bear populations in the Canadian Arctic.” In Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Science, 52 (1995): 2594–2612

BEECHEY, FREDERICK Frederick Beechey’s entry into the Royal Navy was sponsored by Lord St Vincent, and although Beechey saw little action during the Napoleonic Wars, family connections, combined with his skill with pen and brush, secured his appointment to David Buchan’s 1818 Arctic expedition as second-in-command and chief draftsman to Sir John Franklin aboard HMS Trent. Beechey’s capable performance and Franklin’s recommendation led to an appointment in 1819 as second-in-command of the Hecla on Sir William Edward Parry’s first Arctic expedition, and to command of his own expedition in 1825. Such expeditions offered naval officers opportunities for peacetime adventure and promotion. For the Royal Navy, sponsoring expeditions of geographical exploration and scientific discovery was partly motivated by the availability of idle ships, officers, and crews, but primarily by Britain’s strategic and commercial interests. In 1818, concern over Russia’s Arctic exploration and expansion across the Pacific, as well as whaling captains’ reports of favorable ice conditions, prompted the Admiralty to sponsor a search for the North West Passage. While Sir John Ross’s expedition was to probe for the westward passage, Buchan’s two ships left London on April 25, 1818, sailed north from the Shetlands to seek a more direct polar route, and approached Bear Island (Bjørnøya) on May 24. Despite employing seasoned whalers as pilots, Buchan’s expedition only reached 80°34′ N, no more than Constantine Phipps had achieved 45 years earlier. Damage from the icepack forced the ships to return home, but the voyage yielded useful surveys of the coast of Spitsbergen, as well as valuable experience for Lieutenants Franklin and Beechey, who afterwards proposed an assault upon the Pole over the icecap. In May 1819, Parry’s expedition set out for Lancaster Sound. By August Beechey was exploring ashore as Hecla and Griper sailed south through Prince Regent Inlet, before turning back at 71°53′30″ N, to resume their westward passage through Lancaster Sound, Barrow Strait, and Melville Sound. On September 6, they crossed 110° W, and thus won the Board of Longitude’s £5000 prize as the first expedition to do so above the Arctic Circle. On September 26, they laid up at Winter Harbour on Melville Island, where Parry, Beechey, and their shipmates, including Edward Sabine and Sir James Ross, passed the winter recording meteorological and magnetic readings, sketching, producing amateur theatricals, and publishing newspapers aboard ship. The expedition weighed anchor on August 1, 1820, and on August 7 Beechey sighted land (Banks Island) lying southwest of Melville Island, at almost 114° W; however, impenetrable ice barred further westward progress beyond 113º48′ W. 221

BEECHEY, FREDERICK When Parry’s expedition returned to England in November 1820, it had achieved the first successful Arctic wintering by a naval expedition, as well as the discovery and naming of many islands, inlets, and headlands. Beechey played a major role as navigator, observer, and especially artist, and 26 of his drawings illustrated Parry’s published account of the voyage. In 1825, Beechey was appointed to command the sloop-of-war HMS Blossom, which left Spithead on May 19 with instructions to conduct surveys and collect specimens in the Pacific, as well as to rendezvous on Alaska’s north coast with Franklin’s second land expedition and/or Parry’s 1824–1825 attempt to force a North West Passage by sea. Blossom’s crew of 103 included Lieutenants George Peard and Sir Edward Belcher, Ship’s Master Thomas Elson, William Smyth (who sailed with Sir George Back a decade later), naturalist George Tradescant Lay, surgeons Alexander Collie and Thomas Nelson (who also collected specimens), and midshipman Richard Brydges Beechey, the commander’s younger brother. Blossom reached Rio de Janeiro after three months, and rounded Cape Horn a month later. Blossom called at Easter Island, Pitcairn, Tahiti, and Oahu between October 1825 and late June 1826, when the expedition reached Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskii. Beechey found no sign of Franklin in Kotzebue Sound, Alaska, in late July, but a schooner-rigged barge carried aboard Blossom was employed to explore and survey the Sound, including Hotham Inlet and Echoltz Bay. Beechey then followed the coast northward, reached Cook’s Icy Cape on August 13, and dispatched Elson in the barge. Elson halted at Pt Barrow (71°23′31″ N 156°21′ W) on August 23, but was compelled by ice conditions to turn back. Only 235 km (146 miles) to the east, Franklin’s party, coasting in small boats, had already turned about at Return Reef. The barge rejoined Blossom at Chamisso Island in Kotzebue Sound, where advancing winter forced the expedition’s departure on October 14, 1826. Beechey reached San Francisco after less than a month, where he provisioned and conducted a detailed survey of the Bay and its tributaries. The winter of 1826–1827 was again spent conducting surveys across the Pacific before returning to Bering Strait in August 1827. Elson surveyed the west coast of the Seward Peninsula in the barge before proceeding to Kotzebue Sound. Both vessels then coasted northward, but found ice conditions worse than the year before. Beechey was halted at 70°47′ N, near Cape Lisburne, while Belcher, commanding the barge, went no further than 70°45′ N. Neither found any trace of Franklin. Their return to Kotzebue Sound was marred by the wreck of the barge with the loss of three crewmen. Blossom left Arctic waters on October 5, 1827, on a

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homeward voyage via Cape Horn that lasted a full year. Blossom’s crew sailed a total of 73,000 miles, gathered extensive zoological, botanical, and geological collections, surveyed hundreds of miles of Alaskan coastline, as well as numerous islands and anchorages, and lost 15 men to accidents and disease. In addition to his skills as leader and artist, Beechey was a good observer and fluent writer. His account of the voyage contains social, political, and ethnographic data on the countries and cultures visited, including an Inuit vocabulary. Its publication fed the public’s appetite for exotic voyages, while two subsequent volumes detailed the expedition’s zoological and botanical discoveries. Along with Beechey’s numerous charts and drawings, these volumes served the interests of science. Although the Beechey and Franklin expeditions established the existence of a North West Passage, the surveys in the Pacific were of far more practical value to commerce and navigation.

Biography Frederick William Beechey, born on February 17, 1796 in London, was the son of portrait painter Sir William Beechey, R.A., and miniaturist Phyllis Ann Jessup. He was educated informally until he entered the Royal Navy under the sponsorship of Lord St Vincent, later First Lord of the Admiralty, in July 1806. By 1854, he had won promotion to rear admiral. After his Arctic expeditions, he occupied various posts including Superintendent of the Marine Department of the Board of Trade (1850–1856), as a member of the Arctic Council (1847–1856), and as President of the Royal Geographical Society (1855–1856). Beechey’s principal expeditions included the Royal Navy’s North Polar expedition (April 25 –October 22, 1818); the second North West Passage expedition (May 1819–November 1820); the survey of the north coast of Africa between Tripoli and Alexandria in 1821–1822 under Captain William Henry Smyth aboard Adventure; and as commander of the Blossom expedition (May 1825–September 1828). Beechey married Charlotte Stapleton in December 1828, with whom he had five daughters. He died on November 29, 1856 in London. MERRILL DISTAD Further Reading Beechey, F.W. (editor), The Zoology of Captain Beechey’s Voyage; Compiled From the Collections and Notes Made by Captain Beechey, the Officers and Naturalist of the Expedition, During a Voyage to the Pacific and Behring’s Straits Performed in His Majesty’s Ship Blossom, under the Command of Captain F.W. Beechey, in the Years 1825, 26, 27 and 28, London: H.G. Bohn, 1839

BELCHER, SIR EDWARD Berton, Pierre, The Arctic Grail: The Quest for the North West Passage and the North Pole, 1818–1909, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1988 Bockstoce, John R., Eskimos of Northwest Alaska in the Early Nineteenth Century: Based on the Beechey and Belcher Collections and Records Compiled During the Voyage of H.M.S. Blossom to Northwest Alaska in 1826 and 1827, edited by T.K. Penniman, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, 1977 David, Robert G., The Arctic in the British Imagination, 1818–1914, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000 Fleming, Fergus, Barrow’s Boys, New York: Atlantic Monthly Press and London: Granta, 1998 Hooker, Sir William Jackson & G.A. Walker Arnott, The Botany of Captain Beechey’s Voyage: Comprising an Account of the Plants Collected by Messrs. Lay and Collie, and Other Officers of the Expedition, During the Voyage to the Pacific and Behring’s Strait, Performed in His Majesty’s Ship Blossom, Under the Command of Captain F.W. Beechey … in the Years 1825, 26, 27, and 28, London: H.G. Bohn, 1841 Levere, Trevor H., Science and the Canadian Arctic: A Century of Exploration, 1818–1918, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993 Peard, George, To the Pacific and Arctic with Beechey: The Journal of Lieutenant George Peard of H.M.S. Blossom, 1825–1828, edited by Barry M. Gough, Cambridge: Published for the Hakluyt Society at the University Press, 1973

BELCHER, SIR EDWARD Sir Edward Belcher achieved notoriety in the annals of Arctic exploration through his command of the British Arctic Expedition of 1852–1854. The mission was less than successful, resulting in the premature abandonment of four ships. These events and the acrimony arising from them have overshadowed Belcher’s positive achievements, particularly his contributions to Arctic ethnology and surveying. Belcher’s Arctic experience began as assistant surveyor on Beechey’s Blossom expedition of 1825–1828. This expedition was sent, in part, to provide logistic support in the western American Arctic to expeditions led by Sir John Franklin (overland) and Sir William Parry (by sea from the east) that were attempting to establish the existence of a North West Passage. Passing through Bering Strait, the expedition surveyed the coastline of North America as far east as Pt Barrow, Alaska. In 1852, at the mature age of 53, Belcher was given command of a mission to search the eastern Canadian Arctic for the lost Sir John Franklin boat parties and to set up supply depots for another two-ship expedition commanded by Captain Richard Collinson, which was to search for the North West Passage from the west through Bering Strait. Belcher’s expedition comprised five ships: HMS Assistance (Commander G.H. Richards, Belcher’s command ship), Resolute (Captain H. Kellett), Pioneer (Lieutenant S. Osborn), Intrepid (Commander F.L. McClintock), and North

Star (Commander W.J.J. Pullen). Pioneer and Intrepid were steam-powered support tenders attached to Assistance and Resolute, respectively; North Star was the supply ship. Belcher’s orders were to use “Beechey Island … as the basis for your operations … there to establish a general depot,” then to “recover those traces of Sir John Franklin which ceased at Cape Bowden, to the north of Beechy Island … passing up Wellington Channel with one sailing vessel and one steamer (Belcher, 1855). Further orders were to “deposit, if possible, at Parry’s Winter Harbour, Melville Island or failing that at Byam Martin Island…” provisions “for any parties that might reach such positions from Captain Collinson’s or Commander [Robert] M’Clure’s ships” (HMS Enterprise and Investigator, respectively) (Belcher, 1855). The expedition departed from Greenhithe on the Thames on April 21, 1852, sailing through Baffin Bay and Lancaster Sound and, after separating en route, were reunited at Beechey Island on August 11. Ice conditions were favorable and Assistance and Pioneer set out immediately to explore Wellington Channel, reaching almost 78° N before being forced to overwinter at Northumberland Inlet, on the northwest point of Devon Island. Resolute and Intrepid reached Melville Island, but after initially failing to find traces of Collinson’s expedition retreated to overwintering quarters at Dealy Island. Winter sledge parties, having later located a cached message from McClure at Sandstone Rock, Winter Harbour, crossed Melville Strait to establish contact between the two expeditions. McClure’s ship was immovably trapped by ice at Mercy Bay on the north coast of Banks Island, but he was able to visit Kellet on the Resolute on April 19, 1853. After some deliberation, Investigator was abandoned and the ship’s complement transferred over the ice to Resolute and Intrepid, effectively making them the first men to traverse the North West Passage, albeit partly on foot. Their trials, however, were not over; the returning two ships entered the pack ice and spent the winter of 1853–1854 beset south of Bathurst Island. Kellet then sent a message to Belcher detailing his plans for the 1854 season, but received orders to abandon the ships and return expeditiously to Beechey Island. Meanwhile, Assistance and Pioneer, after failing to find further traces of the Franklin expedition, attempted to return to Beechey Island but similarly became beset further south in Wellington Channel. It was at this point that Belcher’s resolve broke and the order for the abandonment of all four ships was given, despite the reservations of some of his officers, particularly Kellet. It appears that Belcher was temperamentally unequipped to face a third harsh winter in the High Arctic. The expedition returned to England that

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BELCHER, SIR EDWARD summer aboard the North Star and two other ships HMS Phoenix and HMS Talbot that had arrived at Beechey Island with further supplies. They arrived home on September 28, 1854. To compound Belcher’s embarrassment, the abandoned Resolute later drifted unharmed into Lancaster Sound and out into Baffin Bay, where on September 16, 1855 she was picked up by Captain James Buddington of the Connecticut Whaler George Henry. Buddington sold the ship to the United States Government, who immediately refitted it and, as a gesture of goodwill and no doubt with some measure of amusement, presented it back to the British Government. When the Resolute was broken up in 1879, an oak desk, made from its timbers, was presented by Queen Victoria to the President of the United States Rutherford Hayes. Later, in 1965, the ship’s bell was also presented to President Lyndon Johnson by the then British Prime Minister Harold Wilson. The repercussions of the expedition were wide ranging, with much rancor among the participants. For example, Osborn used his account of M’Clure’s Discovery of a North West Passage as a vehicle for castigating Belcher as incompetent. The recent discovery of manuscript letters and annotations in Commander Richards’s copy of Osborn’s book indicates, however, that the vitriol flowed in both directions and that Belcher retained the support of at least one of his fellow officers. Belcher faced court martial but was acquitted on the grounds that in abandoning his ships and preserving the safety of his men he had followed the letter, if not the spirit of his orders. Leaving aside his later Arctic experiences and his reputation for being bad tempered and abrasive, Belcher seems to have been a competent and wellregarded naval surveyor, with his treatise on surveying being widely used by the Royal Navy over many years. He was also a collector of Inuit artifacts and a member of the Anthropological Institute of London. The collections he made during his Arctic voyages were acquired by General Pitt Rivers and now form part of the Pitt Rivers Museum collections in Oxford, UK. His 1852 expedition also made valuable collections of fish, molluscs, crustaceans, and fossils, including that of an Ichthyosaur.

Biography Born in 1799, Edward Belcher was the son of Andrew Belcher of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and grandson of the then governor of the Province, William Belcher. He joined the British Royal Navy in 1812. Following routine naval employment, he was appointed as assistant surveyor on Beechey’s voyage to the

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Pacific and Bering straits (1825–1828), and on his return was promoted to Commander. There then followed several long years of exploration, most notably around the world in HMS Sulphur (1836–1842), and a survey of islands in Indonesia and the Philippines in HMS Samarang (1843–1846). He was knighted in 1843. His explorations culminated in his conspicuously unsuccessful expedition to the Canadian Arctic in 1852–1854, the story of which is recounted in his curiously entitled account The Last of the Arctic Voyages. Despite recriminations over this, his final Arctic voyage, he was recognized as Knight Commander (KCB) in 1867 and was promoted to Admiral in 1872. He died on March 18, 1877. IAN HODKINSON See also Beechey, Frederick; British Arctic Expedition, 1875–1876; Collinson, Richard; Franklin, Sir John; McClintock, Francis Leopold; McClure, Sir Robert; North West Passage; Parry, Sir William Edward Further Reading Amor, Norman, Beyond the Arctic Circle: Materials on Arctic Exploration and Travels Since 1750 in the Special Collections and University Archives Division of the University of British Columbia Library. Occasional Publication No. 1, Vancouver, University of British Columbia Library, 1992 [ Belcher archive] Barr, William (editor), A Frenchman in Search of Franklin. De Brays’s Arctic Journal, 1852–1854, Toronto: University of Toronto, 1992 Belcher, Edward, A Treatise on Nautical Surveying: Containing an Outline of the Duties of the Naval Surveyor; with Cases Applied to Naval Evolutions and Miscellaneous Rules and Tables Useful to the Seaman or Traveller, London: Richardson, 1835 ———, The Last of the Arctic Voyages. Being a Narrative of the Expedition in H.M.S. Assistance Under the Command of Captain Sir Edward Belcher, C.B., in Search of Sir John Franklin, During the Years 1852–53–54, London: Lovell Reeve, 1855 Bockstoce, John, Eskimos of Northwest Alaska in the Early Nineteenth Century: Based on the Beechey and Belcher Collections and Records Compiled During the Voyage of H.M.S. Blossom to Northwest Alaska in 1826 and 1827, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, 1977 Eithington, Sidney, Two Dramatic Episodes of New England Whaling: the George Henry and the Salvage and Restoration of The H.M.S. Resolute: the Sinking of the Two Stone Fleets During the Civil War, Mystic, Connecticut: Marine Historical Association, 1958 Government of Great Britain, Further Papers Relative to the Recent Arctic Expeditions in Search of John Franklin and the Crews of H.M.S. Erebus and Terror, Presented to Both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty, London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1855 Hodkinson, Ian and Ian Stone, “Comments by Admiral Sir George H. Richards on Sherard Osborn’s The Discovery of the North-west Passage by HMS Investigator, Capt. R. M’Clure.” Polar Record, 33 (1997): 337–340

BEL’KACHI CULTURE Inglefield, Edward, A Summer Search for Sir John Franklin with a Peep into the Polar Basin, London: Thomas Harrison, 1853 McCormick, Robert, Narrative of a Boat Expedition up the Wellington Channel in the Year 1852, London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1854 McDougall, George, The Eventful Voyage of H.M. Discovery Ship Resolute to the Arctic Regions in Search of Sir John Franklin and the Missing Crews of the Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror in 1852, 1853, 1854, London: Longman Brown, Green, Longmans and Roberts, 1857 Osborn, Sherard, The Discovery of the North West Passage by H.M.S. Investigator Capt. R. M’Lure 1850, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854, London: Longman, Brown and Green, 1856 Petch, A., Collectors:Collecting for the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, 1996 Pierce, Richard, “Edward Belcher (1799–1877).” Arctic, 35 (1982): 552–553

BEL’KACHI CULTURE Russian archaeologist Yuri Mochanov distinguished the Bel’kachi Culture in 1966, based upon materials obtained from excavating the multilayer Bel’kachi I Site (Levels V and VI) in the Lena River basin, Sakha Republic (Yakutia). The Bel’kachi Culture spread over Northeast Asia in the Holocene between the late fourth and the late third millennia BC (5200–4100 years BP), where it has been considered as the Middle Neolithic culture. Researchers have found the majority of sites in the Sakha Republic, in the valleys of the Lena, the Aldan, the Vilyuy, and the Anabar rivers. Archaeologists have associated the origins of the Bel’kachi Culture with the Neolithic cultures of Transbaikal, and Upper and Middle Amur (Shilkinskaya Peshchera and Gromatukhinskaya), which influenced the Syalakh Culture in Sakha (Yakutia) that preceded the Bel’kachi Culture. All multilayer sites in Yakutia comprise levels in which the Bel’kachi materials overlay those found from the Syalakh Culture. The Bel’kachi Culture shared much in common with Syalakh in terms of stone tool typology and processing techniques. The basic feature used for distinguishing the Bel’kachi Culture from other Neolithic materials has been the cord-stamped ceramic. Bel’kachi pottery was parabolic with a round or a pointed bottom. The pot surfaces were covered with cord imprints produced in the process of forming and thinning the vessel walls with the cord-coiled beater or pottery paddle. Archaeologists distinguished two types of pattern on the vessels. Some include a series of small holes and engraved horizontal lines under the rim. Other patterns manifest thickened and raised rims. Also identifiable is a rib-stamp design and a beveled grid and zigzag pattern. The vessels measure approximately 30 cm in diameter at the rim and 40 cm in height.

Bel’kachi Culture artifacts: 1—microblade core; 2—retouched microblade; 3—polyhedral burin; 4, 6, 7—points; 5— retouched adze; 8—scraper; 9—pendant; 10—angle burin on microblade; 11—cutter; 12—slotted knife with chipped-stone sideblades inserted; 13—polished adze; 14—potsherd with cord-stamped design. 1–11, 13—stone; 12—bone and stone; 14—ceramic.

The Bel’kachi Culture represents the regional and chronological variant of a microblade industry based on conic and prismatic microcores. Microblades comprise 10–11% of all lithic (stone) findings at Bel’kachi sites, which is fewer than in the preceding Syalakh time; however, the microblade inserts nevertheless played a significant role in the Bel’kachi tool kit. Many microblades were retouched at the edge for obtaining segments to be inserted into bone or antler projectile points or knives as sideblades. Judging by the exposed fragments of such tools, they were flat, with one or two side grooves where the blades were inserted. People also used microblades for making angle and dihedral burins and gravers (engraving or carving tools) as well as end scrapers. Widespread throughout the Bel’kachi Culture were polyhedral burins that had previously appeared in the Syalakh time. These burins were made on worn cores and on retouched preformes.

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BEL’KACHI CULTURE A significant number of Bel’kachi tools were constructed on flakes, blade flakes, and pebbles. These included points, scrapers, gravers, knives, ground adzes, and axes. Arrow points were bifacially retouched and leaf shaped; these triangular points appeared for the first time in the Neolithic of Northeast Asia. Characteristic for the Bel’kachi, some triangular points feature notched bases. Bifacially retouched spear points or knives, oval or leaf shaped, measure up to 14 cm in length. Another characteristic Bel’kachi tool is the spear-shaped graver on blade flakes. End scrapers with the retouched dorsal surface dominated. Ground adzes were rectangular in the plane and in the cross-section, and stepped with high backs. Retouched oval axes, with lanceolate (tapered to form the shape of a lance) cross-sections, feature so-called “ears” on the back for fixing conveniently in the handle. Bone and antler tools included not only arrow and spear points but also adze and knife handles, composite fishing hooks, and sinker baits for fishing. The Bel’kachi people lived in the Arctic and Subarctic taiga and tundra along the banks of rivers and lakes, hunting moose and reindeer; however, the importance of fishing increased over time. For example, numerous composite fishing hooks and stone net sinkers have been found at Bel’kachi sites. The Bel’kachi nomadic way of life determined the surface teepee-type dwelling. Archaeologists have also identified Bel’kachi sites in Western Chukotka. There, the Bel’kachi complexes were supposed to contain stemmed points on blades with triangular cross-sections. The Bel’kachi Culture moreover influenced the Upper Kolyma Middle Neolithic Culture, with specific artifacts such as stemmed points with triangular cross-sections and flat round pendants with holes in the middle. In Eastern Chukotka, some elements of the Bel’kachi Culture (cord-stamped ceramics and stepped adzes) have appeared in the materials of the Ust’-Belaya Grave on the Anadyr River. This site relates to the Ust’-Belaya Culture of the early second through the early first millennium BC. Despite some differences, the Bel’kachi Culture is believed to have been the base for the Arctic Small Tool Tradition formation in the American and Canadian Arctic. Several single Bel’kachi burials have been discovered in Yakutia: Jikimda (Olyokma River), Rodinka (Lower Kolyma), and Tuoy-Khaya Grave (Vilyuy River). The burials exhibit no stone facing; skeletons, covered with ochre, lie on their backs, with arms bent on the thighs; skulls pointing in the direction of eastnortheast; and legs pointing toward the river. Anthropological research of Bel’kachi skulls shows

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that the Bel’kachi people belonged to the Arctic race with some admixture of the Baikal type. The burials contained a rich assemblage with many stone tools, mostly points, insert tools, microblades, ground adzes, and art items, as well as bone tools. Artistic items are represented by nephrite discs, bone-decorated pendants, shell and eggshell beads, decorated bone amulets, and bird figurines. The complex geometric pattern on most items has not been deciphered so far, but researchers believe the iconography bears a range of complex semantic meanings (e.g., as a pictorial calendar). The dog skull burial in the Tuoy Khaya Grave (Vilyuy River basin)—presumably associated with a type of dog cult or ritual practice—has also been linked to the Bel’kachi Culture. The site contains burial stone tool kits (arrow points), ochre, and a ritual fireplace. Petroglyphs (carvings or inscriptions on rock) in Yakutia have also been identified with the Bel’kachi Culture. The pictures were either painted or, less frequently, pecked (in which impressions are created by striking with a pointed tool). Artisans contoured some of the painted images; others were filled in with areas of color. Within the iconography, hunting stories prevailed depicting primarily moose and reindeer. Some anthropomorphic pictures represent human figures, most of which are shown in motion, with three-finger hands, rounded heads, and clothing details. Adjacent to the petroglyphs, ritual sites with Bel’kachi stone materials were also found. At the end of the third millennium BC, the Ymiyakhtakh Culture replaced the Bel’kachi Culture. SERGEI SLOBODIN See also Arctic Small Tool Tradition; Sakha Republic (Yakutia); Syalakh Culture; Ymyakhtakh Culture Further Reading Alekseyev, Anatoliy, Drevnyaya Yakutia: neolit i epokha bronzy [Ancient Yakutia: The New Stone and Bronze Ages], Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1996 Khlobystin, Leonid, Drevnyaya istoriya taymyrskogo Zapolyarya [Ancient History of the Taymyr Circumpolar Area], St Petersburg: IMCH, 1998 Kiryak, Margarita, Arkheologiya Zapadnoy Chukotki [Archaeology of Western Chukotka], Moscow: Nauka, 1993 Kochmar, Nikolay, Pisanitsy Yakutii [Painted Petroglyphs of Yakutia], Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1994 Mochanov, Yuri, Mnogosloynaya stoyanka Bel’kachi I i periodizatsiya kamennogo veka Yakutii [Bel’kachi I Multi-layer Site and Yakutia Stone Age Periodization], Moscow: Nauka, 1969 Mochanov, Yuri & Svetlana Fedoseyeva, “Main periods in the ancient history of North East Asia.” In Beringia in the Cenozoic Era, edited by V.L. Kontrimavichus, Rotterdam: A.A. Balkema, 1985, pp. 689–693 Mochanov, Yuri, Svetlana Fedoseyeva & Anatoliy Alekseev, Arkheologicheskiye pamyatniki Yakutii (basseyny rek Aldana

BELLOT, JOSEPH-RENÉ i Olyokmy) [Archaeological Sites in Yakutia: Aldan and Olyokma River Basins], Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1983 Mochanov, Yuri, Svetlana Fedoseyeva, Nikolay Konstantinov, Natalya Antipina & Valeri Argunov, Arkheologicheskiye pamyatniki Yakutii (basseyny rek Vilyuy, Anabar i Olenyok) [Archaeological Sites in Yakutia: Vilyuy, Anabar, and Olenyok River Basins], Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1991 Okladnikov, Aleksei, Yakutia Before itsIncorporation in to the Russian State, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1970 Slobodin, Sergei, Verkhnyaya Kolyma i kontinental’noye Priokhotye v epokhu neolita i rannego metalla [Upper Kolyma and Continental Priokhotye in the Time of Neolithic and Early Metal], Magadan: NEISRI, 2001

BELLOT, JOSEPH-RENÉ Lieutenant de Vaisseau Joseph-René Bellot is best remembered as the French naval officer who first volunteered for service on two British expeditions to the Canadian Arctic in 1851 to search for survivors of Sir John Franklin’s expedition, lost while seeking the North West Passage. He was killed in a tragic accident on his second voyage in 1853. Bellot’s early career demonstrated his precocious intelligence, courage, and resolution, which, coupled with his considerate and capable manner, was to prepare him well for his future role as Arctic explorer. He was a gifted student who progressed rapidly, and by the age of 18 he had left the naval academy and was serving on a French corvette in the Madagascar campaign. During this voyage Bellot displayed exceptional courage in rescuing a sailor from the sea, for which he received a commendation, and several days later was himself wounded while capturing cannon during an attack on Tamatave, a seaport of Madagascar. For the latter episode, Bellot was presented with the Cross of the Legion of Honour on December 2, 1845. On his return his commander, Romain-Desfossé, recommended him to the naval minister for his outstanding abilities. Bellot’s Arctic experience began aboard the Prince Albert under the command of the Arctic fur trader William Kennedy, on the expedition privately funded by Lady Jane Franklin to search for her husband, missing in the Canadian north. He volunteered his service and so impressed Lady Franklin at an interview that he was appointed second in command, despite reservations expressed by her advisers in the Admiralty. The Prince Albert sailed from Aberdeen on May 22, 1851, passing Kap Farvel, Greenland, on June 24; on July 8, near Upernarvik Greenland, it received intelligence from a passing whaler that traces of the Franklin expedition had been found on Beechey Island. On September 9, while in Prince Regent Inlet, Kennedy left the Prince Albert with a small shore party at Port Leopold, Somerset Island, leaving Bellot in charge.

While ashore, the ship began drifting in the ice, and after much tribulation Bellot anchored the ship in overwintering quarters in Batty Bay, 50 miles to the south. It took Bellot three attempts, spread over six difficult weeks of adverse weather, to finally bring the party back safely overland to the ship. The next year, in 1852, Bellot and Kennedy, following a trial preliminary sledge journey to Fury Beach, completed one of the longest sledge journeys undertaken during the Franklin searches, an excursion of about 1100 miles. Tracing the coast of Somerset Island southwards, on April 5 they discovered the straits that now bear Bellot’s name, separating the island from Boothia Peninsula, the northernmost point of the North American continent. Continuing westward they crossed Franklin Strait and Prince of Wales Island to Ommanney Bay on the west coast, before recrossing the island to Peel Sound and heading north to reach Cape Walker on May 4. The two men then traced the northern and western coastlines of Somerset Island back to Batty Bay, arriving in late May. The expedition reached Aberdeen on October 7, 1851 and Bellot returned to France, from where he maintained regular correspondence with Lady Franklin. During this time he declined an invitation to serve with Elisha Kent Kane on his second Grinnell Expedition to Smith Sound. In April 1853, Bellot wrote to Lady Franklin requesting that he be allowed to join Edward Inglefield’s expedition that was soon to depart on the Phoenix, which together with the Breadalbane was to deliver supplies and despatches to Edward Belcher’s Franklin Search expedition then in the Canadian Arctic. Partly on her recommendation and partly on his previous record of service, Bellot was accepted at once by the Admiralty. Bellot sailed almost immediately, meeting up with Belcher’s supply ship—the North Star—at Beechey Island (Nunavat) on August 8, 1853. A few days later he set off on foot with four men to deliver correspondence to Belcher on board HMS Assistance, then trapped in pack ice in Wellington Channel to the north. While on this journey Bellot became trapped on floating ice with two of his men, David Hook and William Johnson. Having spent the night in a makeshift shelter, Bellot went out the following morning to review their predicament. He was never seen again, although his stick was discovered on an adjacent ice-floe. It is assumed that he fell into the freezing water and drowned.

Biography Joseph-René Bellot was born in Paris on March 18, 1826, the son of Étienne Bellot (a farrier and blacksmith) and Adélaide Estelle Laurent. His family moved

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BELUGA (WHITE) WHALE to Rochefort in 1931, a place of which he always spoke fondly and regarded as his adopted home. At school he displayed natural gifts and application, and was rewarded by scholarships that allowed him to attend the local college and then the naval academy, where he received numerous prizes. He left the academy at the age of 17½ in September 1843. Bellot then spent six months at Brest serving successively on the Suffren and Friedland before being appointed to the corvette Berceau, bound for Madagascar, in which he served until mid-1845. In November of that year, he was promoted to enseigne de vaisseau (junior grade lieutenant) on the corvette Triumphante (a small warship) on a voyage to the Pacific and on which he acted as navigator. Following his return in August 1850, he was attached to the naval map office, where he completed his journals. His Arctic voyages occupied the period 1851–1854. An account of his first Arctic voyage on the Prince Albert was published in 1854 and subsequently translated into English. Bellot died unmarried on August 18, 1854. A memorial (original tablet now in Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, Yellowknife) was erected on Beechey Island by officers of Belcher’s Arctic expedition on August 27, 1854. Another memorial was established in Rochefort and Sir John Barrow presented a commemorative plaque to the Musée de la Marine in Paris. Memorial subscriptions in Britain raised over £2000, part of which was used to erect a commemorative obelisk, the Bellot Memorial, in Greenwich Park, London. The remaining monies raised went to support his dependent sisters. Bellot’s portrait, by Stephen Pearce, resides in the National Portrait Gallery, London, emphasizing Bellot’s status as an honorary Englishman. Bellot lends his name to the straits between Boothia Peninsula and Somerset Island in the Canadian Arctic, to the cold wind that blows through these straits, and to thoroughfares in Paris and Greenwich. IAN D. HODKINSON See also Franklin, Lady Jane; Franklin, Sir John; Inglefield, Edward A.; Kane, Elisha Kent; Kennedy, William; North West Passage Further Reading Barr, William, “The last known letter of Joseph-René Bellot.” Polar Record, 23 (1986): 61–66 Belcher, Edward, The Last of the Arctic Voyages. Being a Narrative of the Expedition in H.M.S. Assistance Under the Command of Captain Sir Edward Belcher, C.B., in Search of Sir John Franklin, During the Years 1852–53–54, London: Lovell Reeve, 1855 Bellec, François, “Un Français à la Recherche de Sir John Franklin; le Sacrifice de Joseph-René Bellot.” Neptunia, 52 (1997): 33–37 Bellot, Joseph-René, Journal d’un Voyage aux Mers Polaires Eexécuté a la Recherche de Sir John Franklin en 1851 et

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1852, Precede d’une Notice sur la Vie et les Travaux de l’auteur par M.J. Lemer, Paris: Perrotin, 1854 ———, Memoirs of Lieutenant Joseph-René Bellot, with His Journal of a Voyage in the Polar Seas in Search of Sir John Franklin (1st English edition), 2 volumes, London: Hurst & Blackett, 1855 Holland, Clive, “Bellot, Joseph-René.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, 8 (1985): 79–81 Inglefield, Edward, A Summer Search for Sir John Franklin with a Peep into the Polar Basin, London: Thomas Harrison, 1853 Kennedy, William, A Short Narrative of the Second Voyage of the Prince Albert in Search of Sir John Franklin, London: Dalton, 1853 Madure, La Tour, “Le lieutenant de vaisseau Bellot (1826–1853). Notice Biographique.” Les Contemporains, 493 (1902): 1–16 Woodward, Frances Jane, “Joseph-René Bellot.” Polar Record, 5 (1950): 398–407

BELUGA (WHITE) WHALE The beluga or white whale (Delphinapterus leucus), known as qilalugaq in Greenlandic and Inuktitut, puugzaq in Siberian Yupik, and sisuaq in Iñupiat, is a mid-sized toothed whale (odontocete). The whale is white as an adult, and beluga is derived from the Russian word for white. Males are considerably larger than females, the former reaching lengths of 5 m and weights of 900 kg. Females reach a maximum of 4 m and 600 kg. White whales lack a dorsal fin, but they have a prominent dorsal ridge that is used to break through thin ice. They have small eyes, a bulbous forehead (termed a melon), and a flexible neck (unlike most cetaceans that have fused neck vertebrae). They have small flippers and a small fluke or tail lobe. When white whales are born, they are creamy-gray in color, but turn dark gray rapidly. They fade in color over their juvenile years, becoming lighter each year until they are eventually white. Females are white by about age 7, whereas males are about 12 years when they are completely white. White whales can appear a rusty yellow prior to their summer molt. White whales live to an age of approximately 40 years. White whales are found in most Arctic and Subarctic waters, including the Arctic Ocean and its adjacent seas. However, their distribution is somewhat discontinuous as they are virtually nonexistent in the Greenland Sea. A small, southern population of white whales resides in the St Lawrence River. The global population of white whales is not accurately known, but the summation of various stock estimates suggests about 200,000 animals. White whales travel deep into drifting ice, where the ice cover can be 90%+. White whales exhibit highly variable movement patterns in different geographical areas of the High Arctic. In some areas they exhibit marked migratory patterns, while in other areas they remain resident year round. In some areas they spend a lot of time in coastal, occa-

BELUGA (WHITE) WHALE

Beluga or white whale (Delphinapterus leucus). Copyright Nick Caloyianis/National Geographic Image Collection

sionally even in estuarine, areas during summer, while in other areas they occur far offshore. In some areas white whales tend to follow the seasonal movement patterns of the sea ice distribution, remaining near the expanding or retracting ice edges. Although the winter whereabouts of white whales are poorly known, it is assumed that they either overwinter in areas containing polynyas or predictably open leads in the ice or they migrate in the direction of the advancing polar ice Peak birthing occurs in April-May, but births can be spread from late spring through until early fall. The gestation period lasts approximately 14 months. The social dynamics of this species are not well documented, but mating is thought to occur primarily in the late winter. Calves are cared for by their mothers for over 2 years, and remain in the maternal social group for years following their weaning as juveniles. Mothers are very solicitous of their young, and young calves are virtually always in physical contact with their mothers. Mother-pup pairs are also very vocal. Similar to all cetaceans, mother white whales squirt milk into the mouths of their calves using contractile muscles

associated with the mammary glands. The reproductive interval for females is on average 3 years. White whale females reach sexual maturity at about 5 years of age, whereas males are somewhat older (8 years). White whales usually feed in waters above the continental shelf, consuming a wide variety of prey items ranging from benthic invertebrates and squid to pelagic fishes. In summer they often occur in dense concentrations at discrete coastal locations, including river estuaries, where they may feed on seasonally abundant anadromous (salmonids) and coastal fishes in some parts of their range. In western Greenland white whales consume pelagic polar cod and Arctic cod. In Svalbard their diet appears to be dominated by polar cod, and capelin and shrimps may also be important prey at this location. In Svalbard white whales spend a lot of their time along glacier fronts, presumably because upwellings in these areas result in concentrations of prey being available. White whales can dive to depths greater than 1000 m and remain submerged for 25 min. Polar bears and killer whales are both predators of white whales. If the whales become trapped in cracks or small winter ponds in the ice, bears can harvest the entire pod as they weaken after repeated attacks each time they surface to breathe. Killer whales are thought to be a major force in keeping white whales tightly associated with ice, where the orcas cannot follow them. Walruses are also purported to be a predator of white whales, although it is difficult to envisage a situation where they would fall prey to this potential predator. White whales are very social animals that travel in groups virtually all the time. There is significant sexual segregation among groups: females, calves, and juveniles travel together, while adult males form separate groups. Groups are not fixed entities; they seem to divide and reconsolidate through time. White whales are highly vocal in most areas within their range, and have a diverse repertoire of acoustic signals. They have extremely well-developed echolocation that is well adapted to Arctic waters; they can project and receive signals off the surface and detect targets despite high levels of ambient noise and backscatter, which allows them to navigate through heavy pack ice. White whales are highly adapted to the Arctic, similar to narwhal and bowhead whales. They have very thick blubber, and a dorsal ridge (without a fin) that can be used to break through thin sea ice. This species lives most of its life in close association with sea ice. It has an annual molt, which is unique among cetaceans. White whales are harvested for subsistence purposes throughout their range in the Arctic. In some areas the numbers taken are significant because their coastal distribution in summer makes them readily available to shore-based fisheries. It is one of the most important species in traditional hunts in coastal Alaska, the

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BENNETT, JAMES GORDON, JR. eastern Canadian Arctic, and Greenland. There is concern that catches in the eastern Canadian Arctic and in Greenland probably far exceed the sustainable yield for a toothed-whale population, and it appears that these stocks have suffered declines ranging from 30% to 60% within the last decade. White whales have been subjected to commercial harvests by various nations at various times, and until very recently were commercially harvested by Russia in the White Sea. In Svalbard, Russian whalers began harvesting this species early in the 17th century, mainly operating in the fjords on the West Coast of Spitsbergen. Norwegians and other nations commenced hunting for white whales in this region in the late 1800s when the larger whales became scarce. Thousands of white whales were harvested during the latter part of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries in the Barents Sea region, but commercial harvesting no longer takes place. KIT KOVACS See also Marine Mammal Hunting; Whaling, Historical Further Reading Gladden, J.G.B., M.M. Ferguson & J.W. Clayton, “Matriarchal genetic population structure of North American beluga whales Delphinapterus leucas (Cetacea: Monodontidae).” Molecular Ecology, 6(11) (1997): 1033–1046 Heide-Jørgensen, M.P. & Ø. Wiig, Belugas in the North Atlantic and the Russian Arctic, Tromsø: The North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission, 2002 Huntington, H.P., “Traditional knowledge of the ecology of beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas) in the eastern Chukchi and northern Bering Seas, Alaska.” Arctic, 52(1) (1999): 49–61 Lesage, V. & M.C.S. Kingsley, “Updated status of the St Lawrence River population of the Beluga, Dephinapterus leucas.” Canadian Field-Naturalist, 112(1) (1998): 98–113 Lydersen, C., A.R. Martin, K.M. Kovacs & I. Gjertz “Summer and autumn movements of white whales Delphinapterus leucas in Svalbard, Norway.” Marine Ecology Progress Series, 219 (2001): 265–274 Martin, T., Beluga Whales, Grantown-on-Spey Moray Scotland: Colin Baxter Photography Ltd., 1996 Ridgway, S.H., D.A. Carder, T. Kamolnick, R.R. Smith, C.E. Schlundt & W.R. Elsberry, “Hearing and whistling in the deep sea: depth influences whistle spectra but does not attenuate hearing by white whales (Delphinapterus leucas) (Odontoceti, Cetacea).” Journal of Experimental Biology, 204(22) (2001): 3829–3841 Sjare, B.L. & T.G. Smith, “The relationship between behavioural activity and underwater vocalizations of the white whale Delphinapterus leucas.” Canadian Journal of Zoology, 64(1) (1986): 2824–2831

BENNETT, JAMES GORDON, JR. One of the key sponsors of 19th-century exploration was James Gordon Bennett Jr., the proprietor of the

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New York Herald and the man behind numerous expeditions to Africa and the Arctic. Bennett both created and capitalized on a growing public thirst for firsthand details about journeys to unknown lands—especially those in which deaths, starvation, or other sensational aspects figured largely in the story—and helped make international figures of Henry Morton Stanley, Januarius Aloysius MacGahan, and George Washington De Long. Bennett was born on May 10, 1841, the son of James Gordon Bennett Sr., owner of the New York Herald, which had the largest circulation of any newspaper in the United States. He was educated in Paris, where his mother had moved because of the frequent verbal and occasional physical attacks on Bennett Sr., who was one of the most controversial and disliked men in the history of American journalism. The younger Bennett was summoned by his father to join the Union army in 1861, although he spent most of the American Civil War posted on the family yacht. In 1865, with the end of the war, Bennett joined the staff of the Herald, where he was promoted to chief executive officer when his father retired two years later. Bennett was an extraordinary judge of talent, and hired writers such as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Charles Nordhoff, and Charles Edward Russell. Bennett exemplified a prescient understanding of exactly what the American newspaper readership wanted, and he became the first newspaper proprietor regularly to create or manufacture the news accordingly. He had carefully taken note when his father had sent correspondents around the United States to cover the Civil War. He believed that the descriptions of the areas from which the stories emanated were as important to the readers as what might be happening there. Bennett also quickly realized the value of exclusive news, so it was a logical progression for him to send correspondents as members of expeditions and then to organize and send the expeditions himself. In that way, he could first create the popular desire for information and then satisfy it with exclusive reports. Bennett’s first major attempt to create exclusive news was when he sent Stanley, one of his roving reporters, to find the Scottish medical missionary David Livingstone in central Africa. Bennett knew that locating Livingstone, who had been out of touch with the western public for several years, would be a major story of huge significance, for both the writers and publisher. Stanley succeeded in finding Livingstone, and the exclusive reports he sent to the Herald increased the newspaper’s circulation and had the public clamoring for more. Several years later, Bennett’s Herald and the Daily Telegraph of London combined to fund Stanley’s magnificent trans-Africa expedition

BENNETT, JAMES GORDON, JR. (1874–1877), which answered the essential remaining questions about the major rivers and lakes of central Africa. Bennett was also quick to grasp that the public was fascinated by the Arctic, particularly the North West Passage and the attainment of the North Pole. In 1873, his writers accompanied expeditions to search for Polaris, Charles Francis Hall’s missing ship, sending back vivid accounts of the dangers of the search. Two years later, Bennett assigned Januarius Aloysius MacGahan to the expedition ship Pandora on its search for the North West Passage and for relics of the ill-fated expedition under Sir John Franklin, helping the young reporter on the road to international fame. Knowing that the public desired information regarding Franklin’s expedition, Bennett proposed that Herald reporter William Henry Gilder accompany Lt. Frederick Schwatka on a search in the Canadian Arctic. A sledge journey of 5240 km (3251 miles) followed, on which numerous relics were discovered. However, problem-free expeditions do not sell newspapers, and Gilder’s reports to the Herald sensationalized what had been a relatively straightforward story. Bennett’s most sensational—and disastrous—venture in the north was in his sponsorship of the North Pole expedition on Jeannette, under the command of George Washington De Long. In 1878, a year before Jeannette set sail, Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld had set out to navigate the North East Passage. Recalling his success with Stanley and Livingstone, Bennett decided that De Long should “rescue” Nordenskiöld, even though there was nothing to suggest that the latter required assistance. With the possibility of two huge stories (finding Nordenskiöld and the arrival at the North Pole), Bennett assigned reporter Jerome Collins to the ship’s crew. However, the expedition never came close to finding Nordenskiöld. And not long after steaming through the Bering Strait, Jeannette became stuck in the ice. The ship drifted helplessly for almost two years until it was finally crushed, leaving the crew to take to the sea in three open boats. One was never seen again, and two reached the Lena Delta. De Long’s party, including Collins, died while awaiting rescue. Meanwhile, the members of the third boat, under George W. Melville, struggled to safety. In the interim, Bennett had backed a rescue expedition on USS Rodgers, with Gilder aboard. When the ship burned off the coast of Siberia, Gilder sledged by himself across Siberia for help. On the way, he intercepted Melville’s report to the navy about his search for De Long and used it to write a story for the Herald, which thus had another major international “scoop.” Another reporter for the Herald, John P. Jackson, was also sent to the Lena Delta to investigate De Long’s

death. Jackson found the icy grave of De Long and his companions and promptly exhumed them, sending lurid stories and sketches back to the Herald. Not everyone shared Bennett’s pride in his reporters. Melville wrote a harsh condemnation in In the Lena Delta: “I never dreamed that a person born in a Christian land would so far forget the respect due to our honored dead as to violate their sacred resting place for the purpose of concocting a sensational story” (1885, p. 370). The Jeannette expedition was not the last Arctic controversy with Bennett at its heart. In 1909, Frederick Cook claimed to have reached the North Pole. Bennett promptly bought and ran Cook’s exclusive story. Several days later, however, Robert E. Peary, who had previously sold his accounts to the Herald but was now supported by the New York Times, also claimed to have reached the North Pole. The explorers and their respective sponsors were plunged into a controversy that developed into a circulation war between the two newspapers. Bennett spent most of his adult life living in Paris, running his newspaper via the telegraph. His quick temper and unpredictable actions earned make him many enemies, and his flamboyant lifestyle—he spent more than $30 million in his life as playboy, sportsman, traveler, and socialite—caused serious financial problems for the Herald. Nevertheless, he was a major contributor to the development of American journalism, leading the way in the now common practice of creating the news rather than just reporting it.

Biography James Gordon Bennett Jr. was born in New York City on May 10, 1841, the son of James Gordon Bennett Sr., the owner of the New York Herald. He was educated in New York and Paris. Bennett joined the Union army in 1861, but saw no action in the Civil War. In 1865, he joined the staff of the New York Herald and became chief executive officer two years later. Bennett instigated or funded a number of significant Arctic ventures, including a Franklin search (1878–1880), the Jeannette expedition (1879–1881), and the subsequent relief expedition on Rodgers (1881–1882). Bennett was the first journalist to regularly create news in order to sell newspapers. Bennett married Baroness de Reuter (a member of the family that founded the news agency) at the age of 73, on September 10, 1914. He suffered a brain hemorrhage on his birthday, and died four days later, May 14, 1918. BEAU RIFFENBURGH See also Cook, Frederick A.; Hall, Charles F.; Nordenskiöld, Adolf Erik; North Pole

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BERING SEA Further Reading Crockett, Albert, When James Gordon Bennett Was Caliph of Bagdad, New York and London: Funk and Wagnall’s, 1926 Guttridge, Leonard, Icebound: The Jeannette Expedition’s Quest for the North Pole, Annapolis; Naval Institute Press, 1986 Lyons, S.D., “James Gordon Bennett, Jr.” In Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 23, American Newspaper Journalists, 1873–1900, edited by P.J. Ashley, Detroit: Gale, 1983 McCullagh, F., “The Gordon Bennetts and American Journalism.” Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review of Letters Philosophy & Science, 18 (1929): 394–412 Melville, George Washington, In the Lena Delta, London: Longmans, Green, 1885 Riffenburgh, Beau, “James Gordon Bennett, The New York Herald, and the Arctic.” Polar Record, 27 (1991): 9–16 ———, The Myth of the Explorer: The Press, Sensationalism, and Geographical Discovery, London: Belhaven, 1993 Seitz, Don, The James Gordon Bennetts: Father and Son, Proprietors of The New York Herald, Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill, 1928 Stanley, Henry Morton, How I Found Livingstone, London: Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle, 1872

BERING SEA The Bering Sea is a marginal sea of the northern North Pacific Ocean located between Kamchatka Peninsula, the coast of Koryak Autonomous Okrug, and Chukotka Peninsula of Siberia in the west and north, and Alaska in the north and east. The Komandorsky (Commander) Islands and Aleutian Islands form the Bering Sea southern boundary. The Bering Sea was named after Vitus Bering, a Danish explorer who in 1704 went into Russian service and led two large-scale Kamchatka expeditions (1725–1743) to explore the northern North Pacific.

Morphometry, Bathymetry, and Geomorphology The Bering Sea is one of the world’s largest seas. It extends 1683 km N-S and 2389 km W-E, and occupies an area of 2,344,300 km2. Its coastline is 13,340 km long. The Komandórsky-Aleutian island chain, 2260 km long, includes 150 islands with a total area of 37,840 km2. The sea’s major bathymetric steps are (1) shallow (0–200 m) continental shelf (45.8% of the total area), (2) continental slope (200–3000 m, 17.4%), and (c) deep basins (>3000 m, 36.8%). The volumes of water between 0–200, 200–3000, and below 3000 m are, respectively, 8.3%, 78.9%, and 12.8% of the total volume or 315,000, 2,995,000, and 486,000 km3, respectively. The maximum depth of 4420 m is found in Kamchatka Strait. The continental slope of the eastern Bering Sea is cut by several huge canyons: Bering (54–55° N 166–170° W), Pribilof

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(56° N 169° W), Zhemchug (58° N 175° W), Pervenets (59.5° N 178° W), and Navarin (60.5° N 179° W). With the vertical extent of 3 km, the Bering, Pribilof and Zhemchug Canyons are among the world’s deepest, while the 400-km-long Bering Canyon is one of the world’s longest canyons.

Weather, Climate, and Sea Ice In winter, the Bering Sea weather is largely determined by the Siberian High (anticyclonic high-pressure atmospheric system) and the Aleutian Low (cyclonic low-pressure system). The combined influence of both systems results in persistent strong winds from the north, 7–12 m s−1 in the mean. Frequent outbreaks of cold Arctic air make the Bering Sea one of the most hazardous seas, with a maximum observed wave height of 21 m. The absolute temperature minimum over the Bering Sea varies from −15°C (5°F) in the south down to −40°C (–40°F) in the north. In summer, the Siberian High weakens and shifts to the west, while the Aleutian Low almost disappears, whereas the North Pacific High strengthens and advances northward, resulting in persistent southern winds, 4–7 m s−1 on average. The Bering Sea notorious fog is most frequent in June-July. The Bering Sea is partly ice-covered in winter and is ice-free in summer. Sea ice formation begins in late October in the northern Bering Sea, advances southward and accelerates in December-January, especially along the Siberian and Alaskan coasts. The sea ice cover is at a maximum in March-April, when it reaches the southern tip of Kamchatka. The sea becomes ice-free in June-July. Recurring polynyas are observed in the eastern Bering Sea north and south of large islands (Nunivak, St Lawrence, and St Matthew) and also south of Chukchi Peninsula (in Anadyr Gulf), southwest of Seward Peninsula, and north and south of Yukon Delta. The extent of the seasonal ice cover experiences significant interannual and decadal fluctuations. For example, over the Eastern Bering Sea Shelf the interannual range of the maximum ice extent exceeds 300 km in the north-south direction.

Main Oceanographic Parameters: Temperature and Salinity The vertical distribution of temperature is typical of the Subarctic water structure that in summer features a cold subsurface later (a remnant of winter convection) underlain by an intermediate warm layer. This layered structure is especially well defined over deep basins but poorly defined near the Aleutian Islands and nonexistent over the shallow part of the Eastern Bering Sea Shelf with depths <70–80 m. In winter, the

BERING SEA ocean’s large heat losses to the atmosphere drive thermal convection that causes overturning and mixing of the water column down to 150–200 m depth, sometimes to 250–300 m, so the shelf waters (depth <200 m) become completely vertically mixed. At any time of year the sea surface temperature (SST) in the Bering Sea decreases northward, reflecting the Arctic/Siberian influence. During the coldest months (February-March), the SST ranges from 3°C near the Aleutian Islands to below –1°C over the entire Eastern Bering Sea Shelf. Two isolated areas of extremely low SST (<–1°C) are observed off Koryak Coast and in/off Karaginsky-Olyutorsky Bays. During the warmest month (August), the north-south SST gradient almost vanishes; hence, the same temperatures of 8–10°C are observed across the entire Bering Sea, except for the shallow Bristol Bay, Kuskokwim Bay, Norton Sound, and Karaginsky-Olyutorsky Bays, where the SST exceeds 11°C, and Chirikov Basin (north of St Lawrence Island) with the SST between 5°C and 7°C. In the subsurface layers the maximum temperatures are associated with the relatively warm Pacific waters that enter the Bering Sea mostly via Near Strait. The vertical distribution of salinity reflects surface freshening by river runoff; therefore, salinity increases with depth everywhere and at any time of the year. A small vertical inversion of salinity occurs only during ice formation owing to brine release from the upper layer. The main horizontal gradient of sea surface salinity (SSS) is between the relatively fresh Eastern Bering Sea Shelf waters and the saline waters of the deep Bering Sea. This salinity front exists year round along the shelf break and slope. The off-shelf waters of the deep Bering Sea have a relatively constant SSS through the year that increases from <32.5 to >33.0 toward the Aleutian passes. The Eastern Bering Sea Shelf water’s SSS changes with season from 32.0 to 32.5 in winter down to <31 in summer. The lowest SSS values are observed in Anadyr Gulf (19–20 in June), Norton Sound (<28–29 in June-September), and Bristol Bay (<29–30 in June-August). The major rivers are Yukon and Kuskokwim that discharge, on an average, 6412 and 1503 m3 s−1, respectively. The maximum peak discharge of Anadyr River is 1780 m3 s−1. In summer (June-September), another salinity front forms along the shelf break off Koryak Coast and Kamchatka Peninsula. Across this front the SSS ranges from <30 over the shelf to >32.5 in the offshore waters.

Tides and Currents Both diurnal and semidiurnal tides occur in the Bering Sea. Tidal amplitude at the Bering Sea coast varies

from <0.5 m along the eastern Chukotka Coast to 1–2 m along the Alaskan Coast, to >2 m along Koryak and Kamchatka coasts, to >5 m in Kuskokwim Bay and up to 8.5 m in Bristol Bay. On the Aleutian Islands the tidal magnitude is between 1.5 and 2.3 m. Owing to interaction with topography, tidal currents may amplify to significantly exceed the mean flow. For example, the mean flow over Bristol Bay’s middle shelf is only 2 cm s−1, whereas the tidal currents attain 20 cm s−1. Tidal currents play an especially important role in nutrients and sediment transport between the shelf edge and deep ocean. The two major factors that largely determine the Bering Sea circulation are (a) winds and (b) inflows and outflows through straits that connect the sea with the North Pacific and Arctic Ocean. Pacific waters carried by the Alaskan Stream, a jet current with a speed up to 100 cm s−1, enter the Bering Sea via several straits between the Aleutian Islands. The most important straits are Unimak Pass (165° W), Amukta Pass (172° W), Amchitka Pass (180° W), Buldir Pass (175° E), and Near Strait (169° E). The northward inflows to the Bering Sea are concentrated along the eastern side of these passes, whereas the outflows are shifted to their western side. The net northward flow through Near Strait, Buldir, Amchitka, and Amukta passes are, respectively, 9, 1, 2, and 0.5 Sv (1 Sv=106 m3 s−1), while the net southward flow through Kamchatka Strait is 12 Sv. Upon entering the Bering Sea, the Pacific waters turn east and continue along the Aleutian Islands as the Aleutian North Slope Current. After reaching the Eastern Bering Sea Shelf, this current turns northwest and flows off the shelf break as the Bering Sea Slope Current (with an average speed up to 15 cm s−1) until Cape Navarin (62.5° N 179° E), where it splits. The southward branch, the swift (up to 100 cm s−1) Kamchatka Current, follows the continental slope off Koryak Coast and Kamchatka Peninsula and exits the Bering Sea via Kamchatka Strait. The northern branch (Anadyr Current) flows over the northern Bering Sea shelf via Anadyr Strait toward Bering Strait. The dominant flow over the Eastern Bering Sea Shelf is rather diffuse and sluggish and generally directed northwest. The only coherent shelf current is the northward Alaskan Coastal Current with an average speed of 3–5 cm s−1.

Fronts The Bering Sea oceanographic structure is characterized by a series of fronts, sharp boundaries between different stratification types associated with enhanced horizontal gradients of water properties such as temperature, salinity, density, dissolved oxygen, nutrients, etc. These fronts are especially well documented in the

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BERING STRAIT southeastern Bering Sea that features three prominent fronts, inner, middle, and outer, that correspond roughly to the 50, 100, and 170 m (shelf break) isobaths, respectively. Tides are especially important over the Eastern Bering Sea Shelf, where strong tidal mixing fronts are observed to completely surround main islands of the Pribilof Archipelago. The fronts play a key role as principal biogeographical boundaries. They separate distinct biotopes and at the same time they are biotopes per se. The primary and secondary biological productivity is enhanced at fronts that attract fish, sea birds, and marine mammals, including whales. Much less is known, however, about the northern Bering Sea fronts that are related to the southeastern Bering Sea fronts, since the mean alongfront flows are northwestward so that the northern fronts are essentially downstream extensions of the southern fronts. At the same time, the northern Bering Sea frontal pattern continues to the Chukchi Sea via Bering Strait. This connection is highly important: The Bering Slope Current associated with the shelf break front transports a large amount of nutrients and phytoplankton to Anadyr Gulf, from where it is carried by the Anadyr Current to Chirikov Basin (north of St Lawrence Island) and eventually to the Chukchi Sea.

Primary Production and Fisheries The Bering Sea and especially its eastern shelf is one of the most productive areas of the world’s oceans. The average primary production exceeds 125 g C m−2 per year over most of the shelf and is as high as 175–275 g C m−2 per year in the so-called “Green Belt,” the extremely productive shelf edge area along the Eastern Bering Sea Shelf, Koryak Coast, and Kamchatka Peninsula, off Anadyr Gulf and in Chirikov Basin. The most commercially important fish species are currently pollock, cod, salmon, and flounder. Other species such as herring, yellowfin sole, rockfish, and halibut were important in the past and might become important again in the future. Bristol Bay and Aleutian Islands are the most important crab fishery grounds. Production at higher trophic levels can be measured by annual commercial fisheries landings, up to 2 million tons, or the total estimated biomass ever attained by the most abundant commercially important species, pollock, up to 20 million tons in the mid-1980s. During that period, the total annual fisheries landings in the Bering Sea peaked at 4.7 million tons or nearly 7% of the global catch. The biomass and landings of many species declined drastically partly because of overfishing and partly due to climate change (so-called “regime shifts”), since the Bering Sea is believed to be an area where the global climate warming signal amplifies. IGOR BELKIN

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See also Aleutian Islands; Arctic Ocean; Bering Strait; Bering, Vitus; Commander Islands; North Pacific; St Lawrence Island Further Reading Coachman, L.K., “Circulation, water masses, and fluxes on the southeastern Bering Sea shelf.” Continental Shelf Research, 5(1/2) (1986): 23–108 Loughlin, T.R. & K. Ohtani (editors), Dynamics of the Bering Sea, University of Alaska Sea Grant, AK-SG-99-03, Fairbanks, Alaska, 1999 Mathisen, O.A. & K.O. Coyle (editors), Ecology of the Bering Sea: A Review of Russian Literature, University of Alaska Sea Grant Report No. 96-01, Fairbanks, Alaska, 1996 National Research Council, The Bering Sea Ecosystem, Washington, District of Columbia: National Academy Press, 1996 Schumacher, J.D. & P.J. Stabeno, “Continental shelf of the Bering Sea.”The Sea, Volume 11, edited by A.R. Robinson and K.H. Brink, New York: Wiley, 1998, pp. 789–822 Springer, A.M., C.P. McRoy & M.V. Flint, “The Bering Sea Green Belt: shelf-edge processes and ecosystem production.” Fisheries Oceanography, 5(3/4) (1996): 205–223 Terziev, F.S. (editor), Hydrometeorology and Hydrochemistry of the Seas, Volume X, Bering Sea, Issue 1, Hydrometeorological Conditions, Rosgidromet, Gidrometeoizdat, St Petersburg, 1999, 300pp (in Russian)

BERING STRAIT The Bering Strait is a relatively shallow and narrow strait, 55 miles (96 km) wide between the Chukchi Peninsula of extreme northeast Asia and the Seward Peninsula of northwest North America, connecting the Bering Sea northward arm of the Pacific Ocean with the southward Chukchi Sea of the Arctic Ocean. The strait was first sailed by the Russian explorer Semyon Dezhnev in 1648, but is better associated with the Danish navigator Vitus Bering. Bering entered the newly formed navy of the Russian Czar Peter the Great, and in 1724 was commissioned to explore the water routes between Siberia and North America. Although bad weather prevented him from sighting the North American continent on passing through the strait in 1728, he was, however, able to demonstrate that the Asian and North American continents are not joined. Bering was later responsible for mapping large areas of the northern Siberian coast. In 1741, he explored the Aleutian Islands where he and his crew became ill with scurvy and eventually, encountering storms and fog, were wrecked on an uninhabited island where Bering died of exposure. A few members of the expedition survived to return to Kamchatka in 1742. The Island where Bering died has been named Bering Island in his honor. During the Pleistocene, the sea level was lowered by as much as 100–120 m and a land bridge existed

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between Alaska’s Seward Peninsula and Russia’s Chukotka Peninsula. The Bering Strait was created about 9000 years ago, as rising sea level flooded the exposed land area. It is thought that the ancestors of Native Americans and Inuit crossed the land bridge from northeast Asia into North America. The narrowness of the strait makes it possible for small boats today to cross from the Chukchi Peninsula to the Seward Peninsula, but the strait is usually frozen over from October to June. The Diomede Islands are in the strait as is the International Date Line and the official boundary between Russia and Alaska. Pacific water flows through the Bering Strait to enter the Arctic Ocean. This water, colder and less saline than water of Atlantic origin, affects ocean currents and the density structure of much of the Arctic Ocean. The nutrient-rich Pacific waters transport large amounts of nutrients and phytoplankton and support high primary productivity in the Bering and Chukchi seas. The strait is also a major pathway for contaminants to enter the Arctic Ocean, and a gateway for migratory birds and marine mammals. In spring, waterfowl follow the major lead (linear opening in the pack ice) north to the Bering Strait to reach summer feeding grounds, and in summer these waters support major seabird nesting colonies. The strait is used by 14 species of marine mammals, who migrate between the North Pacific Ocean and the Beaufort Sea and Wrangel Island.

The Bering Straits region is home to the Iñupiat, the Yupiit, an Inuit people of western Alaska, and Siberian (Chukotkan) Yupik, most of whom depend on subsistence hunting and fishing. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was passed by the US Congress in 1971, settling a land dispute between the US and Alaska state governments and the indigenous populations of the area. The Act entitles the Bering Straits Native Corporation (BSNC) to over two million acres of land and 30% of the revenues derived thereof. The remaining 70% is redistributed on a pro rata basis among the other 12 regional corporations in Alaska. A number of small and large business enterprises have been founded under the umbrella of the BSNC. The Mission Statement for BSNC is “To improve the quality of life of our people through economic development while protecting our land, and preserving our culture and heritage.” RALPH M. MYERSON See also Arctic Ocean; Beringia; Bering Sea; Bering, Vitus; Chukchi Sea; Diomede Islands; Seward Peninsula

BERING, VITUS Vitus Bering, a Dane in Russian service, was commissioned by Russian Czar Peter I to undertake a voyage to investigate whether Asia and North America were one continent (the so-called First Kamchatka

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BERING, VITUS Expedition). The expedition traveled overland to the Kamchatka Peninsula with all the supplies needed, including those for building the ships. Bering left St Petersburg in February 1725 with 34 participants via Tobolsk and Yakutsk and reached Okhotsk in 1727. His seconds in command were Lt. Martin Spangberg, also a Dane in Russian service, and Aleksey Chirikov. It was not until July that the expedition could sail to Kamchatka. Bering then passed to the east coast to build another ship, St Gabriel. An additional year passed, so Bering did not set off until July 1728 together with Spangberg and Chirikov. Bering first followed the coast northward, charting the coastline, and in the beginning of August they sighted an island, which they named St Lawrence. Afraid of being caught by the ice, Bering returned after sighting what he thought was the easternmost point of Asia (67°18′ N). He was convinced that there was no land connection, only water, between Asia and North America. The expedition set off in the summer to return to St Petersburg. Arriving in the Russian capital on March 1, 1730, only two months after his return, Bering presented his report to the Admiralty Collegium and soon produced a plan for a Second Kamchatka Expedition (also known as the Great Northern Expedition, 1733–1749). He suggested exploration of the land east of Kamchatka and the northern coast of Siberia. This was one of the largest exploring expeditions ever with around 3000 participants, with officers, sailors, soldiers, artists, artisans, and shipbuilders among them. Construction equipment and provisions had to be carried through Siberia. A special mail service to St Petersburg was even established. The expedition was divided into three groups, but Bering had overall command from 1732. A first group left St Petersburg in February 1733, commanded by Spangberg. Bering left in April with a second group and the scientists followed in August. Georg Steller, a German scientist, left St Petersburg in 1737 and joined the other scientists at the end of 1738. Among these were the German naturalist Johann Gmelin, the French astronomer Louis De L’Isle De La Croyère, and the German historian Gerhard Friedrich Müller. Gmelin himself devised the plans for the natural science research and Müller also wrote his own instructions, and on the way through Siberia he copied a large number of historical documents. Astronomic observations were planned to exactly determine the longitude and latitude of each place visited, to aid in map construction. Other instructions concerned meteorological observations and the work of artists to record the journey. Bering traveled with Chirikov and others on the ships St Paul and St Peter from Okhotsk in September

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1740. The building of the ships had started in 1737 in Okhotsk. Overwintering was on Kamchatka at the town of Petropavlovsk, founded by Bering in 1740 and named after the two ships. On leaving Petropavlovsk in June 1741, the two ships were hit by hard storms after departure and were separated. Chirikov, who commanded St Paul, reached the North American coast but was unable to land. He sighted land near the Alexander Islands on July 15, 1741. Further delays caused an outbreak of scurvy on board. One of those who died was De La Croyère, and in October the survivors reached Petropavlovsk. One of Bering’s orders from St Petersburg was to search for a mythical land believed to lie east of Asia, Juan da Gama’s Land, believed to have been found by the Spanish in the 16th century. Bering, commanding St Peter, with a crew of 77, found no trace of it. In July, the Alaskan coast was sighted with a mountain, named Mount St Elias by Bering, as it was found on St Elias day, July 16. It is Alaska’s second highest mountain. A short stop was made on Kayak Island, which gave Georg Steller, a German scientist who was on board, time for research on land. Bering, now 60 years old and increasingly suffering from scurvy, now tried to follow the coast to the northwest, but was hampered by fog. Sailing toward the Aleutian Islands he discovered several volcanoes. One of the crew members died on August 29, and one of the volcanic island groups was named Shumagin Islands after the dead crew member. A boat was landed here and fresh water found. On using other islands for protection against a storm, the ship was approached by two men in canoes, but they did not want to board. Lt. Sven Waxell, a Swedish naval officer in Russian service, took a boat ashore and encountered Aleut natives. Using an English book, with some American words, he tried to engage them in conversation. The next day seven canoes approached the ship, but had to return due to strong winds. During September and October, the ship sailed in uncharted waters south of the Aleutians. In November, Bering Island (in the Commander island group) was discovered. Bering decided that the crew should overwinter on the island, but died on December 8, 1741. The ship was wrecked and the crew had to be transported to shore. They could not build houses, so holes were dug in the ground and covered with sail-cloth. Many crew members died before spring came. Steller was not affected at all by scurvy. His description of the natural characteristics and animal life during the winter and spring contributed greatly to the scientific results of the expedition. Meanwhile Lt. Waxell had taken over as second-in-command. Both the vessel and most of the crew were lost, but Waxell led the survivors back on a boat built from the wreckage of the old ship. On August 13, Bering Island was

BERINGIA left and early in September 1742 the survivors returned back to Petropavlovsk. The valuable furs and sea otter pelts they brought back led to intense Russian interest in the American continent in the North Pacific. Generally the expedition was well planned, but problems caused by local officials in Siberia led to many delays and problems on the way to Kamchatka. The result of the voyage was a greatly improved knowledge of the area between Asia and North America and the sea between the continents. Reports were published after the death of both Bering and Steller, who died in Siberia in 1746 on his way back to St Petersburg. An expedition (Danish) to find Bering’s grave was undertaken in 1991. The body of Bering and five other members of the crew were found and returned with military honors to Petropavlovsk in 1992. They were later reinterred on Bering Island.

Biography Vitus Jonassen Bering was born in Horsens, Denmark, in August 1681. He went to sea as a young man and was a sailor on the Danish East India trade when he was recruited in 1703 into the Russian Navy by Norwegian Admiral Cornelis Cruys. He fought as a lieutenant and from 1710 as captain in the Great Northern War (1700–1721). He married Anna Christina Puellse (from Vyborg) in 1718 and settled there in 1724, fathering several children. Bering returned to Russian service in 1725 leading the First Kamchatka Expedition (1725–1730) and the Great Northern Expedition 1733 to his death in 1741, during which Alaska was discovered. He died on Bering Island in Bering Sea on December 19, 1741. BERTIL HAGGMAN See also Chirikov, Alexei; Second Kamchatka Expedition; Steller, Georg Further Reading Ford, Corey, Where the Sea Breaks its Back: The Epic Story of a Pioneer Naturalist and the Discovery of Alaska, Boston: Little Brown, 1966 Golder, F.A. (editor), “Bering’s voyages. An account of efforts of the Russians to determine the relation of Asia and America.” New York: American Geographical Society, 1922 Kushnarev, E.G., Bering’s Search for the Strait: The First Kamchatka Expedition, 1725–1730, edited and translated by E.A.P. Crownhart-Vaughan, Portland, Oregon: Oregon Historical Society Press, 1990 Steller, Georg Wilhelm, Journal of a Voyage with Bering, 1741–1742, edited by O.W. Frost, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988 Waxell, Sven, The American Expedition, London: William Hodge, 1952

BERINGIA During the Pleistocene, a series of ice ages, or glaciations, affected most of the high-latitude regions in the Northern Hemisphere. When these glaciations occurred, enormous quantities of water became frozen into continental-sized ice sheets, causing the global sea level to drop significantly. For instance, during the last glaciation, the global sea level dropped by about 120 m (almost 400 ft). The continental shelf regions of the Bering and Chukchi seas between Siberia and Alaska are relatively shallow, only about 30–110 m (100–360 ft) below modern sea level. When the sea level dropped during glacial periods, the shelf regions between Siberia and Alaska became dry land, forming a land bridge between western Alaska and eastern Siberia. This land bridge was not a narrow isthmus between the two continents: from north to south, the land bridge extended more than 1000 km (600 miles). The lowlands of Beringia, however, were not buried by glacial ice in the Pleistocene. This is quite remarkable, because nearly all other high-latitude lands were repeatedly buried by glacial ice during the Pleistocene. Lowland Beringia remained unglaciated because the land bridge cut off circulation between the North Pacific and Arctic oceans, which, in turn, greatly diminished the landward flow of relatively warm, moist air masses from the North Pacific. So Pleistocene ice sheets did not form in Beringia because it was too dry. There were Pleistocene glaciers in Beringia, but only in high mountains. Because of this, Beringia formed a unique refuge for cold-adapted plants and animals.

Beringian Flora and Fauna During each Pleistocene glaciation, temperatures dropped in Beringia, aridity increased, and conifer forests gave way to steppe-tundra (see Polar Steppe). This vegetation covered the Beringian lowlands, and was a mixture of plants that today are found in steppe (dry grassland) regions, such as the steppes of Central Asia, and tundra plants that grow today in Arctic regions. In spite of being in such high latitudes, the steppe-tundra was a highly productive ecosystem. Unlike the modern-day Arctic, where soils are often very wet and the active layer over permafrost is shallow, the soils of the Pleistocene steppe-tundra were drier, and thawed more deeply in the summer. Steppetundra soils yielded their nutrients more readily to plants. The combination of steppe and tundra plant species formed a rich mosaic of vegetation, supporting an abundant, diverse mammal fauna. The only modern ecosystem that has as large a variety of grassland animals is the African Savannah. The large mammal fauna of Beringia included woolly mammoth, woolly

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Extent of Beringia at last glacial maxima, when sea level had dropped to expose a new shoreline.

rhinoceros, saiga antelope, giant sloths, one or more species of Pleistocene horses, large-horned bison, camels, and two species of Pleistocene muskox. Predators included Pleistocene lion, saber-toothed and scimitar cats, and the giant short-faced bear. These species all became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene, but they shared the land with species that are still living, such as moose, modern muskox, Dall’s sheep, and caribou. Human beings were the last large mammal species to enter Eastern Beringia (Alaska and the Yukon Territory) before the land bridge was flooded by sea water, about 12,000 years ago.

Human Entrance into the New World, via the Bering Land Bridge Based on what we know from the archaeological record, the first people to cross over the Bering Land Bridge were Paleo-Indians (ancestors to the modern Native American tribes). They probably crossed the land bridge sometime before 13,000 years ago, pursuing large game animals. Because the land bridge was such a huge region in itself, it seems unlikely that these first human immigrants would have been aware that they were entering a new continent. The oldest well-dated human occupations in Alaska date from this time, but these archaeological sites are located in the interior regions of Alaska, so it seems probable that humans entered western Alaska at some earlier date. Shortly after their arrival, however, the Beringian ecosystem started to break down in the face of enormous environmental change. Temperatures rose rapidly about this time, bringing a wholesale change in regional vegetation. The mammoths, Pleistocene horses and camels, large-horned bison, and giant sloths that had roamed Beringia became extinct within a few centuries after the arrival of humans, along with many

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of the large predators. Some scientists argue that these cold-adapted animals could not tolerate the warm climates of the Holocene (the current interglacial period that began 10,000 years ago). This might be convincing, if it were not for the fact that the same cold-adapted species withstood the warm climates of several previous interglacial periods, at least one of which was probably substantially warmer than anything yet experienced in the Holocene. So climatic warming per se was not enough to cause the extinction of the large mammals. There must have been some unique environmental factors influencing the megafauna at the end of the last ice age. Some argue that human beings were the most important agent in dispatching the Pleistocene megafauna. Others argue that a combination of circumstances, including both environmental change and human hunting pressure, brought about the extinction of these animals. This question is still being debated by paleontologists. The first Americans found a way to migrate south of Beringia and colonize the rest of North and South America. Their migration route remains an unsolved mystery (see Migration (Prehistory)), but two theories have gained prominence in recent years. One theory says that the Paleo-Indians migrated south along an ice-free corridor which opened up along the eastern flank of the Rocky Mountains in Alberta. After passing through this corridor, they spread out to colonize first North, then South America. A second theory states that people traveled by small boats or canoes, along the southern coast of Alaska and the west coast of British Columbia, thereby reaching icefree regions of the Pacific coast, and thence commencing their inland migration. The boat theory gains support from data at an archaeological site near the southern coast of Chile, called Monte Verde. At this site, human occupation has been documented back to more than 13,000 years ago. At that time, the ice-free corridor had not yet opened in Canada, so the inhabitants of Monte Verde almost certainly arrived there by boat. SCOTT ELIAS See also Archaeology of the Arctic: Alaska and Beringia; Holocene; Land Bridges and the Arctic Continental Shelf; Migration (Prehistory); Pleistocene Megafauna; Polar Steppe; Quaternary Period Further Reading Dixon, E.J., Bones, Boats, and Bison. Archaeology of the First Colonization of Western North America, Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 1999 Elias, S.A., Ice Age History of Alaskan National Parks, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995

BERNIER, JOSEPH-ELZÉAR Elias, S.A. & J. Brigham-Grette (editors), “Beringian paleoenvironments.” Quaternary Science Reviews, 20(1–3) (2001): 574pp Guthrie, R.D., Frozen Fauna of the Mammoth Steppe. The Story of Blue Babe, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990 Hopkins, D.M., J.V. Matthews, C.E. Schweger, & S.B. Young,Paleoecology of Beringia, New York: Academic Press, 1982 Martin, P.S. & R.G. Klein (editors), Quaternary Extinctions, Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press, 1989

BERNIER, JOSEPH-ELZÉAR Joseph-Elzéar Bernier was born at L’Islet, Québec, on January 1, 1852. A sea captain by the age of 17, Bernier was at sea, save for a few brief intervals, for sixty years, and commanded over 100 ships. His interest in Arctic exploration originated in 1871 when he saw Charles Francis Hall’s Polaris in dry-dock being readied for a voyage to the North Pole. Bernier then began to read the history of polar exploration and to study the problems of Arctic navigation. In 1895, Bernier retired temporarily from the sea and was appointed governor of the Québec city jail, a position that allowed him free time to study the field of Arctic exploration from a historical perspective. During this period he set an ambitious goal, that is, the discovery of the North Pole for Canada. He analyzed the available data—Arctic winds, ice conditions, and currents—before deciding that he would route his assault on the pole by ship via Bering Strait and over the pole to Spitsbergen. An able publicist, Bernier began in 1898 to promote his plan and turned to the Canadian government for support. In 1904, the government purchased the Gauss, a German ship that had wintered successfully in the Antarctic. Renamed the Arctic, the ship was provisioned for Bernier’s polar expedition before the government changed its plans. Instead, Bernier took the ship to Hudson Bay to deliver supplies to the police post at Fullerton, California, established to exert Canadian sovereignty over American whaling interests. The subsequent wintering bolstered Bernier’s fascination with the Arctic. Canada had made no attempt to use its Arctic territories effectively since their transfer from Britain in 1880. American and Norwegian expeditions had been active on Ellesmere Island, and Scots and Americans continued to dominate Arctic whaling. The only official Canadian government expedition to the High Arctic had been that of Albert Peter Low in 1903. In 1906, Bernier made the first of his three famous, flagwaving, cairn-building voyages to assert Canadian sovereignty in the far north. In that year the government’s department of marine and fisheries ordered Bernier north to the Arctic

Archipelago to annex lands, build cairns, and collect customs dues from foreign whaling ships. Bernier took the Arctic into Lancaster Sound, Navy Board Inlet, and Eclipse Sound, then west through Barrow Strait, taking possession of many islands in the Arctic Archipelago, before reaching his farthest point west at Melville Island. He wintered at Albert Harbour, near what is today Pond Inlet. Bernier recognized that in claiming land for Canada, his actions also made the Inuit inhabitants Canadian. Although his orders did not require it, Bernier explained the ways of Canada to the Inuit. In 1908, the governments instructed Bernier to take the Arctic as far as Etah, Greenland, from where he proceeded west to winter at Winter Harbour on Melville Island, further north of where any Inuit lived. The following spring, sled parties visited and claimed Banks, Victoria, and King William islands. On July 1, 1909, at Winter Harbour, Bernier proclaimed sovereignty over the entire Arctic Archipelago as far north as the pole, the first time Canada had claimed ownership based on the sector principle. In 1910, Bernier received orders north again, to patrol the waters of the Arctic Archipelago, issue whaling licences to foreign whalers, and act as justice of the peace and protector of wildlife in the region. However, ice prevented the ship from getting through McClure Strait. His farthest point west was 30 miles southwest of Cape Ross at the mouth of Liddon Gulf. Disappointed in failing to complete the North West Passage, Bernier returned eastward and wintered at Arctic Bay. Bernier’s return south in the fall of 1911 coincided with a change in government in Ottawa. The new government had a different approach to northern development, and would no longer send ceremonial expeditions to the Arctic. For the next decade, the Arctic was neglected by officialdom, virtually forgotten by all except private traders, until the initiation of the Eastern Arctic Patrol in 1922. In 1910, Bernier had purchased land and buildings at Pond Inlet and Bylot Island from Scottish whaling interests. The government also granted him a nearby tract of land 960 acres in area that he named “Berniera” and planned to use as a private trader and entrepreneur in the Arctic. In 1912, he returned to northern Baffin Island with his own ship, the Minnie Maud, to trade and search for gold. (Two other expeditions visited northern Baffin Island that same year in an unsuccessful search for gold.) The crew of six French Canadians, two Englishmen, and one New Zealander wintered on shore in wooden shacks and later in snow houses with the Inuit. The expedition returned south the following year with cargo valued at $25,000. In 1914, Bernier returned to winter again in

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BILIBINO northern Baffin Island with his new ship, the Guide. In 1918, he sold his holdings to a rival trading company, the Arctic Gold Exploration Syndicate. In 1922, the department of the interior brought Bernier, then 70 years old, out of retirement to captain the Arctic on an expedition sent north to establish Royal Canadian Mounted Police posts. The expedition, commanded by John Davidson Craig, was the first of an annual series of voyages known as the Eastern Arctic Patrol. The following year, Bernier again commanded the Arctic when it sailed to Pond Inlet for the trial of three Inuit accused of the murder of a trader. Bernier captained the Arctic again for the next two summers. In the fall of 1925, after a short assignment with the department of railways and canals, he retired. He died in Lévis, Québec on December 26, 1934. Bernier broke new ground in turning the imagination and vision of the Canadian public and its political leaders toward the North, and he did so with flair and skill. Bernier’s accomplishment was not in traveling to new lands, but in securing Canada’s claim to lands that other expeditions, mostly British, had already discovered and cursorily explored. He charted in more detail, described with more accuracy, and explored with more tenacity areas that had been found by others; in doing so he proclaimed Canada’s sovereignty in the Arctic.

Biography Born at L’Islet, Québec on January 1, 1852, JosephElzéar Bernier, son of Thomas Bernier and HenrietteCélina Paradis, was best known for the expeditions he commanded for the Canadian government to extend sovereignty over large areas of the Arctic. He led an expedition to Hudson Bay (1904–1905) and three expeditions to the High Arctic (1906–1907, 1908–1909, 1910–1911), all aboard the Arctic. From 1912 until 1918 he was engaged in private trading, with a fur trading post in northern Baffin Island. Coming out of retirement, Bernier was again captain of the Arctic for four summer voyages beginning in 1922, the beginning of a series of official voyages known as the Eastern Arctic Patrol. Bernier was married twice, to Rose Caron (November 1870) and to Alma Lemieux (July 1919). He and his first wife adopted his godchild, Almina Caron. Bernier died on December 26, 1934. His autobiography, Master Mariner and Arctic Explorer, was published posthumously in 1939. KENN HARPER See also Race to the North Pole; Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)

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Further Reading Report on the Dominion Government Expedition to Arctic Islands and the Hudson Strait on board the C.G.S. “Arctic” 1906–1907, Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1909 Report on the Dominion Government Expedition to the Northern Waters and Arctic Archipelago of the D. G. S. “Arctic” in 1910 Under Command of J.E. Bernier, Officer in Charge and Fishery Officer, Ottawa: Department of Marine and Fisheries, n.d. Report on the Dominion of Canada Government Expedition to the Arctic Islands and Hudson Strait on board the D.G.S. Arctic. Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, 1910 Bernier, Captain J.E., Master Mariner and Arctic Explorer, Ottawa: Privately Printed, 1939 Dorion-Robitaille, Yolande, Captain J.E. Bernier’s Contribution to Canadian Sovereignty in the Arctic, Ottawa: Indian and Northern Affairs, Government of Canada, 1978 Finnie, Richard, “Farewell voyages: Bernier and the ‘Arctic’.” The Beaver (summer) (1974): 44–54 Morrison, William R., Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894–1925, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1985 Tremblay, Alfred, Cruise of the Minnie Maud, Québec: The Arctic Exchange and Publishing Limited, 1921 Zaslow, Morris, The Opening of the Canadian North 1870–1914, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1971 ———, The Northward Expansion of Canada, 1914–1967, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1988

BILIBINO Bilibino (166° E 68° N) is a district administrative center of the Chukchi Autonomous Okrug. The town is located on the shore of Bol’shoy Keperveem River—a tributary of Malyi Anyuy River in the Kolyma Basin. At first it was a settlement of geologists and miners named Karalveyem, which in Chukchi means “reindeer corral.” In 1956, at the wish of residents, it was renamed after the geologist Yuri Bilibin who had studied gold deposits in Kolyma Basin and predicted a rich gold-bearing province there. The population of Bilibino was approximately 7000 in 2001. Russians predominated, although the population included many Ukrainians and a small number of Chukchi, Even, and other indigenous people. Bilibino’s primary activities have been connected to the Geological Survey, an ore-processing plant, a mechanical plant, and the nuclear power plant. Bilibino has two schools, a hospital, and many of its residents work in the district administration, service, trade, and construction fields of employment. The town originated in 1928 when a small geological party of eight men and a caravan of packed horses, led by young Yuri Bilibin, started from the shore of the Okhotsk sea inland to study the Kolyma Basin. Bilibin had not anticipated that his success would fuel what would become Dal’stroy, the Soviet Union’s slave labor camp system at Kolyma and a sinister predecessor to Auschwitz. Hundreds of thousands of political

BILIBINO NUCLEAR POWER PLANT prisoners, interned at Dal’stroy, were destined to dig frozen earth in search for gold. Bilibin’s geological prognosis was proven in 1940 and later, in 1953 and 1955, gold was discovered in the Karalveem river valley where Bilibino is located. The Bilibino region also features deposits of copper, platinum, and coal. In 1955, a medical center and airport opened in the settlement. In 1958, Bilibino received the town status and in 1961 became a district center. The floating diesel power station “Polar Light” —the first then in the Far North—provided the town’s electricity. In 1965, the government decided to build the Bilibino Nuclear Power Plant, which first produced electricity in 1974. By 1976 four nuclear reactors were completed. The town climate is extremely harsh: temperatures reach −60°C in winter and +30°C in summer. Fortunately permafrost layers are deep (over 1 m) so there is larch forest in the surrounding areas and poplar forests along the river valley even within the town. The residents are mainly engineers, geologists, and plant and mechanical workers. The first local newspaper (Golden Chukotka) began publishing in 1965. Access to television was made possible in 1970 through the Sputnik Orbita system. Radio, telephone, and Internet links are today accessible. Before 1950, postal service was poor to nonexistent; residents received mail once or twice monthly via dog- or deersled. Loads for the developing gold industry were transported from Magadan by the Kolyma highway. A winter road to Zelenyy Mys, a port on the Kolyma River, began in 1955 and remains a vital point of connection. All transportation travels by the Northern Sea Route and farther up along Kolyma River. Rich gold deposits and the nuclear power plant remain the primary forms of subsistence in Bilibino. LEONID M. BASKIN See also Bilibino Nuclear Power Plant; Kolyma River Further Reading Bartkova, I. Berling & D. Vishnevskii, Rossiiskaya Federatsiya Dal’nii Vostok (Russian Federation Far East), Moscow: Mysl’, 1971 Bykov, D., Mechta Abramovicha (Abramovich’s Dream) in Sobesednik, 15.07.2001:3 Gaman, O., Bilibinskii rayon (Bilibino district), Magadan: Knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1986 Glazyrin, Georgii, Istoricheskie khroniki Bilibinskogo rayona za 1930–1980 (Historic Chronicles of Bilibinskii District During 1930–1980), Magadan: Magadanskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1980 Shilo Nikolay (editor), Sever Dal’nego Vostoka (North of Far East), Moscow: Nauka, 1970 Vasilevskii, Boris, Dlinnaya doroga v Uelen (Long Way at Uelen), Moscow: Mysl’, 1980

BILIBINO NUCLEAR POWER PLANT Bilibino Nuclear Power Plant in Russia’s Far North is the world’s northernmost nuclear power plant, and the only one in a permafrost region. (The Kola Power Station is also above the Arctic Circle, but has a milder climate.) Constructed from 1974 to 1976, the plant provides energy for the intensive industrial development of territories in the northern part of Magadan Oblast’ and of the western part of Chukotka. These territories are rich in various mineral resources, but are remote from coal, oil, and gas deposits; therefore, the construction of thermoelectric power stations is highly expensive, as are large-capacity diesel electric stations, which require the delivery of large volumes of diesel fuel. The main consumer of the electrical energy produced by Bilibino Nuclear Power Plant is the western Chukotkan mineral province, where there are sizeable known and prospective reserves of gold and tin ore (cassiterite). In the Bilibino area there are considerable placer deposits of gold and one primary ore gold deposit, Karalveyem, which has provided resources for several decades. Construction projects for nuclear power plants with lower power for industrial purposes were planned in the USSR in the mid-1950s, with the awareness that in remote regions the use of nuclear fuel would solve the problem of fuel transportation. In the 1960s, experimental nuclear power stations of two types were constructed: TES-3 and ARBUS. In 1963, surveying began for construction for the Bilibino Power Plant. This was the first nuclear power station intended to provide electrical energy for the Chaun-Bilibino mining industrial region, and would also provide heat for the residential districts of Bilibino town. The plant has four light-water-cooled graphitemoderated reactors (EGP-6, the type at Chernobyl), each with a capacity of 12 MW. The first reactor began operating in January 1974, the second in December 1974, the third at the end of 1975, and the fourth in December 1976. Each reactor is connected with one heating turbine and one power turbine. The absence of a developed network of electrical transmission lines results in a shortfall of electric energy in some settlements, although at the same time the energetic capacities in other settlements may be underloaded. Construction of the plant had to give due regard to its inaccessibility and to reliability under the extreme conditions of the Far North. During the facility’s construction, work was conducted throughout the year despite conditions of low temperature. The plant design took into account the high seismic activity of the area; construction and plant design stipulated considerable antiseismic resistance. The power plant was erected on monolithic reinforced concrete plates. 241

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The Nuclear Power Station at Bilibino, Chukotka, Siberia. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

The general design accorded that the plant’s running, refueling, and startup and shutdown regimes be as simple as possible. The reactors were stabilized by using construction and materials (in particular, the design of tubular fuel elements) that had been meticulously tested in advance. The plant relies on a singlecircuit system with cycling of pressurized water and steam to cool the reactor. Steam from the heated coolant feeds the turbines that generate electricity; the steam is then condensed (in air heat exchangers, utilizing the very cold air outside) and fed back to the coolant circuit. The cost of the electrical energy from the Bilibino Nuclear Power Plant is 1.3–1.5 times less than in fossil fuel electric power stations and 2 times less than in the Bilibino Diesel Electric Station. The cost of heat energy is also 2 times less than in the boiler houses of Bilibino town. The Bilibino plant is a highly effective thermopower station, especially in the Arctic region, where winter lasts for almost 10 months of the year. The plant is located outside the town of Bilibino and separated from it by a mountain ridge. The level of radiation in the town is usually not higher than 14–15 microroentgen per hour (it is recorded and displayed in the town center). The plant provides for spacious subsidiary agricultural enterprises with many hothouses that supply the town and district with fresh vegetables. The long operation of the plant has demonstrated the successful use of graphite-moderated nuclear reactors for power plants in remote territories. In such plants, reactors with tubular fuel elements are preferable; the same reactors run at optimal performance when the capacity of the plant is relatively small. The high reliability of the plant as a source of power and its accident-free functioning were positive factors that

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speak to the possibility of future reactors of the same design. Between 1979 and 1985, Bilibino averaged less than one accidental stop page per year. The process of construction and long operation of the plant enriched the practice of nuclear energetics with the unique experience of building and managing atomic power stations in inaccessible locations with severe climates and permafrost. The results may aid in the development of a general strategy for providing power sources for territories of the Far North. The experience of creating an industrial and social infrastructure providing for the erection and work of the plant, namely the experience of the development of Bilibino town, was also very valuable. Environmental monitoring over many years has demonstrated that Bilibino Nuclear Power Plant has not had a negative ecological impact either in the surrounding areas or among the population. The main cause of radioactive contamination in Chukotka remains atmospheric nuclear tests conducted in the 1950–1960s, when westerly winds transmitted radioactive deposits from the test grounds in the islands of Novaya Zemlya. However, the plant is not free of problems: its design is today considered obsolete, and with the gold resources coming to an end, system failures are becoming more frequent. The radiation levels among plant staff have increased, although they are still far below the maximum permissible. Radioactive solid waste repositories are at maximum capacity as well. Stricter safety standards and guidelines in the 21st century mandate design and other improvements at the Bilibino Nuclear Power Plant. The current reactors will be decommissioned by 2007 as the plant undergoes a second phase of design with three new 32 MW reactors.

BILLINGS, JOSEPH However, the prospects for construction of the second phase of the plant are unclear. The difficulties of further works at the plant are connected with increasing ecological demands of the population and with a considerable increase in costs. The most pressing problem is the uncertain future for further industrial development of Bilibino District and, as a consequence, the impossibility of determining electrical energy requirements. ALEXIS A. BURYKIN See also Bilibino; Nuclear Testing Further Reading Dolgov, V.V., “Bilibinsakya Nuclear Power Plant: 23 years operation in the specific conditions of the Russian far northeast.” Nuclear Engineering and Design, 173 (1997): 87–97 Petrosyants, A.M., Problemy atomnoy nauki I texniki [The problems of atomic science and technics], Moscow: Nauka, 1979; translated as Problems of nuclear science and technology: the Soviet Union as a world nuclear power, Oxford: Pergamon, 1981 ——— (editor), Atomnaya nauka I texnika SSSR [Atomic science and technics in the USSR], Moscow: Energsatomizdat, 1987 Prirodno-ekonomicheskiy ocherk/Chukotka [The survey of nature and economy: Chukotka], Moscow-Anadyr: ArtLitex Publishers, 1995

BILLINGS, JOSEPH As an astronomer, Joseph Billings took part in James Cook’s last expedition by sailing in the northern part of the Pacific Ocean and in the Chukchi Sea. In the early 1880s on the recommendation of S.P. Vorontsov, a Russian envoy in London, Billings was engaged in Russian service as a warrant officer (1783), a lieutenant (1784), and a captain-lieutenant (1785). In 1785, he was appointed as chief of the Northeast Expedition (1785–1794) that Empress Catherine II sent to seize the coast between the Kolyma River and the Bering Strait; explore the sea between the northeast coast of Russia and the opposite coast of the United States of America; verify information about the land stretching to the north from Bear Island; and study the peoples (especially the Chukchi) and natural resources of that place. The expedition, led by Billings on the Pallas and his deputy Gavriil Andreevich Sarychev in Iasashna, accomplished much work on land and sea from 1785 to 1792. At sea, the group explored and described a part of the Arctic Ocean’s coast from the mouth of the Kolyma east to the Aion Island, the Okhotsk Sea coast from Okhotsk up to Aldoma, five islands of the Kuril chain, the Bering Strait, the Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands, Pribilof, Gvozdev (Diomede Islands) Islands, Saint Matwei Island, Saint Lawrence Island, and King Island (Ukivoke). During land trips the group studied the Verkhoyansk Range and the range later named Chersky, Yana Plateau, Tas-Khayakhtakh Range, the

southern part of Gornostakhsk Range, and the Ulakhan-Bam and Uidomo-Maysky ranges. Information about the terrain of the Oimyakon Plateau and the geography of the Indigir lowlands were collected; highlands between Yudomo and Jugjur Range were explored. The group under Billings’s command discovered the Anadyr and Anuisk mountain ranges. The members of the expedition made 57 maps and plans, and kept 42 journals with descriptions of places visited. The explorers collected significant historic, ethnographic, and linguistic materials relevant to the peoples of northeast Asia and northwest America. Billings was the author of the first ethnographic description of the Yukagir. He also paid great attention to Yakuts, and made observations about the Chukchi, Evens, Buryats, Aleuts, Eskimos, and Cossacks. The explorer described the settlements of the peoples, an appearance of some representatives, their occupations, tools, means of movement, the position of women, and gave information about their beliefs, shamans, rituals, and customs. During this expedition Billings kept a diary in English, which was published by his secretary Martin Sauer in 1802. F.K. Karzhavin translated Billings’ journals into Russian. Some data from Billings’s diaries, his text “Note of Chukotka land” were published in 1811 as a part of Sarychev’s work “Captain Billings’s Travel via the Chukchee Land From the Bering Strait up to Nizhnekolymsk Fortress and Captain Gull’s Sail by Black Eagle Ship along the North-East Ocean in 1791.” The ethnographic materials of the 1785–1795 expedition from all three parts of Billings’s journal (translated by Karzhavin) were published by Z.D. Titova in 1978.

Biography Joseph Billings was born in 1761 in England in Turnham Green. Of noble origin, he registered for military service in 1776. For participation in the Northeast Expedition, he was awarded the St Vladimir, third degree and an annual pension of 600 roubles. At his request, Billings was transferred to the Black Sea in 1796. In Sevastopol he was nominated by the commander of the frigate St Andrew, and then accepted the ship St Michail. On the Christmas of the Virgin, Billings engaged in hydrographic works, describing an important site of the Black Sea for the Russian fleet; he then issued the atlas of this area. On May 9, 1799, he was ranked captain-commander from the captain of the first rank. Illness (“constraint of chest”) was the reason for his request for retirement. On November 28, 1799, Billings was dismissed from service “with full-dress uniform and pension.” The exact circumstances of his last years are unknown. It is only known that Billings was married, and that his wife Ekaterina, nee Pestel, was born on June 14, 1772 and died in Moscow on June

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BIOCONCENTRATION 18, 1826. Billings died in 1806 at the age of 45 years. The cape of the Chukchi Autonomous Okrug coast in the East Siberian Sea and the cape in the Akun island group of the Aleutian islands have been given his name. DANARA SHIRINA See also Daurkin, Nikolay; Kobelev, Ivan Further Reading Alexeev, A.I., Uchenyi Chukcha Nikolai Daurkin [Chukchi Scientist Nikolai Daurkin], Magadan, 1961, pp. 76, 77–81 ———., Gavriil Andreevich Sarychev, Moscow: Nauka, 1966, pp. 88–90, 104–106 Billings, Joseph, In Sibirskaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediia [Siberian Soviet Dictionary], Volume 1, Novosibirsk: Sibirskoe kraenoe izd-vo, 1929, p. 343 Magidovich, I.P., Primechaniya [Notes]. In Puteshestvie po Severo-Vostochnoi Chasti Sibiri, Ledovitomu Morui i Vostochnomu Okeanu [Travel along the North-East Part of Siberia, Arctic Sea and Eastern Ocean], edited by G.A. Sarychev, Moscow, 1952, p. 297 (published as Account of a voyage of discovery to the North-East of Siberia, the Frozen Ocean and the North-East Sea, Amsterdam and New York: Da Capo Press, 1969) Sauer, M., An account of a geographical and astronomical expedition to the northern parts of Russia…Performed by command of Catherina the Second, by Commodore Joseph Billings, in the years 1785 to 1794. The whole narrated from original papers, by M. Sayer, secretary to the expedition, London: Cadell and Davies, 1802 Sgibnev, A., Istoricheskiy Ocherk Glavneishikh Sobytiy v Kamchatke [Historical Story of the Main Events in Kamchatka]. Morskoi sbornik, 7(1869): pp. 39–41 ———, Okhotskiy Port s 1649 po 1852 [Okhotsk Port Since 1649 up to 1852]. Morskoi sbornik, 11(1869): pp. 66–69 Shirina, D.A., Letopis’ Expeditsiy Akademii Nauk na SeveroVostok Azii v Dorevolutionnyi period [Chronicle of Expeditions of the Academy of Sciences to the North-East Asia before the Revolution], Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1983, pp. 34, 37, 40 ———, Peterburgskaia akademiia nauk i Severo-Vostok, 1725–1917 [Petersburg Academy of Sciences and the NorthEast], Novosibirsk, 1994, pp. 55–57 Titova, Z.D., Vvedenie. In Etnograficheskie Materialy SeveroVostochnoi Geograficheskoi Expeditsii [Introduction. In Ethnographic Materials of the North-Eastern Geographical Expedition], Magadan: Magadanskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1978, pp. 5–12 Titova, Z.D., Journal ili Podennik Flotskogo Capitana Iosifa Billingsa [A Journal or Diary of Joseph Billings, the Naval Captain]. Part 1–3, In Etnograficheskie Materialy SeveroVostochnoi Geograficheskoi Expeditsii, Magadan: Magadanskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, pp. 19–58

BIOCONCENTRATION Bioconcentration refers to the processes that lead to elevated levels of contaminants in biota. It causes contaminant levels in some fish and wildlife species to become significantly higher than the background levels. This is a major environmental concern in the Arctic due to the increased environmental presence in

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cold climates of many contaminants from long-range sources, and the importance of fish and wildlife, including those high up in the food chain, in the diets of many northern peoples. Bioconcentration is a broad term that encompasses bioaccumulation and biomagnification, the two processes that jointly lead to contaminants concentrating in biota. These processes are distinct, yet combine to produce a synergistic effect that results in the higher levels of contaminants in wildlife at higher levels of food chains. Most contaminants are taken up physiologically through diet when the contaminants in a prey species are passed to the predator that eats it. Certain contaminants are persistent—they last for a long time in bodies and resist metabolic breakdown. Older animals have typically eaten more over their lives than have younger ones, resulting in progressively higher levels of contaminants in the same animal. Bioaccumulation refers to this building up of contaminants in an individual plant or animal over the course of time. Two animals of the same species, at the same trophic level (or same position on the food chain), can have widely different contaminant levels if their ages are different. As a general rule, younger individuals are likely to have lower contaminant levels than older individuals of the same species in the same area because they have had less chance to bioaccumulate contaminants. Many contaminants tend to reach exponentially higher concentrations further up the food chain. That is, they build up in predator species at much higher concentrations than they do in their prey species. This is due to the process of biomagnification. Each trophic level rests on a wider food base. An individual herbivore (plant eater) consumes many primary producers, such as plants, and can receive the contaminants from each of these. The predator that eats many herbivores will receive all the contaminants from all the thousands of plants each of the herbivores ate, and so on. Within the same food web, an animal at a lower trophic level (or lower position on the food chain) will generally have lower contaminant levels than one at a higher trophic level. It is the combination of these two processes that causes high body burdens in some wildlife species, due to a combination of life span (which may increase bioaccumulation) and diet (which may increase biomagnification). The beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas) is an example of an Arctic marine species that bioconcentrates contaminants. In the ocean, primary producers take up contaminants from the surrounding abiotic environment (water, sediment). Primary consumers such as small fish, squid, and crustaceans eat thousands of these tiny plants and animals during their lifetimes, and accumulate their contaminants. Belugas eat thousands of

BIODIVERSITY larger fish, squid, and crustaceans, building up all of the contaminants in all of the millions of tiny plants and animals those fish ate. The result is levels of contaminants that, due to the combination of bioaccumulation and biomagnification, are several thousand times higher in belugas than in the surrounding environment. Because beluga is a common part of the Inuit diet in the Arctic, food advisors suggest limits to the amount of muktuk (the fat layer beneath the skin) that can be safely consumed due to levels of mercury, cadmium, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), DDT, and other contaminants. Polar bears, as top predators, are further up the Arctic food web, feeding on seals, and have much higher levels of contaminants than most other Arctic wildlife (Norstrom et al., 1988). Caribou (Rangifer tarandus) is an example of a terrestrial species that bioconcentrates. Caribou eat lichen, a long-lived type of vegetation that is believed to bioaccumulate airborne contaminants. These are passed to caribou through their diets. This is believed to be the cause of elevated cadmium in caribou livers. Due to biomagnification, the wolves (Canis lupus) that feed on caribou have higher levels (Elkin, 1994). Background levels of contaminants in the Arctic are higher than in temperate zones, due to naturally high levels of certain heavy metals in regional geology and the “cold condensation” effect where low Arctic temperatures cause volatile compounds that have traveled over long distances through the atmosphere to settle in the Arctic and Antarctic regions (Barrie et al., 1992). This results in the Arctic serving as a sink for several contaminants, with higher levels of environmental contaminants in soil and water than most other parts of the globe (CACAR, 1997). These contaminants are more available for bioconcentration in the Arctic than in most temperate zones. Other contaminants that may bioconcentrate in fish or wildlife can be naturally present at high levels, such as mercury released through the weathering of rocks in the North West Territories. This is typically variable from location to location. The main types of contaminants that bioconcentrate in the Arctic are persistent organic pollutants (POPs) (organic chemical compounds largely from industrial compounds and chlorinated pesticides) and heavy metals (Pacyna, 1995). Cadmium and mercury are major heavy metal concerns in the Arctic (CACAR, 1997). Each contaminant concentrates in a certain body part. Most POPs are lipophilic (meaning that they build up in fat), while cadmium builds up primarily in the liver and kidneys and mercury muscle. The amount of bioconcentration that occurs depends on both the nature of the contaminant and the wildlife species. Natural rates of uptake of contaminants can vary even between similar individuals in the same genus. For example, within the family Salmonidae, lake trout

(Salvelinus namycush) in the Arctic is likely to have higher levels of mercury than Arctic char (Salvelinus alpinus) the same size and age, feeding on a similar diet. Contaminants are of special concern in the Arctic because the traditional diet consumed by aboriginal peoples in the North, such as the Inuit, is composed primarily of wildlife. The species eaten are primarily the long-lived wildlife species that can accumulate high levels of contaminants through the combination of bioaccumulation and biomagnification. Further, traditionally eaten parts of animals such as muktuk are the same body parts that accumulate POPs. Studies have observed unusually high levels of contaminants in Inuit as a result of diet. It is believed that this concern is partly responsible for northern people avoiding traditional foods in favor of store-bought foods. However, risk/benefit studies suggest that the many health benefits of traditional diets far outweigh the minor health risks posed by contaminants (e.g., Kuhnlein, 1995). Even with biomagnification, traditional diets appear to be healthy choices for northern aboriginal peoples. ALAN EHRLICH See also Food Chains; Food Use of Wild Species; Heavy Metals; Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) Further Reading Barrie, L.A., D. Gregor, B. Hargrave, R. Lake, D. Muir, R. Shearer, B. Tracey & T.F. Bidleman, “Arctic contaminants: sources, occurrence and pathways.” Science of the Total Environment, 1992: 1–74 Canadian Arctic Contaminants Assessment Report (CACAR), Jensen, J., K. Adare & R. Shearer, Ottawa: Dept. of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, 1997 Elkin, B., “Organochlorine, heavy metal and radionuclide transfer through the lichen-caribou-wolf food chain.” In Synopsis of Research Conducted under the 1993/94 Northern Contaminants Program, Environmental Studies No. 72, edited by J.L. Murray & R.G. Shearer, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 1994, pp. 356–361 Kuhnlein, H.V., “Benefits and risks of traditional food for indigenous peoples: focus on dietary intakes of Arctic men.” Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology, 73 (1995): 765–771 Lockhart, 1998 Norstrom, R.J., M. Simon, D.C.G. Muir & R. Schweinsburg, “Organochlorine contaminants in Arctic marine food chains: identification, geographical distribution and temporal trends in polar bears.” Environment Science and Technology 22 (1998): 1063–1071 Pacyna, J.M., “The origin of Arctic air pollutants: lessons learned and future research.” The Science of the Total Environment, 160/161 (1995): 39–53

BIODIVERSITY Biodiversity is the biological diversity of all living forms (plants, animals, and microorganisms) on Earth. It encompasses variability in both terrestrial and

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BIODIVERSITY marine environments at the level of population (genetic and species diversity) and ecosystem (spatial habitat diversity). Biodiversity is the natural wealth of the circumpolar Arctic that provides resources and ecological services for humans and nature. Genetic diversity represents the heritable variation within and between populations of organisms. The genetic variation within Arctic species is relatively high, despite the low number of plant and animal species. The limited number of plants, animals, and microorganisms living in the Arctic were subject to major climatic variations during the Ice Ages (Pleistocene period, two million years ago to 10,000 years ago), which led to significant genetic variation within species and increased their capacity to adapt to changes in the Arctic environment. Species diversity or “species richness” is the number of species per spatially defined unit. Compared to tropical and subtropical ecosystems, species diversity in the circumpolar Arctic is relatively poor. Approximately 44% of the known global biodiversity of plants and 35% of all nonfish vertebrates are endemic or naturally occur only on 12% of the Earth’s surface. These areas of high diversity are located in the tropical rain forests of central and western Africa, Central and South America, and eastern Asia. In contrast, only a small number of terrestrial species are able to survive the extreme climatic conditions within the large area of the Arctic. For example, only about 0.4% of the Earth’s known vascular plant species occur in the Arctic. The Arctic flora, depending upon the classification of subspecific taxa, totals approximately 1500 vascular, 750 bryophyte, and 1200 lichen species. Well over 100 species of birds are known to breed in the Arctic; however, only 11 species are capable of living in the Arctic all year round. The total number of terrestrial mammals is 48, with 31 occurring in Canada, 29 in Alaska, 33 in Russia, and 9 in Greenland. The invertebrate fauna of the Arctic consists largely of insects. Marine ecosystems are characterized by large stocks of a few key species of plankton, crustacean, large sea mammals such as seals, walruses, and whales, and probably not more than approximately 25 fish species, of which only a few are restricted to fresh water. Species richness and biomass production decline with increasing latitude and altitude. In most areas of the Arctic, less than ten species of higher plants make up more than 90% of the vascular plant biomass. Perhaps as few as 20 genera account for most of the plant biomass of the circumpolar Arctic. These are plants of the genera Betula (birch), Rubus (e.g., cloudberry), Dryas (aven), Vaccinium (e.g., blueberry), Empetrum (crowberry) and Ledum (labrador tea) as well as the sedges Eriophorum (cottongrass) and Carex (sedge).

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Biodiversity at the genetic and species levels is important because it enables Arctic ecosystems to prevent and recover from natural disturbances and disasters; having more genes gives more possibilities for adaptation. Genetic diversity buffers environmental changes and provides insurance against loss of fundamental ecosystem functions. The term biodiversity also implies functional diversity (e.g., food webs) and spatial diversity of ecological structures (also called structural diversity). Structural diversity is the diversity of habitat or landscape structure. In some areas of the Arctic, for instance, where microhabitats of peat mounds and corresponding troughs are provided, species diversity is significantly higher. The mosaic of habitats within a landscape at a point in time is the result of disturbances at all spatial and temporal scales. Not only do locally varying geology, topography, or wind exposure generate habitat heterogeneity in the Arctic, but so do periglacial disturbances such as frost boils, hummocks, palsas, pingos, ice-wedge polygons, or thermokarst lakes, all of which are typical of the Arctic environment. As a consequence, longor short-term changes in habitat structure lead to a change in species composition. Because species diversity in the Arctic is relatively low, some food webs are simple and short. In many cases top consumers are harvested as traditional food sources by indigenous peoples. Arctic food chains are also of particular concern for humans and nature as they are extremely vulnerable as a potential pathway of contaminants. The diversity and complexity of food webs increase as Arctic ecosystems grade into more temperate ecosystems. Unlike terrestrial ecosystems, marine environments are far more productive. The North Atlantic waters are among the most productive areas of the world and support a large production of algae that are consumed by higher trophic animals and eventually by top predators and humans. Arctic animals and plants are specially adapted to their extreme environment. Both terrestrial and marine mammals have large body-volume-to-surface ratios and store considerable amounts of fat. Saving energy and body heat is an integral part of survival in the harsh Arctic environment. Low summer temperatures and the short growing season are severe environmental factors inhibiting plant growth and establishment. Generally, the leaf areas of Arctic plants are low and many perennials form compact cushions, which protect them from physical damage by severe wind abrasion during the winter. Another physiological adaptation is wintergreen leaves. These are leaves that develop late in the summer and remain green under the snow. Thus, photosynthesis can begin as soon as the weather is warm in spring and before there has been time for the new season’s leaves to start functioning.

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Biodiversity in the Low Arctic and Subarctic In the Subarctic, the more or less closed canopy of the boreal forest disperses into small stands of often stunted conifers. The term forest-tundra describes the circumpolar transition zone between boreal forest and the tundra of the Low Arctic (or southern tundra). It includes two important subzones: the forest subzone (southern forest-tundra) and the shrub subzone (northern forest-tundra). The northern limits of the foresttundra are represented by the treeline, which is the northern limit of tree growth. The circumpolar position of the Arctic treeline roughly correlates with the 10°C July isotherm, where July temperatures (the warmest month in the Arctic) average 10°C, the approximate minimum for tree growth. Smaller trees that never grow taller than low shrubs are called krummholz. These krummholz forms can endure at scattered points beyond the treeline. Extensive areas of forest-tundra are found in Alaska, northern Canada, and northern Eurasia. North American forest tundra is mainly composed of white and black spruce (Picea glauca and P. mariana), whereas in Siberia, larch (Larix spp.) is the primary treeline species. In Iceland, occasionally in Greenland and in the western portion of Northern Scandinavia, the treeline is composed of the birch Betula pubescens; however, in the eastern part of Northern Scandinavia and toward the Kola Peninsula, Pinus sylvstris and Picea abies play a dominant role. Increased species diversity in the forest-tundra, compared with the Low Arctic tundra, is not simply a reflection of an improved climate. It also reflects a relatively high diversity of landscape structure and a broader range of soil conditions, which include permafrost and soil nutrient status. Because of the mosaic structure of the forest-tundra, biomass and net primary productivity values vary considerably. In the North American Low Arctic, mean annual temperatures average less than −12°C, which is some 4–6° colder than for typical Subarctic tundra regions. In Eurasia, particularly in the forest-tundra of Siberia, climate conditions are continental and more severe. Winters bring with them extreme conditions, with mean annual temperatures less than −15°C. Summers are warmer than in the North American Low Arctic. Beyond the treeline, the vegetation composition of the Low Arctic tundra still contains a noticeable portion of woody plants, with shrubs such as Salix (willow), Ledum, and Betula (dwarf birch) reaching more than 50 cm in height. In the Low Arctic, most areas are fully vegetated, with the exception of rocky outcrops, ridges, or eskers. Most of the plant communities provide a rich feeding ground for the fauna, particularly migratory ungulates

such as caribou (Rangifer tarandus) in North America. The variety of habitat types and the variation in timing of community-type growth bursts contribute to a continuous supply of fresh food. Localized overgrazing, however, can lead to the diminution and removal of lichen biomass, with lichen recovery taking several decades. In Lapland, for example, overgrazing by high stocks of semidomesticated reindeer is known to degrade tundra vegetation considerably. Some Arctic mammals, such as caribou, Arctic fox (Alopex lagopus), muskox (Ovibos moschatus), Arctic and tundra hare (Lepus arcticus and L. othus), and collared and brown lemming (Dicrostonyx sp. and Lemmus sp.), rarely occur outside the Arctic. Others, such as wolverine (Gulo gulo), brown bear (Ursus arctos), or red fox (Vulpes vulpes), are also common in boreal and temperate biomes. Since the glaciations of the late Pleistocene (which is the scientific name for the Ice Age periods), the numbers of small mammal species present in the tundra appear to have increased considerably, primarily as a result of immigration from boreal and temperate locations. On the contrary, the number of large mammals has declined. Almost all of the bird species breeding in the Arctic migrate to southern latitudes during the winter. Raven (Corvus corax), snowy owl (Nyctea scaniaca), ptarmigan (Lagopus sp.), and gyrfalcon (Falco rusticolus) are among the few species that inhabit the Arctic all year round. The ptarmigans manage to survive the harshness of the winter by feeding on the buds and catkins of dwarf willows and birches buried beneath the snow. Raptors, such as owls and ravens, often have to supplement their diet by feeding on carrion left by polar bears and Arctic wolves. A large proportion of the migratory birds breeding in the Low Arctic rely on wetlands where food sources are abundant. Swans, geese, ducks, plovers, and sandpipers are typical breeders found in these wetlands. Other raptors that commonly breed in the Subarctic and Low Arctic include the peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus), the rough-legged hawk (Buteo lagopus), the short-eared owl (Asio flammeus), the golden eagle (Aguila chrysaetos) in North America, and the white-tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla) in Greenland, Iceland, and northern Eurasia. The northern hawk owl (Surnia ulula) is more restricted to treed terrain within the Subarctic.

Biodiversity in the High and Mid Arctic The High and Mid ecoclimate province of the Arctic is found in northernmost Canada, Greenland, on Svalbard (Norway), and in areas of the Russian Arctic such as Novaya Zemlya and the Taymyr Peninsula. The High and Mid Arctic (or Arctic and typical tundra

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BIODIVERSITY in Eurasian terminology) are characterized by discontinuous vegetation cover and low biodiversity. Plant cover usually ranges between 15% and 75%, depending on the supply of soil moisture, local topography, and climatic conditions. Large areas in the High and Mid Arctic are covered by barren polar deserts and polar semideserts. In addition to Greenland’s immense icecap, large areas of Devon Island, Ellesmere Island, and Axel Heiberg Island in the Canadian High Arctic are covered by glaciers. Yet even in the polar desert of the High Arctic, so-called “polar oases” can be found, which have a more or less continuous cover of sedge meadows and play an important role for local wildlife. In the High Arctic, the mean annual precipitation is low, approximately 130 mm per year. Mean daily temperatures exceed 0°C only in July and August, while daily winter temperatures average below −30°C. Towards the Mid Arctic, climate conditions improve, tending to become more humid with marginally longer growing seasons. In the High and Mid Arctic, vegetation in very moist sites is composed of Eriophorum (cottongrass) and Carex spp. (sedges). Salix, Dryas, and Saxifraga species usually dominate in moist but drained sites as well as in drier locations with low cover. Over 120 vascular plant species occur in the High and Mid Arctic. Net annual plant production is low. Production estimates of 1–2 g cm−2 in polar desert sites and 20–40 g cm−2 in cushion plant-lichen communities reflect the extremely low production capacity. Yet, occasionally wet sedge-moss communities have been found to produce as much as 300 g cm-−. Low above-ground to below-ground phytomass ratios are characteristic of Arctic tundra ecosystems, with the top-to-root ratio generally decreasing with increasing mean annual temperatures. In the High Arctic, only a few mammals are able to maintain viable populations. Muskox, Peary’s caribou (Rangifer tarandus pearyi) (a northern subspecies of the barren-land caribou), Arctic hare, collared lemming (Dicrostonyx groenlandicus), Arctic fox, wolverine, Arctic wolf (Canis lupus), and the polar bear (Ursus maritimus) are among them. Peary’s caribou differs from the barren-ground caribou in being smaller and much paler in color. The High Arctic population is listed as endangered and can exhibit marked population collapses, depending on snow conditions during the winter. Natural populations of muskox occur only in the Canadian Arctic and Greenland. In Canada, muskoxen are found on the Arctic mainland and on the Arctic Islands, with Banks Island and Victoria Island having the largest populations. Greenland’s muskox population is found in the north and northeast of the island. They have also been introduced to other regions, for example Québec in Canada, Norway

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(including Svalbard), Russia (Wrangel Island and Taymyr Peninsula), and Alaska. Muskoxen are the major prey of Arctic wolves—besides caribous, lemmings, and Arctic hares. Since availability of prey is restricted and distributed heterogeneously, wolves have to cover great distances in search of food. For land mammals, winter is a difficult season. Consequently, in all species, winter coats are thicker and longer-haired than summer coats. Some species such as caribou and polar bear have hollow, air-filled hairs that provide exceptionally good insulation. Long-term population cycles are typical for some Arctic land mammals. The three- to four-year population peaks of the brown lemming (Lemmus sibiricus) are typically asymmetrical, with populations declining at a greater rate than they increase. There is strong evidence that these population cycles are caused by plantherbivore interactions rather than by predator-prey or plant-environment interactions.

Biodiversity in the Arctic Marine Environment The Arctic marine environment is of extreme importance for many ecological processes in Arctic terrestrial ecosystems. The marine system functions as a base for many Arctic food webs. Arctic ocean currents also have a major impact on the Earth’s climate, due to the high-energy exchange between polar and tropical areas. The marine region of the Arctic includes the Arctic Ocean and 13 adjacent seas and water bodies, and features a permanent ice cover of 5–8 million km2 during summer and approximately 12–13 km2 during winter. Generally, sea water freezes at approximately −1.9°C, when the salinity is 33 parts per thousand. However, the freezing point of sea ice changes relative to the concentration of salt in the sea water. Remarkably, some water bodies within the Arctic stay open, even in the coldest periods of the winter. These ice-free areas appear where horizontal sea currents, upwellings (vertical sea currents), or winds form leads and polynyas (bodies of open sea water), and thus allow organisms access to primary production of phytoplankton (free floating algae). The sea ice constitutes a thermal barrier against the cold winter atmosphere, with the result that the interface between the ice and the underlying sea water remains relatively high. During spring, when sunlight starts to become available for photosynthesis, a large biomass of unicellular ice algae develops within the lowermost section of the ice and coats the submerged surfaces of floating ice. Their population growth appears to be exponential when the polar day returns, doubling in biomass every five to ten days, depending upon snow cover and nutrient availability. These algae (mainly diatoms) feed the

BIODIVERSITY zooplankton preyed upon by higher organisms, for example, Arctic cod (Breogadus saida), as well as by birds and marine mammals. Ice algae are a very important part of the Arctic marine food web, and contribute on average over 50% to the total marine primary production in permanently ice-covered waters. Areas of high productivity usually occur where nutrient-enriched Atlantic sea waters mix with Arctic water bodies. Generally, ice edges and associated waters are areas of exceptionally high productivity. Phytoplankton production begins when the ice cover disappears and the melting ice causes an increase in the stability of the water column. Phytoplankton contributes to almost 90% of plant photosynthesis in seasonally ice-covered waters. As in Arctic terrestrial ecosystems, increasing spatial heterogeneity in the marine biota results in an increased species diversity, even in the deep sea. The forces effecting such heterogeneity range from riverine influences and benthic storms to small-scale disturbances by grazers and bioturbators in the water columns and on the sea bottom. Iceberg scours also play an important role in the spatiotemporal pattern of the seafloor fauna. Larger, warm-blooded animals such as birds, seals, whales, and polar bears use the sea ice for migration routes, hunting grounds, and raising their young. Two groups of homoiothermic (warm-blooded) marine mammals, the cetaceans and pinnipeds, occur in Arctic waters. Cetaceans include baleen whales (suborder Mysticeti) and toothed whales (suborder Odontoceti). Pinnipeds include fur seals (Otariidae), hair seals (Phocidae), and walruses (Odobenidae). Among the marine mammals that inhabit Arctic waters all year round are the beluga or white whale (Delphinapterus leucas), narwhal (Monodon monocerus), and bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus). All three rely upon open leads, polynyas, and areas of shifting ice where they have access to air. Of the three Arctic whales, belugas are the most numerous and widely distributed. Other whales such as orca (or killer whale, Orcinus orca), blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus), minke whale or lesser rorqual (Balaenoptera acutorostrata), fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus) and sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) appear in Arctic waters occasionally. Two subspecies of walrus (Odobenus rosmarus) are recognized and live, respectively, in the Atlantic and the Pacific. Atlantic walruses live east of Sommerset Island in the Canadian Arctic, notably in Baffin Bay, Davis Strait, Foxe Basin, and the mouth of Hudson Bay. Pacific walruses are found along the Alaska coast and westward along the Arctic shore of Siberia. Five species of the seal family (Phocidae) spend at least part of the year in Arctic waters. Bearded seal (Erignathus barbatus) and ringed seal (Phoca hispida) remain in the Arctic all year round. Harp seal (Phoca

groenlandica) and hooded seal (Cystophora cristata) overwinter farther south. With the exception of the orca, the polar bear is the top predator in the Arctic marine food chain. The polar bear can be considered marine rather than terrestrial, since it spends most of its life on annual sea ice in search of its major prey, seals. However, females still need to find suitable denning sites on the land which, in the case of the Hudson Bay population, extend their range far into the Subarctic woodland.

Biodiversity and Nature Conservation Overexploitation and exploration of natural resources and industrial pollution are major threads to the natural state of Arctic biodiversity. Over millennia, biodiversity had always been subject to changes in species diversity with the occasional extinction of local populations. Yet, most of the environmental changes that we see today cannot be described as the natural fluctuations of a dynamic environment. Instead they are short-term consequences triggered by human industrial impact and have important consequences for the Arctic ecosystems, northern societies, heritage, and economy. Any disturbances are of particular concern as Arctic nature is slow to repair itself. Some Arctic and Subarctic areas are rich in oil and minerals. Exploitation of the natural resources has caused environmental disturbances in Arctic ecosystems and influenced their biodiversity. For example, offshore activities such as seismic exploration, shipping, and construction of offshore production facilities and pipelines may adversely affect marine mammal distribution and numbers through disturbance or direct mortality. There is also evidence that global climate warming is affecting the Arctic climate, with unknown consequences for this fragile ecosystem. Other environmental issues affecting the Arctic include pollution from southern industrial regions and interference with wildlife migration by constructions such as pipelines and roads. Even the impact of human activities outside the Arctic can alter the activity of Arctic key organisms. One example in this case is given by the recent augmentation of snowgeese populations in North America. Recent increases in grain availability in temperate wintering areas have pushed their population numbers beyond their summer carrying capacity, with the result that saltmarsh areas in some regions of the North American Arctic are being destroyed by overgrazing. Whaling and hunting of other sea mammals are well-known examples of overexploitation of Arctic resources. Massive hunting of marine mammals started in the early 1600s. Historic losses and reductions, mostly from commercial hunting, include the almost

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BIODIVERSITY total extirpation of eastern Arctic bowhead whales, which were practically driven to extinction between 1600 and 1700. The populations of blue, fin, and humpback whale were drastically reduced between the mid-1800s and 1920s. The same fate met the polar bear in the European Arctic: by the 1900s, the survival of this top predator was seriously threatened throughout the whole area. Many Arctic fish species are at risk from overfishing and incidental capture. Seabirds are also at serious risk of being caught as bycatch. It is estimated that in 1996, 200,000 birds were accidentally caught in nets in Russian waters and more than 11,000 off the Alaskan coast. Generally, the implications of overhunting are both economic and cultural, as aboriginal people depend upon marine mammals as a major food source and as a mechanism for cultural inheritance. Arctic ecosystems are particularly threatened by persistent organic pollutants (POPs). POPs are very stable pesticides, industrial chemicals, and byproducts. POPs are dangerous because they can be transported over long distances from sources in temperate regions and accumulate to toxic levels in humans and animals within the Arctic food web. The effects of POPs are not fully understood, but reproductive and developmental effects have been observed in Arctic birds. It is also likely that polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and dioxinlike compounds disrupt reproductive cycles in some marine mammals, in particular, polar bears. The uptake of heavy metals such as mercury and cadmium in Arctic biota has also become a significant issue over the past two decades. The increase of mercury in the livers and kidneys of some marine mammals, for example, is probably due to an increase in the global flux of mercury. In northern Eurasia in particular, acidification has major impacts on the diversity in freshwater ecosystems, reducing the number of fish and invertebrate species in many northern lakes. On the Kola Peninsula in northern Russia, pollution from nickel-copper smelters have led to the devastation of entire regions. The environmental consequences of pollution are not expected to improve in the near future. The biomagnification effects on certain species may well get worse as, for example, some POPs and metals continue to accumulate in the Arctic environment and become concentrated at the highest trophic levels in Arctic food chains. The projected increase and the effects will be of major interest over the next decade. The close link between the people and marine mammals in the Arctic further emphasizes the need to monitor the status of marine mammals in the circumpolar Arctic. The Arctic is intrinsically linked with other global ecosystems in ways that are only partly understood.

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In terms of species extinction, it is probable that biodiversity in the Arctic is less threatened than that of warmer latitudes. Worldwide, nearly 26,000 species are threatened with imminent extinction, including more than 2200 vertebrates. Over a thousand species are known to have become extinct in the last 400 years. Hundreds, if not thousands, of others have become extinct without warning. It is estimated that only 1–2% of Arctic mammals and birds are threatened with extinction compared with 10–12% of those in mountain and 35% in lowland rain forest. This is mainly because many plant and animal species are widely distributed within the circumpolar Arctic. In 2000, a total of 14.8% of Arctic land area was protected: roughly 50% of the Arctic land area of Alaska, 20% in Sweden, 5% in Russia, 25% in Norway, 12% in Iceland, 45% in Greenland, 32% in Finland, and 9% in Canada. Legislation and protection are hoped to protect biodiversity and support the integrity of Arctic ecosystems.

Biodiversity and Global Climate Change It has become apparent that human industrial activities are affecting the climate on a global scale. Activities such as burning of fossil fuels are releasing huge amounts of so-called greenhouse gases (especially carbon dioxide and methane) into the atmosphere. These greenhouse gases trap the heat that is radiated from the Earth’s surface and cause global warming. There is general agreement that the effects of global climate change will be most apparent in Arctic ecosystems. This may include increasing winter temperatures and annual snowfall. The current reduction in the extent and thickness of sea ice can also be attributed to climate warming. These physical effects will have an indirect yet severe impact on the integrity of Arctic ecosystems. Scientific studies propose, for example, that there will be a strong shift in the habitat ranges of certain animal and plant species. In recent decades, a few mammals with temperate or boreal habitat ranges have already penetrated northward into the Low Arctic, where suitable habitat is available. The moose (Alces alces) and snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus) are examples. Their movement into the Low Arctic may be an indirect consequence of climatic warming. Climate-induced changes could also have far-reaching effects on caribou migration patterns and population dynamics. Caribou rely on sufficient food resources to raise well-nourished calves. Scientists predict that climate change may affect the regular freeze-thaw cycles, resulting in thick ice crusts over winter pastures and, thus, influencing their ability to find food. Decreases in Arctic sea-ice cover, as a result of increasing temperatures, may also have serious

BIODIVERSITY: RESEARCH PROGRAMS impacts on a number of the region’s marine mammal populations. Changes in the extent and concentration of sea ice may influence the seasonal distribution patterns and reproductive success of some species. Seals living on the ice, such as ringed seals, may be particularly vulnerable since they depend on the pack-ice habitat for raising their pups, foraging, molting, and resting. Since the distribution of the polar bear is probably a function of the distribution of ice conditions that allow them to travel and hunt most efficiently, changes in the extent and type of ice cover are expected to affect their distributions and foraging success. In the Hudson Bay area, scientists have found polar bears that exhibit extremely low rates of fat storage during the summer when they are landlocked and unable to hunt. This observation is due to the increasing length of time between the annual breakup and freezeup of the sea ice, which decreases the time available for the polar bears to feed on seals during winter. Ozone depletion over the North Pole has resulted in increased ultraviolet radiation (UV) flux. The current consensus is that this may cause damage to marine phytoplankton at high latitudes, which will have significant effects on other biological organisms in the food web. Even though the currently observed ozone reduction in the Arctic is smaller than that observed over the Antarctic, some scientists propose that this trend will continue and predict greater ozone losses during the next decade. In the long run, climate change will act as a selective filter: species that can adapt to warming or shift their population range quickly will survive; other species will decrease and may even become extinct. Yet, on a global scale, some Arctic animal populations may even benefit from a slightly warmer climate. It is also likely that less sea-ice cover will increase the overall phytoplankton production, which in turn should increase the total energy flow and production at higher trophic levels. Whatever the outcome, the implications of climate change and other anthropogenic influences should be carefully considered. Any climate change that influences the Arctic environment and its biodiversity will also have a major impact on local human populations. Biological diversity in the Arctic environment and indigenous cultures have been inextricably linked for millennia. Indigenous populations maintain a strong connection to the environment through their subsistence on natural resources and wildlife, and therefore rely on the integrity of the Arctic ecosystem and its biodiversity to survive. JÖRG TEWS See also Adaptation; Conservation; Environmental Problems; Food Chains

Further Reading Chapin III, F.S. et al. (editors), Arctic and Alpine Biodiversity, Berlin and New York: Springer, 1995 Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF), Arctic Flora and Fauna: Status and Conservation, Helsinki: Edita, 2001 Hansell, Roger I.C. et al., “Atmospheric change and biodiversity in the Arctic.” Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 49 (1998): 303–325 Oechel, Walter C. et al. (editors), Global Change and Arctic Terrestrial Ecosystems, Berlin and New York: Springer, 1997 Pielou, E.C., A Naturalist’s Guide to the Arctic, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994 Wielgolaski, F.E. (editor), Polar and Alpine Tundra, Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1997

BIODIVERSITY: RESEARCH PROGRAMS Biodiversity is usually referred to as the variety of life on Earth. This variety is reflected at three levels: genetic diversity (diversity within species and their genetic composition), species diversity (the number of species), and ecosystem diversity (the species structure of ecosystems). Species diversity is important not only for providing ecosystem services such as food, fuel, fiber, and pharmaceuticals but also for our wellbeing in terms of recreation and tourism areas. The biodiversity or structure of ecosystems determines the function, health, and sustainability of ecosystems. A well-functioning biodiversity is thus an essential base on which to build sustainable development. Many international strategies and policy instruments formulate overall goals for the conservation of biodiversity because there are currently many potential threats to biodiversity and we are possibly entering a major extinction event. A target for biodiversity was agreed for the first time at the global level at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (September 2002). This was to achieve a significant reduction in current loss of biological diversity by 2010. Recent recognition of the importance of, yet decline in, global biodiversity has stimulated many programs dedicated to monitor changes in biodiversity or carry out research to understand the role of biodiversity in terms of ecosystem function and sustainable development. In the Arctic, there is particular concern about biodiversity changes because of current warming in many Arctic areas, projected amplification in the Arctic of future global warming, and other environmental changes such as increased habitat fragmentation (Nellemann et al., 2001). Past climate changes associated with deglaciation resulted in extinctions of many species and vegetation types in the Arctic: many large herbivores became extinct and vast tundra steppe

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BIODIVERSITY: RESEARCH PROGRAMS regions became very restricted in area. The Arctic’s biodiversity could be particularly sensitive to such changes because its flora and fauna are already poor in some groups of species, particularly those of the more advanced organisms (Matveyeva and Chernov, 2000). Programs to measure biodiversity in the Arctic are numerous. They include local authority programs aiming to monitor target species, for example of conservation interest, indigenous peoples’ projects seeking to understand changes in ecosystem services, national programs, focusing on inventorying of biodiversity and large regional (e.g., European Union) and international programs aiming to map and monitor circumArctic biodiversity. It is impossible to collate all these programs here: instead, we describe the development and fallout of some of the major programs of particular relevance to the Arctic. Many other programs exist, and some of them may have a minor Arctic component but these are outside our remit. In addition, we will not describe Arctic biodiversity or threats to it per se, information can be found in various sources, such as the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA), Chapin and Körner (1995), Matveyeva and Chernov (2000), Vincent and Hobbie (2000), Sakshaug and Walsh (2000), and CAFF (2001). A particular problem in presenting biodiversity programs is the separation of those that explicitly seek to assess the presence and absence of species and those that measure some aspect of the performance of species. Measurements of the performance of species include phenology, biomass, and population dynamics of animals. Such measurements give an indication of likely future changes in the abundance, presence, and absence of a species. We consequently include both types of program here. Below we list the development and fallout of some of the major programs of particular relevance to the Arctic.

International Biological Programme (IBP) (1964–1974) The International Biological Programme (IBP) was started in 1964 and it aimed to encourage collaboration between biologists representing different fields. This was probably the first program that related biodiversity to ecosystem function. Within IBP, a Biome program was drawn up at a meeting held in Poland in 1966. At this meeting it was agreed that there should be major studies on different types of ecosystems. These ecosystems were first described as “habitat groups,” but soon the word “biome” replaced “habitat” in official publications. One of the original five habitat groups was called “Arctic and Subarctic Lands,” but this title was later

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changed to “Tundra Biome.” In 1969, the circumpolar coverage of the program was enlarged by the active participation of scientists from the USSR. In 1970, when the third international meeting took place at Kevo, Finland, the definition of the biome had then been enlarged to cover Arctic, Subarctic, Alpine, and Sub-Antarctic areas with, in addition, certain moorland ecosystems that did not automatically fit into one of the major categories. Thus, “tundra” was used in its widest sense and not to denote a specific vegetation zone of the Arctic. IBP research in tundra involved ten countries and they aimed, among other things, to: ●

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Measure net primary production of the main types of terrestrial ecosystems in the tundra biome, show how this varies within each ecosystem, within the year and between years, and define the relationships between production and the main factors influencing it, for example, species composition (biodiversity), soil conditions, temperature, and light. Estimate the numbers, biomass, and production of the main invertebrates, and estimate numbers of soil microorganisms and define their main physiological activities in a limited number of sites.

Examples of studies that were carried out within the IBP Biome program are “The collembola of the tundra biome sites: a zoogeographical synthesis” and “The microflora of tundra,” presented in Bliss et al. (1981). In addition, many site descriptions including species lists were published in national and international reports. Overall, IBP produced a wealth of fundamental information on the structure (biodiversity) and function (productivity) of tundra ecosystems. A particularly important focus was that on biodiversity, abundance, and function of soil organisms including microorganisms.

UNESCO Man and Biosphere (MaB) (1971– ) (www.unesco.org/mab; www.unesco.org/mab/ brim/) The UNESCO Man and Biosphere (MaB) program started in 1971 as an outcome of a Biosphere conference that was held in Paris in 1968. The MaB program developed the basis, within the natural and social sciences, for the sustainable use and conservation of biological diversity and for the improvement of the relationship between people and their environment globally. MaB activity is devoted to the research and monitoring of abiotic, biotic, and social aspects of biosphere reserves in an integrated approach throughout the World Network of Biosphere Reserves (WNBR).

BIODIVERSITY: RESEARCH PROGRAMS There are five biosphere reserves located within the Arctic (see Table) and there are others located just south of the Arctic Circle (e.g., Denali in the Alaska Range, Aleutian Islands Biosphere Reserve and National Wildlife Refuge, Glacier Bay and Admiralty Island in Alaska, Pechora-Ilych in the Komi Republic, Tzentralnosibirskii in Krasnoyarsk Kray, Kronotskiy on the Kamchatka Peninsula, and the Commander

(Komandorsky) Islands). The reserves that are presented in the Table are located either in the northern taiga or in the tundra. The WNBR is organized via the Biosphere Reserve Integrated Monitoring program (BRIM), which aims to provide a platform for the integration of the resulting information/data, thus contributing to a better understanding of the changes that take place in the areas

Biosphere reserves located in the Arctic Name

Short description

Major vegetation type

Location (lat; long)

Size (hectares)

Noatak (USA)

Noatak Biosphere Reserve is located in northwestern Alaska and was established in order to maintain the environmental integrity of the Noatak River and adjacent uplands. Situated in northeast Greenland, this biosphere reserve is the largest biosphere reserve in the world. Situated about 200 km north of the Arctic Circle in northwest Sweden, this biosphere reserve comprises mixed terrestrial ecosystems (Subarctic mountain birch, alpine and subalpine heaths, meadows, mires, bare rock communities) surrounding the nutrient-poor Lake Torne. Laplandskiy Biosphere Reserve is situated in the western part of the Kola Peninsula about 120 km south of Murmansk and 120 km north of the Arctic Circle. It is an area of plains and mountains, with glaciated land forms and exposures of the Baltic shield. Taimyrsky Biosphere Reserve is located in the northern Siberian lowlands on the Taymyr Peninsula. The site is a cluster biosphere reserve with three core areas (one covering part of Lake Taymyr), each with a relatively narrow surrounding buffer zone, and which are protected collectively as the Taymyr State Reserve.

Tundra

68° N; 160° W

3,035,200

Tundra communities and barren Arctic deserts

71°00′ to 83°40′ N; 12°00′ to 63°00′ W

97,200,000

Northeast Greenland

Lake Torne area (Sweden)

Laplandskiy (Russia)

Taimyrsky (Russia)

Tundra communities and barren Arctic deserts

68°25′ N; 19°00′ E

96,500

Boreal needle-leaf forests or woodlands

67°10′ to 68°05′ N; 31°45′ to 32°45′ E

278,400

Tundra communities and barren Arctic deserts (north boundary of forest-tundra and mountain tundra)

73°01′ to 74°35′ N; 95°47′ to 101°18′ E

2,750,291

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BIODIVERSITY: RESEARCH PROGRAMS being studied and of the factors triggering these changes. BRIM’s goal is also to suggest options for planning and management in biosphere reserves. An important outcome from BRIM is the MaBFauna/MaBFlora database, which is a biological inventory system for vertebrate animals and vascular plants. This database is freely available, but syntheses of the inventories seem to be not yet available. Over the next decades, MaB will be focusing on new approaches for facilitating sustainable development through promoting conservation and wise use of biodiversity.

Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) (1980– ) (www.lternet.edu; http://ecosystems. mbl.edu/ARC/) In 1980, the National Science Foundation established the LTER program to support research on long-term ecological phenomena in the United States. The LTER network is a collaborative effort investigating ecological processes over long temporal and broad spatial scales. The network promotes synthesis and comparative research across sites and ecosystems and among other related national and international research programs. The Arctic Long-Term Ecological Research (ARCLTER) project is one of 24 LTER projects in North America, Puerto Rico, and Antarctica. The Arctic LTER’s field research site is based at the University of Alaska’s Toolik Field Station, Alaska. The goal of the Arctic LTER project is to predict the future ecological characteristics of the site based upon our knowledge of the controls of ecosystem structure and function as exerted by physical and geologic factors, climatic factors, biotic factors, and the changes in fluxes of water and materials from land to water. To achieve this goal, the Arctic LTER uses several approaches: ●

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Long-term monitoring and surveys of natural variation of ecosystem characteristics in space and time. This includes climate, plant communities and productivity, thaw depth, stream flow, chemistry of streams and lakes, temperatures of streams and lakes, lake chlorophyll lake productivity, and zooplankton abundance. Experimental manipulation of ecosystems for years and decades. This includes tundra warming, shading, and fertilizing, grazer exclusions, fertilization of lakes and streams, and addition and subtraction of predators. Synthesis of results and predictive modeling at ecosystem and watershed scales. This includes stream nitrogen cycling, lake physics, bioenergetics of fish populations, water movement, and transfer of DOC (dissolved organic carbon) and nutrients from land to water, soil respiration,

cycling, and storage of carbon in tundra under different scenarios of future climates. This program has produced extremely valuable information on the biodiversity of Arctic terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, and how this changes over time under both natural conditions and after experimental manipulations of various factors that affect diversity. The goal and approaches of LTER have now been accepted in many countries and this has led to the development of the ILTER, although the Arctic component of this is not yet developed.

International Tundra Experiment (ITEX) (1990– ) www.systbot.gu.se/research/itex/itex. html) In 1990, the International Tundra Experiment (ITEX) was established as a MAB-NSN (Man and Biosphere; Northern Sciences Network) initiative. Since then the program has grown rapidly, and is today one of the most active international field programs in Arctic ecology. The purpose of ITEX is to monitor the performance of plant species and communities on a circumpolar basis in undisturbed habitats with and without environmental manipulations. At present, there are over 20 active ITEX field sites throughout the eight Arctic countries and in addition some alpine areas (Japan and Switzerland). The basic experiment is a temperature enhancement manipulation, where the field mean surface temperature is increased by 2–3°C to simulate the climate at the middle of the next century according to the forecast from the general circulation models (GCMs). Most of the results generated within ITEX so far relate to the response of single species, but from the field season of 1995 the experimentation was scaled up to include community-level responses. There are also ITEX research efforts dealing with plant phenotypic plasticity and quantitative genetics of some of the target species. The results to date can be summarized as follows. The performance of nearly all study species in a warmer climate increases. Different groups of plant species respond in different ways to warming, thereby resulting in changes of community composition. Recruitment of new plant individuals is extremely slow in undisturbed tundra (except perhaps in the polar deserts of the High Arctic); instead we see a loss of species and biodiversity as long as the warming trend persists. Long-term monitoring of manipulated and unmanipulated plots in Arctic Alaska and Subarctic Sweden corroborate the adequacy of these first ITEX results. Thus, we expect a disintegration of the plant communities in the tundra that we are familiar with

BIODIVERSITY: RESEARCH PROGRAMS today, and this must entail drastic changes also for animal populations at the landscape scale. A volume containing the first set of ITEX-generated papers on vascular plants, presented at the 1995 ITEX workshop at Ottawa, Canada, appeared in print in 1997 as a special issue of Global Change Biology (Volume 3, Suppl. 1). A meta-analysis of lichen responses to warming in ITEX and pre-ITEX experiments was published by Cornelissen et al. (2001).

Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) (1992– ) (www.caff.is) In 1991, the Arctic countries adopted an Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS), which was later integrated in the Arctic Council (which was established in 1996). One important issue that was recognized in the AEPS was the conservation of Arctic flora and fauna and the need to facilitate the exchange of information and to coordinate the research on species and habitats of flora and fauna. As a result, the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) was formed in 1992 as one of the working groups of the Arctic Council. CAFF is a distinct forum of Arctic professionals, indigenous peoples’ representatives, observer countries, and organizations that discusses and addresses circumpolar Arctic conservation issues. Its primary role is to advise the Arctic governments on conservation matters and sustainable use issues of international significance and common concern. CAFF sponsors a wide variety of projects, including a circumpolar network of protected areas, documentation of traditional ecological knowledge, an assessment of the conservation value of sacred sites of indigenous peoples of northern Russia, the circumpolar vegetation map, circumpolar expert networks for monitoring key species, an atlas of rare endemic vascular plants of the Arctic, and an assessment of the conservation status of Arctic migratory birds. Monitoring activities on Arctic biodiversity are an important part of the CAFF program. The long-term objective of CAFF is to integrate circumpolar biodiversity monitoring with the circumpolar physiochemical monitoring activities that the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP; www.amap.no) perform. A workshop on a Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Programme was held in Reykjavik in 2000. The workshop decided to launch (voluntary) expert monitoring networks on important biota elements, for which there is already national and regional interest (reindeer/caribou; Arctic plants—ITEX, waders, Arctic char, ringed seal, and seabirds). The initial mandate of the networks is to explore the interest and opportunities for circumpolar collaboration

within the broader context of a Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Network. In 2000, the CAFF Biodiversity Monitoring Support Group was established to provide management support to CAFF’s Expert Networks for monitoring circumpolar species and habitats of key importance. In 2001, the publication “Arctic Flora and Fauna—Status and Conservation” was published by CAFF. Other significant CAFF publications include the Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Map (see separate entry) and the Atlas of Rare Endemic Vascular Plants of the Arctic. These publications show different trends over time of Arctic animal populations (both increases and decreases) with a surprisingly high contribution to the Arctic flora of rare and endemic plant species, particularly in Beringia.

World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) (1992– ) (www.unep-wcmc.org/arctic/) Since 1992, the United Nations Environmental PanelWorld Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEPWCMC) has been developing a program of activities relating to the conservation of the Arctic environment. Much of this is designed to support the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy process, in particular theCAFF program. UNEP-WCMC is widely recognized by the CAFF community as its main biodiversity data supplier. Its advice and contributions are acknowledged and, in connection with Grid Arendal, the service for CAFF and other programs and agreements will be strengthened. A product that has been developed within WCMC is the Arctic Bird Library. This aims to provide comprehensive information on the distribution and conservation status of Arctic birds. The library focuses upon the 125 species of water birds, which breed in the Arctic region as defined by CAFF. Information includes fact sheets with links providing photos, sound recordings, and video clips. The web site has been developed to demonstrate species information on the web.

Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) (2000–2004) (www.acia.uaf.edu) In 2000, the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) started. It is a collaborative project of the Arctic Council (CAFF and AMAP) and the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC). The goal of ACIA is to evaluate and synthesize knowledge on climate variability, climate change, and increased ultraviolet (UV) radiation and their consequences. The aim is to provide useful and reliable information to the

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BIODIVERSITY: RESEARCH PROGRAMS governments, organizations, and peoples of the Arctic on policy options to meet such changes. ACIA will examine possible future impacts on the environment and its living resources, on human health, and on buildings, roads and other infrastructure. Such an assessment is expected to lead to the development of fundamental and useful information for the nations of the Arctic region, their economy, resources, and peoples. Within the major, peer-reviewed ACIA scientific volumes published in 2004, there are three ecosystem chapters; a terrestrial, a freshwater, and a marine chapter. Each chapter deals explicitly with current biodiversity in the Arctic, including recent changes documented by indigenous knowledge, and the likely impacts of changes in climate and UV-B radiation. It seems likely that biodiversity in terms of number of species will increase in response to warming, but that some Arctic specialist species will be lost. Species will relocate as they did during past climate changes.

formally inaugurated. SCANNET is a network of field site leaders, research station managers, and user groups in the North Atlantic Region that are collaborating to improve comparative observations and access to information on environmental change in the North. SCANNET partners provide stability for research and facilitate long-term observations in terrestrial and freshwater systems. One of the science topics that SCANNET is working with is biodiversity. The working group is led by Turku University (Finland) and documents the variations in trends of biodiversity among the sites. The main aims are to:

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) (2000–2005) (www.millenniumassessment.org)

The final results from this work are published on the network’s web site.

In 2000, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) board established a working group to provide the framework and criteria for selecting assessments at multiple scales and to make recommendations to the board for the component assessments. The MA is a “multiscale” assessment and the overall assessment will include component assessments undertaken at several different geographic scales, ranging from individual villages to the globe. The process has been designed so that the findings at any given scale are informed by the assessment components undertaken at other scales. A diversity of ecosystem types and problems are addressed in this process, including the polar regions. The MA will, among other things, contribute to: ●

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Enhanced public awareness of the impacts of ecosystem change on human well-being and the steps needed to address these impacts. Improved international and global cooperation in ecosystem management.

A focus of the MA is “ecosystem services,” and biodiversity is an important component of these. The studies are ongoing.

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The Circum-Arctic Terrestrial Biodiversity Initiative—Causes and Consequences of Changing Biodiversity in Arctic and Alpine Terrestrial Ecosystems (IASC CAT B) (2002– ) (www.iasc.no) The Circum-Arctic Terrestrial Biodiversity Initiative (CAT B) was launched in 2002 as an IASC project. The broad goal of this program is to quantify and understand the role of biodiversity in Arctic and alpine ecosystems, and to evaluate both actual and potential threats to biodiversity. The overarching goal is to understand the causes and consequences of changes in biodiversity in the Arctic (in the terrestrial realm). This program will address the key science issues outlined below through the formation of a multinational, circum-Arctic, integrated, and standardized research network. The project will aim to: ●

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Scandinavian/North European Network of Terrestrial Field Sites (SCANNET) (2001– 2004) (www.scannet.nu) In February 2001, the Scandinavian/North European Network of Terrestrial Field Sites (SCANNET) was

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Explore the range of biodiversity information available at different spatial scales across the field stations/sites within SCANNET. Identify major gaps in the North European biodiversity knowledge. Develop comparable and standardized monitoring protocols to detect biodiversity responses to environmental changes over northernmost Europe.

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identify relevant drivers of change across contrasting regional/local settings; develop monitoring strategies; conduct a variety of intra- and intersite experiments and meta-analyses; predict the potential impact of change on biodiversity and ecosystem function; predict the potential impact of changes in biodiversity on ecosystem function and feedback processes to further change; provide products to user groups such as global change modelers, the remote sensing research

BIOGEOCHEMISTRY community, educators, industry and local communities, conservation organizations, and planners. TERRY CALLAGHAN AND MARGARETA JOHANSSON See also Climate: Research Programs; Conservation; Global Warming Further Reading Bliss L.C., O.W. Heal & J.J. Moore (editors), Tundra Ecosystems: A Comparative Analyses, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981 Chapin III, F.S. & C. Körner (editors), Arctic and Alpine Biodiversity: Patterns, Causes and Ecosystem Consequences, Berlin: Springer, 1985 Cornelissen, H et al., “Global change and arctic ecosystems: is lichen decline a function of increases in vascular plant biomass?” Journal of Ecology, 89 (2001): 984–994 CAFF (Conservation of Arctic Fauna and Flora), Arctic Flora and Fauna: Status and Conservation, Helsinki: Edita, 2001 Matveyeva, N. & Y. Chernov, “Biodiversity of terrestrial ecosystems.” In The Arctic Environment, People, Policy, edited by M. Nuttall &T.V. Callaghan (editors), Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000, pp. 233–274 Nellemann, C et al., GLOBIO, Global methodology for mapping human impacts on the biosphere, UNEP/DENA/ TR.01-3, 2001 Sakshaug, E. & J. Walsh, “Marine biology: biomass productivity distributions and their variability in the Barents and Bering Seas.” In The Arctic Environment, People, Policy, edited by M. Nuttall & T.V. Callaghan, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000, pp. 163–198 Vincent, W.F. & J. Hobbie, “Ecology of Arctic lakes and rivers.” In:The Arctic Environment, People, Policy, edited by M. Nuttall & T.V. Callaghan (editors), Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000, pp. 197–232

BIOGEOCHEMISTRY V.I. Vernadsky first used the term “biogeochemistry” as a scientific discipline in 1926 in the context of a subdiscipline of geochemistry, which at that time had been an established research field for almost a century. Vernadsky recognized the importance of biological processes for certain geochemical reactions, but it is only in recent years that researchers have found that it is virtually impossible to study geochemical processes at the surface of the Earth without studying biogeochemistry. Researchers now know that biota affects almost all geochemical reactions at the surface of the Earth. Biogeochemistry textbooks usually introduce and subdivide the Earth surface system as the atmosphere (gaseous envelope surrounding the planet extending 500 km above the Earth’s surface), the lithosphere (the outer region of the solid Earth extending to a depth of about 100 km), the hydrosphere (the part of Earth that contains water in liquid, vapor, and frozen form), and the biota (life itself, that sequesters carbon and

nutrients from the other spheres). The real thrust in the study of biogeochemistry, however, is the cycling of matter between these different spheres. The biogeochemical cycles have become a research subject of increasing importance in recent decades due to their pivotal role for the understanding of how Earth will respond to major anthropogenic impacts such as greenhouse gas emissions, acidification, and land-use changes. The major global biogeochemical cycles include the global water cycle, the carbon cycle, the global cycles of nitrogen and phosphorus, and the global sulfur cycle. The global water cycle includes the everlasting importance of water in transport and transformations of matter in nature. The water cycle interacts with most other global biogeochemical cycles on the surface of the Earth. The global carbon cycle is driven by the fundamental ability of photosynthetic organisms to capture energy from the sun in organic compounds that in turn act as substrate for the whole of the biosphere as well as a provider of oxygen to the atmosphere (see Carbon Cycling). Of special relevance to the Arctic is the significant uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide in the cold surface waters of the Arctic Ocean and surrounding oceans. This is an important biogeochemical process that “helps” mankind, consuming some of the extra carbon dioxide we add to the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels. Other examples of biogeochemical processes associated with carbon cycling in the Arctic are found in the terrestrial environments. Here there are large carbon stores in the soils, and it is estimated that about 30% of the global soil organic carbon is stored in northern boreal and Arctic soils. This represents a significant past global atmospheric carbon sink, and biogeochemical studies are currently focusing on studying the stability of this sink functioning in a changing climate. There is evidence from northern Alaska that the tundra may be susceptible to change from a sink to a source of atmospheric carbon dioxide as a response to an initial warming. Whether this may lead to a sustained loss of soil organic carbon to the atmosphere is still uncertain and a matter of intense biogeochemical research. Further important carbon-associated processes in the Arctic include the anaerobic (oxygen-free) biogeochemical transformations of carbon in wet tundra environments. These lead to the formation, and emission to the atmosphere, of a range of different reduced compounds, including the important greenhouse gas methane. Wet tundra and northern wetlands are significant atmospheric sources of methane, and much attention in Arctic terrestrial biogeochemical studies has focused on understanding the controls on such trace gas emissions to the atmosphere.

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BIRCH FORESTS The abundance of nitrogen and phosphorus controls many biogeochemical components and are often key determinants of ecosystem, functioning. Arctic ecosystems both terrestrial and marine, are generally nutrient poor, and nitrogen in particular is the limiting factor for ecosystem productivity. Carbon cycling can therefore rarely be studied in the Arctic without considering the biogeochemical transformations of nitrogen and phosphorus as well. Many ecological and biogeochemical studies in the Arctic have hence worked with factorial experimental manipulations of nitrogen, phosphorus, and other nutrients in various combinations to better understand the complex interactions between element cycling and climate that controls the productivity of ecosystems. A prerequisite for understanding how human changes to biogeochemical cycling on Earth may affect climate in the future is a thorough understanding of how climate changes have been connected to natural biogeochemical cycling in the past. Here the Arctic contributes with a very important tool in that permafrost, ice sheets, and lake and ocean sediments keep records of past variations in the atmospheric concentrations of trace gases and other atmospheric constituents (see Ice Core Record). The study of ice core records, in particular, has become crucial for the understanding of global biogeochemical cycling and how it interacts with the physical climate system. TORBEN R. CHRISTENSEN See also Carbon Cycling; Global Change Effects; Global Warming; Ice Core Record Further Reading Butcher, S.B. et al. (editors), Global Biogeochemical Cycles, London: Academic Press, 1992 Reynolds, J.F. & J.D. Tenhunen (editors), Landscape Function and Disturbance in Arctic Tundra, Berlin: Springer, 1996 Schlesinger, W.H., Biogeochemistry: An Analysis of Global Change, San Diego: Academic Press, 1997 Schultze, E.D. et al. (editors), Global Biogeochemical Cycles in the Climate System, San Diego: Academic Press, 2001

BIRCH FORESTS Birches (Betula spp.) are widely distributed throughout the temperate and boreal forests of the Northern Hemisphere. The capacity to withstand low winter temperatures, lengthy snow cover, and cold summers allows tree-sized birches to reach the latitudinal and altitudinal limit of tree growth, in certain places extending beyond the treeline of coniferous species. Dominance of natural birch forests at the Arctic treeline is restricted to the cool and oceanic climates of northeastern and northwestern Eurasia, but birches

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also form the alpine treeline around steppe districts of the Eurasian interior. Since they are light-demanding species, the ability to maintain themselves as climax forests must be viewed in the light of delimited competition with shade-tolerant species in these treeline areas. Elsewhere, birches are common as pioneer trees in secondary forests, but generally give way to shadetolerant species at late-successional stages. In the northwestern periphery of Europe, downy birch (Betula pubescens) forms the most extensive areas of pure birch forests. The northernmost occurrences appear to rest on shelters from cold and drying winds, but inadequate growing-season temperatures also prevent downy birches from reaching tree size at their northwestern extremities. Downy birch cannot withstand summer drought, and its distribution limit in southern Europe corresponds to an average July rainfall of 50 mm. Toward east, the distribution limit of downy birch relates to a mean January temperature of −30°C. The corresponding species in northeastern Eurasia, stone birch (B. erminii), is also associated with the cool and damp summer climate of northern coastal areas. It has been found to withstand winter temperatures down to −47°C, but does not form forests in areas with permafrost and warm summers. Both downy birch and stone birch are relatively persistent to the harsh and strong winds near Arctic oceans. The great majority of stone birches are found at the Kamchatka Peninsula, with similar extents of birch forests only present in northern Fennoscandia. Birches are able to grow in a wide range of soils, including those very acidic and nutrient-poor sites near alpine and Arctic treelines. They vary considerably in structure and species associations, depending on local climatic and soil conditions. On base-poor soils in timberline areas of northwestern Europe, the subspecies, mountain birch (B. pubescens spp. Czerepanovii), occurs as small, crooked, and multistemmed (polycormic) trees. These open and scrublike forests are rather simple communities, often with ericaceous dwarf shrubs, willow shrubs (Salix spp.), junipers (Juniperus communis), and dwarf birches (Betula nana) as the only accompanying woody plants. On the driest and poorest soils in northeastern Fennoscandia, reindeer lichens (Cladonia spp.) dominate the forest floor together with crowberry (Empetrum nigrum coll.), cowberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea), heather (Calluna vulgaris), and dwarf birches. Lichen-rich communities are typical of continental climates with low precipitation and thin snow cover. As precipitation and snowfall increase west of the Scandinavian mountain range, mosses (e.g., Hylocomium splendens, Pleurozium schreberi) replace reindeer lichens in the ground vegetation, and species such as bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillis) and dwarf cornel (Cornus

BIRKET-SMITH, KAJ suecica) become more prevalent. Also wavy hair-grass (Deschampsia flexuosa) sometimes dominates the forest floor in mountain birch forests, often due to grazing by livestock and semidomestic reindeer. On base-rich soils in the coastal lowlands, birches grow as tall trees with single and straight trunks. Apart from birches, other species are usually admixed in the tree layer such as rowan (Sorbus aucuparia), aspen (Populus tremula), gray alder (Alnus incana), bird cherry (Prunus padus), and tall willows (Salix spp.). In river valleys and fjords in northern Norway, meadow birch forests are particularly luxuriant, with tall herbs and ferns flourishing in the undergrowth. Globeflowers (Trollius europaeus), wood’s cranes-bill (Geranium sylvaticum), meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria), monkshood (Aconitum lococtonum), alpine blue sow-thistle (Cicerbita alpina), lady-fern (Athyrium filix-femina), and ostrich fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris) are characteristic species in the ground vegetation. Low herbs and ferns such as beech fern (Phegopteris connectilis), violets (Viola spp.), and stone bramble (Rubus saxatilis) are also widespread in meadow birch forests, but dwarf shrubs, mosses, and lichens are less frequent. In mountainous oceanic areas along the Norwegian coastline and on the North Atlantic islands (Scotland, Iceland, and southwestern Greenland), dwarf shrubs and grasses dominate the undergrowth. Occasionally other tree species such as rowan occur, whereas hazel (Corylus avellana) and silver birch (Betula pendula) are often intermingled with downy birches in northwestern Scotland. Vegetation is extensively modified by grazing, reflected in a high abundance of grasses such as wavy hair-grass, mat-grass (Nardus stricta), or common bent (Agrostis capillaris). In Iceland, bog bilberry (Vaccinium uliginosum) is widespread together with other dwarf shrubs, whereas wood’s cranes-bill and stone bramble are common on richer sites. In the far northwest of Scotland, open woodlands prevail with heather, bracken (Pteridium aquilinium), and purple-moor grass (Molinia caerulea) as characteristic species in the undergrowth. On richer soils the following herbs are common: primroses (Primula vulgaris), wood sage (Teucrium scorodonia), bluebells (Hyacinthoides nonscripta), wood-sorrel (Oxalis acetosella), and wood anemone (Anemone nemorosa). In Kamchatka, stone birch forests occupy large areas between the alluvial meadows in river valleys, and the dwarf pine and alder thickets (Pinus pumila, Alnus maximowiczii) on mountain slopes. The forests are open and parklike with trees looking more like oaks rather than white birches. The mild and very humid climate, and the fertile volcanic soils, favor the dense and tall undergrowth of herbaceous plants, resembling coastal birch forests in northern Norway.

The most conspicuous tall herb is meadowsweet (Filipendula kamtschatica) reaching 3–4 meters at full size, but other species such as cranesbill (Geranium erinathum), meadow rue (Thalictrum kemense), fire weed (Epilobium augustifolium), and horsetails (Equisetum hiemale) are also prevalent. Small trees of willows (Salix hultenii) as well as shrubs of mountain ash (Sorbus sambucifolia) and honeysuckle (Lonicera chamissonis) are among the most common woody plants in the birch forests. In certain subalpine zones in northeastern Eurasia, stone birches extend into the Pinus pumila thickets, in which they exhibit a polycormic form with several stems sprouting from the same base. These forests are vicarious to the timberline forests in northwestern Europe, with VacciniumEmpetrum heaths as the dominating undergrowth. VERA HELENE HAUSNER See also Treeline Further Reading Atkinson, Mark D., “Betula Pendula Roth (B. Verrucosa Ehrh.) and Betula Pubescens Ehrh.” Journal of Ecology, 80 (1992): 837–870 Fredskild, Bent & Søren Ødum (editors), “The Greenland Mountain Birch Zone, Southwest Greenland.” Meddelelser om Grønland, Bioscience, 33 (1990): 1–80 Hämet-Ahti, Leena, “Zonation of the Mountain Birch Forests in Northernmost Fennoscandia.” Annales Botanicae Fennicae Vanamo, 34 (1963): 1–127 Hultén, Eric “The plant cover of Southern Kamchatka.” Arkiv för Botanik (Ser. 2), 7 (1971): 181–257 Hunt, David (editor), Betula—Proceedings of the IDS Betula Symposium, October 2–4, 1992, International Dendrology Society, 1992, pp. 1–111 Wielgolaski, Frans E. (editor), Nordic Mountain Birch Ecosystems. Man and the Biosphere Series, Volume 27, London: The Parthenon Publishing Group, 2001

BIRKET-SMITH, KAJ Danish ethnographer and geographer Kaj BirketSmith worked at the Ethnographic Collections at the National Museum in Copenhagen from 1929 to 1963, where he influenced the fields of anthropology, ethnology, and Eskimology. During his leadership, the ethnographic displays at the National Museum, particularly the Inuit section, were extensively expanded and modernized. Birket-Smith published widely on ethnography and anthropology, extending his initial empirical focus on the Arctic into wide-ranging descriptions of human cultures and civilization based on an almost polyhistorical knowledge of both contemporary and historical societies. Historians generally regard Birket-Smith as one of the founders of professional ethnography in Denmark. He was the first scholar to lecture in the discipline at

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BIRNIRK CULTURE Copenhagen University from 1946 to 1963. In 1912, while still a student in geography, Birket-Smith participated in a zoological expedition to Greenland. This trip initiated a lifelong engagement with the ethnography of the Arctic. After graduation in 1917, BirketSmith traveled to West Greenland in 1918 to conduct ethnographical studies and to collect material culture. He participated as an ethnographer on the Fifth Thule Expedition, led by Knud Rasmussen, to the American Arctic in 1921–1923, and in 1933 he traveled the North West Coast of the United States with American anthropologist Frederica de Laguna. This was BirketSmith’s last trip to the Arctic, although he returned to the ethnographic field as a member of the Galathea Expedition, the Danish circumnavigation of the globe that took place in 1951, during which he conducted fieldwork among the Igorots of Northwestern Luzon (the Philippines) and on Rennell Island (of the Solomon Islands). Birket-Smith’s first scientific monograph Ethnography of the Egedesminde District (1923), based on his 1918 fieldwork, contained a comprehensive and unparalleled description of the material culture of West Greenland. Birket-Smith thoroughly reviewed the existing literature on social organization and belief systems, and this anthropological work allowed him to draft the early outlines of a historical comparison between various cultural systems. He further elaborated this theme in his dissertation, The Caribou Eskimos, based on his work during the Fifth Thule Expedition among inland Inuit at Barren Grounds, Canada. In his research Birket-Smith argued that a culture should not be understood as a closed, organic totality because various elements were constantly exchanged among groups. An analysis of the origin of various traits, technological, material, and the like would hence allow a statistical analysis in order to reconstruct the cultural history. His findings included work with the Caribou Eskimos—who did not practice, for example, seal hunting or whaling and did not use blubber for heating—yet still shared 80% of elements common to the Eskimo. Birket-Smith claimed to have identified in the Caribou Eskimo an ancient Eskimo culture that had not yet adapted to the life at sea. This model for cultural analysis was later applied to other Inuit and Indian groups encountered during fieldwork in the 1920s and 1930s and to the Pacific area after the Galathea Expedition, most notably in Studies in Circumpacific Culture Relations (1967). Along his scientific work, Birket-Smith heavily engaged in popularizing anthropology through published works such as The Eskimos (1927), Vi Mennesker (1940), an account of evolutionary anthropology, and the wide-ranging Kulturens veje (1941) translated as The Paths of Culture (1960).

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Later generations of social anthropologists have criticized Birket-Smith for displaying somewhat paternalistic attitudes toward the Inuit whom he interviewed and studied; such critics have argued that his attempts to model ethnography on the natural sciences could lead to unfortunate political implications. However, through the meticulous attention to details in material culture, the comparative perspective, and the attempts to model processes of cultural exchange and communication, Birket-Smith has left a legacy that still carries tremendous weight within ethnography.

Biography Kaj Birket-Smith was born on January 20, 1893 in Denmark and died in 1977. ANDREAS ROEPSTORFF See also Eskimology; Fifth Thule Expedition; Laguna, Frederica de; Rasmussen, Knud Further Reading Birket-Smith, Kaj, The Caribou Eskimos, Material and Social Life and Their Cultural Position, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1929 ———, Eskimoerne [The Eskimos], translated from the Danish by W.E. Calvert, London: Methuen & Co., 1936 (first published in Denmark in 1927) ———, Kulturens veje, København: Jespersen og Pio, 1948 [translated as The paths of culture; a general ethnology, from the Danish by Karin Fennow], Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965 ———, Primitive Man and his Ways; Patterns of Life in some Native Societies, translated from the Danish by Roy Duffell, Cleveland, Ohio: World Pub. Co., 1960 ———, Studies in Circumpacific Culture Relations, Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1967 Birket-Smith, Kaj & Frederica de Laguna, The Eyak Indians of the Copper River Delta, Alaska, Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard, E. Munksgaard, 1938

BIRNIRK CULTURE Birnirk is the pre-Thule culture first identified by excavations in 1912 by Vilhjalmur Stefansson near Pt Barrow, Alaska. The first extensive description of the culture was by J. Aldon Mason based on University Museum, University of Pennsylvania collections acquired in 1919 from Kugusugaruk just south of Utkiavik (modern Barrow) by the school teacher William B. Van Valin. The first fully scientific excavations of Birnirk materials at Barrow were made by James A. Ford in 1931 and 1932, but the publication was delayed until 1959. Other Birnirk sites were excavated in 1936 at Cape Prince of Wales by Henry Collins, in 1939 at Pt Hope by Helge Larsen and Froelich Rainey, in 1960

BIRTHPLACE CRITERIA and 1961 at Cape Krusenstern by Louis Giddings, in 1968 at Walakpa by Dennis Stanford, and in 1970 and 1971 at the Kuk Site near Nome by John Bockstoce. Birnirk culture also appears to have existed along the northern coast of northeastern Asia as far west as the mouth of the Kolyma River in the East Siberian Sea, where in the early 1920s H.U. Sverdrup and later A.P. Okladnikov and N.A. Beregovaya located typical Birnirk objects in middens. Birnirk settlements appear to have been rather small, with only one or two houses occupied at any one time. The houses themselves are also small and could not have been occupied by more than single families. Two forms of the houses have been noted, the more common with a relatively short entrance passage and a single side bench and the other with a long entrance passage and bench along the rear wall. Most of the houses lacked open fireplaces, and instead were lighted and heated by lamps. The physical type of Birnirk people, described in 1930 by Archaeology of the Arctic: Alaska and Beringia; Hrdlic Eka, is typical northern Eskimo. Birnirk culture is characterized by a wide variety of objects that closely resemble implements of historic period Northwest Alaskan Eskimo culture, an indication that Birnirk, along with its successor Thule culture, is in the direct line of continuity into Iñupiat (Inuit) culture. The long list of artifact types includes ice hunting equipment such as seal ice scratchers for attracting seals basking on the ice in spring, wound pins, and open water seal hunting equipment such as bladder floats. The characteristic sealing harpoon head type of Birnirk culture is self-pointed and open socketed, with a single lateral barb and an opposing chipped stone sideblade inset. The basal toggling spur is usually bifurcated or trifurcated. Another harpoon head form is the Sicco type, a variant of the unbarbed, endbladed Punuk-style harpoon head from St Lawrence and Punuk Islands. Whether Birnirk people hunted whales or not is a subject of controversy. The settlements were too small to have permitted coordinated ice lead hunting with multiple crews, as the deemed prerequisite to successful whaling along the northwest Alaskan coast nowadays, but the presence in Birnirk of one whaling harpoon head from Barrow, a few triangular stone blades identical to those used for insetting into whaling harpoon heads from other sites, as well as whale effigies and baleen are difficult to explain if not related to whale hunting. Birnirk is also characterized by the use of ground slate for knife and ulu blades and thick pottery with curvilinear stamped design. Although Birnirk culture is clearly ancestral to Thule and historic period Inuit culture, its own origin is still a question. The stone tools from the Birnirk

sites are derived stylistically from Ipiutak, an earlier northwestern Alaskan coastal and interior culture dating to the beginning of the Christian era, but the organic implements and pottery bear no relation to Ipiutak, nor do they relate closely to other earlier coastal Beringian or Arctic cultures such as found in Alaska, Chukchi Peninsula, St Lawrence Island, or Canada, except in very generalized ways. The best interpretation to date is that Birnirk developed so rapidly with the introduction of specialized ice hunting practices that traces of the unique aspects of the culture of its forebears were essentially overwhelmed by the new technology. DOUGLAS D. ANDERSON See also HrdliJka, Aleš; Ipiutak Culture; Larsen, Helge; Rainey, Froelich; Thule Culture Further Reading Ford, James A., Eskimo Prehistory in the Vicinity of Point Barrow, Alaska, Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, 1959

BIRTHPLACE CRITERIA The birthplace criterion, as part of the Greenland Civil Servants Act, was used in Greenland until 1991. It determined a person’s salary and other conditions of work according to their place of birth. Since World War II, during the period characterized as the era of modernization in Greenland, there was a need to attract qualified personnel from outside Greenland because there were not enough well-educated Greenlanders. The personnel were needed both by the Danish state in its work in Greenland and later, from 1979, by the Home Rule government. Due to the lack of educated Greenlanders, special conditions (e.g., higher salaries, free annual vacation trips, and generally better working conditions) were offered to both blue and white collar workers from outside, chiefly from Denmark. The fundamental principle for the difference in salary was linked to education as well as productivity. The idea was that Danes were entitled to higher salaries and the other bonuses in order to compete with the Danish marketplace and to compensate them for having to live in Greenland. The reason for the Greenlanders’ lower salary and lack of bonuses was that they should reflect the level of economic development in the country and it was felt that the Greenlanders’ productivity was lower. The legislation enacted in 1946 concerning the salaries of persons working for the Greenland Administration differentiated among civil servants, Greenlandic civil servants, and hired help. According to the civil servant law, both Danes and Greenlanders

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BLADDER CEREMONY could be civil servants; however, there were a number of exceptions because positions such as ship captains, settlement managers, and the like could only be held by Danes. The salaries of civil servants were stipulated in the civil servant law (Tjenestemandsloven) of June 6, 1946. Prices and salaries in Denmark, in principle, determined the economic conditions of the civil servants. Not only did the Danes receive a higher salary but they also received special bonuses of free housing and refund of expenses for fuel. Furthermore, Danes working in Greenland did not have to pay taxes. In theory, the Greenlanders were also tax-free, but in actual fact they had to pay several indirect taxes that were used to fund the Greenland Administration and other activities. Different legislation has, over the years, tried to address the inequity. Law nr. 5 of June 7, 1958 made a distinction between those “belonging to Greenland” and those “sent out” from Denmark. This last group got a special Greenland allowance. If a Greenlander after their eighth year had lived outside Greenland for more than ten years and was hired in Denmark, they would also be entitled to the special enumeration. The G-60 strategy for development in Greenland dealt with income policy in Greenland. Law nr. 168 of May 27, 1964 differentiated between “belonging to Greenland” (hjemmehoerende) and “not belonging to Greenland” (ikke-hjemmehoerende). The primary criterion for salary and other compensation became that of the person’s birthplace. According to this law, any person who at the time of being hired lived in Greenland, was born in Greenland, or had settled in Greenland before their fifth birthday was considered as “belonging to Greenland” and received lesser salary. The “not-belonging” person received a higher salary plus a number of special bonuses: a Greenland allowance usually set as a percentage of the salary, free vacation travel to Denmark including the family, reduced rent, and earlier retirement. Law nr. 263 of June 9, 1971 reinforced these criteria and stated that: “… whereas the reason for the present salary system still are valid and there is for some time to come a need for two levels…it has been accepted that it is not possible to find another criterion that to a higher degree than the birthplace criterion is fair for all sides.” The criteria for the higher salary and bonuses were the place of residence at the time of being hired and birthplace outside Greenland, usually in Denmark (or if the person was a Greenlander, then they would have had to live at least 10 years outside Greenland). However, the birthplace criterion had led to a great deal of criticism because it was regarded as unfair, discriminatory, and racist. In fact, many were so upset about it that it was one of the main reasons for the for-

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mation of the first political party in Greenland, the Inuit Party. The birthplace criterion was finally repealed in 1991 by means of a new civil servants law that unequivocally did away with all unequal treatment in salary and in other respects because of the place of birth. BIRGER POPPEL AND MARIANNE STENBÆK See also Denmark Strait; G-60; Greenland; Greenland Home Rule Act; Inuit Party; Naming; Olsen, Jørgen Further Reading Boserup, M., Økonomisk politik i Grønland, Copenhagen, 1963 Sørensen, Axel Kjær, Danmark—Grønland i det 20. Århundrede, Arnold Busck, Copenhagen: Nyt Nordisk Forlag, 1983 The Greenland Commission of 1948, Betænkning afgivet af Grønlandskommissionen af 1948, Copenhagen, 1950 The Greenland Committee of 1960, Betænkning afgivet af Grønlandsudvalget af 1960, Copenhagen

BLADDER CEREMONY Ethnomusicologists and anthropologists associate the Bladder Ceremony with the Central Alaskan Yup’ik region of Western Alaska. Related groups may have exhibited analogous, although less elaborate, practices. Although scholars know little of the aboriginal Aleut religion, an 18th-century illustration depicts a “bladder dance,” with a female dancer holding an inflated bladder. Aleut ceremonies held through the winter for the return of more whales, and the little-known Pacific Eskimo “animal increase ceremony” may have shared with the Bladder Ceremony the ritual purpose of returning game from one season to the next. The Bladder Ceremony was based on the importance of honoring animals by taking special care of their remains or symbolic parts of their remains (e.g., skull, head, or bones) in order to entreat and ensure the animals’ return. In the case of this ceremony, the Yupiit treated and returned the bladders of sea mammals to the water. The central act of the Bladder Ceremony was to release the “persons” of the seals back into the water so that they would return to their “fellows” with reports of good treatment among humans. If well treated, seals would be inclined to return to the same hunters in the future. A myth told in conjunction with this ceremony— “The Boy Who Went to Live with the Seals”—comprised one of numerous Yup’ik stories of a widespread Inuit type that involves a human’s stay in the world of animals. In this case the boy saw the human world from the seal’s viewpoint, and he returned with instructions on how to behave in ways that honored and respected the seal. In this story, the boy is sent

BLADDER CEREMONY along with the bladders during the ceremony, and returns during the following year’s ceremony to the ice hole through which the bladders are placed. The Bladder Ceremony took place around the winter solstice, but included preparatory ceremonies during the fall that opened paths to the spirit world and publicly identified each participant by name. This set up the conditions for the seals’ spirits (or “persons”) to return to the sea with a knowledge of those who had caught them, so that they could come again to those hunters who had treated them with proper care. The crux of the ceremony centered on the ritual treatment and entertainment of the “persons” of the seals that had been caught during the previous year. The seal’s “person” was believed to retreat into the bladder at death. For this reason, bladders were dried and deflated for storage and kept for the ceremony. Then Yupiit inflated the bladders, painted them with identifying marks, and placed them in the ceremonial center or men’s house (qasgiq). Participants in the ceremony purified the bladders with smoke from wild celery, offered them food and water, entertained them with games, drumming and song, and generally treated the sacred bladders with great care. For example, Yupiit believed that the bladders must be kept company and not frightened by sudden movements and noises. A distribution of goods followed. At the climax of the ceremony, the bladders and wild celery were taken out through the smoke hole, then deflated and submerged through a square hole in the ice of a specified body of fresh water, from which their contained “persons” returned to the sea. While the Bladder Ceremony occurred at a prescribed season, ritual treatment of seals at other times was fundamentally linked to the concern that these animals be treated with respect throughout their stay in the human world. When hunters caught the seals, they offered the animals a drink of fresh water. The Yupiit protected the seals from offensive influences, such as menstruating women, and their heads and bones were also ritually treated. Although the elaborate Bladder Ceremony focused on seals, the prized resource on the west-central coast of Alaska, hunters in some areas saved and their wives dried the bladders of other sea mammals, such as polar bears in St Michael. Small birds, representing the first catches of little boys, and the bladders of land animals were occasionally retained and dried for return at the ceremony. Bladder ceremonies also prominently featured bird imagery and the imitation of inherited helping spirits, most often birds. Ann Fienup-Riordan (1988, 1994) suggested that the association of birds and bladders relates to a more widespread connection between hunter and hunted.

Ethnographic descriptions of the Bladder Ceremony and/or its antecedents, based on contemporary first-person accounts, memory, or oral tradition, are found in Edmonds (Ray, 1966), Nelson (1899), Lantis (1947), Morrow (1984), Mather (1985), Fienup-Riordan (1988), and Orr et al. (1997). Anthropologists (Lantis, Oswalt, Fienup-Riordan, and Morrow) agree on the central purpose of the Bladder Ceremony and its main features, although there is local variation in specific traditions and insufficient information to determine the reasons for some practices. Margaret Lantis classed the Bladder Ceremony as a hunting ritual, based on the concept of honoring animals as instructed in mythic encounters, and characterized by certain ritual actions, including mimicry of animal behavior and hunting scenes. Fienup-Riordan situated the ceremony within a larger complex of Yup’ik ritual actions, all of which circumscribe and control the flow of activity in an otherwise undifferentiated universe. Ritual, she argued, creates passages between worlds as cultural rules set the boundaries among them. Her symbolic interpretation also stressed the Yupiit pairing of opposites— water and land, salt and fresh water, hunter and hunted, women and men—in this and other rituals concerning the return of seals. PHYLLIS MORROW See also Animals in the Worldviews of Indigenous Peoples; Music (Traditional Indigenous); Yupiit Further Reading Fienup-Riordan, Ann (editor), The Yup’ik Eskimos as Described in the Travel Journals and Ethnographic Accounts of John and Edith Kilbuck, 1885–1900, Kingston, Ontario: Limestone Press, 1988 ———, Boundaries and Passages: Rule and Ritual in Yup’ik Eskimo Oral Tradition, Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994 Lantis, Margaret, Alaskan Eskimo Ceremonialism, Seattle: University of Washington Press, and New York: Augustin, 1947; reprinted Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966 Mather, Elsie P., Cauyarnariuq, Bethel, Alaska: Lower Kuskokwim School District, 1985 Morrow, Phyllis, “It is time for drumming: a summary of recent research on Yup’ik ceremonialism.” Etudes/Inuit/Studies, 8 (supplementary issue), 1984 Nelson, Edward W., The Eskimo About Bering Strait, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1899: reprinted 1983 Orr, Eliza Cingarkaq, Ben Orr, Victor Kanrilak Jr. & Andy Charlie Jr., Ellangellemni…/When I Became Aware, Fairbanks, Alaska: Lower Kuskokwim School District and Alaska Native Language Center, 1997 Oswalt, Wendell H., Alaskan Eskimos, San Francisco, California: Chandler Publishing Company, 1967 Ray, Dorothy Jean (editor), “The Eskimo of St. Michael and Vicinity as Related by H.M.W. Edmonds.” Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska, 13(2) (1966)

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BLUE WHALE

BLADDERNOSE (HOODED) SEAL—See HOODED SEAL

BLUE WHALE Even though there are some recently discovered dinosaurs that may have been longer, for sheer bulk the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is the largest and heaviest animal ever to have lived on Earth. The largest specimens were over 100 feet long, and weighed 150 tons (300,000 pounds), but the average blue whales are between 75 and 80 feet long. After a gestation period of a year, the newborn blue whale is 24 feet long, and weighs between 2.5 and 3 tons. This makes a newborn blue whale larger than almost all living adult vertebrates, except for other whales, some sharks, and such terrestrial animals as elephants and rhinoceroses. The calf is fed on its mother’s milk, which is so rich in fat that the neonate puts on some 200 pounds a day—8.33 pounds an hour—for the first six months of its life. The yearling blue whale is weaned when it is approximately 50 feet long. As with other rorquals (i.e., whales of the Balaenopteridae family), adult females are larger than males. For the most part, blue whales are slate- or grayish-blue in color, splashed with lighter spots, which are concentrated most heavily on the back and shoulders and appear only rarely on the head, flippers, or flukes. The underside of a blue whale is the same color as the dorsal surface, not lighter as in most other balaenopterids. In the northern North Pacific and the Antarctic, blue whales often acquire a patina of yellowish diatoms on the underside, which accounts for their occasional name of “sulphur-bottom.” The ventral grooves reach the navel and number between 55 and 70. The baleen of a blue whale is black, and there are some 300–400 plates on each side of the upper jaw. At the front of the mouth, the plates are about 20 inches (50 cm) long, and at the rear they are about 40 inches (100 cm) long. The skull is less sharply pointed than that of any other rorqual, and its wide, flat upper jaw is diagnostic and responsible for some of its early names—“flathead” and “broad-nosed whale.” The flippers are narrow and pointed, and the dorsal fin is very small, and located so far back on the caudal peduncle that it is not visible at the surface until most of the animal’s back has rolled by. The blow of the blue whale is vertical, and on a still day can reach as high as 15 m (50 feet). Some workers have recognized a “pygmy” species (Balaenoptera musculus brevicauda) but others believe that this population, found in the Subantarctic Indian Ocean, is merely a geographical variation. Blue whales make three or four shallow dives, followed by a deeper one, where the flukes are raised out

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of the water. They are selective feeders, preferring shrimplike creatures known as euphausiids, which they ingest by the millions. It has been estimated that a feeding blue whale requires 3 million calories a day, which works out to 4 tons of krill, or about 40 million krill every day during the feeding season. (The feeding season only lasts four months; however, for the other eight months of every year, the whale fasts.) They take in and expel huge mouthfuls of water, trapping the food items in the fringes of their baleen plates and then swallowing them. During their feeding dives, blue whales take so much water into their mouths that their throats are grotesquely distended, increasing their diameter two or three times. Baleen whales do not echolocate, but they do vocalize. The calls of adult blue whales are extremely loud, perhaps the loudest sounds made by any animal. These sounds carry farther than any other animal sounds, and may be detected over a thousand miles away. Blue whale sounds are narrow-band, low-frequency moans that lie below the range of human hearing. During the summer months, blue whales of the eastern North Pacific are found in the Gulf of Alaska, along the southern side of the Aleutian Islands, near the Kuril Islands and off Kamchatka. They have also been reported off the Chukotka Peninsula, but rarely from the Bering Sea. The North Atlantic populations range as far north as Spitsbergen, Jan Mayen Land, and commonly around Iceland. They have been seen on the west side of Greenland (the Davis Strait) and also in Baffin Bay. The Aleuts know the blue whale as umgulik, the Chukchi as akhokhrinkh, the Greenland Inuit as tunnolik, and the aborigines of the Chukotska Peninsula as takyshkok. The blue whales found in the North Pacific and the North Atlantic are, on average, somewhat smaller than those of the Southern Ocean, but otherwise there is no difference between them, and there is no exchange of populations between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Aboriginal and early commercial whalers rarely hunted blue whales because the whales were too large and powerful, but the introduction of heavy artillery made the hunting of blue whales all too possible. In 1904, after decimating the blue whales of the North Atlantic, Norwegian whalers headed south to the Antarctic, where they encountered an unprecedented abundance of blue and fin whales, there to feed on the concentrations of krill in the antipodean summer. The Norwegians and British first established shore whaling stations, mostly on the island of South Georgia, but with the invention of the stern slipway in 1925, the whales could be processed at sea, and the numbers of whales killed increased exponentially. In the 1930–1931 Antarctic season, 29,410 blue whales were killed. In the 1930s, Norwegian and British

BOAS, FRANZ whalers introduced the Blue Whale Unit (BWU), which meant that one blue whale was the equivalent of two fins, two and a half humpbacks, or six sei whales. It required the same effort to kill a blue whale as a fin whale, but you got twice the credit, which meant of course that blue whales, even though declining in numbers, were consistently being targeted. In 1966, the International Whaling Commission banned all blue whale hunting. As a result, they are fully protected around the world, but the total world population of around 5000 animals does not appear to be increasing. RICHARD ELLIS See also Whaling, Historical Further Reading Ellis R., The Book of Whales, New York: Knopf, 1980 ———, Men and Whales, New York: Knopf, 1991 Hershkovitz, P., “Catalog of living whales.” United States National Museum Bulletin, 246 (1966): 1–259 Mowat, F., Sea of Slaughter, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1984 Sears, R., “Blue whales.” In Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals, edited by W.F. Perrin, B. Wursig & J.G.M. Thewissen, London and San Diego: Academic Press, 2002 Small, G.L., The Blue Whale, New York: Columbia University Press, 1971 Yochem, P.K. & S. Leatherwood, “Blue whale Balaenoptera musculus (Linnaeus 1758).” In Handbook of Marine Mammals, Volume 3, The Sirenians and Baleen Whales, edited by S.H. Ridgway and R. Harrison, San Diego: Academic Press, 1985

BOAS, FRANZ Franz Boas has earned the standing as one of the founders of the modern academic discipline of anthropology. He is known in part for his geographical and anthropological work in the Canadian Arctic, whereby he pioneered the modern anthropological practice of fieldwork. Although born in northwestern Germany, he emigrated to the United States to escape growing antiSemitism in the years following his Arctic research in 1883–1884. Boas became the first anthropology professor of Columbia University in New York in 1899 after publishing The Central Eskimo in 1888, and engaged in further fieldwork in the Pacific Northwest, leading to a voluminous and distinguished publication career. Boas can be credited with helping to invent the modern notions of culture and cultural relativism; helping to launch Arctic anthropology; stressing fieldwork as a core aspect of anthropological research; training the founding generation of American anthropologists; and making significant contributions to a variety of fields, including physical anthropology, ethnography, linguistics, and geography (particularly in the Arctic). Boas conducted his earliest fieldwork in the Canadian Arctic from 1883 to 1884. Although he

traveled to Cumberland Sound (an inlet of Davis Strait in the Northwest Territories) as a geographer interested in recording Inuit place-names, mapping the region, and traveling the overland route westward to Foxe Basin, his experiences there led him to change his vocation from geography to anthropology. Ludger Müller-Wille has noted in his introduction to the published version of the journals of Boas from the journey that “this, the first and only research trip that Boas spent among the Inuit, became personally and scientifically a key experience for him and ultimately one of special significance for the development of anthropology” (Müller-Wille, 1998: 3). Boas chose to travel to Cumberland Sound because no one had yet traveled the route from the sound to Foxe Basin, and exploring uncharted territory was a requirement for a geography doctorate in Germany at the time. His choice was in part prompted by the First International Polar Year in 1882–1883, which had demonstrated strong German participation in Cumberland Sound as well as an established structure of whaling stations. The station at Kekerten Island served as Boas’s base in the Arctic. Cumberland Sound seemed therefore to be a propitious location. The participation of his assistant, Wilhelm Weike, significantly facilitated Boas’s Arctic fieldwork. Boas and Weike traveled in the summer of 1883 on the Germania, which under the sponsorship of the German Polar Commission had set off for Cumberland Sound with the purpose of returning with German scientists who had spent the previous year there. Although Boas did not succeed in making the trip to Foxe Basin, he traveled extensively around the Sound, up along the north coast of Baffin Island, and in the western interior as far as Nettilling Lake. The maps Boas ultimately produced were superior to those in use at the time (the British admiralty charts), and he subsequently authored a number of geographically oriented texts. However, the study of the people generated the most enthusiasm for both Boas and, ultimately, his audience. In the journal he kept for his fiancée, he famously noted, “As you see, my Marie, I am now truly just like an Eskimo; I live like them, hunt with them, and count myself among the men of Anarnitung” (quoted in Muller-Wille, p. 182). Here Boas was referencing the Austro-Hungarian adventurer and author Henry Wenzel Klutschak, who had traveled in the region to the west of Hudson Bay as part of the Frederick Schwatka expedition in search of Sir John Franklin’s lost ship during the years 1778–1779, surviving by living among the Inuit. Klutschak’s riveting account of his years had been published in Germany in 1881. In Boas’s journals he also observed on October 3, 1883, after only two months, that “Eskimos are far from uncivilized people” (quoted in

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BOAS, FRANZ Müller-Wille, p. 110), the beginning, as Müller-Wille and others have noted, of the notion of cultural relativism. The concept of cultural relativism implies attempting to understand different cultures without using evaluative criteria that stem from the observing culture; by moving away from a notion that Inuit were savages and understanding that Inuit had their own forms of “civilization.” Boas began to break with the prevailing mode of scholarship that invoked ethnocentric judgments to characterize and describe culture prior to his own. As a result, upon his return to Europe and visit to America, Boas began primarily engaging audiences with his ethnographic rather than geographical material. The book-length monograph he ultimately produced (The Central Eskimo) was not a geography text, but in a sense a hybrid text that incorporated the nascent field of anthropology that would hence become a classic in that field and within the study of Inuit culture. Boas, in this text, achieved the application of science and scientific models to the study of culture, sharply distinguishing it from the amateur ethnography tradition (to which Klutschak’s account, for example, belongs) by being strictly analytical in applying categories and attempting a complete description of culture. The Central Eskimo contains an extensive description of the geographical distribution of Inuit, emphasizes material culture and activities, but devotes about one third of its material to categories such as social and religious life, tales and traditions, and science and the arts, or what would presently be termed cultural anthropology. Today the environmental determinism found in Boas’s approach would likely garner less sympathy (although that tradition of thought has remained persistent in Arctic studies), and the static view of culture as untouched by temporality and as a “pure” totality would be challenged by most contemporary cultural anthropologists. Nevertheless The Central Eskimo remains a remarkable achievement for its implicit challenge to the ethnocentric model of cultural hierarchy implied by cultural evolution that dominated 19thcentury letters. Boas’s pioneer work also put Inuit culture squarely at the center of the anthropological enterprise and retained a strong influence on Arctic anthropology. Boas went on to a very distinguished career at Columbia University in New York, serving terms as president of the American Anthropological Society and the New York Academic of Sciences. He authored many other books and hundreds of articles, including Primitive Art (1927), Anthropology and Modern Life (1928), and Race, Language and Culture (1940). Among his most influential books, The Mind of Primitive Man (1911) demonstrated that there was no such thing as a superior

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race, thereby establishing Boas as an outspoken thinker within the field of physical anthropology and a prescient scholar of race and culture theories. His later fieldwork was among First Nations on the Pacific Northwest coast, though often the more general publications drew extensively on his Arctic experience. Boas was also active in museum presentations of culture, particularly as curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, in the years 1901–1905. His students included Alfred Kroeber, Robert Lowie, Edward Sapir, Paul Radin, and later Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict, among others, many of whom are today considered leaders in the field of American anthropology in the first half of the 20th century. Boas maintained a concern for the Arctic throughout his career, although he only spent the one year of fieldwork there. As late at the mid-1930s, Boas actively debated with Diamond Jenness whether Inuit should be classified as Indians. Boas’s view that Inuit should be seen as another group of aboriginal peoples—in contrast with Jenness’s opinion that Inuit were so distinct they should be legally categorized as an entirely different people—won recognition in the Supreme Court of Canada case re: Eskimos in 1939. Boas’s perspective helped ensure that Inuit gained constitutional protection as aboriginal peoples who held aboriginal rights. Although in many respects later anthropologists would challenge much in Boas’s approach, clearly in his time he presented a powerful, progressive intellectual force against racism and ethnocentrism. It is perhaps a useful reminder of the passions inspired by his work to recall that the Nazi regime in Germany sponsored the burning of his books. The ancestors of the community of Pangnirtung in contemporary Cumberland Sound, through the work of Boas, may be said to have played a significant role in the history of ideas in the 20th century. That is, it is not only as the subjects of his research, but as people who shared ideas with him and whose respect for him no doubt helped influence the respect he offered back, that Inuit played a strong role “between the lines” in the nascent doctrine of cultural relativism. Boas deserves enormous credit for listening carefully, translating well, and adding his singular perspective to the material and ideas he gathered.

Biography Franz Boas was born on July 9, 1858 in Minden, Germany. He earned his baccalaureate from the University of Heidelberg in 1881, and in that same year earned his Ph.D. from the University of Kiel, Germany. Boas conducted his first Arctic fieldwork on Baffin Island (1883–1884) before his intellectual interests shifted to ethnology and anthropology. He

BOGORAZ, VLADIMIR GERMANOVICH subsequently served as assistant to Adolf Bastian at the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde (the Royal Museum of Ethnology), Berlin, 1885–1886. He emigrated to the United States in 1886 and served as a lecturer in anthropology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts (1889–1892). From there, he worked at the Field Museum in Chicago, moving to New York in 1895 to work at the American Museum of Natural History. In 1899, he was appointed a professor at Columbia University, New York City, where he founded the country’s first Ph.D. program in anthropology and trained several generations of anthropologists. Boas’s ideas and research led to the development of the notion of “cultural relativism,” which significantly altered the field of anthropology for years to come. Cultural relativism recognized that the differences in peoples were the results of historical, social, and geographic conditions, and that all populations had complete and equally developed culture. This countered more traditional views of culture that were often based on evolution, ethnocentrism, and even racism. Boas died on December 22, 1942. PETER KULCHYSKI See also Eskimology; International Polar Years; Inuit; Jenness, Diamond; Klutschak, Henry Wenzel Further Reading Boas, Franz, The Mind of Primitive Man, New York: Macmillan, 1924 (originally published as a course of lectures delivered before the Lowell Institute, Boston, Massachusetts, and the National University of Mexico, 1910–1911) ———, Race, Language and Culture, New York; The Macmillan Company, 1940 ———, Primitive Art, New York: Dover Publications, 1955 ———, Anthropology and Modern Life, New York; Dover Publications, 1962 ———, The Central Eskimo, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964 Klutschak, Henry W., Overland to Starvation Cove, translated and edited by William Barr, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987 Müller-Wille, Ludger (editor), Franz Boas Among the Inuit of Baffin Island 1883–1884, translated by William Barr, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998 Stocking Jr., George (editor), A Franz Boas Reader, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982 Williams, Vernon J., Rethinking Race: Franz Boaz and his Contemporaries, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996

BOGORAZ, VLADIMIR GERMANOVICH Vladimir Bogoraz (known in English as Waldemar Bogoras) pioneered the study of the Chukchi among other topics of anthropological research in the Siberian

North. He first came into contact with the peoples of northeastern Siberia as a political exile, banished to the Kolyma River as a consequence of his underground activities against the czarist regime. His ethnographic and folklore studies of the Chukchi and neighboring peoples, which began to appear in print shortly after his return from exile, have remained, in certain aspects, unsurpassed in the field of anthropology. After the Russian revolution (c.1905–1921), Bogoraz, along with Lev Y. Shternberg, founded the so-called Leningrad School of Ethnography. Bogoraz’s career as an Arctic fieldworker began in 1890, shortly after his arrival in northeastern Siberia, where he started to collect and record folkloric materials among the Russian population. Although his work among the so-called Russian Old Settlers is rarely remembered today, it resulted in a valuable body of texts and also triggered further inquiries into the ethnic landscapes of the Lower Kolyma River. A major event during Bogoraz’s years as an involuntary fieldworker was his participation in the so-called Sibiryakov Expedition, which was funded by the rich gold miner Alexander M. Sibiryakov and organized by the Russian Geographical Society. The expedition explored different areas of what is now the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), and Bogoraz’s assignment was the study of the Chukchi and Even peoples. In the course of the expedition, Bogoraz participated in the conduct of the first All-Russian census of 1897 along the Kolyma River. The materials collected enabled Bogoraz to publish his first scholarly contributions to Chukchi ethnography. Bogoraz’s participation in the Jesup North Pacific Expedition (1897–1902), masterminded by Franz Boas and organized by the American Museum of Natural History in New York, marked yet another significant contribution. Together with Vladimir I. Iokhel’son, Bogoraz led the northern party of the Siberian section of the expedition. Bogoraz spent over 12 months in Chukotka and northern Kamchatka (1900–1901), and his travels introduced him to the Reindeer and Maritime Chukchi, as well as the Yupiget (Siberian Yupik). Bogoraz returned to St Petersburg with a wealth of ethnographic data, linguistic notes and texts, ethnographic artifacts, skeletal samples, archaeological specimens, as well as photographs and voice recordings. The Jesup North Pacific Expedition resulted in the publication of Bogoraz’s best-known research—The Chukchee, a massive, three-part monograph that originally appeared in English under the editorship of Boas. Despite its mono-ethnic title, the work provided outstanding ethnographic data not only about the Chukchi but also about the Yupiget and, to a lesser degree, the Koryak, Yukagir, Even, and Russian Old

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BOGORAZ, VLADIMIR GERMANOVICH Settlers. In accordance with other major baseline ethnographies at the turn of the century, Bogoraz managed to include references to a myriad of anthropological interests, including fishing implements to funeral ceremonies, shamanism to dog-breeding, and from children’s games to customary law. The Chukchee is also characterized by an unusual amount of historical information and remains the single best ethnographic source ever written about this people. Other monographs resulting from the expedition include an outstanding volume on Chukchi mythology (Bogoras, 1910) and a short collection of Siberian Yupik folklore (Bogoras, 1913). While The Chukchee primarily described the various aspects of ethnography, Bogoraz’s theoretical writings demonstrate influences from evolutionism and geographic determinism. Most of Bogoraz’s scholarly works published outside Russia appeared under the name of Waldemar Bogoras, while he used the pen-name “Tan” as a novelist. Bogoraz was a self-taught scholar who had no academic standing prior to the Russian revolution. His activities and support for the new government, nonetheless, helped move him into influential positions. In 1918, he became a curator at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences and was given the academic title of professor. In 1922, Bogoraz joined the staff of the faculty of ethnography at the Geographical Institute, which became the core institution of the Leningrad School of Ethnography. He and his colleagues trained the first generation of Soviet anthropologists working in Siberia and elsewhere. Bogoraz was also active in the Committee of the North and served as the director of the Institute of the Peoples of the North in Leningrad. In these and other capacities, Bogoraz contributed to the development of written languages, as well as to the compilation of textbooks and dictionaries for the Chukchi and other peoples. He was the founder and director of the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism in Leningrad, which provided him with the opportunity to exhibit artifacts of Siberian shamanism and of other traditional forms of religion, while at the same time serving the official cause of the fight against religion.

Biography Vladimir Bogoraz was born Natan Mendelevich Bogoraz in the small village of Ovruch, northwest of Kiev, Russia, in 1865. At the age of seven, he moved with his family to Taganrog in southern Russia. Through his elder sister, Bogoraz came into contact with the ideas of the revolutionary organizations Zemlya i volya (“Land and Freedom”) and Narodnaya volya

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(“People’s Freedom”). When he entered St Petersburg University in the fall of 1880, Bogoraz joined a secret student circle of narodniki (generally translated into English as “populists”). He was subsequently arrested, expelled from the university, and exiled to Rostov on the Don River. At the age of 20, he converted from Judaism to Russian Orthodoxy and changed his name to Vladimir Germanovich Bogoraz so as not to compromise his political underground activities. Another arrest in late 1886 led to 18 months of solitary confinement in the Peter and Paul fortress in St Petersburg and to a sentence of ten years of exile in northeastern Siberia, where Bogoraz arrived in 1889. He was only allowed to return to the Russian capital in 1899. Bogoraz served as a hospital orderly during World War I and supported the social transformations triggered by the Russian Revolution of 1917. After a period of intense influence and recognition during the 1920s, Bogoraz became the target of Marxist criticism during the subsequent decade. He nevertheless managed to avoid open persecution and died a natural death in 1936. PETER P. SCHWEITZER See also Boas, Franz; Chukchi; Committee of the North; Jesup North Pacific Expedition; Shternberg, Lev Yakovlevich

Further Reading Bogoras, Waldemar, “The Chukchi of Northeastern Asia.” American Anthropologist, n.s., 3 (1901): 80–108 ———, “The folklore of Northeastern Asia, as compared with that of Northwestern America.” American Anthropologist, n.s., 4(4) (1902): 577–683 ———, The Chukchee, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1904–1909 ———, Chukchee Mythology, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1910 ———, The Eskimo of Siberia, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1913 ———, Tales of Yukaghir, Lamut, and Russianized Natives of Eastern Siberia, New York: American Museum of Natural History, 1918 ———, “Chukchee.” In Handbook of American Indian Languages, Part 2, edited by Franz Boas, Washington, District of Columbia: Government Printing Office, 1922 ———, “Early migrations of the Eskimo between Asia and America.” In Congrés International des Americanistes. Compte-rendu de la XXIe session, deuxieme partie tenue a Göteborg en 1924, Gothenburg, 1924 ———, “Ideas of space and time in the conception of primitive religion.” American Anthropologist, 27(2) (1925): 205–66 Bogoraz-Tan, Vladimir Germanovich, “Avtobiografiia [Autobiography].”In Vladimir Germanovich Bogoraz-Tan i Severo-Vostok: Biobibliograficheskii ukazatel’, Magadan: Magadanskaia oblastnaia biblioteka im. A.S. Pushkina, 1991 [first published in 1927] Freed, Stanley A., Ruth S. Freed & Laila Williamson, “Capitalist philantropy and Russian revolutionaries: The Jesup North Pacific Expedition (1897–1902).” American Anthropologist, 90(1) (1988): 7–24

BOREAL FOREST ECOLOGY Gernet, Katharina, Vladimir Germanovich Bogoraz (1865–1939). Eine Bibliographie [Vladimir Germanovich Bogoraz (1865–1939): A Bibliography], Munich: Osteuropa-Institut, 1999 Krader, Lawrence, “Bogoraz, Vladimir G., Sternberg, Lev Y., and Jochelson, Vladimir.” In International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Volume 2, edited by D.L. Sills, New York: Macmillan, 1968 Krupnik, Igor, “The Bogoras enigma: bounds of culture and formats of anthropologists.” In Grasping the Changing World: Anthropological Concepts in the Postmodern Era, edited by V. Hubinger, London: Routledge, 1996 Kuleshova, Natal’ia F., V.G. Tan-Bogoraz. Zhizn’ i tvorchestvo [V.G. Tan-Bogoraz: Life and Work], Minsk: Izdatel’stvo BGU im. V.I. Lenina, 1975 Vdovin, I.S., “V.G. Bogoraz-Tan—uchenyi, pisatel’, obshchestvennyi deiatel’ (K 125-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia) [V.G. Bogoraz-Tan: scholar, writer, public activist (on his 125th birthday].” Sovetskaia etnografiia, 2 (1991): 82–92

BOGS—See PEATLANDS AND BOGS

10–15 km per year, and most recently was located on the Noice Peninsula in southwest Ellef Ringnes Island. Topographically and climatically, the Boothia Peninsula resembles the islands of the Arctic Archipelago. Although occupying an area of 12,483 sq mi (32,331 sq km—about the combined land areas of Connecticut and New Jersey), the area is virtually uninhabited except for a few settlers at Taloyoak (formerly Spence Bay) at the southern tip of the peninsula. Taloyoak has a population of about 700 and is a budding tourist center in the area. The community is best known for producing Inuit dolls and other Inuit crafts. The Netsilik School in Taloyoak is organized under the Aboriginal Headstart Program of Canada and serves the educational needs of 240 local students, offering classes in English, French, mathematics, art, music, and sponsoring science and HIV/AIDS fairs. RALPH M. MYERSON See also Baffin Island; Prince of Wales Island

BOOTHIA PENINSULA The Boothia Peninsula, a component of the new Canadian territory of Nunavut, is a fingerlike projection of land extending northward from the Canadian mainland. It represents the northernmost tip of the North American mainland extending to a latitude of 71o58′ N. It is connected to the mainland by the narrow Isthmus of Boothia. The narrow Bellot Strait separates the Boothia Peninsula from Somerset Island to the north. To the east, the Gulf of Boothia separates it from Baffin Island. To the northwest, Franklin Strait separates it from Prince of Wales Island, and to the southwest, James Ross Strait separates the peninsula from King William Island. The Boothia Peninsula was discovered and explored by the British explorer Sir John Ross, who named it for the wealthy brewer Sir Felix Booth, a patron of his expedition. In 1829, Ross had set out on a voyage to discover the North West Passage. His ship became trapped in ice off the northwest coast of the Boothia Peninsula, where it remained icebound for the next four years. Living off the land in a manner similar to the indigenous inhabitants of the area, Ross successfully maintained his entire crew without a single loss of life and free of scurvy until his subsequent rescue. Sir John’s nephew, James Clark Ross, made a number of observations concerning the location of the magnetic north pole during this period, finally measuring a dip in the compass needle of 89o59′ at Cape Adelaide on the west coast of the Boothia Peninsula. The location of the north magnetic pole has gradually moved to the northwest at a rate of

BOREAL FOREST ECOLOGY The term boreal forest or taiga is applied to coniferous forests of the Paleo-Arctic and Neo-Arctic Regions (the latter emphasized here); also included are Rocky Mountain Forest and the Temperate Rainforest of the Pacific Northwest. To the north, the boreal coniferous forest merges sinuously with both Arctic and alpine tundra. To the south, the boreal forest merges with the northern deciduous forest in some places and in other places with the plains and steppes of North America and Eurasia. Southward extensions of the boreal forest follow the three main north-south oriented ranges of North America. The climate of the boreal forest region is characterized by short summers (50–100 frost-free days), long, cold, dark winters, great variations of temperature between winter lows and summer highs (at Fairbanks, Alaska (USA), record low, −52.2°C (−62°F); record high, 35.6°C (96°F)), and a mean annual precipitation of 380–500 mm. At Fairbanks, annual precipitation averages out at 272 mm, including an annual average of 1780 mm of snowfall. Snowfall totals vary widely from winter to winter— at Fairbanks, for example, 940 mm in 1969–1970; 3660 mm in 1971–1972. From the early 1900s to the present, average annual measurements at Fairbanks have changed as follows: temperature increase, 1.1°C; snowfall increase, 635 mm; and precipitation decrease, 38 mm. Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula is mostly free of permafrost, but permafrost occurs commonly throughout

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A carpet of reindeer moss covers the boreal forest floor in Southern Labrador, Canada. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

the circumpolar boreal forest region. However, its distribution is discontinuous, especially in the southern regions of the forest. Some south-facing slopes and the beds of the larger rivers lack permafrost. Generally, the farther north, the more continuous and closer to the surface is the permafrost. Larger trees are unable to develop supportive root systems in the thin, nutrientpoor soil overlying permafrost. Seeds that manage to germinate often culminate in a krummholz (from the German word meaning “twisted wood”) community of small, straggly, misshapen trees that are characteristic of both the boreal and the alpine treelines. The boreal/alpine treelines are far from stable; for example, in Alaska the treeline is slowly moving farther into the tundra on the Seward Peninsula, and slowly creeping up some of the lower hillsides of the Alaska Range, both phenomena apparently expressions of global warming. Both the Palearctic and Nearctic Regions share some species of plants and animals, but the general rule is that while the types of plants and animals are similar (often in common genera), the species are often different in the two regions. Although there is a

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certain apparent sameness of plant cover throughout the boreal forest region, ecologists have subdivided the forest into many dozens of ecozones or ecoregions, and within these they have further characterized numerous communities or habitats. There is a pronounced north-south gradient in the numbers of plant and year-round resident animal species (fewer toward the north, especially if one starts counting in the High Arctic or on the North Slope of Alaska, far to the north of the boreal forest region). Spring thaw signals a huge influx of breeding migratory birds representing many species. These migrants exploit the summer food resources of the north, and then retire to warmer climes for the winter. The yearround residents also harvest the abundant foods of summer; their winter survival involves either hibernation or continued hunting (predators) or grazing (herbivores). A summer survey of a taiga community in the Yukon River valley of central Alaska revealed 37 species of mammals, 157 kinds of birds, and 14 species of fish. A very short list of some of the yearround animal residents of the boreal forest in North America would include the lynx (Felis lynx), shorttail

BOREAL FOREST ECOLOGY weasel or ermine (Mustela erminea), beaver (Castor canadensis), red fox (Vulpes fulva), snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus), moose (Alces alces; called elk in Eurasia), white-winged crossbill (Loxia leucoptera), willow ptarmigan (Lagopus lagopus), and the great horned owl (Bubo virginianus). Caribou (Rangifer tarandus) are exceptional in that, in many instances, they winter in the boreal forest and summer on the Arctic or alpine tundra. Food webs tend to be shorter and simpler (at least when compared to warmer biomes) in the boreal forest (e.g., lichens—caribou—wolf, or aquatic plants— moose—wolf). Plant and animal parasites and symbionts—all well represented in the forest—complicate food webs. The finer roots of white spruce (Picea glauca) are often enshrouded in mutualistic mycorrhizal fungi (numerous ascomycete and basidiomycete species) that promote water and nutrient absorption; the tree supplies sugars and amino acids to the fungi. These spruce trees (and several other conifer species) are parasitized (eventually fatally) by the spruce broom rust, Chrysomyxa arctostaphyli, which causes some of the spruce branches to form tangled masses called witches’ brooms. Essential (as a telial host) for the completion of the broom rust life cycle is another plant, kinnikinnick (bearberry), Arctostaphylos uva-ursi. In preparation for the breeding season and for the next winter, northern flying squirrels (Glaucomys sobrinus) and red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) fashion nests inside the witches’ brooms and later store harvested mycorrhizal fungi inside for winter food. As northern redbacked voles (Clethrionomys rutilus) graze the underground fruiting bodies of the mycorrhizal fungi, they spread the fungal spores about in their feces as they continue to forage. Only a very few of the many kinds of insects and fungal pathogens that attack a wide variety of boreal forest trees are noted here. In cycles of 25–30 years, spruce budworm (Choristoneura fumiferana) populations explode in the forests of northern Maine (USA) and in Ontario and Québec (Canada), causing largescale die-offs of balsam fir (Abies balsamea). Many scientists are convinced that global warming is at least in part responsible for the outbreak of spruce bark beetles (Dendroctonus rufipennis) that has killed an estimated 38 million trees (white spruce; Sitka spruce, Picea sitchensis; Lutz spruce, Picea glauca X lutzii) in 1.6 million hectares of forest on the Kenai Peninsula and neighboring regions. These large tracts of dead trees are extremely susceptible to forest fires. A new disease of forest trees, sudden oak death, caused by a funguslike pathogen, Phytophthora ramorum, has killed large stands of oak (Quercus spp.) and tanbark oak (Lithocarpus densiflorus) trees in California and Oregon, and is known to infect several

other kinds of trees in the boreal forest. Infections have also been reported in the seedlings of Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) and coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens). Although this pathogen currently exists in a relatively restricted range (mainly western USA, the Netherlands, Germany, England, and Poland), the potential for the spread of this disease is still not clear. Lightning-caused fires are natural and, for fireadapted trees, essential events in forest ecosystems. Forest trees are frequent targets of lightning strikes; fires are a common result. The subsequent course of such a fire depends on multiple factors. If there is available combustible, sufficiently dry detritus, the fire may spread; but oftentimes the fire simply burns itself out in situ, especially if the lighting is accompanied by heavy rainfall. In the usual course of events, a forest may grow undisturbed by fire for 50–200 years (or some similar periodicity). During this time, combustible debris builds up on the forest floor. When hit by a dry strike (not accompanied by rain) of lightning, combustion proceeds and spreads until the available combustible materials are consumed or until rainfall dampens the fire. Such a burned tract will not again be available for another fire for a prolonged number of years because it will take many years to build up a layer of combustible forest detritus. But it is highly probable that lightning will set off another fire at some distant point in time, and the cycle of fire-induced succession will start all over again. Fires in natural, unmanaged forests (not subject to human interventions) tend to move rapidly over the surface without producing extreme temperatures in the subsurface soils, but at the same time producing sufficient heat to provoke seed release from serotinous cones. Fire-susceptible seeds and seedlings are destroyed, mineral-rich ashes are deposited on the soil, and the way is cleared for the propagation of fireadapted seedlings and windborne seeds of other plants. Generally, forest fires are good for moose and detrimental for caribou. Fire destroys reindeer lichens, but clears the way for new plant growth that makes for good moose forage (the lichens may eventually recover but only very slowly). This natural cycle of fires followed by new growth is the norm for the vast reaches of coniferous wilderness that encircle the Northern Hemisphere, forests that are mostly far removed from human interventions. Where there are fire prevention and control interventions, forest detritus builds up so much that when it burns, the temperatures generated are so high that both fire-adapted and fire-susceptible trees, seeds, and seedlings are often destroyed. Succession then must begin with the germination of windborne seeds and spores. In central Alaska, bare ground scoured by fires or by river flooding and channel changes is first

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BOREAL FOREST ECOLOGY colonized by airborne seeds of various herbaceous and woody plants such as thinleaf alder (Alnus incana tenuifolia), balsam poplar (Populus balsamifera), and willows (Salix spp.). After about 15 years, the poplars overshadow the willows and the latter begin to wane and are replaced with horsetails (Equisetum spp.), highbush cranberry (Viburnum edule), prickly rose (Rosa acicularis), and seedlings of white spruce (Picea glauca). After about a century, the poplars largely disappear and white spruce becomes the dominant species. As white spruce trees progress towards dominance, a thick layer of moss and plant debris gradually accumulates on the forest floor, forming an insulating layer that keeps the soil temperatures cold, sometimes so cold that permafrost forms. Since such conditions are more favorable to black spruce (Picea mariana), this species eventually becomes dominant. The large stands of mature red pine (Pinus resinosa) in the Boundary Water Canoe Area of Minnesota (USA) have been protected from forest fires for so long that many of the trees will die before being able to reproduce. The serotinous (closed) cones release their seeds usually only in response to forest fires. The fires also clear away the understory vegetation, making sunlight available to the new seedlings. It has been estimated that red pine stands can reproduce themselves if they are subjected to fire at least once every 300 years. Shorter intervals between fires would better serve other fire-adapted trees such as the jack pine (Pinus banksiana), a widespread species in Canada and in northern New England and the Lake States (USA) and the dominant tree species (or codominant with red pine) in the more southerly portion of the boreal coniferous forest, often growing in association with aspens (Populus spp.) and paper birch (Betula papyrifera). Some jack pines produce both serotinous (closed) cones that release seeds in response to high temperatures, usually caused by fires, and nonserotinous (open) cones that mature and release their seeds at ambient summer temperatures. The boreal forest biome remained relatively unchanged for eons, but in recent years change-producing factors, mostly of human origin (but there may also be some factors related to interactions between cosmic rays and cloud cover), have begun to have impacts on this ancient ecosystem, including its human inhabitants, most especially nursing infants. Pollutants (pesticides, dioxins, PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), petroleum byproducts, radioactive wastes and emissions, especially from Chernobyl, aboveground nuclear device detonations and nuclear industry emissions, acid rain, black carbon aerosols, POPs (persistent organic pollutants), and many others), all products of human enterprises, are carried on winds and waters to the boreal regions where they become

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incorporated into the living tissues of fish, birds, and mammals that in part are the traditional foods of indigenous northern peoples (see Local and Transboundary Pollution). Pollution-generating industries are also located within the boreal forest biome. A satellite photograph shows large stands of trees killed by acid rain/sulfur dioxide from a nickelcopper smelter on Russia’s Kola Peninsula; these pollutants also kill insects that prey on the willow-eating Melasoma lapponica, allowing populations of this leaf beetle to explode. The global warming trend is impacting, among other things, glaciers, permafrost, tundra-taiga ecotones, and the distributions of plants and animals and their diseases. Timber, petroleum and mineral exploitation, and hydroelectric projects have caused major alterations in the boreal forest ecosystem. Most of the world’s supply of softwood timber (used to make paper) and of construction lumber comes from the boreal forest. Timber extraction operations invariably lead to habitat degradation and fragmentation, but restorative measures, implemented soon after harvest, can mitigate some of the damage. All of these impacts are uniformly both deleterious and capable of being mitigated to some extent if appropriate remedial measures are applied in a timely fashion. The most serious threat to the boreal forest wilderness is one of attitude, a mindset shared by many in government and industry, namely that the “frozen North” has value only in as much as it can be commercially exploited. J. RICHARD GORHAM See also Coniferous Forests; Taiga; Treeline Dynamics Further Reading Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, Arctic Pollution Issues: A State of the Arctic Environment Report, Oslo: AMAP, 1997 Bailey, Robert G, Ecoregions of North America (map), Washington, District of Columbia: Forest Service, US Department of Agriculture, 1997 ———, Ecoregions of North America, Explanatory Note, Washington, District of Columbia: Forest Service Miscellaneous Publication Number 1548, US Department of Agriculture, 1998 Berg, Edward, “Bark beetles and climate change on the Kenai Peninsula.” 2000–2002, website http://chinook.kpc.alaska. edu/~ifeeb/cycles/cycles_index.html Chapin, F. Stuart III, Robert L. Jefferies, James F. Reynolds, Gaius R. Shaver, Josef Svoboda & Ellen W. Chu (editors), Arctic Ecosystems in a Changing Climate: An Ecophysiological Perspective, San Diego: Academic Press, 1992 Danks, H.V. & R.G. Foottit, “Insects of the boreal zone of Canada.” Canadian Entomologist, 121(8) (1989): 625–690 Gawthrop, Daniel, Vanishing Halo: Saving the Boreal Forest, Vancouver, British Columbia: Greystone Books, 1999

BOURQUE, JAMES W. Gunn, John M. & Rod Sein, “Effects of forestry roads on reproductive habitat and exploitation of lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) in three experimental lakes.” Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 57(Suppl. 2) (2000): 97–104 Hansen, Andrew J. & Jay J. Rotella, “Biophysical factors, land use, and species viability in and around nature reserves.” Conservation Biology, 16(4) (2002): 1112–1122 Hanski, Ilkka & Peter Hammond, “Biodiversity in boreal forests.” Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 10(1) (1995): 5–6 Humphries, Murray M., Donald W. Thomas & John R. Speakman, “Climate-mediated energetic constraints on the distribution of hibernating mammals.” Nature, 418(6895) (2002): 313–316 Klein, David R., “Caribou in the changing North.” Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 29 (1991): 279–291 Lakehead University, Faculty of Forestry and the Forest Environment, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, 2002, website http://www.borealforest.org. Morrisset, Pierre & Serge Payette (editors), Tree-Line Ecology: Proceedings of the Northern Québec Tree-Line Conference (Collection Nordicana No. 47), Laval, Québec: Centre d’études nordiques, Université Laval, 1983 Packee, Edmond, C., “Silvicultural systems for Alaska’s Northern Forest.” AgroBorealis, 32(1) (2000): 21–27 Stenseth, Nils Chr., Atle Mysterud, Geir Ottersen, James W. Hurrell, Kung-Sik Chan & Mauricio Lima, “Ecological effects of climate fluctuations.” Science, 297(5585) (2002): 1292–1296 Viereck, Leslie A., “Forest succession and soil development adjacent to the Chena River in interior Alaska.” Arctic and Alpine Research, 2(1) (1970): 1–26 Webster, Paul, “Biodiversity: bid to save Kamchatka’s wildlife.” Science, 297(5588) (2002): 1787–1788 Zvereva, E.L. & M.V. Kozlov, “Effects of air pollution on natural enemies of the leaf beetle Melasoma lapponica.” Journal of Applied Ecology, 37(2) (2000): 298–309

BOURQUE, JAMES W. James W. Bourque was born in northern Alberta, Canada, to a Ukrainian mother and a Cree father. By the time he died in 1996, Bourque had profoundly affected the nature and practice of renewable resource management in the Northwest Territories. Bourque grew up trapping and hunting, then became one of the first aboriginal park wardens in Wood Buffalo National Park in the Northwest Territories (1955–1963), and then a wildlife officer with the territorial government, working in several communities in the eastern and western Northwest Territories. In 1982, Bourque became deputy minister of renewable resources for the Government of the Northwest Territories, where he served until 1991. In that position, he had a significant effect on renewable resource policy—not only at the territorial level but also at the federal and international levels. For instance, Bourque helped to bring about changes to the international migratory waterfowl legislation, which then allowed aboriginal peoples to hunt birds in the spring months, a traditional activity that had been

ignored and thus prohibited under the Migratory Birds Convention Act. Bourque dedicated his career to ensuring that the traditional aboriginal ways of life, based on the land and its resources, be protected and enhanced. He perceived these lifestyles as meriting tremendous cultural and social importance, but also as the essence of sustainable economic opportunities. While he did not think of himself as a radical or politician in the strictest sense, Bourque’s work resulted in practical effects on wildlife and environmental management practice by emphasizing the importance of listening to and serving the hunters and trappers of the Northwest Territories, and by advocating the role of the renewable resource economy in the region. Bourque’s role as deputy minister allowed him extensive networks of influence; he was able to extend his ideas far beyond the Northwest Territories’ borders, to Ottawa for instance, to CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) meetings, and to Europe during antitrapping campaigns. Bourque was the founding chairperson of the Fur Institute of Canada—established in Ottawa in 1983 on the initiative of the federal, provincial, and territorial wildlife ministers to pursue the work of the Federal-Provincial Committee for Humane Trapping—from 1984 to 1989, and in this regard led the defense of trappers against the animal rights movement. In his work, Bourque encouraged acknowledgement of traditional (indigenous) environmental knowledge, and expected his officials’ attention to the concerns and knowledge of the hunters and trappers of the Northwest Territories. After he left the territories, he carried on work on traditional knowledge and its application through electronic technology, founding The Centre for Traditional Knowledge at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. Bourque also worked for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1994–1996) serving as co-director of policy. He held other political positions as well, including president of the Northwest Territories Métis Association (1980–1982) and as chairperson of the Northwest Territories’ Commission for Constitutional Development (1991–1992).

Biography James W. Bourque was born in Wandering River, Alberta, Canada, to Mary and Edwin Bourque on December 17, 1935. He learned hunting, trapping, and fishing as a youth. From the age of 18, he served in a variety of political and professional posts, including president of the Fort Chipewyan Hunters and Trappers Association, as park warden in Wood Buffalo National Park (Northwest Territories, Alberta), president of the

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BOWHEAD (GREENLAND RIGHT) WHALE Northwest Territories Métis Association, deputy minister of renewable resources for the Government of the Northwest Territories, chairperson of the Commission for Constitutional Development, founder and chairperson of the Fur Institute of Canada, and co-director of policy for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. In honor of his distinguished career and achievements, he was appointed to the Privy Council in July 1991 and as a fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society in 1995. Bourque and his wife Sharleen had three children. He died in Ottawa on October 19, 1996. HEATHER MYERS See also Government of the Northwest Territories Legislation (1966– ); Indigenous Knowledge; Métis; Northwest Territories Further Reading “Bourque’s Acclaimed Department re NWT Renewable Resources.” Yellowknifer Weekender, July 15, 1988, p. 5 Braden, Bill, “J. Bourque Named to Senior Post on Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.” Yellowknifer, 22(90) (1994): 16 Devine, Marina, “Lives lived: James W. Bourque.” Globe and Mail, December 5, 1996 “J. Bourque Announces Retirement from NWT Govt.” Mackenzie Times, December 2, 1992, p. 4 “J. Bourque Visits USSR re NWT Renewable Resources Minister.” News/North, August 15, 1988, p. 3 “J. Bourque Back to NWT Govt.” Slave River Journal, Fort Smith, NWT, February 25, 1982, p. 1 “J. Bourque Resigns re NWT Metis Association.” Native Press, February 26, 1982, p. 1 “J. Bourque Appointed Deputy Minister re NWT Resources.” Nunatsiaq News, March 12, 1982, p. R7 Malloy, P., “J. Parker, J. Bourque Named to Inuvialuit Board.” News/North, April 13, 1992, p. 12 “NWT Wildlife Officer Honored.” Tapwe, April 16, 1980, p. 17 “New Metis President Named Wildlife Officer of the Year.” The Hub, Hay River, April 16, 1980, p. 10 Saunders, P., “J. Bourque Carries on re NWT Boundary.” News/North, December 30, 1991, p. 1 Thompson, Francis, Man Who “Can’t Stop Working is about to Retire.” News/North, November 30, 1992, p. A11 “Wildlife Officer Gets International Award.” News/North, April 18, 1980, p. A9

BOWHEAD (GREENLAND RIGHT) WHALE One of the first biological descriptions of the bowhead or Greenland right whale (Balaena mysticetus) is given in the book Drie Voyagien gedaen na Groenlandt, published around 1668 by Gillis Joosten Saeghman in Amsterdam. This book reveals that 17th-century whalers knew a great deal about the biology of whales, probably because they were not only excellent hunters but also very good observers. Thanks

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to information from such historical sources and data from recent biological research in Alaska, it is possible to give a description of the Greenland right whale. Greenland right whales have a circumpolar distribution and are endemic to Arctic and Subarctic waters. It is a large whale that belongs to the family of the baleen whales (Balaenidae), which have baleen plates hanging down the upper jaw across the length of the mouth. With these baleen plates, sometimes more than 4 m long, the whale can sift the zooplankton out of the sea water. The Greenland right whale has 250–300 plates in each of two rows hanging down the upper jaw. The length of the Greenland right whale varies between 12 and 18 m; although a whale can reach lengths of 20 m, only a few exceed 18 m. At birth, the length is about 4 m. In general, females are longer than males. After the feeding season the animal has a layer of blubber approximately 60 cm thick, which helps protect against extreme cold, and the average weight of an adult whale is about 75–100 metric tons. The body coloration is black, but there is a white spot on its “chin” on the lower jaw, and a light spot on the tail and/or fluke plates. The skin is smooth. The throat, chest, and belly lack ventral grooves and the back is smooth with no dorsal fin or ridge as other related species have. The head is very large, about one-third of the total body length, and the bonnet callosities characteristic of this family are absent on the upper part of the head. The Greenland right whale has a higher arch of the upper jaw than related species, such as the northern and southern right whales (Eubalaena glacialis and Eubalaena australis). This high, bow-shaped head gives the Greenland right whale its common name— bowhead—and distinguishes bowheads from other whales. The arched head may be an adaptation that enables the whale to break through ice to breathe. The widely separated blowholes cause a double blow, the Vshape of which is characteristic of the Greenland right whale. The eyes are placed quite low on the sides of the head, about 30 cm above the corner of the mouth. The Greenland right whale is a slow swimmer. It can remain underwater for more than 40 minutes, but it is not a deep diver. The whale spends a great part of its life close to the edge of the pack ice near the Arctic and Subarctic islands. From historical sources, it appears that the 200 m depth contour is of great significance to them. Both biological research and historical sources have demonstrated that because of their short baleen plates, young Greenland right whales use these shallow waters to feed on benthic prey as gammarid amphipods. Adults feed primarily on small to medium-sized zooplankton, animals (euphausiids, copepods, mysids,

BOWHEAD (GREENLAND RIGHT) WHALE

Bowhead or Greenland right whale (Balaena mysticetus), Nunavut, Canada. Copyright Paul Nicklen/National Geographic Image Collection

and pteropods) found in concentrations along the ice edge near islands in the (sub) Arctic seas, at places where there are many nutrients. This availability of nutrients and the thickness of the ice determine the growth of both phyto- and zooplankton. This growth shows a seasonal rhythm with the peak coming later with increasing latitude. In the springtime, the Greenland right whale migrates to the north to feed on this zooplankton and returns south in the autumn after the feeding season. It usually does not go farther south than 68º N. Archaeological excavation of 16th-century Basque whaling stations in Red Bay, Labrador showed, however, the existence of this whale species south of 52º N in the Gulf of St Lawrence in those days. The Greenland right whale usually travels alone or in small groups. Concentrations of hundred or more individuals are sometimes seen on the feeding and mating grounds. The mating time is probably in July-August, but there are indications that Greenland right whales already mate in May-June when they are ice bound during their migration. The gestation period is believed to be 10–11 months long so that the parturition will take place in the spring and early summer. There are some historical sources, which confirm a parturition in the early summer. The lactation period lasts at least one year. The young animals are mature within two years, and the maximum age of a Greenland whale will be between 30 and 40 years. The only natural predator is the killer whale (Orcinus orca). Other natural causes of death are starvation from lack of access to feeding grounds and suffocation under ice. However, most Greenland right whales die because of whaling. While indigenous peoples have hunted the bowhead whale for subsistence

food and oil and as a ceremonial structure for centuries, commercial whaling began in the 16th century. Whalebone corsets were made from the baleen, and whale oil was used in lamps. The animal was very easy to catch because it is a slow swimmer and floats after being killed due to the thick, buoyant blubber. From the estimated number of 90,000 Greenland right whales at the onset of the international whaling trade, only 1000–3000 animals remain. Bowheads were classified as endangered on the US Endangered Species Act in 1969, and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) prohibits the trade of whalebone. In 1937 when the first international convention was signed, the whaling nations also agreed on the complete protection of the Greenland right whale. From this moment on, no hunting took place on this whale but the damage to stocks had already happened. From the stocks existing in the Sea of Okhotsk, Bering Sea, Hudson Bay, Davis Strait, and Spitsbergen, only one survived in significant numbers, namely the Bering Sea stock. Nowadays only the traditional Inuit whalers from Alaska and Canada and the native Yupik people of Chukotka have permission to kill a limited number of Greenland right whales according to a quota set by the International Whaling Commission. The Inuktitut name for the bowhead whale is arvitt or arviq and the Iñupiat name is agviq or aghveq. LOUWRENS HACQUEBORD See also Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission (AEWC); Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES); International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling; Marine Mammal Hunting; Whaling, Historical; Whaling, Subsistence

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BRENT GEESE Further Reading Burns, J.J., J.J. Montague & C.J. Cowles (editors), The Bowhead Whale, Special Publication Number 2 (Lawrence), 1933 Hacquebord, L.,“The hunting of the Greenland right whale in Svalbard, its interaction with climate and its impact on the marine ecosystem.” Polar Research, 18(2) (1999): 375–382 Leatherwood, S. & R.R. Reeves, Whales and Dolphins, San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1983 Nerini, M.K., H.W. Braham, W.M. Marquette & D.J. Rugh, “Life history of the bowhead whale, Balaena mysticetus (Mammalia: Cetacea).” Journal of Zoology, 204 (1984): 443–468

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BRENT GEESE Brent geese (Branta bernicla) are members of the genus Branta, the so-called black geese, which includes the Canada goose of North America and the barnacle goose of Greenland, Svalbard, and Arctic Russia. There are seven recognized races of brent geese, all of which winter along coasts where they feed mainly upon sea grasses, especially subtidal and intertidal Zostera. All brent geese are distinctive from other geese in having a completely sooty black head, neck, and upper breast; this is the smallest of all geese, little bigger than a Mallard. The sexes are alike, but the pale edgings to feathers on the folded wings distinguish the birds of the year from older geese. First winter birds also lack the distinctive white “necklace” on the throat that characterize the adults. Underparts are dark slategray in the nominate race bernicla, almost black in nigricans, and variably pale gray to almost white in hrota. Seven distinct populations are recognized as follows: 1. The dark-bellied brent goose B. b. bernicla breeds mainly along coasts of the Taymyr Peninsula from 73 to 79° N and from 75 to 122° E, with recent expansion of the breeding range westward to the Yamal and Kanin peninsulas. This population winters along coasts of western Europe, from the Atlantic coast of France, south and eastern coasts of England, southwest Netherlands and in the Wadden Sea as far north as Denmark. Satellite telemetry and recent field observations have confirmed the importance of the White Sea in spring and autumn as staging areas for their long migrations to and from breeding areas. Following apparent declines in the Zostera food stocks, this population fell from several hundred thousand to 20,000 in the 1930s, with 16,500 counted in the earliest complete counts of the mid-1950s. Following protection from hunting in Denmark in 1972,

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numbers rose rapidly tomore than 300,000 at present. The black brant B. b. nigricans breeds on Banks Island, through the Queen Maud Gulf Sanctuary, in Alaska and the far eastern Russian Arctic as far west as eastern Taymyr. It is thought that most, if not all, congregate in Izembek Lagoon in October before migrating on to winter along the Pacific coast, primarily in Baja California, Mexico. This population numbers some 120–140,000 birds. The gray-bellied brant B. b. hrota breeds exclusively in the Canadian High Arctic, probably confined to Melville Island, Prince Patrick Island, and small islands nearby. This group is thought to winter exclusively in Padilla Bay, Washington, but small numbers are seen among Pacific black brant down into Mexico. This population is poorly known and only recently recognized as being morphologically separate from other forms. Its numbers are considered to be critically small, probably numbering 8–10,000 birds in all. The Atlantic brant B. b. hrota nests on Baffin Island and Somerset Island in the Canadian Arctic winter along the Atlantic coast of North America from Massachusetts to North Carolina. This population numbers some 106,000 individuals and has shown reasonably stable trends for the last 30 years. The black-bellied brent geese B. b. nigricans that pass through Hokkaido in Japan in autumn number at least 5000 individuals. Although 2500 remain to winter in Japan, it is not known where the remainder spend the winter. The population uses coasts of Korea and China, but the precise breeding area of this population remains unknown at present. Between 19 and 24,000 light-bellied brent geese B. b. hrota winter in Ireland, passing through Iceland on migration to and from their High Arctic Canadian breeding areas. Their breeding areas lie in the eastern Queen Elizabeth Islands from eastern Melville Island (108° E) to northern Ellesmere Island, although the precise breeding distribution remains unknown. Another group of light-bellied brent geese breed on Svalbard and in northeast Greenland and winter in Denmark and Lindisfarne on the northeast coast of England. This population numbers some 6000 individuals and has shown a very slow increase in numbers in recent years.

Brent geese nest on the High Arctic open tundra, but are extremely sensitive to predation, their small

BRITISH ARCTIC EXPEDITION, 1875–1876 size making them no match for an Arctic fox (Alopex lagopus). Breeding success is typically highly erratic, with the number of young in autumn population, varying greatly between years. Almost complete nonbreeding seasons are a regular feature of the darkbellied brent population, alternating with years with up to 50% young in the autumn flocks. This pattern is influenced by the three-year lemming Lemmus sibiricus cycle on the Taymyr Peninsula, although the spring condition achieved in the Wadden Sea prior to departure in spring also has an impact on subsequent breeding success. In contrast, delayed snowmelt in the Queen Elizabeth Islands makes it easier for predators (such as Arctic fox, polar bear Ursus maritimus, gulls Larus spp., skuas Stercorarius spp., or ravens Corvus corax) to find nests, but there seems to be no cyclicity in their reproductive success. The Svalbard population shows similar swings in breeding output, dependent in part on sea ice conditions that affect the likelihood of polar bears being present on the nesting islands in spring. Throughout their winter range, brent geese are marine in habit, with all the above populations exploiting eelgrasses Zostera for most of their annual cycle outside of the breeding period. Many switch to saltmarshes in spring, when the eelgrass stock is depleted and new grass growth is protein rich to support accumulation of stores in preparation for spring migration. Brent geese are and continue to be important food for native peoples: remains are known from middens on Ellesmere Island from 1900 BC to AD 1000 and the species has long been important for the Yup’ik people of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. TONY FOX See also Barnacle Goose

Further Reading Bellrose, F.C., “Ducks, Geese and Swans of North America,” Harrisburg: Stackpole, 1976 Boyd, H., L.S. Maltby-Prevett & A. Reed, “Differences in the plumage patterns of Brant breeding in high arctic Canada.” Canadian Wildlife Service Progress Notes, 174 (1988): 1–9 Clausen, P. & J.-O. Bustnes, “Flyways of the North Atlantic Light-bellied Brent Geese Branta bernicla hrota reassessed by satellite telemetry.” Norsk Polarinstitutt Skrifter, 200 (1998): 269–286 Cramp, S. & K.E.L. Simmons, The Birds of the Western Palearctic, Volume 1, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977 Del Hoyo, J., A. Elliot. & J. Sartagal, Handbook of the Birds of the World, Volume 1, Ostrich to Ducks, Madrid: Lynx, 1992 Ebbinge, B.S. & B. Spaans, “The importance of body reserves accumulated in spring staging areas in the temperate zone for breeding in dark-bellied brent geese Branta b. bernicla in the high Arctic.” Journal of Avian Biology, 26 (1995): 105–113

Madge, S. & H. Burn, Wildfowl: An Identification Guide to the Ducks, Geese and Swans of the World, London: Helm, 1987 Madsen, J., T. Bregnballe, J. Frikke & J.B. Kristensen, “Correlates of predator abundance with snow and ice conditions and their role in determining timing of nesting and breeding success in Svalbard light-bellied brent geese Branta bernicla hrota.” Norsk Polarinstitutt Skrifter, 200 (1998): 213–226 Madsen, J., G. Cracknell & A.D. Fox, Goose Populations of the Western Palearctic: A Review of Status and Distribution, Wageningen & Rønde: Wetlands International and NERI, 1999 Reed, A., D.H. Ward, D.V. Derksen & J.S. Sedinger, “Brant.” Birds of North America No. 337, Philadelphia: BNA, 1998 Spaans, B., M. Stock, A.K.M. St Joseph, H.H. Bergmann & B.S. Ebbinge, “Breeding biology of dark-bellied brent geese Branta bernicla bernicla in Taimyr in 1990 in the absence of arctic foxes and under favourable weather conditions.” Polar Research, 12(2) (1995): 117–130

BRITISH ARCTIC EXPEDITION, 1875–1876 The British Arctic Expedition, under the auspices of the Royal Navy, explored Ellesmere Island, Greenland, setting a farthest north record. For nearly a quarter century after the final expedition mounted in 1852 in search of Sir John Franklin and his expedition, the British government steadfastly refused to support any scientific, geographic, or military expeditions into the polar regions. The combined efforts of the Royal Society and the Royal Geographical Society in London in the early 1870s pressured the government to alter this stance. In late 1874, with the fall of William Gladstone’s (1809–1898) Liberal government and the beginning of Benjamin Disraeli’s (1804–1841) Conservative government, this changed, and the Admiralty announced that an expedition would be mounted to explore northwest Greenland and northern Ellesmere Island. At the last moment, the government also stated that an attempt would be made to reach the North Pole. One of the difficulties considered by the Admiralty in planning any expedition was that all the officers who could command or lead were flag officers or on the retired list. Thus, in 1873, Albert Markham, then a first lieutenant, was granted leave from the Royal Navy to allow him to sail on a Dundee whaler, the Arctic, to the Davis Strait, to Disko and Upernavik in Greenland, to Melville Bay, Baffin Bay, and Lancaster Sound. This travel made Markham one of the few serving officers with any experience sailing or navigating in pack ice. When the expedition was announced by the Admiralty, George S. Nares was selected as the commanding officer. Nares was commanding the Challenger Expedition, an around-theworld scientific expedition that had sailed in 1872, at the time and was recalled from that post while the

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Vintage print depicting the HMS Alert pressed onshore in the Kennedy Channel during the British Arctic Expedition. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

Challenger was still in the Pacific Ocean. Markham was named second-in-command. The difficulty in mounting a major expedition was exacerbated by the time limitations placed on the process by nature. In order to reach a reasonable northern latitude in the first year of the projected two-year expedition, the ships would need to leave England in late spring. This left barely six months to acquire and fit ships, identify and train crews, and gather the needed stores. The Admiralty outfitted two ships, HMS Alert and HMS Discovery, for the voyage and appointed Markham as commander of the former and Henry F. Stephenson as commander of the latter, with Nares in command of the expedition as a whole. After hurried preparations, the ships sailed from Portsmouth, England, on May 29. The vessels faced a particularly stormy passage to Greenland and reached Disko in early July. The ships then sailed to Upernavik where dogs, fuel, and final supplies were obtained. They then sailed the middle passage into Smith Sound on July 28 and reached Discovery Harbor, on the north side of Lady Franklin Bay on Ellesmere Island, on August 25. Here the Discovery was moored for its winter quarters. The Alert continued north in Robeson Channel and rounded the northern shore of Ellesmere Island, where it put into winter quarters on September 1 at Floeberg Beach. This was the most northerly latitude reached by a ship to that date. Autumn sledging

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parties explored and mapped the northern coast of Ellesmere Island and laid depots of supplies and equipment for the spring sledging season. The first sledges went out on April 3, 1876, with Pelham Aldrich following the north coast of Ellesmere Island to Cape Joseph Henry and beyond. Leaving Markham and A.A.C. Parr at the cape to head north, Aldrich’s party continued to explore the coast, reaching Cape Columbia, the most northerly point of Canadian Arctic territory. The men continued to explore and map Ward Hunt Island, Milne Fjord, Yelverton Bay, turning back at Alert Point. Their arduous trek permitted them to discover, explore, and map over 250 miles of coastline. The party returned to the Alert, some suffering from scurvy, on June 25 without any loss of life. Markham and A.A.C. Parr turned north at Cape Joseph Henry and began a drive to attempt to set a record for the most northern trek. Almost immediately, signs of scurvy appeared in the men and they were forced to halt on May 10. Markham and Parr made one further attempt to go north, but gave up on May 12 after reaching 83°20’26’’ N. Nearly the entire party was suffering from scurvy by the time they reached Cape Joseph Henry, and one man died before the Alert was reached. The third sledging expedition left the Discovery on April 6 under the command of Lt. Lewis Beaumont. Traveling first to the Alert at Floeberg Beach, the sledges then turned eastward to the northern coast of Greenland. Scurvy soon developed among the men and Lt. Wyatt Rawson was sent back in early May with the most ill. Beaumont continued along the Greenland coast until reaching Sherard Osborn Fjord, turning back on May 22. After more than a month of terrible conditions, starvation, and scurvy, the men reached Polaris Point on the Greenland shore opposite Lady Franklin Bay. Because of ice conditions, they could not cross to the Discovery until August 15, by which time two men had died. The scurvy that the ship’s physicians and the Admiralty medical staff confidently declared would not occur abruptly ended the expedition. The Alert left winter quarters in July 31 and joined the Discovery in Lady Franklin Bay. The two ships sailed for England on August 20 and reached Portsmouth on November 2, 1876. Generally judged a dismal failure as a result of disease and the early end to the expedition, the expedition did, in fact, support important geographical discoveries and provided a large quantity of scientific specimens and data. A subsequent parliamentary inquiry on the command of the expedition further clouded the scientific and geographical successes. PHILIP N. CRONENWETT

BROOKS RANGE See also Markham, Sir Albert H.; Royal Geographical Society Further Reading Markham, Albert, The Great Frozen Sea: A Personal Narrative of the Voyage of the “Alert” During the Arctic Expedition of 1875–6, London: Daldy, Isbister, 1878 Moss, Edwin L., Shores of the Polar Sea: A Narrative of the Arctic Expedition of 1875–6; Illustrated by Sixteen ChromoLithographs and Numerous Engravings from Drawings Made on the Spot by the Author, London: Marcus Ward, 1878 Nares, George S., The Official Report of the Recent Arctic Expedition, London: J. Murray, 1876 Nares, George S., Narrative of a Voyage to the Polar Sea During 1875–6 in H.M. Ships “Alert”’ and “Discovery” With Notes on the Natural History Edited by H.W. Feilden, London: S. Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1878 Royal Geographical Society, The New Arctic Expedition: Correspondence Between the Royal Geographical Society and the Government, London: W. Clowes, 1873

BROOKS RANGE The Brooks Range lies north of the Arctic Circle (66°33′ N), roughly straddling 68° N. The range begins in the Yukon Territory of Canada, about 120 miles (193 km) east of the international boundary with the United States. At this point the Continental Divide leaves the north-south trending Richardson Mountains and runs east-west, first through the Barn Range, with Mt Sedgwick (2057 ft/627 m) as one of the high points, and then into the British Mountains, which straddle the international boundary. Mt Greenough (7240 ft/2207 m) is the highest peak of this range. The Brooks Range stretches westward from the international boundary for some 600 miles (965 km), ending near Pt Hope on the Chukchi Sea. The Alaskan portion of the British Mountains, the Davidson Mountains, the Romanzof Mountains, and much of the Philip Smith Mountains lie within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The highest peak of the entire Brooks Range is one of the Romanzof peaks, Mt Isto (9060 ft/2761 m). Atigun Pass, situated at the headwaters of the Sagavonirktok River, flowing north, and the Dietrich River, flowing south, separates the Philip Smith Mountains from the Endicott Mountains. The Endicott Mountains lie within the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. Cockedhat Mountain (7610 ft/2348 m) and Mt Doonerak (7457 ft/2273 m) are major Endicott peaks, the latter made famous by Robert Marshall. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline and the Dalton Highway both cross the Brooks Range through Atigun Pass at 4752 ft (1448 m). At the western edge of Gates of the

Arctic, the Continental Divide turns sharply to the south, leaves the Brooks Range, crosses the Arctic Circle, and then heads west to the Seward Peninsula. The Schwatka Mountains begin in the western portion of the Gates of the Arctic and continue westward into the Noatak National Preserve. Glacial melt waters from Mt Igipak (8510 ft/2594 m), a Schwatka peak located in the Gates of the Arctic, give rise to the Noatak River that empties into the Chukchi Sea near Kotzebue, some 400 miles away. The Noatak River divides the Brooks Range into a northern half, the De Long Mountains, with Mt Bastille (4440 ft/1353 m) a major landmark, and a southern half, the Baird Mountains, before turning southward near the northeastern corner of Cape Krusenstern National Monument and the village of Noatak. The most westerly peak of note, Mt Hamlet (2034 ft/620 m), forms a headland that drops off into the Chukchi Sea at Cape Lisburne. The major uplifting of the Earth’s crust that led to the formation of the Brooks Range occurred some 160 million years ago when an oceanic plate rotated away from the Canadian High Arctic Islands and collided with what was then northern Alaska. The Kobuk River marks the southern boundary of these colliding landmasses. Granite spires such as the Arrigetch Peaks are derived from the magma cores of ancient (Devonian) volcanic intrusions. Portions of the range, especially those peaks on the Arctic Divide, are derived from limestone terranes that were once coral reefs in tropical seas. Gold-bearing quartz veins are found in the hills on the southern side of the range. Only a few small glaciers remain, even though all of the Brooks Range was glaciated, and most of these are on northfacing slopes. There is too little snowfall (annual average 60–80 inches/152–203 cm in Gates of the Arctic) to support glacier production. Average annual precipitation on the south-facing slopes in Gates of the Arctic varies from 8 to 18 inches (20–46 cm). The climate is continental, with very cold winters and moderately warm summers. Winters are severe, the average January minimum in the Gates of the Arctic being –30°F (−34°C); the average maximum is −10°F (−23°C). The July minimum and maximum averages are 46°F (8°C) and 70°F (21°C). Temperatures on the north-facing slopes of the Brooks Range average, winter and summer, about 10–15° colder than on the south side. Total average annual precipitation on the north-facing slopes rarely exceeds 10 inches (25 cm), including an annual average snowfall of about 45 inches (114 cm). Because the whole of the Brooks Range is underlain by permafrost, any rainfall runs off rapidly, producing dramatic changes in the water levels in the streams and rivers.

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Brooks Range visible miles away over the flat Arctic plain, Camden Bay, Brooks Range to south, Alaska. Photo by Rear Admiral Harley D. Nygren, NOAA Corps. Courtesy National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

Except for the bare rock faces, the north side of the Brooks Range is clothed in vegetation characteristic of Arctic and alpine tundra. The higher elevations on the south side have similar vegetation, but at lower levels the vegetation mix includes tundra, often as vast expanses of cottongrass tussocks with intervening lichens, mosses, grasses, and dwarf shrubs, boreal forest (taiga), and scrub thickets. The treeline is extremely sinuous on the south slopes, but generally extends up to about 2100 ft (640 m) in the vicinity of latitude 67°30′ N. The generally dense vegetative coverage of the Brooks Range supports a great variety of animal species, but usually in rather small numbers of individual kinds, the exceptions being the twice-annual concentrations of migrating caribou, small herds of Dall’s sheep and mountain goats, and the cyclic population upsurges of snowshoe hares and lemmings, and their predators. Moose, grizzly bears, black bears (south slopes only), wolves, red foxes, many other kinds of smaller mammals, and many kinds of birds inhabit the Brooks Range. Permanent human residents, mostly native Americans (Iñupiaq and Athapaskans) and all on the south side, number only about 1000, and they are largely concentrated in the tiny villages of Anaktuvuk Pass, Arctic Village, Bettles, Evansville, Kobuk, Noatak, and Wiseman. The town of Coldfoot, on the Dalton Highway about 75 miles (121 km) south of Atigun Pass, is a service center for traffic to and from the Prudhoe Bay oil production facilities. Several active gold mining operations are scattered across the southern slopes and in the river valleys flowing out of the Brooks Range. J. RICHARD GORHAM See also Alaska; Trans-Alaska Pipeline

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Further Reading Brower, Kenneth, Earth and Great Weather: The Brooks Range, New York: Friends of the Earth, 1971 Chipp, E.R., Geology and Geochemistry of the Chandalar Area, Brooks Range, Alaska, Geologic Report No. 42, College: Division of Mines and Geology, Alaska Department of Natural Resources, 1970 Crisler, Lois, “Where wilderness is complete.” The Living Wilderness, 22(40) (1957): 1–4 ———, Arctic Wild, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958 Kauffmann, John M., Alaska’s Brooks Range: The Ultimate Mountains, Seattle: The Montaineers, 1992 Marshall, Robert, Alaska Wilderness: Exploring the Central Brooks Range (2nd edition), Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970 McKendrick, Jay D., “Inventory of grasses along the TransAlaska Pipeline—1999.” Agroborealis, 33(1) (2001): 4–15 Murie, Margaret E., Two in the Far North: The Alaska Frontier 1912–1959, New York: Ballatine Books, Comstock Edition, 1972 Plafker, George & Henry C. Berg (editors), The Geology of Alaska, Boulder: The Geological Society of America, 1994 Rennick, Penny (editor), “North Slope now.” Alaska Geographic, 16(2) (1989): 1–93 ——— (editor), “Arctic national wildlife refuge.” Alaska Geographic, 20(3) (1993): 1–79 Special Publications Division, Alaska’s Magnificent Parklands, Washington, District of Columbia: The National Geographic Society, 1984 Woerner, R.K., The Alaska Handbook, Jefferson: McFarland and Company, 1986 Wright, Sam, Koviashuvik: Making a Home in the Brooks Range, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997 Wuerthner, George, Alaska’s Mountain Ranges, Helena: Alaska Geographic Publishing, 1988

BRUCE, W.S. In the realms of polar history, the name of William Speirs Bruce stands alongside the greatest explorers.

BRUCE, W.S. In the space of 28 years (from 1892 to 1920), William S. Bruce took part in 13 expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic. It was his father’s intention that his son should follow in his footsteps and Bruce entered University College, London, to study medicine. However, during the summer of 1887, he visited Edinburgh, where he was influenced by the great educator Patrick Geddes. His tutor’s holistic approach to the study of science and the interest he took in his protégée’s development changed the course of Bruce’s life. Bruce decided to study in Edinburgh, a decision that led to his development into an ardent Scottish nationalist and a formidable explorer. He entered the University of Edinburgh to continue with his medical studies and further his passion for environmental sciences. For a student with such interests, Edinburgh was an exciting place in the latter quarter of the 19th century. Through his friendship with Geddes he met the staff of the Challenger expedition, working alongside such luminaries as James Murray and John Young Buchanan. In 1892, Bruce joined the Baleana, one of four whalers from Dundee embarking on an exploratory voyage to the Antarctic. Bruce was surgeon and naturalist and throughout the voyage observed the meteorology and oceanography of these polar seas. This trip whetted his appetite for polar areas. On his return to Scotland, he was employed at the meteorological observatory on the summit of Ben Nevis. It was while there, in June 1896, that Bruce received an invitation to make his first visit to the Arctic as a naturalist on the Jackson-Hamsworth expedition to Franz Josef Land. On the island, Bruce developed skills and continued to increase his knowledge and understanding of the polar environment; in particular, his collections and observations on meteorology increased knowledge of the Arctic. It was on Franz Josef Land that he met Fridtjof Nansen, who had landed on the island following his failed, but heroic, attempt to reach the North Pole from the Fram. The two developed a friendship that lasted for the rest of Bruce’s life. Back in Scotland, Bruce returned to the wind-swept tops of Ben Nevis, but it was not long before he was invited by Andrew Coats of Paisley to join the Blencathra, as a naturalist, on a voyage to Novaya Zemlya. From this trip a friendship with the Coats family developed, which enabled him to fulfil his greatest achievementthe Scotia expedition (1902–1903). Following a successful voyage, the Blencathra berthed in Tromsø. Anchored nearby was the Princesse Alice, the research vessel of the Prince of Monaco en route to the Arctic. Bruce was asked to join the expedition, and he again sailed north, this time

to explore the area around Bjørnøya. Such was the impression that Bruce made on the Prince that he was invited to spend the winter working on his scientific observations at the Prince’s laboratory at the palace on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The following summer Bruce again sailed north on the Princesse Alice to work along the coasts of Spitsbergen. By the time he returned to Edinburgh, no British scientist of his generation was as well equipped as Bruce to lead a polar expedition. He was one of the few figures from the “Heroic era” of polar exploration who devoted his entire professional life to the study of polar sciences. In 1899, on hearing of the Discovery expedition, he wrote to Sir Clements Markham, President of the Royal Geographical Society and the driving force behind the venture, to offer his services. A year passed before Markham had the courtesy to reply in the affirmative. In the intervening time, however, Bruce made plans for his own expedition, and declined the offer. Markham was incensed by Bruce’s rejection and never forgave him. This personal spite by the President of the Royal Geographical Society was an important reason as to why the Scottish explorer received little of the national recognition and support he so richly deserved. At a meeting of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, on March 22, 1900, Bruce announced plans for a Scottish Antarctic expedition to the Weddell Sea, which were enthusiastically received by the Scottish scientific community. It was to be truly Scottish, financed, staffed and equipped from within Scotland. Funds, for what became known as the Scotia expedition, came largely from the Coats family. The expedition, described as the most successful of all those that ventured south during the “Heroic” era, achieved all its aims and included the discovery of the Scotia Arc and Coats Land. A meteorological station, established at the winter quarters on Laurie Island, South Orkney Islands, was handed over to the Argentine Meteorological Service who have maintained it to this day, making it the longest continual meteorological study in the whole Antarctic region. Scotia returned to Scotland on July 21, 1904 to great acclaim. That the expedition was a success can be seen by the six volumes of scientific reports that were subsequently published. Despite this, Bruce and his colleagues failed to receive the public recognition they deserved. Neither he nor any member of his staff received the Polar Medal or any award from the Royal Geographical Society. Markham was seen as the major reason for this, possibly along with Bruce’s nationalistic approach to the Scottish expedition. The Scotia was the apex of Bruce’s career. Bruce established the Scottish Oceanographic Laboratory in Scotland, which was opened in 1906 by

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BRUN, ESKE the Prince of Monaco. This venture, however, never received the necessary funding and eventually closed in 1919. Although Bruce never returned to the Antarctic, he made six further visits to the Arctic, but his career was tragically on the wane. He attempted to develop a commercial venture to exploit the potential resources of Spitsbergen, but this was financially unsuccessful. His health began to deteriorate, and following the loss of his Scottish Oceanographic Laboratory, he became progressively more melancholic and suffered both physical and mental illness. He entered Liberton College Hospital in Edinburgh, and died there on October 28, 1921 at the comparatively young age of 54. His ashes were scattered at sea off South Georgia on Easter Monday 1923.

Biography Born in London on August 1, 1867, W.S. Bruce was the fourth of eight children. His father, Dr. Samuel Bruce, was a doctor in general practice. Though born in England, the family on his father’s side were Scots, his grandfather a Scots minister and his grandmother hailing from Orkney. His early education was at home, and he was 11 before he entered mainstream education, at a private boarding school in Norfolk. He studied medicine at Edinburgh University. He married Jessie Mackenzie in 1902. They established a home in Joppa on the Firth of Forth, outside Edinburgh, and had a son Eillium Allistair (1902–1979) and a daughter Sheila Mackenzie Bruce (1909– ). JIM CONROY See also Franz Josef Land; Markham, Sir Clements R.; Nansen, Fridtjof Further Reading Brown, R.N. Rudmose, A Naturalist at the Poles: The Life, Work & Voyages of Dr. W.S. Bruce the Polar Explorer, London: Seeley, Service & Co. Ltd., 1923 Bruce, William Spears, The Log of the Scotia Expedition, 1902–4, edited by Peter Speak, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992 Rudmose Brown, R.N., J.H.H. Pirie & R.C. Mossman, The Voyage of the Scotia, Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 2002

BRUN, ESKE In 1932, Eske Brun first came to Greenland from Denmark, where he worked in Godhavn (Qeqertarsuaq) as interim Governor of North Greenland (Landsfoged). He left again in 1933 and returned to his job in the Ministry. In the years 1925–1950, all Greenlandic affairs were administered by the Greenland Administration (Grønlandsstyrelsen). Brun was attached to this

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organization from 1934 when he was offered a job as principal. The same year he returned to Greenland, this time to Godthåb (Nuuk) as interim Governor of South Greenland (Landsfoged). Later, once again he became interim Governor of North Greenland, and he did not return to Denmark until 1936. Brun was appointed Governor of North Greenland in 1939. When Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany on April 9, 1940, the history of Greenland and the life of Eske Brun changed dramatically. The Danish Ambassador to USA, Henrik Kauffmann, immediately announced that he did not want to follow the Danish policy of cooperating with the Germans. Kauffmann chose to represent “Denmark as it existed, and that will continue to exist, even if its government temporarily is suppressed.” He was in Washington to represent the King, a democratic Denmark, and a free and independent people. In Greenland, the opinion was the same. The two Governors, Axel Svane and Eske Brun, called the two Assemblies (Landsråd) from South and North Greenland to a joint meeting in Godthåb, where it was stated that Greenland belonged to Denmark, but during the hostile occupation, Greenland wanted to cooperate with the USA. Governor Svane traveled to the USA in 1941 and joined Ambassador Kauffmann; Brun stayed in Greenland and took charge of the entire administration. The monopoly continued, even if the supplies no longer came from Denmark but instead from the USA and to a lesser degree from Canada. Both the USA and Canada appointed consuls to Greenland. An Agreement Relating to the Defence of Greenland was signed in Washington by Kauffmann and Secretary of State Cordell Hull on April 9, 1941. Subsequently, the USA built up 17 military installations in Greenland. During the war, Brun gained more power and he also became a Defense Chief, when he established a military patrol to guard the coast of East Greenland. But Brun never recognized Kauffmann as his superior. As a matter of fact, Brun ran the country because he was the Danish government in person; he worked closely with the Joint Greenland Assembly and the consuls of the USA and Canada. In a way, the colonial system had never been so powerful as during the war. It would be easy to accuse Brun of being a power-seeker. Viewed another way, he can be seen as clever and pragmatic, a man who understood how to get the best out of a bad situation. When news of the liberation of Denmark reached Greenland on May 4, 1945, Brun returned all authority to the Danish government. Brun went back to Denmark and, with his long and great experience from Greenland, thought that someone in the Greenland Administration would like to listen to him and what kind of thoughts he had for the future of Greenland.

BUNGE, ALEXANDER VON Prime Minister Vilhelm Buhl asked Brun only once about his opinion. Brun wrote him a memo in September 1945, giving a thorough description of the poor conditions in Greenland. Further, he referred to the UN charter of 1945, Article 73, which states the responsibilities the member states have to those people who had not yet attained a full measure of self-government. He was specifically referring to section A, which reads: “to ensure, with due respect for the culture of the peoples concerned, their political, economic, social, and educational advancement, their just treatment, and their protection against abuses”; and to section B, which reads: “to develop self-government, to take due account of the political aspirations of the peoples, and to assist them in the progressive development of their free political institutions, according to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and their varying stages of advancement….” For the next year and a half, Brun heard nothing from the Greenland Administration, and he began looking for a new job. But in 1946, the Danish press traveled in Greenland, and their reports were of such character that Hans Hedtoft, the new Prime Minister, was shocked. He called Brun and offered him the job as vice-director in the Greenland Administration. In the following years, Brun led in reforming Greenland into a modern society. In 1949, he was appointed Director of the Greenland Administration, and in 1950, the White Paper on Greenland’s future (G-50) came from the joint DanishGreenlandic Greenland Commission. The modernization included that Greenland should become an equal and integrated part of Denmark. According to the Constitution from 1953, Greenland became so, and two Greenlanders were elected Members of the Danish Parliament. At the same time the Greenland Administration was changed into a Department of Greenlandic Affairs under the Prime Minister’s Office. Brun was appointed Head of the Department. In 1954, when the Ministry for Greenlandic Affairs was opened, Brun was appointed Head of the Department there. Brun was pro-American, and he was the lead person in negotiating the American military presence in Greenland. Paradoxically he did not ensure, with due respect for the culture of the Inughuit (Polar Eskimos), their political, economic, and social rights when the USA started building up the Thule Air Base on the territory of the Inughuit in 1951. The Inughuit were forced away from their small village Uummannaq in 1953. Until his death, Brun denied that the Inughuit had been displaced.

Biography Born in 1904, Eske Brun grew up in the Danish provincial town of Aalborg. In 1929, he graduated in

law at the Faculty of Law at the University of Copenhagen. Immediately after his graduation, Brun got a job in the Ministry of Finance. Brun retired in 1964 and died in 1987. MADS FÆGTEBORG Further Reading Brøsted, Jens & Mads Fægteborg, “Expulsion of the Great People. When U.S. Air Force came to Thule.” In Native Power, edited by Jens Brøsted et al., Universitetsforlaget AS, Bergen-Oslo-Stavanger-Tromsø, 1985, pp. 213–238 Brøsted, Jens & Mads Fægteborg, Thule fangerfolk og militæranlæg, Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1987, 224pp Brun, Eske, Mit Grønlandsliv, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1985, 157pp Fægteborg, Mads, “Grønland i dag—en introduktion år 2000.” Arctic Information, Copenhagen, 2000, 190pp Lidegaard, Bo, I Kongens Navn. Henrik Kauffmann i dansk diplomati 1919–58, Copenhagen: Samleren, 1996, 812pp

BUNGE, ALEXANDER VON The Baltic-German physician and naturalist Alexander von Bunge took part in two major Arctic expeditions in 1882–1884 and 1885–1886, and is known mainly for collecting thousands of fossil mammoth bones and tusks and other fossil mammals from the New Siberian Islands, mammals that were previously unknown in this part of the Arctic. In 1881, having heard that the Russian Geographical Society was planning to set up a polar station at the delta of the Lena River in the framework of the First International Polar Year (1882–1883), von Bunge put forward his own candidacy for the post of a simultaneous physician and an observer at the station. Leopold von Schrenck, a member of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences, helped Bunge secure financial support from the Academy, and at his suggestion (he was a member of the commission organizing the expedition) Bunge became the physician and assistant of the leader of the expedition to the delta of the Lena (1882–1884). Bunge became a polar researcher through the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences, where he improved his knowledge of zoology and geology before the expedition to the Lena delta. The expedition was conducted by a military man, Nikolai Iurgens, and mathematician Adolph Eigner acted as an observer. In addition to the scientific staff of three persons, there were seven male attendants. It was one of the most difficult expeditions of the First Polar Year because of the remote location of the observation station and severe climatic conditions. The expedition was launched in St Petersburg on December 31, 1881 and moved through Irkutsk to Yakutsk, from where the trip continued on

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BUNGE, ALEXANDER VON barges. The expedition arrived at the destination point, Sagastyr, on August 24, 1882 and there built an observation house. August 31, 1883 was planned to be the final date of the expedition, but at the suggestion of the Russian Geographical Society the expedition stayed at Sagastyr for another winter continuing different scientific observations. In March 1883, information was obtained that a mammoth had been found c.50 km from the station, and Bunge went to look for it. Unsuccessful searches for the mammoth lasted until the first days of May when the thawing snow made further search impossible. Bunge returned to the observation station of Sagastyr, which finished its activities on July 1, 1884. Before leaving, Bunge decided to find the mammoth he did not succeed in finding in the spring. This time he was successful. The expedition to the delta of the Lena River, organized by the Russian Geographical Society, was one of the most fruitful in the framework of the First Polar Year. Regardless of the extremely severe climatic conditions, different meteorological (air temperature, air humidity, atmospheric pressure, amount of precipitation) and geomagnetic observations were carried out during the one and a half years using the same methods. These were the longest continuous observations from the Russian Arctic. In addition to the recording of observation data, the results of the expedition included a precise mapping of the delta of the Lena River, and rich zoological (including the remains of the mammoth) and botanical collections compiled by Bunge. The results of the expedition were published in the book Trudy poliarnoi stancii po ust’e Leny. The success of the expedition and a dream of Bunge to visit “his Eldorado,” Kotel’ny Island, led Schrenck to suggest a scientific expedition to Novosibirskiye Islands (New Siberian Islands) in the spring of 1884 at the initiative and direction of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences and under the leadership of Bunge (the last to visit these islands was Petr Anzhu’s expedition, 1821–1824). Bunge accepted the offer along with the young Baltic-German zoologist and geologist Edward von Toll. The goal of the expedition was to investigate and compare the natural conditions and geology of the Verkhoyansk region (Yakutia) with those of Novosibirskiye Islands. Until then, these areas had never been visited by any professional naturalist. The St Petersburg Academy of Sciences was especially keen for data on the reasons of dying-out mammoths and other mammals at the end of the Pleistocene, as the Novosibirskiye Islands were known to be very rich in Pleistocene mammal bones. The expedition was launched from Irkutsk on March 6, 1885. The team of the expedition consisted

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of ten persons, while Bunge and Toll were responsible for its scientific part. They passed Yakutsk and arrived in Verkhoyansk on April 30. From there they started the investigation of the lower courses of the rivers of Iana, Indigirka, Alazeia east of the Lena. Bunge had to determine the altitude of the area covered by the aneroid barometer, carry out meteorological observations, collect botanical, zoological, paleontological specimens, and investigate the anthropology and ethnography of the local native peoples. Toll carried out the geological investigation of the area. In August the expedition arrived at Kazach’e and stayed there for winter. The main goal of the 1886 expedition was to investigate Novosibirskiye archipelago. The preparations for the expedition started at the beginning of 1886 with the building of food stores. Toll went to Bol’shoi Liakhovskii (Bigger Lyakhov) island at the end of April. Bunge joined him in the middle of May. On May 15, they reached Kotel’ny Island, where the food depot was built. Then the expedition was divided into two groups. Toll went on to explore the Tree mountains on Novaya Sibir’ and had to map Kotel’ny Island on his way back. Bunge also went north trying to map (unfortunately unsuccessfully) the eastern shore of Kotel’ny Island. In fact, Kotel’ny and Faddeevskii, which on earlier maps were indicated as separate islands, turned out to be one big island, with a low sand shoal area joining its parts, which Toll named Bunge land. On June 1, Bunge went from Kotel’ny to Bol’shoi Liakhovskii Island in order to carry out natural scientific investigations there. The explorers met again at the beginning of November and returned to the continent together. Bunge arrived at Kazach’e on November 17. Toll had arrived there a couple of days earlier. Bunge and Toll were the first naturalists to investigate Novosibirskiye archipelago and Verkhoyansk region. They determined the geological, geographical, climatological, zoological, and botanical features characterizing the areas studied. Rich collections of zoological, botanical, paleontological, and geological materials were gathered, and the glacial origin of fossil ice was determined. It was treated as one of the reasons for the dying out of mammoths. The fact that remains of mammoth, rhinoceros, horse, two species of oxen, muskoxen, and sequoia were found were treated as proof that Novosibirskiye archipelago had had a relatively warm climate in the late Pleistocene.

Biography Alexander von Bunge was born in Tartu (Dorpat) in Russia on November 9, 1851 into the family of Alexander (professor of botany at the University of

BUNTINGS AND LONGSPURS Tartu) and Elisabeth (born von Pistohlkors) von Bunge. In 1862–1870, Bunge attended the Blumberg elementary school and a gymnasium in Tartu. Although Bunge wanted to study zoology at the University of Tartu, he still had to choose the speciality of medical doctor, since it guaranteed a job after graduation. Bunge studied medicine in 1870–1878 (MD 1880) and worked simultaneously (1874–1875) as an assistant at the Institute of Anatomy. After graduation he worked as a director of a mental hospital for women in Tartu (1878–1880). In 1881, Bunge left for St Petersburg, and joined his first polar expedition. After returning from his Arctic expeditions in 1886, he worked mainly as a physician in different Russian frigates and on smaller expeditions. In 1901, Bunge was a senior physician in the Russian frigate “Diana” and took part in the Russian-Japanese war (1904–1905) as a head physician of the Russian Pacific Ocean squadron and marine hospitals in Port Arthur. In 1905, he made another trip along the North East Passage to the mouth of the Yenisey, and in 1906–1914 he was the head physician of the Russian Baltic Sea navy. During World War I, he was the director of several private military hospitals in St Petersburg. In 1918, Bunge returned to Estonia, where he lived first on the Mõtliku farm inherited from his father, and since 1924 in Tallinn, where he died on January 19, 1930. ERKI TAMMIKSAAR See also Russian Geographical Society; Toll, Baron Edward von Further Reading Bunge, A. von, “Predvaritel’nyi otchet ob ékspedicii na Novo-Sibirskie ostrova.” Izvestia Imperatorskogo Russkogo Geograficheskogo Obshchestva, 23 (1887): 573–591 Bunge, A. von & E. von Toll, “Die von der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften ausgerüstete Expedition nach den Neusibirischen Inseln und dem Jana-Lande.” Beiträge zur Kenntniss des Russischen Reiches und der angränzenden Länder Asiens, III. Folge, Bd. 3, 1887 Bunge, A. von, “Die russisch-schwedische SpitzbergenExpedition 1899/1900.” Baltische Monatsschrift, 53(1) (1902): 45–58

BUNTINGS AND LONGSPURS The Arctic buntings (snow and McKay’s) and longspurs (Lapland and Smith’s) breed exclusively on the tundra and taiga of North America, Europe, and Asia, where they are usually the earliest birds to return in spring, their melodious songs heralding the end of a long, cold, dark winter. Lapland longspurs and snow buntings are particularly common in circumpolar tundra habitats

McKay’s bunting (P. hyperboreus). Photo courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

during the summer months and are readily encountered, often nesting in human settlements. McKay’s buntings and Smith’s longspurs, on the other hand, have restricted distribution and are found only in North America. These four species are very closely related to songbirds in the large (c.150 species) avian subfamily of buntings and sparrows (Emberizidae). In Europe, Lapland longspurs are called Lapland buntings. All four Arctic buntings and longspurs are relatively small birds that forage and nest on the ground. Males arrive on the breeding grounds as snowmelt begins, singing their loud warbling songs during aerial displays (except Smith’s longspurs, which sing on treetops) to defend territories and attract females. Females arrive shortly after the males, settle with one male, build a nest of grasses and mosses lined with fur and feathers, and lay a clutch of eggs that they incubate for 11–13 days. Nesting is highly synchronous within species, most pairs in any locality laying their clutches within a few days of each other. Adults eat seeds when they first arrive on the tundra but soon switch to a largely insect diet. They also feed their offspring exclusively on insects. In summer, weasels, foxes, and jaegers are the main predators on both adults and nests, whereas falcons prey only on adults. After the nestlings leave the nest, the parents divide up the brood, each caring for about half the chicks for the next 1–3 weeks, until they can fly and become independent. Due to the short Arctic breeding season, Arctic buntings and longspurs usually raise only one brood per year, then form small flocks, and leave the tundra before the fall snows begin. During the fall, they migrate slowly southward into the temperate zone to spend the winter in large, often mixed-species flocks feeding on seeds in snow-covered agricultural areas and open country. Snow (Plectrophenax nivalis) and McKay’s (P. hyperboreus) buntings are larger (c.40 g) than the longspurs and are very similar in appearance to each

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BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS other, reflecting their recent common ancestry. Snow buntings breed in the High Arctic worldwide whereas McKay’s buntings nest only on Hall andSt Matthew Islands in the Bering Sea, where they likely evolved from snow buntings that became isolated there c.10,000 years ago. Males of both species are strikingly black and white in the breeding season: snow buntings have a black back whereas McKay’s are black only on their wings and tail. These are birds of rocky tundra during the breeding season, building their nests in rock crevasses. Snow bunting males usually mate with only one female each year, often feeding her on the nest while she is incubating. Breeding densities vary from one to ten pairs per km2 in suitable habitats, and mean clutch size varies from four to seven eggs depending on latitude (larger clutches farther north) and local conditions. Snow buntings spend the winter months in the middle latitudes across North America (35–55° N) and Eurasia (45–60° N). Little is known about McKay’s bunting but its habits are expected to be similar. Lapland (Calcarius lapponicus) and Smith’s (C. pictus) longspurs are also closely related to each other and about the same size (c.28 g) but, unlike Snow and McKay’s buntings, are very different in plumage and habits. Both species are mainly streaked with brown, except during the breeding season when male Lapland longspurs have a black head and bib with a rufous nape and male Smith’s longspurs are golden brown below with a unique black and white head pattern. Lapland longspurs breed on open well-vegetated Arctic tundra worldwide, whereas Smith’s longspur breeds only in a narrow band along the treeline of North America, where scattered small spruce trees dot the tundra. Females of both species usually build their nest in the side of a hummock, most often in wet meadows. Smith’s longspur clutches average four eggs whereas Lapland clutch size varies from four to six eggs, with larger clutches at higher latitudes. Lapland longspurs are typically monogamous (although extrapair mating is not uncommon), with both sexes feeding and tending to their brood. Smith’s longspurs, however, have one of the most unusual mating systems known in birds. Typically, females initially settle with one male, build a nest, and begin egg-laying. However, this pair bond breaks down after 1–2 eggs have been laid and the male leaves to become the second mate of a neighboring female whose initial pair bond with her first mate has also broken. When the eggs hatch, most males return to help the females feed at any nests in which they have sired offspring. In both species, the nestlings grow quickly, leaving the nest 7–9 days after hatching, but before they are fully developed. Lapland longspurs winter in the same regions as snow buntings (with whom they often form large flocks) but

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Smith’s longspurs go further south into the south-central United States. In North America, Arctic indigenous peoples call snow buntings “Qaulluqtaaq” and “Kó-ka-noch,” and Lapland longspurs “Kungnituk” and “Tuk-cho-fluk,” in the Iñupiat and Yup’ik dialects, respectively. Both species are often depicted in Inuit art. It is likely that indigenous peoples ate adults and eggs of buntings and longspurs during the summer. In winter, snow buntings have been extensively trapped for food in French Canada right up until modern times. With the exception of McKay’s bunting, the breeding populations of all Arctic buntings and longspurs are large, widespread, and flourishing. During the breeding season, adult population sizes worldwide are probably in excess of 75 million Lapland longspurs, 15 million snow buntings, and 75,000 Smith’s longspurs. In contrast, these species spend the winter in areas heavily modified by humans and may be susceptible to changes in land use practices. McKay’s buntings probably number less than 2500, but they are not endangered, since their breeding and wintering ranges are so remote. ROBERT MONTGOMERIE Further Reading Briskie, James, “Smith’s longspur (Calcarius pictus).” In The Birds of North America, No. 34, edited by Alan Poole, Peter Stettenheim & Frank Gill, Philadelphia: Academy of Natural Sciences, 1993 Byers, Clive, Urban Olsson & Jon Curson, Buntings and Sparrows: A Guide to the Buntings and North American Sparrows, Sussex: Pica Press, 1995 Cramp, Stanley & Christopher M. Perrins (editors), The Birds of the Western Palearctic, Volume IX, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994 Hussell, David J.T. & Robert Montgomerie, “Lapland longspur (Calcarius lapponicus).” In The Birds of North America, No. 656, edited by Alan Poole and Frank Gill, Philadelphia: Academy of Natural Sciences, 2001 Lyon, Bruce E. & Robert Montgomerie, “Snow bunting and McKay’s bunting (Plectrophenax nivalis and Plectrophenax hyperboreus).” In The Birds of North America, No. 198-199, edited by Alan Poole and Frank Gill, Philadelphia: Academy of Natural Sciences, 1995 Tinbergen, Niko, “The behavior of the snow bunting in spring.” Transactions of the Linnaean Society of New York, 5 1939): 1–95

BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS At the time of the adoption of the United States constitution at the end of the 18th century, the federal government obtained from the states the responsibility of Indian Affairs. In 1824, John C. Calhoun (US Secretary of War) created the first Bureau of Indian Affairs. Thomas L. McKenney was the first appointed

BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS head of the bureau, but he had neither any official title or any real authority. In 1832, the Congress passed the Act of July 9 establishing the official position (and title) of Commissioner of Indians Affairs “who, under the direction of the Secretary of War…have the direction and management of all Indian affairs, and of all matters arising out of Indian relations” (see Curtis, 1977: 47). Elbert Herring was the first appointed commissioner in 1832. Originally this administration was named the Office of Indian Affairs (OIA). It was later renamed the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Initially under the auspices of the Department of War, the bureau was transferred to the Department of the Interior in 1849.

History of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Throughout its history the BIA implemented radical changes to its Indian policy. The attitude of the BIA towards Indians was complex and often ambiguous. Nonetheless, it is possible to distinguish two major orientations: protection and assimilation. Initially, one of the bureau’s responsibilities was the protection of Indian people, including their culture and lands. For example, in February 1829 the BIA head Thomas McKenney instructed Major Edward Du Val (an Indian agent in Little Rock, Arkansas) to prohibit white people from entering or settling on Indian lands without the Indians’ approval. Generally, however, the bureau encouraged the assimilation of Indians and oriented its policy to this end. The goal was to transform Indian people into “Americans.” An extract from the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, written by Luke Lea in November 1850, is eloquent: “…it is indispensably necessary that they (Native people) are placed in positions where they can be controlled, and finally compelled by stern necessity to resort to agriculture labour or starve.” Decisions that the BIA implemented in regard to assimilation policies included: (1) Boarding school policy. In 1879, boarding schools in locations such as Carlisle (Pennsylvania) integrated young Native people within North American culture through the teaching and learning of English. These integration attempts further distanced young Natives from their families and cultures. (2) In 1883, the BIA published a list of Native religious practices that were not approved by the government. For example, the Sun Dance and other traditional medicinal practices were forbidden. (3) In 1887, the BIA approved the General Allotment Act (or Dawes Act) promulgated by the Congress. Henry Dawes was convinced that private property as well as agriculture and schooling were the only avenues toward civilization; the act hence called

for the creation of Indian reservations. The government granted a certain number of acres to each Indian of the United States, and then took for itself whatever was left of the lands of the former reservations. The Indians subsequently lost two-thirds of their lands or nearly a hundred million acres. The Dawes Act also allowed non-Indian settlers on Indian lands west of the Mississippi River. Gradually, Native life was regulated, decided, and organized by white Americans, with the BIA specifically in charge of decision making. The bureau’s power increased when, in August 1876, an act (19 Stat. 200) passed by Congress enlarged the authority of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs by giving him the right to appoint traders in Indian tribes. One important aspect of organization lies with the field agent. In the field, one agent represented each reservation, functioning as the contact between the reservation’s inhabitants and the United States government. Many of these field agents stole money and food while Indian people were left starving and dying of exposure. Field agents were also charged with reporting activities that occurred on the reservations and, if the case arose, to denounce them.

The Indian New Deal In 1928, the Meriam Report, initially titled “Problems of Indian Administration,” was published. It exposed Indian poverty, social problems regarding housing, the Indians’ failure to adjust to the education system, health problems such as lack of hygiene and malnutrition, the high rate of child mortality, etc. This report underlined the inadequacy of the BIA’s programs and revealed systemic corruption. Because of the Meriam Report, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed in 1933 the Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier, both founding members of the American Indian Defence Association, to create together the so-called Indian New Deal. Under Collier’s tenure (from 1933 to 1945), he outlined policy and supported the origin of the modern tribal governments. In 1934, the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) or Wheeler-Howard law was enacted to stop the processes of Indian Territories dispossession. The act marked the return of tribal institutions. Native people obtained greater autonomy and received funds to develop economic activities. These new measures were not imposed by the BIA but proposed to the Native populations. Collier’s Indian Policy was never unanimously approved however. Critics argued that the financial costs were high, and the pace of assimilation slow. In 1944, a committee formed and advised the BIA to reinstate former policy. This committee presented a “definite solution to the

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BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS Indian problem (or question)” and the Termination Policy of the postwar era.

Termination Policy The years 1953–1954 marked the beginning of the Termination Policy, an application of the congressional Resolution 108. According to the policy, American Indians were to be freed from federal supervision and control and from all disabilities and limitations specially applicable to Indians. This meant that every BIA office would be abolished. This resolution was applied to all Indian populations from 1954 to 1960, specifically to 61 tribes, groups, and communities without any consultation with Indians. The BIA drew up a list of populations willing to live without federal services and then supervised the termination. Natives affected by this policy were thus dependent on the states. Once again, numerous Native lands were lost to non-Natives. Moreover, the federal government strongly promoted a population move from reserves to the cities and urban areas. In 1952, Dillon Myer, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, initiated a program to urbanize Native populations, the so-called Relocation Policy. The BIA provided Indians with one-way bus tickets to destination cities usually far away from the reserves in addition to accommodations, one-year free medical services, and one-month financial support. Thereafter, the Natives would receive nothing. In 1954, the BIA created a Relocation Branch (with many offices in many cities) to supervise the resettlement of American Indians. The Termination Policy greatly contributed to the lack of trust many Natives had in the bureau. The political Native movement originated in great part from dissatisfaction with the bureau, its politics, and its operations.

Criticisms of the Bureau of Indian Affairs The bureau had over time grown to vast proportions. Critics claimed that the organization’s massive size inhibited its progress and slowed action. The number of BIA employees over a century illustrates this growth: 1852 (108), 1888 (1725), 1911 (6000), 1934 (12,000), and from 1934 to the 1970s (11,000 to 16,000) (Taylor, 1984: 35). The main cause of this increase was the multiplication of divisions—such as forestry, health, and education—whose responsibility the BIA obtained and that required greater numbers of specialized personnel. In response in part to the bureau’s unwieldy administration, American Indian students created the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC) in 1961 and took actions to protest the bureau’s policies and decisions. One of the

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youth council’s actions was the protest against fishing rules. However, the council’s most significant act against the BIA was the sit-in organized in Washington, District of Columbia, near the White House on November 2, 1972. The goal was to protest against the lack of respect for treaties. Native people from many different states traveled to Washington for the protest, which was named the Trail of Broken Treaties. International press coverage and numerous signs of public support in favor of the Natives put the government in a delicate situation at a time of pre-electoral campaigns. However, no agreement seemed possible between the government (which wanted the sites to be abandoned) and the Natives (who asked for a guarantee of major future changes in the BIA). Soon after the elections, the government agreed to limited changes: to examine the nomination of Natives to federal offices, to extend the percentage of Natives employed by the bureau, to accelerate the entire assistance process, and to improve development programs in reservations. In exchange, the Natives left their sites on November 7, 1972, but declared that they had put BIA files proving the corruption of its members in a safe place. Louis Bruce, Indian Affairs commissioner, lost his job. Despite the promises, the regional offices did not change in any way. Some changes however were noticed, as in July 1972 when the BIA offered the Navajos self-rule, which meant the transfer of bureau functions on the reservations to the Navajos. Moreover in 1975, the Indian Self-Determination and Educational Act implemented self-determination policies. Under the administration of President Ronald Reagan, the president dealt with the Native people on a “government-to-government basis,” and initiated a new policy for economic development. Reagan appointed a presidential Commission on Indian Reservation Economies that submitted a report and recommendations to the office of the president in November 1984. The report underlined the administrative spending of tribal governments, noting that the BIA consumed more than two-thirds of its budget on the organization itself, leaving little monies for investment purposes. In June 1996, another action against the BIA ensued. A class-action lawsuit representing 300,000 American Indians was filed in federal court against the bureau, the United States Treasury, and the Department of the Interior. The suit alleged that the BIA had mishandled $450 million in revenues from mineral leases on lands held in trust for Indians. The suit further alleged that no accurate records were kept of the monies collected and that funds were illegally diverted to other projects.

BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT

The Bureau’s Mission The BIAs mission is to fulfil its responsibilities and promote self-determination on behalf of tribal governments, American Indians, and Alaska Natives. According to the US Department of the Interior, “Responsibility is the administration and management of 55.7 million acres of land held in trust by the United States for American Indians, Indian tribes, and Alaska Natives. Developing forestlands, leasing assets on these lands, directing agricultural programs, protecting water and land rights, developing and maintaining infrastructure, providing for health and human services, and economic development are all part of this responsibility taken in cooperation with the American Indians and Alaska Natives’’ (Bureau of Indian Affairs, 2003). According to the US Department of the Interior, the main objectives of the BIA are to encourage and assist Indian and Alaska Native people in managing their own affairs under the trust relationship to the federal government; to facilitate, with a maximum involvement of Indian and Alaska Native people, the development of their human and natural resources; to mobilize all public and private aid for the advancement of Indian and Alaska Native people for use by them; and to promote self-determination by using the skills and capabilities of Indian and Alaska Native people in the direction and management of programs for their benefit. In carrying out these objectives, the BIA works with Indian and Alaska Native people, as well as tribal governments, Native American organizations, other federal agencies, state and local governments, and other interested groups in the development and implementation of effective programs for their advancement. Forty-five commissioners have succeeded at the head of the BIA, six of whom were American Indian: Ely S. Parker, Seneca (1869–1871); Robert L. Bennett, Oneida (1966–1969); Louis R. Bruce, MohawkOglala Sioux (1969–1973); Morris Thompson, Athapaskan (1973–1976); Benjamin Reifel, Sioux (1976–1977); and William E. Hallett, Red Lake Chippewa (1979–1981). In 1977, the BIA created the position of assistant secretary for Indian affairs. This office “is responsible for identifying and acting on issues affecting Indian policy and programs, establishing policy on Indian affairs, maintaining liaison and coordination between the Department and other Federal agencies that provide services or funding to Indians, and monitoring and evaluating ongoing activities related to Indian affairs” (Department of the Interior, US government manual, 243). Only American Indians have occupied this position; they include Forrest J. Gerard, Blackfeet (1977–1980); Thomas W. Frederick, Mandan–Hidatsa

(1981); Kenneth L. Smith, Wasco (1981–1984); Ross O. Swimmer, Cherokee (1985–1989); Eddie F. Brown, Tohono O’odham (1989–1993); Ada E. Deer, Menominee (1993–1997); and Kevin Gover, Pawnee (1997–2001) (US Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, 2003). STÉPHANIE EVENO See also Self-Determination Further Reading Jackson, Curtis E. & Marcia J. Galli, A History of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and its Activities Among Indians, San Francisco, California: R&E Research Associates, 1977 Stuart, Paul, The Indian Office. Growth and Development of an American Institution, 1865–1900, Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1979 Taylor, Theodore W., The Bureau of Indian Affairs, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1984 US Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs: http://www.doi.gov/bureau-indian-affairs.html US Department of the Interior, US Government Manual: ttp://www.usembassy.de/usa/etexts/gov/govmanual/int.pdf

BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an organization located in the Department of the Interior, within the government of the United States of America. Established officially in 1946 by merging the Grazing Service and the General Land Office, the Bureau became responsible for the management of public lands. At the time, there were over 2000 conflicting laws regarding public land management, and it was not until the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA) that the Bureau had an official and unified legislative mandate. In the FLMPA, Congress recognized the value of public lands by declaring that these lands would remain in public ownership. Therefore, the Bureau is now responsible for managing 262 million acres of land and approximately 300 million additional acres of subsurface mineral resources located mostly in the Western United States and including Alaska. The Bureau is also responsible for the management of a variety of resources and uses such as energy and minerals, timber, forage, wild horse and burro populations, fish and wildlife habitat, wilderness areas, and archaeological, paleontological, historical, and other natural heritage values. In Alaska, the BLM manages more public land than any other state—87 million acres. These lands are characterized by forested hills, small mountain ranges, and Arctic tundra. The most significant of these is, perhaps, the bureau-managed lands on Alaska’s North Slope, because they are thought to contain significant

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BURYAT REPUBLIC (BURYATIYA)

BURYAT REPUBLIC (BURYATIYA) The Buryat Republic is situated in the southern part of East Siberia, along the eastern shore of Lake Baikal and bordering Mongolia to the south. The republic’s area is 351,300 km2. There are four main landscape units: East-Sayan upland (height up to 3491 m, Mt Mynky Sarduk); the Baikal mountain area with ridges Khamar-Daban, Ulan-Burgasu, Barguzinskiy; Selenginsky midland with mountain ridges ZaganDaban, Zagan-Hurtei, Zaganskiy; and the Vitim plateau. Within the limits of these mountain systems are extensive intermountain depressions, such as Gusinozerskiy, Udinskiy, Barguzinskiy, and Verkhneangarskiy. Buryatia has many lakes and rivers. Lake Baikal, most of which is in Buryatia’s territory, contains 25% of the world’s freshwater stocks. The rivers belong to the Yenisey (with Lake Baikal) and the Lena River catchment areas. The largest rivers are the Selenga, Barguzin, and Upper Angara, which flow into Lake Baikal. In the western part of the republic, the Irkut, Kitoy, and Oka rivers (Yenisey basin) flow. The large river Vitim is a tributary of the great Lena River. Buryatiya Republic has extensive mineral resources, including marble, coal, wolfram, molybdenum, gold,

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oil and gas resources as well as 40% of the total coal resource potential in the United States. The largest adjoining area of public lands is found in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPRA), created in 1923 by President Warren Harding, and is made up of a 23million-acre region on the North Slope. The Bureau works with numerous other Federal and State agencies in the managing of public lands in Alaska. The four Alaska Public Lands Information Centers involve nine other Federal and State agencies in their development, management, and operation. Other groups, such as the public, constituent groups, indigenous organizations, and other agencies have become increasingly important to the Bureau in collaborative decision-making processes that affect the uses of public lands for those who rely on them. The greatest challenge for the organization today is negotiating more effective land management practices, such as conservation, recreation, and tourism, with the demands of resource development on public lands. The BLM commits itself, in its mission statement, to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations. RACHEL OLSON

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lead, zinc, quartz, and asbestos. Most of the coal is extracted from open pit mines (brown coal deposits of Gusinoozersky and Tugnuisky). Of the metallic minerals, the iron ore (Kurbin-Eravninskiy iron ore area) and manganese (Ikatskiy ridge and Eravninskiy valley) deposits are significant. Kholodninskoe leadzinc and Dzarchikhinskoe molybdenum deposits are of regional importance. Buryatiya has taiga, forest-steppe, and steppe zones. Forests occupy 65% of the region, mainly a light coniferous, broad-leaved taiga, with some pine forest. Sable, squirrel, fox, stoat, and muskrat are hunted for fur; deer and elk also roam the taiga. The rivers and lakes are rich in fish. There are two national parks (Zabaikalskiy and Tunkinskiy) and three nature reserves (Baikalskiy, Barguzinskiy, and Dzerginskiy). Buryat has an extreme continental climate, with long, cold windless winters, with low snowfall. Summer is short, warm, and dry. The average temperature in January is –24°C, and in July +17°C. According to the 1989 Soviet census, there were 1,041,000 people, representatives of more than 100 nationalities, living in Buryatia. fifty-seven percent of the population is urban, about 300,000 living in the capital Ulan-Ude (formerly Verkhneudinsk). Russians form the majority (70%) of the population; other ethnic groups are Buryats (24%), Ukrainians (2.2%), Tatars (1%), Byelorussians (0.5%), and Evenki (0.2%). Since 1992, the population of the republic has been decreasing, as the disintegration of the Soviet Union stimulated migration. At the same time, many Buryats came back from regions of the Russian Federation and the former Soviet republics. The indigenous population of Buryatiya are Buryats who speak the Buryat language (of the Mongolian group of Altaic languages). Until 1930, most Buryat used the classical Mongolian script; however, since 1931 they have used the Russian (Cyrillic)

BURYAT REPUBLIC (BURYATIYA) script. The main traditional economy of the Buryats was cattle breeding. They bred cattle, horses, sheep, and camels. Later, under the influence of the Russian peasants, some of the Buryats began to be interested in agriculture. Despite Christianization, many Buryats remained adherents of shamanism and Buddhism. During Soviet rule, both shamanism and Buddhism underwent persecution. In modern Buryatiya, since the late 1980s and early 1990s, a rough process of Buddhist revival has been observed, old temples have been restored, and more than 20 datsans (Buddhist monasteries) have been built. Shamanism also has been undergoing a revival. Evenki also are representatives of the indigenous population of Buryatia. They live mainly in the northern regions, in Bowntovskii and Severobaikalskii districts of Buryatia. The Evenki were formed on the basis of mixing of aboriginal tribes of East Siberia, related to ancient Yukagir and Tungus-Manchurian tribes. They had pagan beliefs and shamanism from old times. Russians are the major ethnic group in Buryatia. In the middle of the 17th century, Russians began expanding into the present territory of modern Buryatia. First they were frontier guards, officials and merchants, and then in the 19th century there were peasant-settlers. The majority of the Russians are members of the Orthodox Church. A specific ethnocultural group of Old Believers (starovertsy), so-called “semejskie,” is distinguished: these are a sect of the Russian Orthodox Church that migrated to parts of Siberia after a split in the 17th century. Prior to the Russian Cossacks’ conquest of Eastern Siberia, the Buryat-Mongol nomad tribes created early feudal states on the basis of military unions of tribes. For more than 300 years, Buryat was a part of Russia. After the revolution in February 1917, the movement for a cultural-national autonomy developed within the framework of the Russian state formed after the October revolution. In January 1922, the BuryatMongol Region of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic was established by the decree of the All Union Central Executive Committee. At the same time, the Buryat-Mongolian Autonomous Region was created in the Far East Republic. In 1923, they were united in the Buryat-Mongolian ASSR in structure of the RSFSR. It included the territory of the Pribaikal Province with Russian population. In 1937, a number of areas were removed from the Buryat-Mongolian ASSR, from which the Buryat independent districts Ust-Ordynsky and Aginsky were formed in the Irkutsk and Chita regions, respectively. Some areas with Buryat populations (Olkhonsky and some part of Ulan-Ononsky aimak) were not included in the Autonomous Regions. The decree of 1937 was an

obvious historical injustice and one of the factors for the destabilized modern ethnopolitical situation in the republic. In 1958, the Buryat-Mongol ASSR was renamed as the Buryat ASSR. On October 10, 1990, the Supreme Soviet of Buryatiya proclaimed state sovereignty and changed the former name to the Buryat Soviet Socialist Republic, and in January, 1992 it was named as the Buryatiya Republic. Buryatiya is a parliamentary republic with a presidential form of government, a subject of the Russian Federation. The powers of the president, parliament (National Khural), and government of the republic are determined by the Constitution of the republic, accepted in February 22, 1994. The first president of the Buryatiya Republic is Potapov Leonid Vasilievich, elected in June 1994. Official languages in the republic are Russian and Buryat. The National Khural is a representative and legislative body of the republic, it is elected for a period of four years, and consists of 65 members, taking into consideration its territorial and national representation. In the early 1990s, there was an organizational registration of political parties (sets) and movements in Buryatiya. Among them were the Buryat-Mongolian National Party, movement “Negedel,” Independent Democratic Party of Buryatiya, a party “Sport Buryatiya,” and Buryat branches of federal parties. By autumn 1993, by elections to the Federal Assembly and adoption of the new Constitution of the Russian Federation, five electoral blocks, including about 30 various parties and movements, were generated. Great cultural changes resulted from the democratic transformations. Since the early 1990s, there has been reorganization of all levels of the educational system. National schools with training in the Buryat language have been opened, and study of the history, culture, and language of the Buryat people was introduced. In the Soviet era the educational level of the Buryat population was one of the highest in the USSR, and the high level of education has been maintained. In 1989, of 1000 people aged 15 or above, 183 had higher education. Today in Buryatiya there are four state higher educational institutions. By the number of its students, the republic surpasses some of the west European countries. The basic industries of Buryatiya are mechanical engineering and metalworking; wood and pulp and paper industries; production of building materials; and food processing. Extraction of brown coal and graphite, and extraction and processing of tungsten and molybdenum ores and apatite are conducted. Gusinoozersky hydroelectric station is a basic supplier of the electric power in the republic. The main industrial centers are Ulan-Ude, Gusinoozersk, Zakamensk, Selenginsk, and Kamensk settlements.

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BUTTON, SIR THOMAS The republic has old cattle-breeding traditions. They breed cattle for meat and milk, pigs, sheep, and birds. They sow fodder cultures and grains such as wheat. Lake Baikal and the Selenga and Barguzin rivers are navigable. The Trans-Siberian and Baikal-Amur railways cross the republic, and most freight traffic is carried by train. A health resort economy has been developing in Arshan, Sayany, and Goryachinsk. Lake Baikal, a World Heritage Site, generates considerable tourism. ELVIRA MYARIKYANOVA See also Evenki Further Reading Abaeva, L. & S. Tsyrenov, Respublika Buriatiia: Model’ etnologicheskogo monitoringa [The Buryatiya Republic. Mode of ethnological monitoring], Moscow: Institut etnologii i antropologii im. Miklukho-Maklaia RAN, 1999 Hartmuth, M. Buriats, Encyclopedia of the World’s Minorities, edited by C. Skutsch, New York and London: Routledge, 2004 Humphrey, Caroline, “Buryatiya and the Buryats.” In The Nationalities Question in the Post-Soviet States, edited by Graham Smith, London: Longman, 1996 Narody Rossii. Entsiklopedia [Peoples of Russia: Encyclopedia], edited by V.A. Tishkov, Moscow: Bolshaia Rossiiskaia entsiklopediia, 1994 Regiony Rossii: Statisticheskii Sbornik [Regions of Russia: Statistical Handbook], 2 volumes, Moscow: Goscomstat of Russia, 2000 Republic of Buryatia website: http://www.buryatia.ru/buryatia/gov/english/

BUTTON, SIR THOMAS The charts that accompanied the return of Henry Hudson’s mutinous crew in 1611 lent further impetus to London’s merchant “adventurers” in their search for a North West Passage. The mutineers were not charged because of a lack of hostile witnesses but primarily in deference to their newly acquired Arctic expertise. Some were even allowed to accompany a new expedition led by Sir Thomas Button, a Welsh naval captain with a distinguished war record and good connections at court. Under the patronage of Henry, Prince of Wales, and the 288 investors of the newly formed North West Company, the Resolution and Hudson’s former vessel, the Discovery, left London in mid-April, three months before the company’s belated receipt of its royal charter dated July 26, 1612. Resolution was a naval vessel that Button had selected as early as January on the advice of his friend, Phineas Pett, master shipwright and advisor to the Prince of Wales. The Prince presented Button with elaborately detailed sailing instructions, which neglected to direct Button to search for the betrayed and ill-fated Hudson. Button also carried letters from

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King James optimistically addressed to foreign sovereigns, including the Emperor of Japan. The ships’ personnel included John Ingram, in command of the Discovery, Abacuck Prickett and Robert Bylot, who had both escaped charges of mutiny against Hudson, and William Gibbons and William Hawkeridge, who later, like Bylot, commanded expeditions to explore Hudson Bay. Button made a landfall at Resolution Island, at the mouth of the Hudson Strait, and christened it after his flagship. After traversing the ice-laden strait, the expedition reached the rock-bound cliffs of the Digges Islands (62°35′ N; 77°50′–78°03′ W), which lie near Cape Wolstenholm, at the mouth of Hudson Bay. A shore party sent to hunt black guillemots, which nest there in profusion, was attacked by Inuit, who were repelled with gunfire, killing at least one and wounding others. Later, a second landing party, sent ashore for fresh water, was ambushed by Inuit, who killed five of the Englishmen, while a sixth escaped death only by swimming back to his ship. Once again sailing westward, Button discovered and named Coats Island, as well as “Cary Swan’s Nest” on that island’s southern extremity, and crossed Hudson Bay to a point approximately 60°40′ N on its western coast, which, in frustration, he named “Hopes Checkt.” Sailing south, he discovered the estuary of the Nelson River, which he named for the Resolution’s sailing master, Robert Nelson, who died and was buried there. From mid-August 1612, Button established a winter anchorage on Root Creek at Port Nelson, near present-day York Factory. Button had set out with provisions for 18 months, and the local game was abundant, but nonetheless the expedition was illequipped to cope with the long, hard winter. So many of the men died that Button resolved to abandon the Resolution. When the ice broke up the following June, Button coasted northward to Button Bay and the estuary of the Churchill River. According to the map by cartographer Henry Briggs, published in Purchas, a large tidal flow was observed there, and the location was dubbed “Hubbart’s Hope,” for crewman Josias Hubbart, who prepared a chart of the voyage, which was subsequently lost. Button inexplicably failed to explore upstream: this omission led Luke Foxe to a futile search there for the passage two decades later. Button continued sailing north along the coast, past Rankin and Chesterfield Inlets, perhaps as far as 65° N, south of Wager Bay in the sound he named “Roe’s Welcome,” but which he mistook for a bay. Turning south from this farthest point at the end of July, and sailing through storm and fog, the expedition skirted the south coasts of Coats and Southampton Islands, which Button, mistaking the Fisher Strait for

BUTTON, SIR THOMAS an inlet, assumed to be one and the same. Pressing further eastward, Button landed on Mansel Island, which he named for his relative and patron, Vice-Admiral Sir Robert Mansel, Treasurer of the Navy, and where he discovered the ruins of Inuit dwellings and numerous native artifacts. He obeyed his sailing instructions by making careful tidal observations between Coats and Mansel islands, and reached Cape Wolstenholm by August 19. Button made further tidal observations as far north as Salisbury Island, but these only confirmed his opinion that the desired westward passage must lie further north, which he later claimed his too-rigid instructions had prevented him from exploring. Turning the Discovery toward home, the expedition reached London on September 27, 1613, after a remarkably swift passage of 16 days. Button succeeded in exploring hundreds of miles of coastline in Hudson Bay, identified and named several islands, and established to his own satisfaction that the North West Passage must lie elsewhere. Nearly two decades later, when Luke Foxe and Thomas James were preparing to renew the search for a North West Passage, the Admiralty solicited Button’s views on the matter. From his home in Cardiff, he traveled to London with the journal of his voyage. There he reiterated his strong belief in the existence of the passage, and that it would be found to the north of Hudson Bay. In 1613, however, Samuel Purchas and Henry Briggs were denied direct access to Button’s journal, perhaps because the North West Company believed it might undermine efforts to finance further exploring expeditions, such as those subsequently led by Gibbons and Bylot. The initial suppression and later loss of Button’s journal resulted in the later publication by Foxe of mere fragments based upon transcriptions and anecdotes from Sir Thomas Roe, William Hawkeridge, and Abacuck Prickett. Despite the misleadingly optimistic description on the map by Briggs, Button’s achievements as an explorer suffered an eclipse, and his name, which Briggs had assigned to much of the surface of Hudson Bay, lost its significance.

Biography While the date is unknown, Button was born the fourth son of Miles Button of Worlton, Glamorganshire, and Margaret, daughter of Edward Lewis, of Van, Caerphilly, Glamorganshire. Button entered the navy c.1588–1589, and served in the West Indies and Ireland, where his actions at the siege of Kinsale in 1601 won him a pension for life. Under the patronage of Sir Robert Mansel and Sir John Trevor, surveyor of the navy, he was selected to command the North West Company’s 1612 expedition, after which he was

appointed Admiral of the King’s ships on the coast of Ireland, where he suppressed piracy. His success against rebels in the west of Scotland in 1615 earned him a knighthood the following year. He failed to resolve long-running disputes with the commissioners of the navy over costs of provisioning his squadron of ships and the nonpayment of his pension before Buckingham was assassinated in August 1628, and these issues remained unresolved at his death. Button married twice, and fathered at least seven children. He died “of a burning fever quickly” in April 1634. MERRILL DISTAD See also Bylot, Robert Further Reading Burpee, Lawrence J., The Search for the Western Sea: The Story of the Exploration of North-western America, New York: D. Appleton, 1908; revised edition, 2 volumes, New York: Macmillan, 1936 Clark, George Thomas, Some Account of Sir Robert Mansel, Kt., Vice Admiral of England, and Member of Parliament for the County of Glamorgan; and of Admiral Sir Thomas Button Kt., of Worlton, and of Cardiff, in the County of Glamorgan, Dowlais, s.n., 1883 Crouse, Nellis M., In Quest of the Western Ocean, London: Dent, 1928 Dodge, Ernest S., Northwest by Sea, New York: Oxford University Press, 1961 Fox, Luke, North-West Fox, or, Fox From the North-West Passage, Beginning with King Arthur, Malga, Octhvr, the Two Zeni’s of Iseland, Estotiland, and Dorgia; Following with Briefe Abstracts of the Voyages of Cabot, Frobisher, Davis, Waymouth, Knight, Hudson, Button, Gibbons, Bylot, Baffin, Hawkridge, originally published 1635, reprinted New York: Johnson Reprint, 1965; also in Miller Christy (editor), The Voyages of Captain Luke Foxe of Hull, and Captain Thomas James of Bristol, in Search of a North-West Passage, in 1631–32; With Narratives of the Earlier NorthWest Voyages of Frobisher, Davis, Weymouth, Hall, Knight, Hudson, Button, Gibbons, Bylot, Baffin, Hawkridge, and Others, 2 volumes, 1894, reprinted New York: Burt Franklin, 1963 Graf, Miller, Arctic Journeys: A History of Exploration for the Northwest Passage, New York: Peter Lang, 1992 Monson, Sir William, The Naval Tracts of Sir William Monson, 5 volumes, edited by Michael Oppenheim, London: Printed for the Navy Records Society, 1902–1914 Pennington, L.E. (editor), The Purchas Handbook: Studies of the Life, Times and Writings of Samuel Purchas, 1577–1626: With Bibliographies of His Books and Works About Him, 2 volumes, London: Hakluyt Society, 1997 Purchas, Samuel, Hakluytus Posthumus, or, Purchas His Pilgrimes: Contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen and Others, Glasgow: J. MacLehose and Sons, 1905–1907 Thomson, George Malcolm, The North-West Passage, London: Secker and Warburg, 1975 Waters, David Watkin, The Art of Navigation in England in Elizabethan and Early Stuart Times, London, Hollis and Carter, 1958; 2nd edition, Greenwich: National Maritime Museum, 1978

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BYLOT ISLAND

BYLOT ISLAND Bylot Island (73° N 80° W, Nunavut, Canada) was named after Robert Bylot, captain of the Discovery, the first sailor to describe this region with his pilot William Baffin in 1616, in search of the North West Passage. Not until 1818–1919, 200 years later, did two other European explorers, James Ross and Sir William Edward Parry, sail again along Bylot Island. The island covers an area of about 15,000 km2 in Baffin Bay, north of Baffin Island. Its ice-capped mountains, rising to 1951 m (Byam Martin Mountains), are part of the “Arctic Cordillera” (Davis Highlands) running from southern Baffin Island to northern Ellesmere Island. Large sedimentary plains with a rich wildlife surround the glaciers. Large areas of this accessrestricted land belong to the Bylot Island Migratory Bird Sanctuary established in 1965, and the whole island belongs to the Sirmilik National Park established in 1999. Mean daily temperatures on Bylot Island range between 6°C (July) and –35°C (February) and are even colder on the windward coastal areas. Precipitation is higher than in most other parts of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, with 700 mm/year in the east and 150 in the northwest. Most of the major rivers and streams have glacial origins and peak flows occurring in late summer. Bylot Island lies within the Canadian Shield (crystalline basement complex with overlying succession of Proterozoic sedimentary and volcanic rocks) and the Arctic Platform (Cambrian to Devonian flat-lying sedimentary rocks and Cretaceous-Tertiary sediments) geological provinces. Geologists have found no mineral concentrations of

economical interest, however, on the island. These bedrocks support static, turbic, and organic soils with many interesting periglacial phenomena (pingos, polygonal ground, sorted and nonsorted stone patterns, and solifluction lobes). Tall towers of weathered sandstone bedrock, called “the Hoodoos,” rise above a river valley. Several hundred mosses, lichens, and vascular plants are known from the five vegetation types covering the island: low shrub-herb tundra, dwarf shrub barrens, shrub-sedge tundra, wetland meadow, and lichen barren. Surrounded by Baffin Bay, Navy Boar Inlet, Eclipse Sound, Pond Inlet, and Lancaster Sound, Bylot Island has a strong marine component and an unequaled rich and diversified mammal fauna for Canada. White whale, narwhal, killer whale, bowhead whale, polar bear, walrus, and five species of seal exist in these rich waters. Among the terrestrial mammals, Arctic hare, collared and brown lemmings, Arctic fox, red fox, and ermine all breed on Bylot. Caribou (and their main predator, the wolf) had virtually disappeared in 1943, probably due to overhunting, but in the 1990s, observations began to increase. The avifauna is also one of the richest known in Canada north of 70° N, with more than 45 breeding species among the 74 recorded. Seabirds (about 180,000 pairs) colonize the high cliffs at the southeastern (Cape Graham Moore) and northwestern (Cape Hay) tips of the island. The lowland terraces in the southwest hold the largest known colony of the greater snow goose, Anser caerulescens atlantica (70,000 adults in 1993), an increasing population precisely studied and monitored for more than ten years

The Hoodoos, dramatic land forms in a river valley on Bylot Island, Nunavut. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

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BYLOT, ROBERT by Gilles Gauthier and his team at the University of Laval in Québec. When the Arctic Institute of North America organized a biological expedition on Bylot Island in 1954, there was still one permanent Inuit camp at Iglookashat on the southern shore of the island. According to Father Guy Mary-Rousselière, the renowned archaeologist who spent most of his life in Pond Inlet, Inuit had occupied the island for the last 4000 years. Presently, all the hunters and fishermen visiting Bylot Island travel from Pond Inlet (Mittimatalik, on Baffin Island) for short trips or a few weeks stay in summer camps. Currently, hunters target ringed seal, narwhal, polar bear, caribou, Arctic fox, snow goose, thick-billed murre, rock ptarmigan, and Arctic char. OLIVIER GILG See also Baffin Bay; Baffin Island; Baffin, William; Bylot, Robert; Lancaster Sound; Mary-Rousseliere, Father Guy Further Reading Lepage, Denis, David N. Nettleship & Austin Reed, “Birds of Bylot Island and adjacent Baffin Island, Northwest Territories, Canada, 1979 to 1997.” Arctic, 51(2) (1998): 125–141 Miller, Richard S., “A survey of the mammals of Bylot Island, Northwest Territories.” Arctic, 8(3) (1955): 166–176 Scherman, Katharine, Spring on an Arctic Island, London: Victor Gollancz, 1956 Zoltai, S.C., K.J. McCormick & G.W. Scotter, A Natural Resource Survey of Bylot Island and Adjacent Baffin Island, Northwest Territories, Ottawa: Parks Canada, 1983

BYLOT, ROBERT Robert Bylot (sometimes spelled Billet) is one of the most enigmatic characters in early 17th-century Arctic exploration. Despite commanding, or being a central character in, four expeditions between 1610 and 1616, scholars know little about his early life or his later years. Only one island bears his name, while the men he sailed with and whose contributions were no more notable are commemorated on a much grander scale. Apparently, Bylot never entirely escaped the stigma of being one of the returning mutineers from Henry Hudson’s disastrous fourth voyage. Bylot first appeared as leading seaman on Hudson’s ship Discovery in 1610. With the backing of a private group of investors including Sir Thomas Smythe, Sir Dudley Digges, and John Wolstenholme, Hudson searched for the North West Passage. The Discovery sailed on April 17, entered Ungava Bay on June 25, and passed Digges Island to enter Hudson Bay proper on August 2. On September 10, as the Discovery sailed

back and forth in James Bay, a near mutiny persuaded Hudson to demote the mate, Robert Juet, and promote Robert Bylot in his place. From November 1610 to June 1611, Hudson and his crew wintered in James Bay, where most suffered from scurvy and hunger and one man died. When the ice released the ship, Bylot was demoted in his turn, with quartermaster John King replacing him as mate. On June 22, Henry Greene, Robert Juet, and William Wilson, uncertain that Hudson was going to head straight home and sure he was hoarding food, mutinied. Hudson, his son John, and seven others were cast adrift in the ship’s boat. Bylot’s role in the mutiny is unclear, although he navigated the Discovery out of Hudson Bay. When Henry Greene was killed by Inuit on Digges Island, Bylot took over as ship’s master and piloted the survivors home. Bylot and seven others arrived off the coast of Ireland on September 6, 1611, and returned to London on October 20. Bylot and Abacuk Prickett immediately reported to Sir Thomas Smythe. Although a recommendation was made that the mutineers be hanged, Bylot was pardoned for his work in bringing the ship home, and the others were not brought to trial until 1616 and were finally acquitted in 1618. Apparently the news they brought back of the North West Passage outweighed their deeds. In 1612, Smythe, Digges, and Wolstenholme obtained a charter as the Governor and Company of Merchants of London, Discoverers of the North West Passage (sometimes called the North West Passage Company). The director was Henry, Prince of Wales (who died before the end of that year), and Bylot, Prickett, and Edward Wilson were members. The new company hired Captain Thomas Button to return and sail through the North West Passage. On April 15, 1612, Button sailed from Gravesend in the Resolution with Bylot, Prickett, and a letter to the Emperor of Japan, and accompanied by the refitted Discovery. Button and Bylot’s voyage was not a rescue mission to find Hudson. Button’s orders were to sail to Digges Island, note the direction of the flood tide, and sail directly into it. Details of the voyage are not known as the company kept the journals secret to protect their monopoly. However, Button did as he was ordered. He arrived at Digges Island, where five men were killed in a battle with Inuit. Sailing west, Button reached the western shore of Hudson Bay at latitude 60º 41′ N, naming the place Hopes Checkt. Sailing south, Button touched Cape Churchill, which he named Hubbard’s Hope, and reached the Nelson River on August 15, claiming the land for King James I, an important factor in England’s later disputes with the French. After wintering in the Nelson River, Button sailed north in the Discovery, abandoning the Resolution

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BYRD, RICHARD because so many of the crew had died. Button and Bylot sailed into Roe’s Welcome to latitude 65°, before retreating out of what they believed to be a bay. They mapped and named Southampton, Coates, and Mansel islands, left Hudson Bay on August 19, 1613, and arrived home on September 27. This voyage established that there was no open sea route to the Orient in mid-northern latitudes, and for many years all or part of Hudson Bay was known as Button’s Bay. In 1614, William Gibbons, in the Discovery, attempted to find the North West Passage, but was blocked by ice. In 1615, again sponsored by Smythe, Digges, and Wolstenholme, Bylot was given command of the Discovery and sailed with William Baffin as his pilot. On June 21, Baffin made the first lunar observations taken at sea to determine longitude. Bylot sailed up Fox Channel, mapping the east coast of Southampton Island. On July 13, having rounded Cape Comfort, Bylot saw land and thick ice ahead and returned south. The Discovery docked at Plymouth on September 8. Bylot’s 1615 voyage convinced his sponsors that there was no outlet to the west from Hudson Bay. Consequently, they sent Bylot and Baffin out in 1616 to find a more northerly route. Bylot sailed through Davis Strait and circumnavigated the bay above it. He named Smith (a misspelling of Smythe), Wolstenholme, Jones, Lancaster Sounds, and Sir Dudley Digges Cape after the voyage’s backers. At the entrance to Smith Sound, Bylot reached 78° N, a record that would not be surpassed for 236 years. Probably because of Bylot’s role in the Hudson mutiny, he named Baffin Bay after his navigator rather than himself. Bylot Island, an offshore adjunct to its giant neighbor Baffin Island, lies to the south of Lancaster Sound. After Bylot’s return in 1616, the map of his voyage and the original journal written by Baffin were lost. Thus, many of his discoveries were doubted, and it was not until John Ross’s voyage of 1818 that they were reconfirmed. Bylot and Baffin’s voyages of 1615 and 1616 convinced the Muscovy and North West Passage Companies that there was no route to Asia around or through North America, and commercial interest in the area waned.

Biography Nothing is known of Robert Bylot prior to 1610. His first voyage was with Henry Hudson in 1610–1611. To be promoted to mate, and to successfully navigate the starving mutineers out of Hudson Bay and home, Bylot must have already had considerable sailing experience. His role in the mutiny of 1611 is not known, but he was obviously trusted by the merchants of the Muscovy Company as they allowed him to join

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them as a member of the new North West Passage Company and entrusted him with following up on Hudson’s discoveries. Between 1612 and 1613, Bylot sailed with Thomas Button and mapped much of the west of Hudson Bay, proving that there was no open ocean there. His third voyage in 1615, with Baffin as his pilot, could find no outlet from Hudson Bay to the northwest, and in 1616 he sailed around Baffin Bay, discovering many of the straits that were important to the 19th-century explorers. Nothing is known of Robert Bylot after 1616. JOHN WILSON See also Button, Sir Thomas; Hudson, Henry Further Reading Anonymous, Sir Thomas Button, Winnipeg: Manitoba Historic Resource Branch, 1984 Johnson, Donald S., Charting the Sea of Darkness: The Four Voyages of Henry Hudson, Camden: International Marine, 1993, and New York: Kodansha, 1995 Markham, Clements, The Voyages of William Baffin 1612–1622, London: Hakluyt Society, 1881 Purchas, Samuel, Purchas His Pilgrims— in Five Books, The Third Part, Voyages and Discoveries of the North Parts of the World, by Land and Sea, in Asia, Europe, the Polare Regions, and in the North-west of America, London: Printed by W. Stansby for H. Fetherstone, 1625

BYRD, RICHARD The United States’ most prominent polar explorer was motivated by a strong desire for achievement and adventure. This drove Richard Byrd toward the nascent field of naval aviation and then toward the North and South Poles. Aviation was an important component of his polar expeditions, especially those in the Arctic. In contrast with his more numerous Antarctic expeditions, his earlier Arctic adventures were fewer, characterized by disappointment, limited success, and controversy. In September 1923, Lieutenant Byrd was medically retired from the US Navy, although he remained on active duty due to his political, administrative, and aviation skills. His ambition and growing reputation for invention and leadership led to the young officer’s appointment to significant tasks, especially those involving aviation. This resulted in Byrd’s assignment to the aviation team that eventually would manage the first flight across the Atlantic (in stages) in May 1919. Disappointed at being denied a seat in the successful aircraft, his navigational contributions and earlier personal contacts secured him a September 1923 assignment to the staff that was to fly the first US dirigible (Shenandoah) across the Arctic and the North Pole. The ZR-1 Shenandoah, based on a captured World War I German Zeppelin, would use mooring masts on

BYRD, RICHARD two US Navy tenders to fly from Barrow, Alaska, to Spitsbergen. This duplicated the year earlier polar basin flight route scheme by Roald Amundsen during his Arctic drift expedition. Damage to the airship in January 1924 caused President Calvin Coolidge and the US Congress to reconsider the safety of such a hazardous flight. It was canceled by the time a special act of Congress promoted Byrd to lieutenant commander in June. A similar North Pole airship flight would be made two years later in the opposite direction by another party. Denied a chance to fly to the North Pole in 1924, Byrd now grew intent upon a North Pole flight the following year. This time it would be via US Navy aviation support of a civilian polar veteran’s Arctic expedition. The US Navy aviation unit left on June 20, 1925 from Wiscasset, Maine, for Etah, Greenland, aboard the expedition’s support vessel (Peary). Byrd’s flight unit had pilots Lieutenant M.A. Schur and Chief Warrant Officer E.R. Reber, along with three chief machinist’s mates and enlisted pilot-mechanic Floyd Bennett. Their aircraft were three Loening amphibian biplanes borrowed from the Army. Byrd had persuaded the Navy and science organizations that he could return with valuable hydrographic, magnetic, and geographical information, including the possible discovery of new territory. He would also be testing aviation in an extreme climate new to the Navy. During August at Etah, Byrd and his unit flew 50 hours, covering about 30,000 square miles. This was despite fewer than four good flying days due to bad weather. Some new geographical features were sighted, but not Peary’s apocryphal “Crocker Land.” Donald Baxter MacMillan (the organizer of the Crocker Land Expedition, 1913) was sorely disappointed with the results of the Navy flights. The team accomplished two significant flights over the interior of Ellesmere Island, but established only two shortdistance cache sites, meaning that no landings at the planned longer-distance forward base on the coast of the Arctic Ocean could be made. MacMillan probably exercised sound judgment when he overruled Byrd’s attempted dash for the North Pole on August 30. The expedition returned to Wiscasset on October 12. In spite of MacMillan’s dismal view of Byrd and his expedition support, Byrd’s achievements were as promised and important for the future of polar exploration. He learned how to fly in a polar environment, despite having lost two of his three airplanes. Byrd had made the first flights over the Greenland Ice Cap and Canada’s Queen Elizabeth Islands, and he was the first to land in Ellesmere Island waters. Using several air navigational aids of his own design, Byrd also pioneered the use of Alfred H. Bumstead’s sun compass as well as shortwave aerial radio transmis-

sion. Most importantly, Byrd’s aviation, even with its shortcomings, proved to be a modern polar expedition asset. More territory could be covered in a day’s flight than in a month of sledging. Byrd and Bennett next would attempt and claim to have been the first to fly over the North Pole on May 9, 1926. The 50-member Arctic Aviation Expedition left Brooklyn Navy Yard on April 5 aboard a leased ($1/year) vessel (Chantier) with two aircraft. The expedition used a Fokker trimotor monoplane with retrofitted skis and Wright J-4B 200-hp engines, and was named Josephine Ford after the daughter of benefactor Edsel Ford. The plan upon arriving at Kings Bay (Ny-Ålesund), Spitsbergen, on April 29 was to make the North Pole after a stop at Northern Greenland. Seeing Amundsen arrive a few days later with the same intention, and already experiencing difficulty with the skis, caused Byrd to take off early on May 9 for a planned nonstop flight directly to the Pole. A right engine oil leak raised doubts about being able to continue. Byrd later reported that with oil pressure holding, and he and Bennett alternating at the controls to alleviate the effects of their sleepiness, they reached the North Pole shortly after 9 a.m. It was generally reported that they successfully returned to Kings Bay at about 5 p.m. (GMT), having averaged about 100 miles per hour on the 1500-mile round trip. The expedition returned via Europe to New York City on June 23, where both pilots were promoted and honored with numerous awards, including a medal of honor from Congress. The time of their arrival caused some to question whether Byrd had traveled the round trip to the North Pole. Bernt Balchen with the Amundsen party in Spitsbergen, and later with the first Byrd Antarctic expedition (1928–1930), raised this issue first. His calculations showed that Byrd could not have made the trip in only 16 hours. Joining this chorus of criticism after Byrd and, later, Balchen’s death were noted Swedish scientist G.H. Liljequist and a number of researchers who published articles supporting their conclusions. The critics’ general view was that the oil leak hazard led them to decide to fly a lateral back-and-forth course just over the horizon until a reasonable amount of time had elapsed. A publication that contained Byrd’s recently discovered notebook further fueled the controversy. The notebook revealed notes from when Byrd was on this flight, which included erasures and calculations that tended to support the argument against his having reached the North Pole. Pete Demas, Byrd’s aviation mechanic, was in the process of refuting the anti-North Pole claims before he died in the 1970s. Among the facts he said were in error was that his time of return had been incorrectly reported by about 45 mins. The

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BYRRANGA MOUNTAINS time of return is a critical factor in this ongoing controversy that has many believing that Byrd did not fly to the North Pole. Biography [subheading] Richard Byrd was born on October 25, 1888, in Winchester, Virginia, to a prominent American family. After attending military school and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, he graduated in 1912 from the US Naval Academy, Annapolis, to begin his career as a Navy officer. Following a serious injury to his leg, he officially was placed on the retired list in 1916, thereafter being recalled to active duty. Byrd’s most significant achievements, including being promoted continually by Congressional action eventually to Rear Admiral, occurred while he was retired. He became one of the early Navy pilots, and made major contributions to US Navy aeronautics and aircraft navigation instruments, while managing important Navy stations and programs. Byrd is best known for his leadership of five Antarctic expeditions (1928–1956). During World War II, Rear Admiral Byrd was commander of a special navy mission that helped establish airfields in the Pacific. Byrd died on March 11, 1957 in Boston, Massachusetts. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. HAL VOGEL See also Amundsen, Roald; MacMillan, Donald Baxter; Race to the North Pole Further Reading Bryant, John H. & Harold N. Cones, The First Modern Polar Expedition, 1925, Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2000 Byrd, Richard E., Skyward, New York: Putnam, 1929 Goerler, Raimunde, E. (editor), To the Pole, the Diary and Notebooks of Richard E. Byrd, 1925–1927, Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998 Green, Fitzhugh, Dick Byrd, New York: Putnam, 1928 Grierson, John, Challenge to the Poles, London: Foulis, 1964 Hoyt, Edwin P., The Last Explorer, New York: John Day, 1968 Montague, Richard, Oceans, Poles and Airmen, New York: Random House, 1971 Simmons, George, Target: Arctic, Philadelphia: Chilton, 1965 Taylor, Andrew, Geographical Discovery and Exploration in the Queen Elizabeth Islands, Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1955

BYRRANGA MOUNTAINS The Byrranga Mountains (in the Nganasan language, Saw Mountains) are the most northerly continental mountain system. They are located in the DolganoNenets okrug of Krasnoyarsk kray and form the elevated crest (as 1100 km long) of the Taymyr Peninsula. The mountains trend northeast between 90° E and 111° E and terminate around 76° N close to the Laptev Sea. Elevations of mountain peaks and ridges increase in the northeasterly direction, as does the general width of the mountain system, from 50 to 80

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km (31–50 miles) in the southwest to 180 km (112 miles) in the northeast. The highest point is Mt Lednikovaya at 1121 m (3678 ft). There are some parallel mountain chains, for example, the Glavnaya, Ploskaya, Severnaya, and Topographicheskaya, composed of ragged rocks with peaks at 200–800 m (660–2600 ft). The crest of the ridge does not coincide with the watershed, and rivers that drain into the Taymyr Lake begin at glaciers of the northern slope of the ridge and cut their way to the south through the ridge. Some peaks of the Glavnaya chain, such as Mt Nedostupnaya, are surrounded by steep cliffs up to 300 m (980 ft) high. At the northeast, the mountain system transforms to a plateau up to 900 m (2950 ft) high with a very irregular conglomeration of domes, block mountains, and short longitudinal ridges. The whole Byrranga mountain system is transected by a dense net of valleys, some as deep as 350–600 m (1150–1970 ft). These are mostly glaciated trough valleys with rivers that start in bowl-shaped cirques. The Byrranga mountains are composed of Late Paleozoic, Permian argillites and sandstones with rare masses of Carboniferous limestones in the most exposed parts, and economically significant coal deposits in the upper parts of the sequence. The whole strata are folded and then covered by Permian-Triassic basaltic lavas and tuff sheets and intruded by numerous irregular basic igneous bodies. The main rivers are Severnaya, Ledyanaya, Zhdanova, Leningradskaya, Nyun’karakutari, and Malakhaytari. In the main ridge, Levinson-Lessing Lake fills a longitudinal tectonic graben and reaches a depth of 120 m (390 ft). The Byrranga area is known for its very deep permafrost (up to 400–500 m or 1300–1640 ft deep, at temperatures of −13°C). A large mountain glacier center is located in the high Byrranga plateau, with more than ten valley glaciers up to 5 km long and more than 100 small ones with a total area of more than 40 km2. Byrranga Mountains serve as a barrier to northern winds, protecting western Taymyr, and precipitation is highest on their northern slopes. Winter in the mountains lasts eight months; the average January temperature is −26°C and rarely drops below −40°C. There are no trees in Byrranga Mountains, and the few bushes are mostly willows. Intermountain valleys in summer are covered with rich steppe grasses, and stone surfaces are colored by numerous lichens. Among tundra plants, circumpolar species predominate, cryophytes (algae, moss, or fungus that live in snow or ice) comprising more than 85% of total plant number, with a few shrub tundra plants. Only lichens grow above 250 m (820 ft) elevation. The Byrranga Mountains are home to lemmings, Arctic fox, hare, wild reindeer, and wolves. A number of birds such as

BYRRANGA MOUNTAINS snowy owl, peregrine falcon, rough-legged buzzard, and ptarmigans live and nest there, and white-fronted geese stop over in their summer migration. The Byrranga mountains are unpopulated. There are no settlements, only occasional visiting hunters, geologists, and scientists. In 1979, the Taymyr Nature Reserve was established with three areas within the Byrranga Mountains. LEONID M. BASKIN See also Taymyr (Dolgan-Nenets) Autonomous Okrug; Taymyr Peninsula

Further Reading Govorukha, L., Ledniki Byrrangi [Byrranga Glaciers], Priroda 7 (1969): 63–69 Pavlov, Dmitriy, Evgeniy Sokolov & Evgeniy Syroechkovskiy (editors), Zapovedniki Sibiri, [Siberian Nature Reserves], Volume 1, Moscow: Logata, 1999 Pospelov, Igor’, Osobennosti prirody basseyna ozera Levinsona-Lessinga [Nature Peculiarities of the LevinsonLessing Lake Basin], Izvestiya Akademii nauk, seria geograficheskaya 2 (2001): 87–95 Vakar, V., Geologicheskoe stroenie Tsentral’nogo Taymyra [Geological structure of the Central Taymyr], Moscow: Glavsevmorput’, 1952

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C CANADA

Canada as a Northern Nation

Canada is a young northern nation. Its recorded history began during the 1500s when the period of European colonization in North America commenced. Approximately 50% of the land area under claimed Canadian sovereignty is north of latitude 60°, including the many islands of the High Arctic, such as Ellesmere, Axel Heiberg, Baffin, Devon, Victoria, and Banks. These islands and the waterways between them are shared between the territories of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. This claim of sovereignty becomes a large undertaking in the presence of a very sparse population, and it will become increasingly difficult as the present global warming trend threatens to open the North West Passage to more and more international shipping. The United States, among other countries, contends that the northern waterways of Canada should be considered as international waters. The topography of Canada’s North is varied, with vast areas of Precambrian Shield outcropping through much of the boreal (coniferous forest) Subarctic and extending east through much of the Arctic areas of Nunavut, including Baffin Island. North of the treeline, and bounded between the rocky Shield on the east and the Mackenzie Mountains to the west of the Mackenzie River, lie large areas of low-lying tundra. The Subarctic is covered by the boreal forest in a continuous belt from Newfoundland in the east to the Rocky Mountains in the west, and north into the Yukon and the Mackenzie region of the Northwest Territories. The region is marked by fast-flowing rivers and large, clear lakes. The northern border of the boreal forest is the treeline, where the forest gives way to the northern tundra. To its south, the boreal forest is bordered by the subalpine and montane forests of British Columbia, the grasslands of the prairies, and the Great Lakes-St Lawrence forests of Ontario and Québec.

More than one-third of Canada’s area is composed of the forested Subarctic region, which includes the northern regions of eight of Canada’s ten provinces as well as much of the Yukon and the Mackenzie region of the Northwest Territories. For example, the province of Québec has the largest northern area of all individual provinces, making up more than 80% of its territory. The Arctic and Subarctic regions have a sparse population, amounting to just over 1,400,000 in total in 2001 (Bone, 2003: 84), as compared to the total population of Canada of just over 30,000,000 in 2001. Approximately 80% of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples live in the boreal Subarctic, sometimes referred to as “Mid-Canada.” From a political perspective, 38 of Canada’s 301 elected Members of Parliament represent this vast region. Thus, Canada’s North represents less than 5% of Canada’s population, but controls more than 12% of Canada’s parliament. Most of the remainder of Canada’s population lives in a narrow east-west band of approximately 400 km in width just north of the border between Canada and the United States. In the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, all north of latitude 60°, the total Aboriginal population numbers approximately 46,000, as compared to a total population of approximately 95,000 (Source: Statistics Canada information from the 1996 Census). Aboriginal peoples are in the majority overall in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, but are outnumbered five to one in Yukon. A few tens of thousands of Aboriginal people reside in the northern regions of Québec, Newfoundland, and Labrador, and the northern regions of most of the other provinces. Major cities north of 60° latitude include Whitehorse, the capital of Yukon Territory (population 22,500 in 2001), Yellowknife, the capital of the

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Provinces and territories, main cities, towns, and rivers in northern Canada.

Northwest Territories (population 17,500 in 1998), and Iqaluit, the capital of Canada’s newest territory of Nunavut (with a growing population in excess of 5000 in 2003). The largest towns in the three territories include Dawson City and Watson Lake in the Yukon, and Hay River, Inuvik, and Fort Smith in the Northwest Territories, all with populations between 1600 and 4000 at present. All of Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut are located in the North. Of course, it is necessary to define what is meant by “north.” Hamelin (1979) has developed a measure of “nordicity,” as the degree of northernness of any place in Canada. Bone (2003: 8–11) has summarized this nordicity index, which has a maximum value of 1000 polar units by Hamelin’s definition, for many locations in the country. As examples, Montreal in Québec has a nordicity index of 45 polar units, Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory has an index of 283, and Sachs Harbour on Banks Island in the far north has an index of 764. Canada is a country that is home to many nations of indigenous people, and it is the chosen destination of

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many international travelers bound on a wilderness vacation. It is also the destination of many researchers from around the world, who wish to study Arctic ecology or climate change. Although Canada’s modern history began with exploration of the Arctic, it is paradoxical that most Canadians think of the Arctic as barren and inhospitable, and of little relevance to their daily lives. However, this view is far from reality when one considers that the Mackenzie watershed represents one of the two most sensitive areas on the planet to global warming. Much of the weather in southern Canada and the northern United States originates from climatic events in the Arctic regions of Canada. Details of climate change impacts and adaptation challenges in northern Canada have been documented by Maxwell (1997), Stewart and Malcolm (1999), and Malcolm (2002). Canada’s North has been described in two main visions: the northern frontier and the northern homeland. In the frontier image is the vision of great mineral and hydrocarbon wealth in the face of a harsh environment. In contrast to this, most northerners view

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the North as a friendly and accepting place for them to raise and nurture their families. Those northerners who live, work, and play in a northern environment have developed a deep and lasting attachment to their surroundings (Bone, 2003: 1–2). During the relatively short time since the 16th century, the Arctic has captured the imagination of Canadians. The Further Reading section at the end of this entry provides a sample of the varied art and writings authored and edited by Canadian sources. Further details of Canada’s Arctic history, and of the economic, political, and cultural relationships of Canada’s northern regions, as described in this narrative, can be found in Bone (1992 (2003)), Coates and Morrison (1992), Wonders (2003), and in various publications available through the Internet site of Canada’s Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (www.inacainc.gc.ca). The North of Canada has inspired famous people from many walks of life, such as Sir John Franklin the explorer, Lawren Harris the famous artist from the Group of Seven, John Hornby the adventurer, and Pierre Berton, William Wonders, Shelagh Grant, and C. Stuart Houston as editors and historians.

History of Settlement This summary of the history of Northern Canada is taken from Bone (1992). It is commonly believed that a land bridge in the Bering Strait joined Asia to North America during part of the last Ice Age, and that the first people to move to North America were hunters

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and gatherers who crossed this bridge into Alaska. However, the timing of the arrival of these PaleoArctic hunters into Alaska and then into northern Canada and the interior of North America is not well understood. Some archaeological evidence suggests that Paleo-Indians moved as far as southwestern USA by 11,000 years ago. However, archaeological findings near Old Crow Flats in the northern Yukon suggest that human presence there may have been much earlier, perhaps even before the Ice Age began, thus indicating that the earliest population of the Americas could have been as long as 30,000 years ago. It is believed that the Indian tribes found in North America by European explorers evolved from either these early Asian hunters or more recent migrants. During the past 6000 years or so, northern Canada was free of ice and the Subarctic regions became home to several Indian tribes. Then, around 5000 years ago, a second wave of Asian hunters, the Paleo-Eskimos, crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia to Alaska. They found a relatively ice-free Arctic coast and proceeded to develop a sea-based hunting economy. Their culture, referred to as the Arctic Small Tool Tradition, was based on the use of flint stone, which was used to shape bone and ivory into harpoons and other tools. These sea hunters occupied the Arctic coastal lowlands and eventually reached the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland. It is believed that, over time, these migrants were replaced by Dorset people and then Thule peoples from Alaska. The first culture either evolved into, or was replaced by, the Dorset culture,

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CANADA whereby the Dorset people lived in semipermanent snow and turf houses heated by soapstone oil lamps. About 1000 years ago, the Thule culture appeared, gradually replacing the Dorset culture. The Thule hunters had developed the technology necessary to hunt large bowhead whales. The Thule peoples spread eastward across the Canadian Arctic using a transportation system of skin boats and dog sleds to harvest large mammals, including caribou, seal, and walrus, as well as bowhead whales (see Archaeology of the Arctic: Canada and Greenland). It is evident that when the Vikings and first European explorers discovered North America in the first half of the past millennium, Canada had been occupied by Aboriginal peoples for several thousands of years. At that time, Algonkian tribes lived in the eastern Subarctic, Athapaskan tribes lived in the western Subarctic, and the Thule peoples lived further north, eventually becoming the Inuit of today. Early estimates of population at the time of European contact suggest that there were of the order of 40,000 people living in the Subarctic regions, and about 10,000 people living in the Arctic. Prior to European contact, the Indians and Inuit living in northern Canada were engaged primarily in nomadic hunting economies, securing their food by hunting, fishing, and gathering. Since dried meat and fish could be stored in limited quantities and hunting technologies were primitive, the hunters were constantly moving from place to place in search of food. Starvation was, and still is, a constant risk, especially in the far north where changing ice conditions and migrating patterns of wildlife are prevalent. Following European contact, northern Aboriginal populations came under the threat of diseases such as smallpox and measles, which were previously unknown to them. The first Europeans to arrive in northern Canada, probably during the 10th century, were the Vikings who regularly traveled from Greenland to the Baffin and Ellesmere islands to trade with the Dorset and Thule peoples. They also attempted to establish settlements along the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland. When Columbus visited America some five hundred years later, the Viking presence had been nearly forgotten. Early explorers of this era, including Jacques Cartier of France and Martin Frobisher of England, sought not North America but the spice lands of the Far East. Early reports of the discovery of the “new” land of America and its wealth of resources were based upon information obtained from local Indians. Frobisher’s quest was to find a North West Passage to the Orient. His two voyages of 1576 and 1577, in which he discovered Baffin Island, mark the beginning of English exploration of the Canadian Arctic (see North West Passage, Exploration of).

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During the latter years of the 16th century and the early 17th century, other explorers including John Davis, Henry Hudson, and Thomas Button continued to search for a northern passage to the Orient. They explored Baffin Bay and Hudson Bay, and through trade with Indian tribes were responsible for the beginnings of the fur trade. As emphasized by Bone (1992: 44), “the fur trade was the most powerful economic, social, and political force in the Canadian North.” To a large extent, the fur trade was driven by the European demand for beaver pelts and other furs. It came to be led by the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), still in existence and Canada’s oldest company. The HBC came into being in 1670, nearly two hundred years before Canada’s confederation in 1867, and controlled the fur trade in one-third of present-day Canadian territory. This area was designated Rupert’s Land, and encompassed most of Northern Ontario and North Québec, all of Manitoba, most of Saskatchewan, the southern half of Alberta, and a large part of what is now the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. A rival company, the North West Company, came into existence in 1784, led by Scottish-Canadian traders from Montreal, but was merged with the HBC in 1821. The monopoly of the HBC came to an end in the mid- to late 19th century as the prairies became known as suitable for settlement, and as they became part of the new nation of Canada.

Government The Northwest Territories became recognized as a distinct part of Canada in 1895, when the territories were divided into the Districts of Franklin, Mackenzie, Ungava, and Yukon. At that time, the boundaries set for the Yukon were nearly the same as its current configuration. In 1897, there was a change in the political status of the Yukon in response to the changing administrative needs of the district as a result of the discovery of gold in the Klondike region in 1896. In 1898, the Yukon achieved recognition as a separate territory under the Yukon Act with its own government structure. The Northwest Territories then remained static in terms of its geographical boundaries north of 60o until the 1990s, when an agreement was reached to create the new territory of Nunavut in the eastern part of the Northwest Territories (Simpson et al., 1994) where the population is approximately 85% Inuit. Nunavut formally came into being on April 1, 1999. Canada now has three territories, Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, each with their own representative governments and legislatures. As time goes on, more and more governing powers are being transferred to the territories from Canada’s federal government in

CANADA Ottawa. A proposed new Yukon Act will provide the Yukon government with control over the management of public land and resources and water rights in the Yukon, with certain exceptions such as the national parks that remain under federal jurisdiction. The Government of Canada, the Government of Yukon, and the First Nations of Aboriginal peoples will work closely together to ensure a smooth transition of these functions and powers from the federal government to the Yukon Government. Similar devolution of government to the Northwest Territories is still under negotiation. Many Aboriginal land claim settlements are either completed or in process at present in Canada’s North (see Land Claims). Self-government is becoming a reality in Nunavik for the Inuit in northern Québec, the former Ungava district. Land claim agreements have been consummated in the Northwest Territories, for the Inuvialuit in 1984 and for the Gwich’in in 1992. These agreements recognized Inuvialuit and Gwich’in ownership of settlement lands and set out the boundaries of these lands. They also detailed the ownership of subsurface minerals and petroleum resources. However, the agreements did not empower the Inuvialuit and Gwich’in to govern themselves. For this reason, regional self-government negotiations are also in process with the governments of Canada and the Northwest Territories in the Beaufort-Delta region near Inuvik, with the Inuvialuit and the Gwich’in peoples of the region working together in partnership. At present, many other land claim agreements are either consummated or in process for other First Nations in Canada.

Economic and Social Conditions Prior to the arrival of Europeans during the past millennium, the Indians and Inuit of northern Canada engaged in subsistence economies, most of which were nomadic, where they sustained their communities through continuous practices of hunting, fishing, and gathering. Little is known about the nature of trade between indigenous societies during that time. The published trade discussion concentrates on the involvement of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples in the international fur trade and the influence of the HBC and the North West Company. The economy of Canada’s North definitely follows a north-south orientation. Larger communities in the North have north-south transportation and communication networks set up. At the same time, Aboriginal communities in all areas of the north communicate with each other in an east-west manner. For example, the Inuit communities communicate all the way from Greenland to Alaska on a regular basis. The northern

peoples of Canada are very much interested and involved in other areas of the circumpolar world. The Aboriginal peoples of northern Canada are struggling to retain their languages and cultures; at the same time they are attempting to benefit from the economic opportunities of western economies and globalization. Many languages and cultures face extinction in northern Canada. The elders are disappearing, carrying with them the languages, stories, and traditional knowledge that keep whole cultures alive. In some cases, the income-earning potential of tourism can provide the financial resources to enable distinct societies to reclaim their cultures and reactivate their languages. Considerable worldwide interest is emerging for North American and international visitors to experience the cultures and buy handicrafts from traditional industries of Canadian northern peoples. As the first decade of the new millennium advances, considerable federal government assistance is devoted to improving electronic connectivity in the North, so that the peoples of the North can benefit from digital communication technologies and from distance learning, telemedicine, and entertainment that has become available via the Internet. Such benefits come with a high cost to northern Aboriginal societies. Traditional economies and lifestyles have given way to the norms of western lifestyles and standards of living, as promoted through television, movies, the Internet, and magazines, and this has taken place in one generation. The youth of the North struggle to adapt to these new paradigms of social interaction without the benefit of the wisdom of the elders, since only the older generations know and understand the traditional ways of their forefathers. Hence, high rates of suicide, high teen pregnancy, and low literacy and educational attainment abound. And, in these societies where little financial benefit accrues from resource development by large corporations, high unemployment and low levels of skills in the trades exist. It is not surprising that the Aboriginal peoples of the North now demand a share of future resource development, as they negotiate new land claims agreements and regional self-government rights. For example, the peoples residing in the Mackenzie drainage basin of the Northwest Territories are adamant that they must share in the wealth of new forestry, petroleum, mining, and pipeline developments on their traditional lands, through both shared ownership and employment. Coates and Morrison (1992: 107–108) discuss the devastating assaults on the Aboriginal northern economy after 1950. Falling prices for pelts destroyed the fur trade, and the animal rights movements of the 1980s brought international boycotts of Canadian fur products. Also, the expanding resource industries

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CANADA eroded the traditional food supply of northern societies. Large hydroelectric developments at James Bay and in northern Manitoba eliminated large tracts of hunting and trapping territory relied on by the Aboriginal hunters and gatherers. With the dwindling fur trade and food supply came a loss of interest on the part of young people to follow their elders on the land, and jobs in the wage economy were few. Eventually, such impacts lead to populations that are completely dependent on social welfare payments of various descriptions. The loss of land and culture, combined with exceedingly high unemployment, eventually leads to alcoholism, drug and gambling addictions, family violence, suicide, and school dropouts. Many young people, the men in particular, spend a considerable portion of their lives in jail, beset by an insensitive justice system (Grant, 2002), and the promise of adequate food and clothing while incarcerated. As discussed by Bone (1992: 208), few wage employment opportunities exist for the Aboriginal peoples in the North. Moving people from their home communities to sources of employment, such as resource-based industry towns, is very disruptive and has not proved successful. An alternative to relocation to resource towns is air commuting, which allows Aboriginal workers access to employment while allowing their families to remain in their home communities. It has been difficult for Aboriginal peoples to adapt to the expanding wage economies brought on by resource exploitation in northern regions. For many generations, northern Aboriginal peoples have been governed by their hunting and gathering cultures and have lived in subsistence economies. The change from subsistence economies to economies of daily and weekly employment routines is difficult for them to accommodate. Also, with partial dependence upon hunting and gathering for food and clothing, Aboriginal workers often do not choose to work for a daily wage during the seasons when hunting and gathering is necessary to provide for their families. One indicator for the wage employment difficulties that northern Aboriginal people face is the employment/population ratio for Aboriginal and nonAboriginal people. This information was charted between 1981 and 1996 for Canada’s northern territories, Yukon and Northwest Territories, from Canadian Census data by Canada’s Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development in a report entitled Basic Departmental Data 2002 (p. 72). Keeping in mind that up to 1996 the Northwest Territories included the new territory of Nunavut, it is concluded that: “Since 1981, the percentage of employed Aboriginals aged 15 and over has increased in both territories,” and further:

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“However, the Aboriginal employment/population ratios in Northwest Territories and Yukon remain substantially lower than those for non-Aboriginals.” Aboriginal people are making positive contributions to community-based research in many areas of social and economic development through the knowledge and wisdom of their elders, often referred to as traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). The primary contributions are in the areas of protected habitats, protected species, renewable resource management, health and nutrition, and persistent organic pollutants. These contributions become important as people struggle to adapt to rapid climate shifts in remote northern regions. Fenge (2001) has provided a summary of Inuit TEK in the field of climate change, and McDonald et al. (1997) have documented the TEK of the Inuit and Cree. Through academic institutions and northern community organizations, many efforts are under way in Canada to promote the value of knowledge acquisition through research partnerships. Most of these partnership arrangements are funded through Canada’s three major funding agencies in support of academic research, namely the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) that includes an Institute of Aboriginal Peoples Health. However, because of the potential for communitybased and community-driven research to improve northern social and economic development, the regional development agencies of Canada’s national government are also taking an interest in funding. More than ever before, efforts are being made to combine TEK with the knowledge of the western scientific disciplines in addressing the challenges facing northern communities.

The Circumpolar Dimension Canada’s Aboriginal people, nations within a nation, have defined the position of the country in the circumpolar world. This contribution has been instrumental in identifying the country as a true northern circumpolar nation. The cultural history of indigenous people tends to a ready identification with their cousins in other circumpolar nations. Geographical boundaries have never been considered to be of much importance to indigenous people. Relationships with other people are more often considered in terms of common cultural ideals, and in terms of common interests in land and water and other renewable resources. Consequently, the Aboriginal peoples of Canada are often found contributing to international fora, which contribute to

CANADA world peace, sustainable development, racial harmony, and common understanding. Canada’s role in the circumpolar world is defined by its participation in the Arctic Council, a high-level intergovernmental forum established in September 1996 in Ottawa, Canada, with Canada being the founding Chair (see Arctic Council). Canada’s Aboriginal people are involved in three of the six Permanent Participants, namely the Arctic Athabascan Council, Gwich’in Council International, and the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC). The other three Permanent Participants are the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON), the Aleut International Association, and the Saami Council. Canada’s indigenous people are also involved in many of the more than 20 Observer countries and organizations. It is curious as to why Canada’s indigenous people tend to be so greatly involved with international relations. It stems from their strong cultural beliefs and ideals, and especially from their mutual respect for all races. They strongly believe in their place as one of the four basic groups of people in the world: red, black, yellow, and white. They often speak of their place on the “Red Road.” It is not only the Arctic peoples who contribute to Canada’s place in the circumpolar world. The MidCanada Corridor, defined by the vast area of boreal forest, includes many First Nations who consider themselves part of the circumpolar world. All across the Mid-Canada Corridor, as mentioned earlier, indigenous people in remote communities tend to ignore provincial boundaries, and look to their place relative to land and water, in terms of their location in different river basins for example.

The Forgotten North The Subarctic, the boreal forest region of Canada, is often referred to as “The Forgotten North” (Coates and Morrison, 1992) since it has received far less developmental interest than Canada’s three territories north of the 60th parallel. Canada owes its national heritage to previous generations of the peoples of the Boreal Region, now referred to as Mid-Canada. Mid-Canada stretches all across the country from British Columbia and the Yukon to Québec and Newfoundland and Labrador and up into the Mackenzie Basin, truly making Canada a “nation of rivers and a river of nations.” The peoples of Mid-Canada think of their regions primarily in terms of drainage basins of land and water rather than in terms of provincial and territorial boundaries. This resource-rich area has been a source of wealth for all Canadians for more than the past century, both through its nonrenewable resources of min-

erals and hydrocarbons and through its renewable resources of wildlife, fish, and forests. Although the remote communities of Canada’s North tend to experience a lower standard of living than their southern counterparts, the peoples and communities of Mid-Canada wish to become self-sustainable and to contribute to the quality of life experienced by the rest of Canada. For them to accomplish this, they must develop policy and the internal capacity to supplement their efforts through a visionary, inclusive, and responsible process of community-driven research. In 1967, the Mid-Canada Corridor Concept was advocated as a national developmental strategy that would encompass the entire Boreal Region, from Newfoundland to the Yukon (Rohmer, 1970). A consulting engineering firm was retained to carry out a concept study. It published a report, entitled MidCanada Development Corridor, in 1967. Following this event, the Mid-Canada Corridor Conference was held in August 1969 at Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, as a means of public consultation and scholarly discussion of the Acres report. After considerable consultation, and for reasons not known, the concept was shelved. In 2001, the Member of Parliament for Churchill River began to redevelop the concept. Since August 2001, the Mid-Canada development concept has been discussed at three “River Gatherings” with northern Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal leaders in northern Saskatchewan. The common heritage of Canada’s remote northern communities and their dependence upon the rivers and river basins of Canada for their livelihoods was discussed. Northern community leaders voiced their opinion that considerable new knowledge and research was needed for them to ensure the sustainability of their communities in the Boreal Region in the face of pronounced global change. The following list shows eight typical research priorities that have arisen through a consultative process for the communities of the Mid-Canada Subarctic region: ●

● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Economic development, business development, job creation. Environment and climate change. Health services. Education and training. Energy. Housing. Governance. Communication and knowledge sharing.

The priority of governance research is indicated by the fact that the provincial territory of Nunavik in northern Québec has attained self-governing status,

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CANADIAN ARCTIC EXPEDITION, 1913–1918 that land claims agreements do not necessarily specify transfer of governing powers, and that negotiations with Canada’s federal and provincial governments are in process for regional self-government in many parts of Mid-Canada. A new institute, the Mid-Canada Research Institute, has recently been formed. It will facilitate the first steps toward national policies and programs for the resource-rich Mid-Canada region that is vital to Canada’s economy by: ●

●

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Providing a focused research approach to the priorities of Mid-Canada social, environmental, and economic development. Building community capacity that will link and integrate earth sciences into innovation in the Mid-Canada region. Serving as a knowledge base and information clearing house to be shared between communities, universities, other northern research institutions, governments, and the private sector. DAVID MALCOLM

See also Cree; Dene; Fur Trade; Gwich’in; Hudson’s Bay Company; Innu; Inuit; Inuvialuit; Land Claims; Mackenzie River; Newfoundland and Labrador; North West Passage; Northwest Territories; Nunavik; Nunavut; Québec; Yukon Territory Further Reading Abel, Kerry & Ken Coates, Northern Visions: New Perspectives on the North in Canadian History, Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2001 Back, George, Arctic Artist: The Journal and Paintings of George Back, Midshipman with Franklin, 1819–1822, edited by C. Stuart Houston, Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1994 Berger, Thomas, Northern Frontier Northern Homeland: The Report of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1988 Berton, Pierre, The Mysterious North, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1989 Bone, Robert, The Geography of the Canadian North, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992; 2nd edition, as The Geography of the Canadian North: Issues and Challenges, 2003 Bone, Robert, “Population Change in the Provincial Norths.” In Geographic Perspectives on the Provincial Norths, edited by Margaret E. Johnston, Mississauga: Copp Clark Longman, 1994 Brody, Hugh, Maps and Dreams, Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1981 Coates, Ken & William Morrison, The Forgotten North: A History of Canada’s Provincial Norths, Toronto: James Lorimer, 1992 Crowe, Keith, A History of the Original Peoples of Northern Canada, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1974 Diubaldo, Richard, Stefansson and the Canadian Arctic, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998

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Fenge, Terry, “The Inuit and climate change.” Canadian Journal of Policy Research, 2(4) (2001): 79–85 Grant, Shelagh, Arctic Justice, Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2002 Hamelin, Louis-Edmond, Canadian Nordicity: It’s Your North Too, Montreal: Harvest House, 1979 Hood, Robert, To the Arctic by Canoe 1819–1821: The Journal and Paintings of Robert Hood, Midshipman with Franklin, edited by C. Stuart Houston, Montreal and London: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1974 Kassi, Norma, “Native Perspectives on Climate Change.” In Impacts of Climate Change on Resource Management in the North, Waterloo: Department of Geography, University of Waterloo, 1993 MacLean, Hope, Indians, Inuit and Metis of Canada, Toronto: Gage, 1982 Malcolm, David, Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation in Northern Canada, 1997–2000 (http://yukon.taiga.net/ knowledge/initiatives/Report_Malcolm.pdf), Whitehorse: Northern Climate ExChange, Yukon College, 2002 Maxwell, Barrie, Responding to Climate Change in Canada’s Arctic, Volume II of Canada Country Study: Climate Impacts and Adaptation, Downsview: Environment Canada, 1997 McDonald, Miriam, Lucassie Arragutainaq & Zack Novalinga, Voices from the Bay: Traditional Ecological Knowledge of Inuit and Cree in the Hudson Bay Bioregion, Ottawa: Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, 1997 Mercredi, Ovide & Mary Ellen Turpel, In The Rapids: Navigating the Future of First Nations, Toronto: Penguin Books Canada, 1994 Rohmer, Richard, “Remarks at the Opening Banquet.” In Essays on Mid-Canada, edited by the Mid-Canada Development Foundation, Toronto: Maclean-Hunter Limited, 1970 Simpson, Elaine, Linda Seale & Robin Minion, Nunavut: An Annotated Bibliography, Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute and the University of Alberta Library, 1994 Stewart, Ronald & David Malcolm, “Wärmeschock am Mackenzie: Folgen der Erwärmung im Nordwesten Kanadas.” In Wetter-wende, edited by Hartmut Graßl, Frankfurt/New York: Campus Verlag, 1999 Waldron, Malcolm, Snow Man: John Hornby in the Barren Lands, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1959 Wonders, William, “Introduction.” In Canada’s Changing North, edited by William Wonders, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003

CANADIAN ARCTIC EXPEDITION, 1913–1918 The Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913–1918 was the first Canadian expedition to the western Arctic and the largest multidisciplinary scientific Arctic expedition ever mounted. It was an important event in Canada’s history and had a considerable impact on the local people. The inspiration of anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson, the expedition was initially to be a continuation of work in the western Arctic begun during the Stefansson-Anderson Expedition of 1910–1912 and an

CANADIAN ARCTIC EXPEDITION, 1913–1918 exploration for unknown lands in the Beaufort Sea. Mindful of the sovereignty issues raised by the potential discovery of new islands in the Arctic, the Canadian government took over the expedition and added a program of scientific research along the Canadian Arctic mainland coast. The new objectives resulted in the division of the expedition into two parties: the Northern Party led by Stefansson to explore north of the mainland, and the Southern Party led by Dr. Rudolph M. Anderson, an experienced Arctic zoologist, to conduct research on the northern mainland. Two government agencies were assigned responsibility: the Department of Naval Service and the Geological Survey of Canada. It was to be a three-year expedition, employing 14 scientists. In June 1913, the Expedition set out from Victoria, British Columbia, on the ex-whaler Karluk, under the command of Captain Robert Bartlett. Two schooners, Alaska and Mary Sachs, were purchased at Nome, Alaska, to handle the increase in men and supplies due to the expanded objectives. Severe ice conditions along the north coast of Alaska entrapped Karluk and three other ships. The two smaller schooners were able to navigate in shallow water as far as Collinson Point, Alaska, where they overwintered. Stefansson left Karluk with five others to hunt caribou in September 1913. Karluk drifted west with the pack ice, was crushed, and sank in January 1914 near Wrangel Island off the Siberian coast. Although most of the 25 people on board reached Wrangel Island, four men were lost on the ice and four others died after reaching nearby Herald Island. After reaching Wrangel Island, Bartlett and Kataktovik crossed the ice to the Russian mainland and traveled east to Alaska to arrange the rescue. Three men died on Wrangel Island before they were rescued in the fall of 1914. Only one of the six scientists on Karluk survived. After the loss of Karluk, Stefansson purchased the schooner North Star and new supplies, and hired local hunters, seamstresses, and ship’s crews from several localities along the Arctic coast to assist in the planned work of the expedition. The men of the Southern Party spent the first winter at Collinson Point, learning to hunt, travel, drive dog teams, and making various scientific observations. Anthropologist Diamond Jenness excavated old Inuit settlements on Barter Island and studied the Mackenzie Inuit. In the late winter, the topographers and geologist, Kenneth Chipman, John Cox, and J.J. O’Neill, completed contour and geological mapping along much of the coast from the international boundary, up the Firth River, and throughout the east and west channels of the Mackenzie River Delta.

In March 1914, Stefansson visited the Southern Party, announcing that he planned to use Mary Sachs, as well as some of the Southern Party’s supplies and dogs, for his northern exploration. This led to considerable conflict between the two leaders and between Stefansson and the other scientists, part of a series of disputes resulting from Stefansson’s leadership of an expedition with two parties, two objectives, and two funding authorities giving instructions. Eventually, Stefansson left with his ice party of three sleds, heading north over the Beaufort Sea ice to drift for several months before landing at Banks Island. In the summer of 1914, the small expedition schooners made their way along the coast to Herschel Island and eventually east to Coronation Gulf, where a base was established at Bernard Harbour. The expedition schooners were the first ships to carry the Canadian flag along the western Arctic coast. In August, George Hubert Wilkins, the expedition photographer, took Mary Sachs to Banks Island with supplies for Stefansson’s party. Stefansson and his three men landed on Banks Island in late June after 96 days and 500 miles of travel over the ice. They spent the winter at the camp established by Wilkins near Cape Kellet. In February 1915, Anderson, along with Jenness and marine biologist Frits Johansen, explored the lower Coppermine River. Jenness then traveled to Victoria Island and lived with an Inuit family for several months. At Bernard Harbour, he acquired a large collection of representative utensils, tools, weapons, and clothing of the Copper Inuit, described their material culture, and made sound recordings of their songs. As soon as conditions allowed travel in 1915, the Southern Party traveled east from Bernard Harbour to Bathurst Inlet by dog sled, umiak, and schooner. They surveyed and mapped copper-bearing rocks in Bathurst Inlet, collected hundreds of specimens, and explored, mapped, and named islands and rivers along the coast. Wilkins and North Star assisted the Southern Party before heading to the northwest coast of Banks Island. Meanwhile, traveling by dog sled over the sea ice and supporting themselves by hunting seals, caribou, and muskoxen, the men and women of Stefansson’s Northern Party established winter camps on Banks and Melville islands. From there, smaller parties discovered Brock and Borden islands. Stefansson purchased a fourth ship, the schooner Polar Bear, in August 1915 and tried to go north to Melville Island by sea, but was forced to winter at Victoria Island. The Northern Party continued work in the northern islands in 1916, starting off in late January and discovering Meighen Island in mid-June. In August they explored their third “New Land,” later named Lougheed Island, then retreated to the winter camp at Cape Grassy, Melville Island.

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CANADIAN ARCTIC RESOURCES COMMITTEE (CARC) After wintering again at Bernard Harbour, the Southern Party scientists returned to Bathurst Inlet in March 1916 and completed their studies. With 27 people, 25 dogs, and tons of scientific cargo, Alaska left headquarters in mid-July. The Southern Party discharged their local assistants at Baillie and Herschel Islands, and reached Nome in mid-August. The scientists were back in Ottawa by October 1916, thus successfully completing the planned three-year expedition. Stefansson, however, prolonged his stay in the Arctic. In March 1917, the Northern Party dog sleds again headed north from Melville Island to Borden Island and out into the sea ice, reaching a latitude beyond 80° N before scurvy forced a return in late April. Stefansson’s support parties returned south to Polar Bear at Victoria Island where Storker Storkersen mapped much of the island’s north coast. Stefansson reached Banks Island again in August 1917. There he found that Mary Sachs had been relaunched after three years on shore, but then abandoned. Stefansson purchased the schooner Challenge and caught up with Polar Bear as it worked its way west in September. When Polar Bear ran aground on Barter Island, Alaska, on the way out to Nome, Stefansson took the opportunity to remain for the winter, and planned another Beaufort Sea ice trip. When illness prevented him from this undertaking, Stefansson headed south in 1918, leaving Storkerson in charge of the last ice party. Polar Bear and its crew reached Nome in September 1918. The five-month ice drift was completed in November, thus ending five years of exploration. Stefansson never returned to the Arctic. Although Stefansson’s published narrative is entitled The Friendly Arctic, 17 men died during the expedition: 11 after Karluk sank, two members of the Southern Party, and four members of the Northern Party. Although Stefansson promoted the idea of living off the land, his exploration parties carried large amounts of food to supplement their hunting, and at times his men were reduced to eating old skins and rotting meat from long-dead muskoxen. The four islands discovered in 1915 and 1916 by Stefansson’s Northern Party were the last major new islands discovered in the Canadian High Arctic, and the only major Canadian islands discovered by a Canadian expedition. The ice trips confirmed that “Croker Land” and “Keenan Land” did not exist, and regular soundings established the nature of the polar continental shelf. The Southern Party returned with thousands of specimens of animals, plants, fossils, and rocks, thousands of artifacts from the Copper Inuit and other Eskimo cultures, and over 4000 photographs and 9000 feet of movie film.

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The impact of the expedition was considerable: Iñupiat hunters and seamstresses from Alaska moved into the Canadian Arctic, the expedition hired many local people, trading for artifacts and specimens introduced new tools and equipment, fox trapping was established as a local industry, and two of the expedition schooners were left behind, forming a focal point for camps and settlements. Local assistants gained valuable experience and became important members of Arctic communities. Fourteen volumes of scientific results and several popular accounts of the expedition were published. Four books have been written on the Karluk disaster, but much of the story of this first major Canadian scientific expedition to the Arctic still remains locked in expedition diaries. DAVID AND SALLY GRAY See also Bartlett, Robert; Jenness, Diamond; Stefansson, Vilhjalmur Further Reading Anderson, Rudolph Martin, Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913. Report of the Southern Division, Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1917 Bartlett, Robert A. & Ralph T. Hale, Northward Ho! The Last Voyage of the Karluk, Boston: Small, Maynard, 1916 Canada, Department of Mines, Report of the Canadian Arctic Expedition 1913–18, Volumes 3 to 1, Ottawa: King’s Printer, various dates 1922–1944 Diubaldo, R., Stefansson and the Canadian Arctic, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1978 Gray, David R., Northern People, Northern Knowledge: The Story of the Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913–1918, Ottawa: Virtual Museum of Canada, www.virtual museum.ca or www.civilization. c.2003 Jenness, Diamond, The People of the Twilight, New York: Macmillan, 1928 Jenness, Stuart E. (editor), Arctic Odyssey: The Diary of Diamond Jenness 1913–1916, Hull: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1991 Niven, Jennifer, The Ice Master: The Doomed 1913 Voyage of the Karluk, New York: Hyperion, 2000 Noice, Harold, With Stefansson in the Arctic, New York: Dodd Mead, 1924 McKinlay, William L., Karluk—The Great Untold Story of Arctic Exploration, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976 Stefansson, V., The Friendly Arctic: The Story of Five Years in Polar Regions, New York: Macmillan, 1921

CANADIAN ARCTIC RESOURCES COMMITTEE (CARC) The Canadian Arctic Resources Committee (CARC) was founded in 1971 and is one of the oldest nongovernmental organizations working in the Canadian North. CARC promotes a definition of sustainable development that seeks to limit the footprint of

CANADIAN BASIN industry in the North while ensuring the wise use of renewable and nonrenewable resources. CARC brings an independent and critical but constructive perspective to environmental, economic, constitutional, and other issues. It bridges the gap between North and South, between aboriginal and nonaboriginal communities, and builds consensus around issues. CARC challenges government agencies, industry, and others to act responsibly and to focus on the effects of decisions in a fragile environment. At the same time, CARC understands that a nonconfrontational approach to northern issues often produces long-term results. CARC’s respected policy journal, Northern Perspectives, has been published continuously for nearly 30 years. It has also published over 50 books, issue papers, and monographs. Some of these have been honored with national awards, including the Governor-General’s Award. CARC’s work was launched with its First National Workshop on People, Resources, and Environment North of 60 in Ottawa. The proceedings, Arctic Alternatives, became the authoritative work on public policy and contemporary issues. Protection of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and adjacent land in the Yukon was among the first issues that CARC tackled. CARC maintained a lead presence at the famous Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry and coordinated the response and analysis of a number of environmental groups. This was followed by work on national energy policy and security, aboriginal land rights, sound cost and benefits analyses of numerous northern development proposals, northern sovereignty and security, environmental and cumulative effects assessment, land use planning, the effect of transboundary contaminants like POPs (persistent organic pollutants) on northern ecosystems and human health, and ways to ensure the long-term viability of the barren ground caribou. Supporters and adversaries alike acknowledge CARC’s tireless efforts to ensure that decisions concerning the North are made based on solid information, with a clear understanding of consequences and alternatives. The Canadian Arctic Resources Committee is funded mainly by individuals and private foundations that share a commitment to the North, and maintains offices in the Canadian capital of Ottawa and Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. JOHN CRUMP See also Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Further Reading Calef, George, Caribou and the Barren-Lands, Ottawa: Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, 1981

Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, Environmental Committee of Municipality of Sanikiluaq, Voices from the Bay. Traditional Ecological Knowledge of Inuit and of Cree in the Hudson Bay Bioregion, 1997 Canadian Arctic Resources Committee website: www.carc.org

CANADIAN BASIN The Canadian Basin is the largest and oldest sub-basin of the Arctic Ocean and stretches for about 1100 km from the Beaufort Sea shelf to the Alpha-Mendeleev Ridge, which divides the Canadian Basin from the Makarov Basin (see the bathymetric map in Arctic Ocean). The two basins are sometimes referred to together as the Amerasian Basin. The basin has a complex bottom topography with several uplift regions. Ocean depth in the deepest abyssal plain reaches 3800 m, and its area exceeds 250,000 km2. The width of the continental slope varies from 100 to 400 km, the shelf being steepest and narrowest in the southern basin. The continental slope has terraces at depths of 2600–3000 m and 3200–3400 m, and is divided by canyons, which form the radial-centripetal system of the basin. The abyssal plain at the foot of the continental slope is reached between 3600 and 3800 m. The surface of the abyssal plain is mainly flat, complicated with isolated raisings from 600 to 800 m high located in immediate proximity to Northwind Ridge. The deep crustal structure in the area of the Canadian Basin is oceanic crust 5–7 km thick of an unexplained age; however, there is no active spreading ridge today in the Canadian Basin, and spreading must have ceased by the early Tertiary. The Northwind Ridge, part of a complex Chukchi Borderland region of ridges and plateaus that projects into the basin, is probably a high-standing fragment of continental crust. The basin now has a deep sedimentary layer up to 1–2 km thick. The sedimentary cover of the abyssal plain is made up of old terrigenous sediments. The clays, silts, and fine-grained sands are devoid of foraminifers and were brought by sea ice materials, evidently originating from onshore river systems. On the bottom of the Canadian Basin, the process of accumulating atmosphere dust (possibly transported by snow) is ongoing at a slow rate of 1 mm or more per 1000 years. Such a slow accumulation continues on Lomonosov and other ridges, but is not typical for abyssal plains, where mudflows along with deep-sea sources of sedimentary accumulation are more common. At the surface, the anticyclonic Beaufort Gyre covers the whole of the Canadian Basin. At intermediate depths, the Canadian Basin has warm, saline Atlantic water, but deep waters are Pacific in origin. VALERY MIT’KO

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CANADIAN POLAR COMMISSION See also Alpha Ridge; Beaufort Gyre; Chukchi Plateau Further Reading Gorbatskiy, G.V., Physicogeographical Zoning of Arctic, Volume 3, Arctic Basin, Leningrad: Leningrad University Publishing House, 1973 Gramberg, I.S. (editor), Orographic Map of Arctic Basin. 1:5000000, Helsinki: Karttaneskus, 1995 Gramberg, I.S. & G.D. Naryshkin, Peculiarities of the Arctic Deep-Water Basin’s Ground. SPb, VNII Okenologiya, 2000 Grantz, A., D.L. Clark, R.L. Phillips & S.P. Srivastava, “Phanerozoic stratigraphy of Northwind Ridge, magnetic anomalies in the Canada Basin, and the geometry and timing of rifting in the Amerasia Basin, Arctic Ocean.” Geological Society of America Bulletin, 110 (1998): 801–820 Lawver, L.A. & C.R. Scotese, “A review of tectonic models for the evolution of the Canadian Basin.” In The Arctic Ocean Region. The Geology of North America, edited by A. Grantz, L. Johnson & J.F. Sweeny, Volume L, Boulder, Colorado: Geological Society of America, 1990, pp. 593–617 Weber, J.R., Exploring the Arctic Seafloor in Selected Lorex Contributions, Ottawa, 1985

CANADIAN POLAR COMMISSION Canada’s polar science advisory agency is the Canadian Polar Commission. In 1985, David Crombie, Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs, commissioned a study group to investigate the state of Canadian polar science. Despite its extensive Arctic territory and distinguished record in Arctic and Antarctic science, Canada had no effective means of coordinating polar science activities. Polar researchers could not easily find out who was doing what in the field, and where. The report, released in 1987, identified the need for improved communication and cooperation among Arctic research interests in Canada, better coordination among Canadian and international polar researchers, and also better support and public awareness of polar research. It recommended creating an advisory commission on polar affairs to bring together Canada’s polar and northern research interests, get northern research institutions more involved in choosing Canada’s polar research priorities, and encourage government departments to give greater emphasis to northern research. The government commissioned Prof. T.H.B. Symons of Trent University to study the feasibility of establishing such a body. His report “The Shield of Achilles” (1988) supported the creation of a polar commission. The idea also had widespread backing from government departments, research councils, territorial governments, aboriginal organizations, private enterprise, research institutes, and universities. Parliament established the Canadian Polar Commission in 1991.

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The Commission is generally responsible for monitoring and promoting Canadian polar knowledge, facilitating communication among the many and diverse members of the Canadian polar research community, and advising the government on polar matters. It hosts conferences and workshops, circulates information on polar research, and works closely with other governmental and nongovernmental agencies to promote and support Canadian study of the polar regions. The Polar Commission is Canada’s adhering body to the International Arctic Science Committee and the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research. Commissioners, who come from across Canada, north as well as south, are appointed by the Prime Minister for a term of three years. During its early years, the Commission struggled with its broad mandate; structural changes in 1998 resulted in significant improvement. In 1999, it began developing a series of indicators to measure the state of Canadian polar knowledge over the long term. Its Canadian Polar Information Network, on the Commission website (www.polarcom.gc.ca), provides extensive information on Canadian Arctic and Antarctic research and links to international Arctic and Antarctic research sites. The Commission publishes two bilingual (English and French) newsletters: Meridian, which deals with Arctic science, and the Newsletter for the Canadian Antarctic Research Network. JOHN BENNETT Further Reading Adams, W.P., E.F. Roots, P.F. Burnet & M.R. Gordon, Canada and Polar Science (Report submitted to Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs, Canada), Ottawa: Government of Canada, 1987 Canadian Polar Commission, Annual Report 1999–2000, Ottawa: Government of Canada, 2000 Canadian Polar Commission, Developing Indicators on Canadian Polar Knowledge: Establishing the 1998 Baseline, Ottawa: Government of Canada, 2000 George, Jane, “Ottawa creates new leadership for polar commission.” Nunatsiaq News, February 18, 1999; see http://www.nunatsiaq.com/archives/nunavut990228/nvt902 19_16.html Symons, T.H.B. & P. Burnet, The Shield of Achilles: The Report of the Canadian Polar Research Commission Study (Report submitted to the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs), Ottawa: Government of Canada, 1988

CAPACITY BUILDING Capacity building is best understood within the context of sustainable development. However, like sustainable development, the concept variously referred to as “capacity building” or “capacity development” is broad, and therefore difficult to define with precision.

CAPACITY BUILDING The term still creates the sort of confusion that comes with a catchall phrase that attempts to encapsulate an approach intended to reorient human activities toward approaches that maintain environmental integrity, improve economic and social justice, and allow cultural affirmation. Basic questions that flow from efforts to build capacity are: (1) What is to be built or developed? (2) Who does the building or developing? (3) How is it done? (4) Where is it done? (5) Why is it done? The United Nations Development Programme has described capacity building as a process to nurture, enhance, and utilize the skills and capabilities of individuals, groups, organizations, institutions, and societies to: “(1) perform core functions, solve problems, define and achieve objectives; and (2) understand and deal with their development needs in a broad context and in a sustainable manner” (United Nations Development Programme, 1997). In other words, capacity building develops the tools necessary to allow individuals, groups, organizations, institutions, and societies to meet challenges and resolve problems. The term “capacity building” emerged in the 1990s to signal a new approach, which was designed to be a more holistic and systematic process to address the shortcomings of traditional developmental assistance efforts. Capacity building is intended to marshal, enhance, and utilize various forms of capital in sustainable ways. Forms of capital include: natural capital such as renewable, nonrenewable, and replenishable resources; human capital provided by educated, skilled, and experienced individuals and groups; social capital that includes organizations and institutions, communities and societies, and the processes, structures, values, and norms that guide them; human-made capital such as infrastructure, equipment, machinery, and other forms of technology; and financial capital. Among the tools used to fashion these forms of capital into tangible results are: ●

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improving individual health, literacy, and other skills required to adapt to differing and changing circumstances; integrating laws, policies, and strategies that encourage sustainable development; improving management practices and techniques; fostering institutions that facilitate and support partnerships and cooperative arrangements; developing appropriate infrastructure and technology to support sustainable development; identifying and promoting sustainable financing mechanisms; and building knowledge bases and awareness that facilitates better decision-making.

Capacity Building and the Arctic While the eight circumpolar states—Canada, Denmark (Greenland), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Russia, and the United States—are comparatively prosperous and resource-rich countries, the concept of capacity building is finding currency in the context of the Arctic regions of some of these countries. In some situations in the Arctic, the development challenges are analogous to challenges in developing countries. Changing lifestyles and the shift away from traditional hunting, trapping, fishing, and herding livelihoods have stimulated the need for capacity building as a means to cope with cultural and economic flux. As industrial and resource extraction economies have intruded into Arctic regions, subsistence economies have transitioned to wage economies. Self-government processes in Arctic Canada also generate a need to develop capacity to assume additional responsibilities at the local level. This requires education and training along with skills development to participate in economies in transition. Increasingly however, the challenges facing Arctic peoples are not ones that have entirely local solutions or responses. Arctic climate change, for example, which appears to be leading to ecosystem impacts, is expected to accelerate the decline of traditional harvesting pursuits while creating new pressures for adaptation. Similarly, the influx of a range of pollutants, often from non-Arctic sources, through airborne and water transport mechanisms, impact local, traditional foods with consequences for human and ecosystem health. Capacity building is conceived as a means to adapt and respond to such challenges, as well as many others. However, any suggestion that capacity building is a one-way street directed at Arctic indigenous peoples and residents should be discouraged. Many Arctic cultures maintained sustainable livelihoods well into the 20th century. Their norms and values, and traditional and local knowledge associated with living close to the land, can inform the transition to sustainable development sought in many non-Arctic communities. As Arctic peoples increase their engagement with national and international economic, social, and political systems through improved communications, participation, and influence, capacity building could occur in more southerly latitudes, as the lessons and practices of the Arctic become better known. The Arctic has produced some unique organizations and fora at national, regional, and international levels that realize tangible results from capacity-building initiatives. Among these is the Arctic Council, a highlevel forum devoted to facilitating cooperation,

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CAPELIN coordination, and interaction among the Arctic States with the involvement of the Arctic indigenous communities and other Arctic inhabitants on common Arctic issues. Although the Arctic Council’s mandate excludes matters of military security, other areas of concern include issues of sustainable development and environmental protection in the Arctic. The Council comprises the eight Arctic States aforementioned, and also includes six international Arctic organizations of indigenous peoples as Permanent Participants. The Council created the category of Permanent Participation to provide for active participation and full consultation with the Arctic indigenous representatives within the Arctic Council. The Council defines and outlines the concept of capacity building in a wide range of publications and declarations including the Iqaluit (1998), Barrow (2000), and Inari (2002) Declarations, the Terms of Reference for the Sustainable Development Program, and the Sustainable Development Framework Document. For example, the Sustainable Development Framework Document adopted by the Council in October 2000 states that: Capacity building is, similarly, a necessary element for achievement of Sustainable Development and must be taken into consideration in the projects developed under the [Sustainable Development] Program. The Program should, therefore, aim to increase capacity at all levels of society.

Capacity building is also a significant, ongoing dimension of activities in the environmental Working Groups under the Arctic Council. The Arctic Council as an organization is itself a new component of social capital. The programs and activities under the Council increase the capacity of circumpolar individuals, organizations, and institutions to achieve sustainable development and environmental protection. In addition, the Arctic Council and its working groups have made contributions to the development of human and social capital in the Arctic by supporting initiatives such as the University of the Arctic, and by contributions of member states to programs and projects adopted at ministerial meetings of the Arctic Council, working groups have been conducting programs for several years that will continue to enhance capacity-building efforts in the Arctic. In this regard, the successes and lessons learned will be the subject of a Canada-led report being prepared for the Arctic Council Ministerial meeting scheduled for 2004. BERNARD FUNSTON See also Arctic Council; Sustainable Development; University of the Arctic

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Further Reading Canadian International Development Agency, Capacity Development:The Concept and its Implementation in the CIDA Context, Hull, Québec: Canadian International Development Agency, 1996 Cohen, J.M., Capacity Building, Methodology and the Language of Discourse in Development Studies, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Institute for International Development, 1994 Dale, Ann & John B. Robinson (editors), Achieving Sustainable Development, Vancouver: UBC Press, 1996 Grindle, M.S. & M.E. Hilderbrand, Building Sustainable Capacity: Challenges for the Public Sector, New York: HIID/UNDP, 1994 Hesselbein, Frances, Marshall Goldsmith, Richard Beckhard & Richard Schubert (editors), The Community of the Future, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1998 Nuttall, Mark, Protecting the Arctic, Indigenous Peoples and Cultural Survival, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998 Polese, Mario & Richard Stren, The Social Sustainability of Cities, Diversity and the Management of Change, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000 Ross, S. Adrian, Catalina Tejan & Rina Rosales (editors), Sustainable Financing Mechanisms: Pubic Sector-Private Sector Partnerships, Philippines, GEF/UNDP/IMO Regional Programme, 1997 Sen, Amartya, Development as Freedom, New York: Anchor Books, 2000. Tapscott, Don, David Ticoll & Alex Lowy, Digital Capital, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2000 United Nations Development Programme, “Capacity Development Technical Advisory Paper II.” Capacity Development Resource Book, UNDP, Management Development and Governance Division, 1997 (see http://mirror.undp.org/magnet/cdrb) Vidas, Davor (editor), Arctic Development and Environmental Challenges, Information Needs for Decision-Making and International Cooperation, Denmark: Scandinavian Seminar College, 1997 Weizsacker, Ernst von, Amory Lovins & L. Hunter Lovins, Factor Four, Doubling Wealth, Halving Resource Use, London: Earthscan Publications, 1998

CAPELIN Capelin are small, elongated, and silvery marine fishes of the genus Mallotus (family Osmeridae, order Salmoniformes). Capelin play a key role in the North Atlantic Subarctic ecosystem as a food source for cod, haddock, redfishes, plaice, seabirds, and marine mammals. There is one species with two subspecies: Mallotus villosus villosus of the North Atlantic Ocean and Mallotus villosus catervarius of the North Pacific Ocean, both distributed in cool temperate and Subarctic waters. Capelin are practically absent along the Siberian coast, and present discontinuously in the Canadian Arctic; the Arctic populations are probably relicts from preceding warm periods. M. v. villosus (the North Atlantic population) is distributed along the Norwegian coast, northward to Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemlya, White and Barents seas,

CAPELIN

Masses of capelin dead on a beach after breeding, Newfoundland, Canada. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

also Jan Mayen Island, Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland north to Ittoqqortoormiit (Scoresbysund), and in the western North Atlantic southward to Maine. Body length can be up to 22 cm, rarely to 25 cm. The habitat is littoral to neritic (water column over the continental shelf) and benthic (living on the ocean bottom) on fishing banks down to 300 m, and they feed on planktonic crustaceans. North Atlantic capelin form shoals and migrate to coastal spawning areas from spring to autumn. There are two different spawning populations, in two habitats: on intertidal beaches (in the western North Atlantic with the exception of the population on the Grand Banks) and on subtidal sediments offshore (mainly in the Barents Sea with some minor stocks in some Norwegian fjords, the White Sea, and around Iceland). In the western Atlantic, capelin are found on offshore banks and in coastal areas, occasionally spending the winter and early spring months in deep bays. The largest concentrations in Canadian waters are found off Newfoundland and the Labrador coast. Mass spawning takes place from the age of three to four years. On the south and east coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, spawning begins around the first part of June and may continue through July and August depending on tides, winds, and water temperature. Beach-spawning capelin spawn on coarse sand or fine gravel, where the eggs are buried by wave action and are presumably safe from flushing by tidal exchange and from predation while development takes place. Substrate characteristics of capelin-spawning beaches are specific, and pebble diameter varies from 5–15 mm (at Holyrood Beach, Newfoundland) to 1–4 mm (at Bryant’s Cove, Newfoundland). The capelin spawn during an ebbing tide at or near the period of maximum tidal range. Surface water temperature ranges from 5.6°C to 10.8°C, average 6.2–7.3°C (east coast of Newfoundland). Usually two waves of

spawning take place at the same spawning ground, with an interval of 12–15 days. Offshore spawning also occurs at a depth from 2–3 to 46–49 m. Here, bottom water temperatures are about 2.8–4.2°C. Capelin in spawning condition are found offshore on various banks at depths up to 80 m. Mating on beaches is most intensive during a period of intermediate tide. Spawning takes place at night or during times of heavy overcast and ceases during sunlight hours. Rolling and swimming inshore near the crest of the waves, the gravid females and males are brought onto the beaches where the eggs are deposited and fertilized on the substrate. The male can be observed to press against the side of the female, and often a second male takes a position on the opposite side of the female. Eggs, which are spherical, demersal, adhesive, and with an average diameter of about 1 mm, can be buried 15 cm or more beneath the surface of the beach. They become attached to beach gravel or to the bottom substrate, where they develop and hatch. The number of eggs produced increases with the size of the female, and may be up to 50,000. Spent fish appear immobile for a short period before reentering the water with the following waves, and may sometimes become stranded. Mass mortalities occur, leading to the mistaken belief that capelin may spawn only once. But there is evidence of repeated spawning by some females. The specificity of beach spawning sites used by capelin results in dense concentrations of eggs (>800/cm2) in the beach gravel. Egg mortalities vary annually with changes in biological, meteorological, and hydrological conditions. Lack of oxygen resulting from high egg density, water and air temperature effects, substrate characteristics, amount of rainfall, and accumulation of excretory products are hypothesized to affect egg development and egg mortality. Hatching occurs in the beach sediments after 9–11 days in the high-tide zone and 22–24 days in the lowtide zone, depending on incubation temperature. The emergence of capelin larvae from the beach gravel, and the onset of larval drift, is episodic and closely correlated with the occurrence of onshore winds. Onshore winds drive warmer, food-reach, predator-poor surface waters into the nearshore waters. Larvae emerge actively in response to the sharp temperature increases caused by this water mass exchange and thus become associated with a favorable predator/prey field. Onshore water mass exchange occurs synchronously over large areas of Newfoundland’s east coast in response to large-scale atmospheric systems. Larval emergence is therefore synchronous over large geographical areas. Dispersal of the larvae is initially passive, but is later moderated by active vertical migrations. The migratory pattern of this species in early life brings

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CARBON CYCLING them inshore and near the surface in early summer and offshore into deeper waters in autumn. At age 1+, the average length of capelin is about 87 mm. Males grow faster than females until they reach maturity, after which the rate of growth is approximately the same. There is a general northsouth cline. Those from the Grand Bank and southern Newfoundland areas grow more quickly than those from the Labrador area until a similar maximum size is attained. Labrador capelin tend to mature one year later than those from the Grand Bank. The majority of capelin do not live longer than five years, but in Greenland, where the growth rate is slower, sevenyear-old fish are known. The length of mature specimens is generally 13–20 cm. The largest capelin recorded was a five-year-old female, 25.2 cm in total length, weighing 59 g, captured in Trinity Bay, Newfoundland. In the Barents Sea, the Pacific capelin (M. v. catervarius) mature at ages of two to four years, mainly three years, at a length of 15–19 cm. During summer and autumn, the adult capelin feed in the northern part of the Barents Sea. The feeding area shifts in the eastwest direction in response to climatic variations. The Barents Sea capelin make annual spawning migrations from northern areas of the Barents Sea to the coastal zone. Three waves occur: (1) spring-spawning capelin (majority of age three to four years) spawn in MarchMay mainly from Finnmark to West Murman, but also (in years of high density) eastward to Kharlov Island and Cap Svyatoy Nos; (2) summer-spawning (Murman) capelin (of age two to three years) spawn in June-July, with intervals to August, mainly along East Murman, in the entrance to the White Sea (Gorlo) and in Cheshskaya Bay, but also westward along the whole Murman coast and in the Voronka of the White Sea; (3) autumn-spawning (Novaya Zemlya) capelin spawn in August-September irregularly at the west coast of Novaya Zemlya and Cheshskaya Bay (eastern limits of spawning area). Spawning takes place on offshore sediments at a depth from 30 to 130 m, and a large number of capelin die after spawning. Capelin is an important subsistence catch in some indigenous communities, and the Ammassalik area in East Greenland takes its name from “the place of the capelin,” where large numbers of capelin have always spawned on the beach, leaving many stranded and easy to harvest each year. It is also an important commercial fish. The mean annual total capelin catch from 1965 to 1984 was 1,994,164 tons. The total catch of capelin peaked in 1977 at 4,000,000 tons and ranked second in world catch production. Capelin continue to play an important role in the North Atlantic fishery. In the Barents Sea, the catch was 1.6–2.3 million tons in 1977–1984; in the mid-1980s, the stock catastrophically decreased and fishery was forbidden until 1990. 316

At present, the Barents Sea population of capelin is in a depressed state and fishery here is controlled and strictly limited. NATALIA V. CHERNOVA See also Fish Further Reading Stergiou, Konstantinos I., “Capelin Mallotus villosus (Pisces: Osmeridae), glaciation, and speciation: a nomothetic approach to fisheries ecology and reproductive biology.” Marine Ecology Progress Series, 56 (1989): 211–224

CARBON CYCLING Carbon cycling is a general term that covers the flux of carbon from inorganic forms to organic compounds and back to inorganic molecular states. The term may cover very different processes dependent on the time scale. Carbon cycling in the form of gas exchange, photosynthesis, and biochemical transformations takes place in seconds while it takes millions of years from formation to weathering of carbonate rocks representing the longest time scale of carbon cycling. In recent decades, the term carbon cycling has been most widely used in the context of understanding the sources and sinks of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). CO2 is a greenhouse gas and the global climate is linked to its atmospheric concentration, which is why it is of great importance that we understand the global carbon cycle in order to understand global climate. It is well known that atmospheric CO2 concentration is increasing rapidly as a consequence of anthropogenic emissions and that it is now at a concentration (360 ppm) that is more than 25% higher than in preindustrial times (about AD 1700). The atmospheric concentration of another carbon-carrying and very strong greenhouse gas, methane (CH4), has been increasing by more than 100% since the early part of the 18th century. The increasing CO2 concentration is expected to have important consequences for ecosystem productivity (as CO2 is the substrate for plant growth), and the general increase in the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is expected to cause climate warming (see Climate Change; Global Change Effects). Figure 1 shows a schematic illustration of the global modern carbon cycle. Carbon is being fixed as CO2 through photosynthesis (gross primary production, GPP), and organic matter and oxygen are produced following the simplified chemical reaction 6CO2 + 6H2O + light → C6H12O6 + 6O2 At a global scale, this process is responsible for the fixation of 120×1015 g C/yr of atmospheric CO2

CARBON CYCLING

Figure 1: Modern global carbon cycle. Numbers in bold are fluxes of C in 1015 g C/yr. Numbers in italics are pools in 1015 g C. The hypothesized “missing sink” in the terrestrial biosphere is also indicated (see text).

(Figure 1). The CO2 is returned to the atmosphere through the following generalized process of respiration: C6H12O6 + 6O2 → 6CO2 + 6H2O + energy Roughly half the carbon fixed in the process of GPP is returned to the atmosphere from plant respiration and the other half from decomposers. Where there is a slight imbalance between the net primary productivity (NPP=GPP−plant respiration) and the decomposition, carbon accumulates in the soils. Peat bogs are a good example of this, where NPP in general exceeds respiration and organic material (peat) accumulates in the ground (see Peatlands and Bogs) This is a phenomenon of special relevance for high northern latitudes as a large fraction (about 30%) of the global soil organic material 1500 × 1015 g C (Figure 1) is found in northern boreal and tundra soils. The oceans are the largest single reservoir of carbon amounting to 38,000 × 1015 g C, although only a tiny fraction of this amount, around 90 × 1015 g C/yr, is in active exchange with the atmosphere. This compared to the stock-size, small exchange of carbon between global oceans and the atmosphere is, however, extremely important for understanding the global carbon cycle. Using the oceanographers’ best estimates, the global oceans are namely a net sink for atmospheric CO2 taking up around 2 × 1015 g C/yr or onethird of the global anthropogenic emissions. In this respect, the oceans are “helping” us in taking up some of the extra CO2 that we add to the atmosphere and that otherwise could accelerate climate warming further. The Arctic has a special role here in that the sink functioning of the oceans is largely taking place under cold oceanic conditions where the solubility of CO2 in sea water is the highest and the northern oceans are also where the mixing of surface and deep waters (which constitutes the real sink for atmospheric CO2) takes place.

Man-made fossil fuel emissions amount to a total of about 6 × 1015 g C/yr and deforestation (mainly in the tropics, for example, Amazonia) amounts to an estimated further 1 × 1015 g C emitted as CO2 annually to the atmosphere (Figure 1). If we try and trace what happens to these emitted amounts, we discover an important discrepancy between known sources and sinks. The sinks constitute the oceanic 2 × 1015 g C mentioned above and, with the traditional assumption that the terrestrial biosphere is in equilibrium, the only other sink is the actual increasing concentration in the atmosphere. Due to detailed measurements of the rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 at several monitoring stations around the globe and the fact that the size of the atmosphere is well known, it is possible to estimate the amount of C that goes into the atmospheric increase with great accuracy. Such a calculation leads to a sink of about 3 × 1015 g C/yr. The best-known sinks (oceans + atmospheric increase) therefore only amount to a total of approximately 5 × 1015 g C/yr while the total sources (fossil + deforestation) are estimated at around 7 × 1015 g C/yr. The difference of 2 × 1015 g C/yr has been termed the “missing sink” in the global carbon budget and it has been subject to intensive global biogeochemical research over recent years to locate where the numbers in the calculation are wrong or where possibly there is a significant global sink for carbon not accounted for in the budget. The most recent consensus among carbon cycling researchers is that the residual “missing” sink is to be found in the terrestrial biosphere, and it is a significant extra uptake by the terrestrial biota in particular at high latitudes that is needed for the closure of the global carbon budget. The increased uptake by the terrestrial vegetation may be induced by a so-called fertilization effect caused by the rising CO2 concentration in itself. CO2 is, as shown above, the substrate for photosynthesis, and increasing its atmospheric concentration may induce higher rates of NPP in some ecosystems without affecting the respiration to the same extent. This would lead to an enhanced sink activity of the terrestrial biosphere. Respiration, on the other hand, may be more sensitive to warming, and in climate warming scenarios the balanced effect of rising CO2 concentrations and temperature on global photosynthesis versus respiration will be of crucial importance for the fate of the stored soil carbon that potentially could be released as extra CO2 in the atmosphere. This issue has particular implications in the circumpolar Arctic, as this is where the predicted warming is expected to be the greatest and also where significant amounts of carbon are stored as soil organic matter. TORBEN R. CHRISTENSEN See also Global Warming; Peatlands and Bogs; Soil Respiration 317

CARIBOU Further Reading Chapin, F.S. et al. (editors), Arctic Ecosystems in a Changing Climate: An Ecophysiological Perspective, San Diego: Academic Press, 1992 Christensen, T.R., S. Jonasson,A. Michelsen, T.V. Callaghan & M. Havström, “Environmental controls on soil respiration in the Eurasian and Greenlandic Arctic”. Journal of Geophysical Research, 103(D22) (1998): 29015–29021 Oechel, W.C. et al. (editors), Global Change and Arctic Terrestrial Ecosystems, Berlin and New York: Springer, 1997 Prentice, I.A. et al., “The Carbon Cycle and Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide”. In Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by J.T. Houghton et al., Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001 Schlesinger, W.H., Biogeochemistry: An Analysis of Global Change, San Diego: Academic Press, 1997

CARIBOU Caribou (Rangifer tarandus, a member of the deer family Cervidae) are found throughout the Arctic and are known as reindeer in Eurasia. Caribou apparently originated in alpine habitats in the New World during the late Pliocene (4.2–2.5 million years ago). As climates cooled during the Pleistocene (about 2 million years ago), caribou adapted to cold dry climates followed by the spread of tundra habitats across the north and into Eurasia via the Bering land bridge. Together, the caribou of North America and Greenland and the reindeer of Eurasia now have the most extensive circumpolar distribution of any living hoofed mammal. The name “caribou” likely derives from the Micmac word xalibu — “the one who paws,” an apt name for this animal of cold and snowy regions. Caribou are well furred, even on their muzzles, with hollow guard hairs that trap air for added insulation as well as buoyancy when swimming. Their large, concave hooves splay out for traction on snow and boggy ground and double as efficient digging scoops to reach ground lichens through snow. Unique among deer, both males and females possess antlers. Females retain their smaller antlers until just after calving and use them during winter to defend feeding craters in the snow from other females as well as males, which drop their antlers earlier (November for older, breeding males, and by April for younger males). Adult caribou travel with ease and can easily outrun their primary predators, wolves. While lichens are their primary winter food, they also feed on low shrubs, moss, grasses, and cottongrass, and leaves of dwarf birch and willow in spring and summer. Although caribou have been divided into a number of subspecies, there is no consensus on their validity. However, distinctions based on habitat can be made among three ecotypes: woodland, barren ground, and Arctic caribou. 318

Barren ground caribou crossing the tundra, Northwest Territories, Canada. Copyright Paul Nicklen/National Geographic Image Collection

Woodland caribou occur in relatively small populations (hundreds to thousands of individuals) in boreal forest across North America, including the mountainous areas of the west. Prior to deforestation following European settlement of North America, woodland caribou ranged much farther south. Today, many populations are threatened by human activities. Woodland caribou are large; males weigh up to 250 kg and females up to about 125 kg. Although considered sedentary, woodland caribou do move among a variety of habitats, using lowland forested habitats during spring/summer and alpine or coastal tundra areas in winter, particularly if snow is deep. Barren ground caribou represent the classic migratory ecotype, traveling thousands of kilometers annually between calving areas on tundra and wintering areas within the boreal zone. They occur in relatively discrete populations (herds) across the north, each named for its calving area (such as the Porcupine caribou herd). Their populations may number in the tens to the hundreds of thousands; they also go through decades-long cycles of abundance driven by factors like weather, forage abundance, and predation. Barren ground caribou are intermediate in size, with males weighing up to 150 kg and females up to about 90 kg. Arctic (or Peary’s) caribou are the smallest of the ecotypes: males weigh 65 kg and females 52 kg. This dwarfing is a consequence of the short growing season, low plant productivity, and long and cold winters that they face in the High Arctic (up to 80° N). Arctic caribou may be particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events. Caribou breed during a relatively brief fall rut. In woodland populations, males attempt to defend small groups of females, whereas barren ground males follow a single estrus female until she is ready to mate. Consequently, woodland caribou males have antlers more suitable for combat with other males while barren ground males have antlers more useful for display

CARIBOU HUNTING to attract females. Once copulation occurs, the male abandons the female and seeks additional mates. Only the larger males typically breed. Gestation is approximately 228 days. Pregnant barren ground caribou cows migrate to a traditional calving ground in April or May; the timing of the migration may vary depending on snow conditions and, if spring is late, females may drop their calves before reaching the calving grounds. Once on the calving grounds, the females disperse and calve over a brief (i.e., 10-day) period. Poor weather may kill many calves, but predators are not common. Wolves den below treeline and pup in May; thus, most do not follow the cows to the calving ground. Nevertheless, some wolves as well as bears, wolverines, foxes, and golden eagles take their toll. Woodland cows do not aggregate for calving. After spending the winter in groups, females disperse into forested areas and calve near lakes, ponds, and wetlands in late May or June. Woodland females attempt to hide their calves from predators, which they cannot escape through migration. Still, the major cause of mortality of the young, especially those under a month of age, is wolf or bear predation. To further reduce predation risk, caribou calves are among the most precocial of deer neonates, capable of moving around on their own soon after birth, and are fed one of the richest milks (25–38% milk solids). This may speed up development, but represents a heavy investment on the mother, limits her to a single calf, and may result in her failure to calve every year during periods of nutritional stress. After calving, barren ground females form postcalving aggregations, which may number in the tens of thousands or more, and begin to utilize the spring greenup of vascular plants occurring on the tundra. Soon after, hordes of mosquitoes, black flies, and the larger nose bot and warble flies emerge and force caribou to seek habitats such as windy ridges, coastlines, or snow banks where insect activity is lower. These measures, however, limit the ability of caribou to feed. Once insect activity declines in late summer, the aggregations disperse and caribou focus on eating before fall frosts end the season’s productivity. Bulls do not follow females to the tundra calving grounds but remain on richer vegetation, in order to maximize growth during the short summers. By fall, a male may have acquired a reserve of fat representing 15% of his body weight, including a large supply of back fat up to 8 cm thick, to see him through the rut. Antlers grown during this same period may represent 5% of a male’s lean weight. The indigenous peoples of the north have relied on caribou for thousands of years, hunting them at river crossings or driving them into ambushes. Every language group had one or more names for caribou. The

Inuit called them tuktu. One group of Dene from western Canada were known as Etthen-eldeli-dene or “caribou eaters” and followed a nomadic lifestyle centered on the caribou. For all the peoples of the north, caribou meant food, hides for clothing, boots, boats and shelter, bones and antlers for tools, sinew for thread, and fat for fuel. Most indigenous cultures created stories and customs centered upon the caribou. One Dene legend, for example, spoke of caribou coming to Earth from the Milky Way; in another, caribou came down to Earth from the aurora borealis. The dependence of humans on caribou is also reflected in a variety of customs concerning respect. Caribou migrations may suddenly change after years or decades of regularity, leaving hunters with the prospect of starvation. For the Dene, these sudden departures from tradition might follow disrespectful treatment of caribou. FRED HARRINGTON See also Caribou Hunting; Reindeer; Reindeer Pastoralism Further Reading Banfield, Alexander W.F., The Mammals of Canada, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974 Burham, Dorothy K., To Please the Caribou: Painted CaribouSkin Coats Worn by the Naskapi, Montagnais, and Cree Hunters of the Québec-Labrador Peninsula, Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1992 Calef, George, Caribou and the Barren-Lands, Toronto: Firefly Books, 1981 Hall, Ed, People and Caribou in the Northwest Territories, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories: Department of Renewable Resources, Government of the Northwest Territories, 1989 Jackson, Lawrence J. & Paul T. Thacker, Caribou and Reindeer Hunters of the Northern Hemisphere, Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 1997 Kelsall, John P., The Migratory Barren-Ground Caribou of Canada, Ottawa: Canadian Wildlife Service, 1968 Morrison, David A., Caribou Hunters in the Western Arctic: Zooarchaeology of the Rita-Claire and Bison Skull Sites, Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1998 Russell, H. John, Nature of Caribou: Spirit of the North, Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1998 Thorpe, Natasha, Naikak Hakongak, Sandra Eyegetok & Kitikmeot Elders, Thunder on the Tundra: Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit of the Bathurst Caribou, Victoria, British Columbia: Tuktu and Nogak Project, 2002 Walker, Tom, Caribou: Wanderer of the Tundra, Portland, Oregon: Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company, 2000

CARIBOU HUNTING Antler artifacts and cave etchings suggest that Arctic people hunted caribou at least 40,000 years ago in Eurasia and 25,000 years ago in North America. Those early people also hunted steppe bison and mammoths. 319

CARIBOU HUNTING But it was caribou that survived the megafaunal extinctions about 10,000 years ago—perhaps through caribou adaptability and migratory behavior. Subsequently, many Arctic and Subarctic cultures became based on caribou (or, in Eurasia, wild reindeer) hunting. In North America, ancestors of the Athapaskan peoples moved north as glaciers melted, and by at least 7000 BCE were hunting caribou across the Barren Grounds region, between Hudson Bay and Great Bear Lake. Their cultures were and still today are based on caribou hunting. Elsewhere across the Arctic, other cultures such as the Innu in the eastern Canadian Arctic and the Gwich’in (people of the caribou) in Alaska and Yukon developed through dependence on caribou. The strongest cultural association between people and caribou is with the migratory barren ground caribou (wild reindeer). Barren ground caribou characteristically migrate in large herds and follow relatively predictable routes across the barrens and, in some areas, into the black spruce forests for the winters. In summer, caribou use traditional water crossings where they are easily hunted. During winter and spring migration, people could herd caribou, using fences made of spruce trees and flutters (small strips of cloth that move in the wind), toward snares and waiting hunters (Legat and Zoe, 1995). The material dependence (food, clothing, and shelters using caribou hide tents and sleeping skins) is intertwined with a spiritual relationship that, perhaps, is less easy to understand by cultures not dependent on wildlife. A hint of the spiritual importance of caribou is the similarities in, for example, the Gwich’in, Dogrib (Tlicho), and Innu conventions (only recently written down) about respectful ways to treat caribou. Many of these conventions echoed rules about respectful hunting (using all parts and avoiding wastage). These conventions about respecting caribou are a fraction of aboriginal knowledge about and values for caribou (and the natural world). The circumpolar Arctic has about 184 barren ground caribou herds whose size fluctuates over decades. In North America, at least, many caribou herds were smaller in size in the early 1950s and again during the 1970s with tenfold changes in herd size. The major Alaskan herds experienced smaller herd sizes in the mid-1970s. The Nelchina and the Fortymile herds declined to 7–10,000 caribou by 1972 before increasing to a peak of 35,000–50,000 in the late 1990s. The Western Arctic herd numbered 240,000 in 1970, declined to 75,000 by 1976, and recovered to 463,000 by 1996. The Mulchatna herd has varied between 14,000 caribou and 193,000 caribou between 1974 and 1996. Currently, the annual subsistence take is <3–5% of herd size.

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The Porcupine herd ranges in northwestern Canada and eastern Alaska. Gwich’in, Iñupiat, Inuvialuit, Han, and Northern Tutchone peoples annually harvest 3000–7000 caribou from a herd that has declined from 178,000 animals in 1989 to 123,000 in 2001. In Canada’s Northwest Territories and Nunavut, the four largest herds (Bathurst, Beverly, Qamanirjuaq, Ahiak) had 1.4 million in the mid-1990s with about 250,000 in the smaller herds. Subsequently, the Bathurst herd has declined from 470,000 in 1986 to 186,000 in 2003. Aboriginal subsistence hunters annually took about 16,000 caribou in the late 1980s and nonaboriginal hunters annually take another 1000–2000 caribou (including guided trophy hunting). The replacement value of meat from the Bathurst herd is about 10 million dollars and an additional 3 million dollars from the Northwest Territories caribou outfitting. In northern Québec and Labrador (Canada), the George River herd reached 775,000 caribou in the 1990s before starting the downward phase of its cycle (Couturier et al., 1996). As of this writing, aboriginal and nonaboriginal hunters take about 36,000 caribou (5% of the herd). In Norway, reindeer hunting has ranged from an annual peak of 16,000 to a current level of 8000 from 30 to 35,000 reindeer in 23 herds of wild reindeer and semidomesticated reindeer. Wild reindeer hunting in northern Russia includes subsistence, commercial (harvest for velvet antlers as well as for meat), and sport hunting. Under the Soviet government, largescale commercial hunting at river crossings displaced indigenous people’s subsistence hunting and for example, in the Taymyr peninsula, helicopters and refrigerated river barges transported about 1.5 million reindeer carcasses over 25 years to markets at the Noril’sk industrial complex. Then after 1992, the wild reindeer declined and the annual harvest dropped from about 90,000 per year to about 15,000 per year. The current harvest levels are an incomplete picture as today, despite all the economic changes and cultural influences, the affiliation between Arctic people and caribou is strong. An inkling of the continued importance of caribou comes from Arctic people’s fears about changes, especially industrial development. The strength of the relationship can be seen in the Gwich’in people’s efforts to protect the calving grounds of the Porcupine herd from oil and gas development and the Dogrib (Tlicho) elders expressing concerns about diamond mines on the central barren ranges of the Bathurst herd. Threats to caribou hunting lie in the cumulative effects of all the changes that follow development (at the local scale, such as roads, to the global scale of longrange pollutants and climate change), unregulated or poorly regulated commercial hunting and the unexpected. The effects of these various changes depend on the

CARTOGRAPHY phase of the caribou cycle—caribou are more resilient when their numbers are increasing. Caribou need unrestricted access to their seasonal ranges, and networks of roads and industrial sites can restrict and modify caribou use of their seasonal ranges as happened on the Central Arctic herd’s range where oil and gas fields were developed; Norway and Russia have further examples. Global climate change and the atmospheric transport of contaminants will affect caribou and caribou hunting. Along the mainland central Arctic coast, Inuit are already expressing concern about caribou dying as they try to cross sea ice as freezeup is delayed and breakup occurs earlier than previously (Thorpe, 2000). Contaminants are reaching detectable levels in some caribou (Elkin and Bethke, 1995), although the effects are poorly understood. Although the distinction between subsistence and commercial use is not simple and although some aboriginal people reject commercial hunting, managing for commercial hunting runs the risk of maximizing profits, which is inconsistent with sustainable use (Clark, 1976). Greater risks that hunting can become unsustainable and contribute to caribou declines may lie in the unexpected (Holling, 1986). The unexpected ranges from shortcomings in data collection to the difficulties in predicting how complex ecological systems respond to the interacting changes. Added to this is the uncertainty that comes from comanagement: comanagement to ensure the sustainability of caribou hunting requires understanding and negotiation among different values and bodies of knowledge. ANNE GUNN See also Common Property Management; Hunting, Subsistence; Reindeer Pastoralism; Wildlife Management: Environmental Initiatives Further Reading Baskin, L.M., “Hunting of Game Animals in the Soviet Union.” In The Conservation of Biological Resources, edited by E.J. Milner-Gulland & R. Mace, Oxford: Blackwell Science, 1998, pp. 331–345 Clark, C.W., Mathematical Bioeconomics: The Optimum Management of Renewable Resources, New York: Wiley Interscience, 1976 Couturier, S., R. Courtois, H. Crépeau, L.-P. Rivest & S. Luttich, “Calving photocensus of the Rivière George Caribou Herd and comparison with an independent census.” Proceedings of the Sixth North American Caribou Workshop, Prince George, British Columbia, Canada, March 1–4, 1994, Rangifer Special Issue No. 9, pp. 283–296 Elkin, B.T. and Bethke, R.W. “Environmental contaminants in caribou in the Northwest Territories, Canada.” Science of the Total Environment, 160/161 (1995): 307–321 Holling, C.S., “The Resilience of Terrestrial Ecosystems: Local Surprise and Global Change.” In Sustainable Development of the Biosphere, edited by W.C. Clark & R.E. Munn,

Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 292–320 Legat, A. & S.A. Zoe,Traditional Methods used by the Tlicho to Redirect Caribou, Tlicho Treaty 11 Council. Prepared for Department of Renewable Resources, Government of the Northwest Territories,Whaehdoo Naowoo K.e, Treaty 11 Council, Rae-Edzo, NT, 1995

CARTOGRAPHY In the Middle Ages, cartography only produced world maps and no regional or local maps. These maps represented a rather contemporary conception than a real picture of the world. This changed in the Renaissance when charts and maps in general became pictures of exploration, products of observation during voyages of discovery. Nowadays, charts and maps are real representations of the world, essential equipment for travelers and researchers. The first picture of the North was based on a voyage to the North made by Pytheas, who set out from the Greek colony of Massilia in about 325 BC. Although the book itself has been lost, we know something of his adventures from later Greek and Roman geographers. Six days sailing north of Britain, Pytheas reached a country, which he called Thule. It is not known which country he meant. It could be Iceland or a place somewhere on the west coast of Norway. Pytheas also spoke about a sea with much ice, and a sun that did not set in summer. The information of Pytheas is represented on early maps such as the Anglo-Saxon map (c. AD 1000) and Idrisi’s map of the world (AD 1154). In 1475, an atlas based on Claudius Ptolemaeus (Ptolemy)’s description of the world was published with detailed information of Thule and the Scandinavian countries. However, the maps in this atlas do not go further north than 65° N. The depiction of Thule on the Ptolemaeus maps resembles Iceland of the Anglo-Saxon map. In the 16th century, the Ptolemaeus atlas was reprinted several times, and was important for the perception of the geography of the North. New discoveries in the 16th century were represented in Abraham Ortelius’s atlas Theatrum Orbis Terrarum published in 1570. In the 16th century, there were three perceptions of the geography of the North. The first was that there was no land in the North. North of Thule, which was located six days sailing north of England, it was believed that there was only sea and one day further north this sea was deeply frozen. The world map of Martin Waldseemuller (1507) gives a representation of this polar sea. Secondly, there was the perception of land around the North Pole connecting Greenland with the Eurasian continent as is shown on the map of the Atlantic Ocean of Jacob Ziegler (1532). The third perception was a combination of perceptions one and

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CARTOGRAPHY two. In this representation there was land and sea in the North. This picture was put forward by Adam van Bremen in a book published in the middle of the 10th century. One century later, a British bishop Gerald van Wales elaborated the picture of Adam van Bremen. It consists of four islands around a polar sea, with a black rock with the Polus Arcticus in the middle and a whirlpool around it. In this sea, four ocean currents come together to disappear in the interior of the earth. As far as we know, this perception appears for the first time on a world map of Johannes Ruys from 1507 to 1508. However, there is a globe made by Martin Behaim in 1492 with the same representation of the North Pole area. It is very likely that for their mapmaking, Ruys and Behaim both used the same historical source: Inventio Fortunatae. Probably Gerard Mercator used this historical source as well. The representation of the Arctic used for the inset map on his world map of 1569 greatly resembles those of Ruys and Behaim. Mercator performed some basic research for his map of the world before he decided to depict the polar world as Adam van Bremen did, with four islands around a polar sea and the North Pole on a black rock in the middle of the polar sea. Expeditions of Hugh Willoughby and Richard Chancellor in 1553, Stephen Burrough in 1556, and Arthur Pet and Charles Jackman in 1580 sharpened the information of the south coast of the Barents Sea and the Yugorski Shar in the Kara Sea. The results of these expeditions are represented in the revised map of the Polar Regions in Mercator’s Atlas from 1595. The fact that Petrus Plancius used the same representation on his wall map of the world of 1594 means that this was seen as the most probable geography of the area. The three expeditions of Willem Barents have changed this picture. The Willem Barents polar map published in 1598 depicts the polar area as a sea again, and this picture is used on most maps in the beginning of the 17th century. An example is the large wall map of the world of Willem Jansz Blaeu dating from 1605 and the 1625 map Poli Arctici of Hondius. These maps with no ice drawn in the polar sea, and reports of 17th- and 18th-century whalers about reaching very high latitudes, gave rise to theories of an open polar sea. Between 1765 and 1818, this ice-free Arctic Ocean stimulated several British and Russian naval expeditions to seek a passage across the ocean from the North Atlantic Ocean to the Bering Sea. All expeditions got stuck in the ice, but the idea stayed. The German geographer August Petermann believed in it, and his 1869 map of the polar area showed not only an open polar sea but also a polar land from Greenland to Wrangel Island. In 1868 and 1869–1870, together with others, he organized two German polar expeditions to

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travel to the North along the east coast of Greenland. His ideas stimulated the American expeditions of Elisha Kane (1853–1855), Isaac Hayes (1860–1861), and Charles Hall (1871–1873) to explore northward from Baffin Bay. Together with the British Arctic Expedition of 1875–1876, they found out that north of Greenland there existed a polar sea completely covered with ice. The ideas of Petermann also led to the Austro-Hungarian Expedition (1872–1874), which sought a route between Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya and discovered Franz Josef Land. In 1879–1881, the American George Washington de Long, who tried to cross the Arctic Ocean from the Bering Strait side with his ship the Jeannette, got stuck in the ice north of Siberia and lost his ship and many of his crew members. With this expedition, the hope of an ice-free polar sea faded away. When in 1893–1896 Fridtjof Nansen with his ship the Fram finally proved the existence of a permanent ice cover, the idea of an ice-free polar sea disappeared altogether. With the invention and following technical developments in aviation and shipping in the 20th century, the map of the Arctic was completed. Presently mapping is carried out with the use of the GPS (global positioning system) and satellite photographs, which make it easier for a cartographical representation of an area such as the Arctic. The fact that all charts and maps discussed above were made by people of the temperate zone does not mean that the Inuit did not have maps. On the contrary, Inuit had wooden maps, which represented their traditional routes along the coast of Greenland and reflected the features that were relevant to a boat traveler. LOUWRENS HACQUEBORD See also Barents, Willem; Exploration of the Arctic; Open Polar Sea; Petermann, August Further Reading Okhuizen, E., “The Dutch Contribution to the Cartography of Russia during the 16th–18th Centuries”. In Russians and Dutchmen, Relations Before 1917, edited by J. Braat, A.H. Huussen Jr., B. Naarden & C.A.L.M. Willemsen, Groningen: Instituut voor Noord- en Oosteuropese Studies, 1993, pp. 71–115 Rey, L. (editor), “Unveiling the Arctic.” Arctic, 37(4) (1984): 321–613 Schilder, G., “Development and achievements of Dutch northern and arctic cartography in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.” Arctic, Journal of the Arctic Institute of North America, 37(4) (1984): 493–514 Vaughan, R., The Arctic, A History, Dover: Alan Sutton, 1994 Woodward, David & G. Malcolm Lewis (editors), The History of Cartography Volume 2, Book 3—Cartography in the Traditional African, American, Arctic, Australian and Pacific Societies, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998

CASTRÉN, ALEXANDR MATHIAS

CASSIOPE HEATHS Cassiope heath is a circumpolar Arctic vegetation type predominated by Cassiope tetragona. Cassiope heaths are a widespread plant community occurring from the Subarctic to the High Arctic. C. tetragona (L.) D.Don (Arctic white heather, white Arctic bell heather, fire moss, four-angled Cassiope, Qijooktaik, Iksutit (Inuktitut), Issutit (Greenlandic)) is an evergreen, long-lived dwarf shrub of the Ericaceae family, which reaches 5–20 cm in height. It has four-ranked, dark green leaves with a deep furrow on the back. The solitary campanulate (bell-shaped) flowers are white. Its general distribution is circumpolar. In contrast, the moss heather Cassiope hypnoides (L.) D.Don is an amphi-Atlantic, Arctic-alpine species and more common in Greenland, Scandinavia, and the Eastern Canadian Arctic. Further Cassiope species, such as C. stelleriana (Pall.) DC (Alaska moss heather), C. lycopodioides (Pall.) D.Don (club moss mountain heather), or C. mertensiana (Bong.) D.Don (western moss heather, white mountain heather), are more restricted to alpine environments south of the treeline. The distribution of vegetation communities in the Arctic is closely related to topographic features that affect soil drainage and microclimate. The harsh climate dictates that species diversity is relatively low and plant height is restricted. In the High Arctic where summer and winter precipitation is low, Cassiope heaths can often be found on hummocky and moist terrain in late-melting snowbeds. Here, they are usually associated with Dryas integrifolia M.Vahl (Mountain Avens, White Dryas), a prevalent species of many cushion plant and dwarf-shrub heath communities in the Mid and High Arctic. Toward the Low Arctic where soils are often poorly drained, C. tetragona occasionally remains an important component of some heaths; however, other dwarf shrubs such as Salix spp. (willows), Betula spp. (birch), Vaccinium spp. (e.g., cranberry), Empetrum spp. (crowberry), and Arctostaphylos spp. (bearberry) dominate. In the Low- and Subarctic, C. tetragona is abundant only on well-drained calcareous soils and rock outcrops. Drier soil conditions occur where slight rises in topographic relief provide a rooting zone above the standing water table, for example, on eskers, raised beach ridges, river banks, along the rims of lakes, or on pingos. Dwarf-shrub communities usually grow in these better-drained areas. C. tetragona has a relatively high resin content and was formerly important to Inuit as a fuel source for outdoor cooking when traveling on the land. Nowadays, it can provide an archival proxy for climate-related plant growth. Although the leaves of C. tetragona die off after 3–4 years, they remain attached on the plant stems for several decades and their number can be compared with annual temperature variations in the Arctic.

Arctic Bell-heather (Cassiope tetragona). Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

Recent studies in the High Arctic have shown that the number of leaves and flowers produced each year is positively correlated with the July mean temperature. C. tetragona is therefore an Arctic analog to tree-ring records from the Subarctic and is potentially useful as a bioindicator in climate change research. JÖRG TEWS See also Dwarf-Shrub Heaths Further Reading Callaghan, Terry V. et al., “Historical records of climate-related growth in Cassiope tetragona from the Arctic.” Journal of Ecology, 77 (1989): 823–837 Havström, Mats et al., “Little Ice Age temperature estimated by growth and flowering differences between subfossil and extant shoots of Cassiope tetragona, an arctic heather.” Functional Ecology, 9 (1995): 650–654 Johnstone, Jill F. & Greg H. Henry, “Retrospective analysis of growth and reproduction in Cassiope tetragona and relations to climate in the Canadian High Arctic.” Arctic and Alpine Research, 29(4) (1997): 459–469 Scott, Geoffrey A.J., Canada’s Vegetation—A World Perspective, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995

CASTRÉN, ALEXANDR MATHIAS Alexandr Mathias Castrén, a Finnish linguist and ethnologist, was born into the family of a Lutheran pastor in the village of Tervola near the Arctic Circle (the county of Oulu in northern Finland) in 1813. He went to the University of Helsinki in 1830 with the aim of studying classical and oriental languages, adding Finnish language to his program in 1834. After the appearance of the epic Kalevala (1835) compiled by the Finnish linguist E. Lönnrot, Castrén devoted himself more completely to the Finnish language. Having obtained his doctorate of philosophy in 1836, Castrén began to study theology, investigate Finnish mythology, and translate Kalevala into Swedish

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CASTRÉN, ALEXANDR MATHIAS (published in 1841). A two-month trip to Finnish Lapland together with C.R. Ehrström, a physician in Tornio, in 1838 prompted Castrén to study the Lappish language. In 1839, having received a grant from the Finnish Literature Society, he undertook a journey to Finnish and Russian Karelia to collect linguistic and ethnographic material in order to learn more about the old local folk-songs (called runes). In 1839, he earned a doctoral degree for the study of the declensions in the Finnish, Estonian, and Lappish languages. In 1841, Castrén and Lönnrot made a trip to (Finnish, Norwegian, and Russian) Lapland and to Russian Karelia, from where Castrén, having received money from Finland, went to the tundra inhabited by the Samoyeds of northern Siberia. The trip that started in Arkhangel’sk continued through Mezen, the tundra of Timan, the western and southern area of the Timan tundra, and finished at the mouth of the River Ob’ in western Siberia in 1844 (then called Obdorsk, at present Salekhard). During this hard trip, Castrén fell ill with tuberculosis. In 1844, he compiled the grammar of the Komi language, and in 1845 that of the Mari language. Owing to the help of the Finnish linguist A.J. Sjögren, a member of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Castrén received a grant from the Academy that enabled him to carry out an extensive expedition to western and central Siberia and to Trans-Baikal land in 1845–1849. His traveling companion was the Finnish linguist J.R. Bergstadi. They stopped at Tobolsk, Samarovo, Surgut, Narym, Tomsk, Eniseisk, Turukhansk, and Tolstoi Nos (the northernmost place they visited at the Bay of Enisei), in the regions of Minusinsk and Kansk, at Irkutsk, Kiakhta, Nerchinsk, and several other places. They studied the Khanty, Sel’kup, Ket, Nganasan, Siberian-Tatar, Tungus, and Buryat languages and ethnologies. Castrén had prepared the grammar of the Khanty language by 1849. From 1849 to 1851, Castrén was an adjunct at the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences while living in Helsinki so that he could systematize the linguistic and ethnographic material collected at the expedition. He published his dissertation on the comparison of the Finno-Ugric, Samoyed, Turkic-Mongolian, and Tungus languages, De affixis personalibus linguarum Altaicarum, in 1849. This allowed him to apply for the post of a professor of the Finnish language and literature at the University of Helsinki in 1850 (he was appointed to the post in 1851). The material collected by Castrén was posthumously edited by the Baltic-German linguist F.A. von Schiefner, a member of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences, and published in a 12-volume series entitled M.A. Castréns Nordische Reisen und Forschungen (1853–1862). It contains the Khanty grammar, the

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grammars, and dictionaries of the Samoed languages, the grammars of the Tungus, Buryat, Koibal, Karagassian, and Ket languages, travel accounts, letters, lectures on Finnic mythology, and the ethnology of the Ural-Altaic people and other items. Castrén developed on the theory of the affinity of the Uralic and Altaic languages put forward by the Baltic-German linguist F.J. Wiedemann, a member of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences since 1858. However, only the kinship of the Finno-Ugric and the Samoyed languages was proven. Castrén’s contribution is particularly remarkable in the profound investigation of the unknown to Europe, the Samoyed, Turkic-Mongolian, and Tungus languages. Before Castrén, many Siberian languages (except the Iakutian and Mandzhurian literary languages) were unknown to Europeans. Castrén was the first linguist to study several of them, such as the Khanty, Sel’kup, Ket, Nganasan, Siberian-Tatar, Tungus, and Buryat languages. In addition, he proved that the last-mentioned language had affinity with Mongolian, Turkic, as well as Finno-Ugric languages. A great number of ethnographical data supported Castrén’s theory of the affinity of the Ural-Altaic languages. The principal conclusion of Castrén’s theory was that pro alutination, personal affixes, toponymy, and similar ethnography (e.g., nomadism, exogamy) were the features indicating the affinity of the Ural-Altaic languages. Castrén supposed that the initial home of the UralAltaic languages was the Altai.

Biography Matthias Alexander Castrén was born in the village of Tervola near the Arctic Circle (the county of Oulu in northern Finland) on December 2, 1813. In 1821, his family moved to Rovaniemi. After the death of his father Christian Castrén in 1825, his mother Susanna Sofia (born Fellman) together with her eight children settled in Kemi. Castrén’s education at Oulu (1825–1830) was financed by his paternal uncle M. Castrén (a clergyman and botanist) and uncle J.A. Fellman (a merchant). He attended the University of Helsinki in 1830 studying classical and oriental languages, adding Finnish language in 1834. Castrén, who had lived the greater part of his life in poverty, earned money for his studies by working as a private teacher. In 1836, Castrén translated the epic Kalevala into the Swedish language (published in 1841). In 1836, under the influence of C.R. Ehrström, a district physician in Tornio, Castrén began to study the Lappish language. In 1839, he earned a doctorate for the study of the declensions in the Finnish, Estonian, and Lappish languages, and in 1840 he became a docent of the

CHARCOT, JEAN-BAPTISTE Finnish and Old Nordic languages at the University of Helsinki. In 1841, Castrén and Finnish linguist E. Lönnrot traveled to Lapland (Finnish, Norwegian, and Russian) and to Russian Karelia. Concurrently, he completed his doctoral dissertation in 1844 on the comparison of the Finno-Ugric, Samoyed, TurkicMongolian, and Tungus languages, De affixis personalibus linguarum Altaicarum (published in 1849). This eventually led to an 1850 appointment as professor of Finnish language and literature at the University of Helsinki. Castrén received a grant that enabled him to carry out an extensive expedition to western and central Siberia and to Trans-Baikal land in 1845–1849. He traveled with the Finnish linguist J.R. Bergstadi and studied the Khanty, Sel’kup, Ket, Nganasan, SiberianTatar, Tungus, and Buryat languages and their ethnologies. In the years 1849–1851, Castrén was an adjunct at the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences and was allowed to live in Helsinki. In 1850, Castrén married 19-year-old Natalia Tengström. In 1851, a son was born. Castrén died of duodenal ulcer as a complication of tuberculosis in Helsinki on May 7, 1852. ERKI TAMMIKSAAR See also Lapland; Northern Altaic Languages; Northern Uralic languages Further Reading Korhonen, M., Finno-Ugrian Language Studies in Finland 1828–1918, Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1986 Schiefner, A., “Ocherk zhizni i trudov Kastrena.” Vestnik imperatorskogo Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva, 7 (1953): 100–133

CHARCOT, JEAN-BAPTISTE The French Arctic and Antarctic explorer JeanBaptiste Charcot belonged to a family of physicians, although from an early age Charcot had decided to become a sea traveler or sailor. At the age of 25, he bought his first yacht, Courlis. During his earliest navigations, Charcot cruised the Shetland and Faroe islands, and also visited Jan Mayen Island in the Greenland Sea. These sailings marked the future interests and commitments of Charcot in the Polar Regions. In 1903, Charcot was planning to sail north again on his purpose-built ship, the Français, but on hearing of the missing Swedish Antarctic explorer Otto Nordenskjöld and his expedition, decided to set sail for the Southern Ocean to assist with the search. On hearing that Nordenskjöld had already been found, Charcot decided to stay in the Antarctic, but then changed his plans. From 1903 to 1905, Charcot con-

ducted the French Antarctic Expedition on the Français to explore the western coast of the Antarctic peninsula. He conducted surveys in the Palmer Archipelago, the northwestern part of which at that time was still uncharted. Charcot’s expedition confirmed some findings of islands and straits in this region made by previous visitors of those waters, particularly by German whalers. The wintering of Charcot’s ship in 1904 was one of the first winterings of European travelers in the Antarctic region. On March 4, 1905, Français dropped anchor in PuertoMadrin, and the ship was later sold to the Argentine government. The results of this polar trip included 65 boxes of geological and zoological specimens, meteorological observations, as well as three maps with 1000 km of new lands charted by the expedition. Charcot’s next voyage to the Antarctic, financially aided by the French government as a scientific expedition, was the Second French Antarctic Expedition (August 15, 1908 to June 5, 1910). He outfitted a new ship, the Pourquois-pas?, which was larger and more powerful than the Français, comprising three laboratories and a library. During the expedition of the Pourquois-pas? in 1908–1910, Charcot continued the cartographic research of the Antarctic peninsula, Alexander III Island, and the Peninsula of Peter I. Charcot conducted measurements of depth and geodesic works, took pictures of the lands, and collected other measurements and specimens of the bottom with dredge. On January 11, 1909, Charcot explored and named an unknown island of the Palmer Archipelago— the Charcot Island (70° S 77° W). During the trip, Charcot reached the border of the Antarctic Continent. His ship was stopped by ice at 124° W, and returned to South America. The scientific results of this expedition included 28 volumes of research and maps. In 1911, Charcot conducted oceanographic researches in the English Channel. The French Navy requisitioned the Pourquoi-pas? for work as a training ship. After serving as a medical doctor and then commanding a Q-boat for Britain’s Royal Navy during World War I, Charcot resumed command of the Pourquoi-pas?, conducting various expeditions to the Arctic. From 1920 to 1925, he worked with expeditions in the Atlantic Ocean, where the object of his interests included underwater lithology and geology using dredging methods. In 1921, Charcot visited Rockall Bank twice, where his research helped establish the origin of this remarkable geographical object. In 1925, Charcot led investigations near Iceland and Jan Mayen Island. In 1927, he conducted depth measurements in the English Channel and in the Bay of Biscay. From 1926 to 1936, Charcot participated and led several expeditions on the ship Pourquoi-pas? to the shores of Greenland. On July 28, 1928, Charcot

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CHELYUSKIN, SEMYON arrived at Tromsø and took part in the search for Roald Amundsen, whose airplane “Latam” and its crew had disappeared. The expeditions of 1931–1933 were conducted as contributions to the polar researches during the International Polar Year. In 1931, Charcot participated in the opening of the polar station in Ittoqqortoormiit (Scoresbysund) in Greenland. The summer of 1936 marked Charcot’s final voyage as well as the last sailing of his old and reliable ship Pourquoi-pas?. After the expedition to Greenland, Pourquoi-pas? arrived in Reykjavik. On the morning of September 16, during a severe storm near the shore of Iceland, Pourquoi-pas? was shipwrecked. Charcot perished with all the other members of the crew—a total of 40 people died; only one sailor was saved by Icelanders. Twenty-three bodies of the crew members of Pourquoi-pas?, the body of Charcot among them, were found and transported to France for burial.

Biography Jean-Baptiste Charcot was born on June 15, 1867, in Neuillis-sur-Seine, France. His father was Jean-Martin Charcot, the notable neurologist whose work on hysteria influenced Sigmund Freud. Having received a medical education, Charcot defended his dissertation in 1895. Charcot’s first marriage was to the granddaughter of Victor Hugo Jeanne, but this marriage ended during his first Antarctic Expedition. During his second marriage to Meg Clairie (1907), Charcot had three daughters—Marion, Martina, and Monica. From 1903 to 1905, Charcot participated in the French Antarctic Expedition to explore the western coast of the Antarctic peninsula. Charcot’s next voyage to the Antarctic was the Second French Antarctic Expedition (1908–1910). His voyages to Antarctic seas resulted in the award of a golden medal from the Russian Geographic Society (1914) and the subsequent award of Honorable Member of the Geographic Society of the USSR. After serving in World War I, from 1920 to 1925 he worked with expeditions in the Atlantic Ocean, where the object of his interests included underwater lithology and geology. In 1925, Charcot became the knight commander of the Legion d’Honneur. He died on September 16, 1936, in the sea near Iceland. ALEXIS BURYKIN Further Reading Blond, George, La grande aventure des Oceans. Les mers froides [The Great Adventure of The Oceans. Polar Seas]. Paris: Famot, 1977 Charcot, Jean-Baptiste, Le Français au pôle Sud: journal de l’expédition antarctique française 1903–1905, Paris: Flammarion, 1906

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———, La Mer du Groenland, croisières du “Pourquoi pas?,” Paris and Bruges: Desclée, de Brouwer and cie, 1929 ———, The Voyage of the Pourquoi-Pas?, translated and edited by Philip Walsh, Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1978 Emmanuel, Marthe, Tel fut Charcot [Who was Charcot?], Paris: Beauchesne, 1967

CHELYUSKIN, SEMYON Semyon Ivanovich Chelyuskin was a Russian polar researcher and navigator who participated in the LenaYenisey group of the Second Kamchatka Expedition (also known as the Great Northern Expedition) in the 18th century. He reached and mapped the northernmost point of the Eurasian continent (Cape Chelyuskin on Taymyr Peninsula). The First (1725–1730) and Second Kamchatka (1733–1743) expeditions were sanctioned first by Peter I (Peter the Great) and then by Empress Anna as ambitious attempts to explore the Russian Arctic seas and open them up to navigation and trade. At the time, knowledge of the Russian Arctic was limited to rather small areas, for example, around northeastern Siberia between the Kolyma and Lena rivers. In the summer of 1735, Chelyuskin sailed from Yakutsk down the Lena River toward the sea, on the double-hulled boat Yakutsk, under the command of Vasily Pronchischev. On reaching open sea the ship turned west and in August reached the mouth of the Olenek River, where the ship spent the winter. In the summer of 1736, the Yakutsk again sailed west along the coast to the mouth of the Anabar River before turning north and reaching 77°29′ N. The Peter, Faddeya, and Samuel islands (today known as the Komsomol’skoy Pravdy islands) off the northeast coast of the Taymyr Peninsula were discovered. Because of pack ice the ship turned back without rounding the peninsula and the boat overwintered again at the mouth of the Olenek River, where Pronchischev died at the end of August 1736. Pronchishchev’s wife Tatyana, who had accompanied the voyage and was the first woman polar explorer, died 14 days after her husband. From 1737 to 1742, the expedition was led by Khariton Laptev. The participants of the group included the boatswain Medvedev, land-surveyor Nikifor Chekin, and subnavigator Chelyuskin. In the summer of 1739, Chelyuskin passed on the Yakutsk along the eastern coast of the Taymyr Peninsula north to Cape Faddey. Over winter, he returned with a vessel to the Khatanga River at the base of the peninsula. In the summer of 1740, he advanced up the peninsula only as far north as 75°21′ N, where the vessel became trapped by ice and was abandoned by the crew. That winter the ship returned again with a crew to Khatanga. Because of adverse ice conditions Khariton

CHEMNITZ, LARS Laptev decided to investigate the Taymyr coast by land, splitting the expedition into three subgroups. On March 17, 1741, Chelyuskin left his winter hut with two sailors. He was directed to the upper reaches of the Pyasina River, from where he would descend the valley to the coast (western side of the Taymyr Peninsula) and then travel by dog sled toward Laptev’s group. On June 1, Chelyuskin met Laptev’s party, and it was agreed that Chelyuskin should complete the mapping of the northern coast of the Taymyr Peninsula. On December 4, 1741, he left Turukhansk on the Yenisey by dog sled for the lower reaches of the Khatanga River, where he overwintered, preparing the dog sleds, and replenishing his foodstuffs. On April 3, 1742, Chelyuskin set off once more by sled to the north. By May 1, he reached Cape Faddey and began mapping the coast to the north, toward the cape now bearing his name, Cape Chelyuskin, at the northernmost tip of the Taymyr Peninsula. On May 7, 1742, with three soldiers he was approximately 10–20 km from it, and made astronomical measurements defining the latitude as 77°43′ N. The next day they reached (May 8) Cape Chelyuskin, which he named “East Northern cape.” Here astronomical positioning was not carried out, but Semyon Chelyuskin gave a brief textual description in his journal of the northernmost point of Asia. Chelyuskin was then directed southwest to the estuary of the Lower Taymyr River. From May 15, he mapped the last unexplored miles of the northwestern coast of the peninsula down to the mouth of the Pyasina at its base. He also repeated the survey carried out in 1740 by Dmitriy Sterlegov on the western coast of the Taymyr Peninsula up to Cape Sterlegov (75°25′ N). At the Pyasina estuary, he met with Khariton Laptev and was directed to return to St Petersburg through Yeniseysk. Chelyuskin had passed overland from Khatanga to the Pyasina estuary in spring 1741, and also from Turukhansk to the mouth of the Khatanga in the winter of 1741–1742. He also described all the east coast of the Taymyr Peninsula up to Cape Chelyuskin, and mapped the coast to the southwest and finished the mapping of the coast at 76°42′ N at the Lower Taymyr estuary, which Khariton Laptev had reached from the west in 1741. Chelyuskin’s mapping and exploration feat was not immediately appreciated. But Alexander Theodor von Middendorf and A.A. Sokolov have noted the high accuracy of his measurements. In the description of his North East Passage navigation aboard Maud in the winter of 1918–1919, Roald Amundsen also confirmed the reliability and conscientiousness of Chelyuskin’s journals. An icebreaker named Chelyuskin attempted the Northern Sea Route from Murmansk to the Pacific Ocean in 1934, but was crushed by ice in the Chukchi

Sea, forcing aerial rescue of the expedition. An island in the Gulf of Alaska and a cape of Attu island in the Aleutians are also named in honor of Chelyuskin.

Biography Semion Ivanovich Chelyuskin was born in 1700. He studied in Moscow Navigation School and in the St Petersburg Naval Academy. In 1728, he was enlisted in the fleet as subnavigator. In 1733, he gained the rank of navigator and was included in the Second Kamchatka expedition in the subgroup led by Vasiliy Pronchischev. In 1742, Chelyuskin was ranked midshipman. He later served in the Baltic fleet as lieutenant (from 1751) and captain-lieutenant (from 1754). He resigned in 1760 as a captain of the third rank. Historians do not know when he died. ANNA SHISHIGINA See also Laptev, Khariton; Second Kamchatka Expedition Further Reading Andreev, A.I., Russkie otkrytiya v Tikhom okeane i Severnoi Amerike v XVIII[-]XIX vekakh [Russian discoveries in the Pacific Ocean and Northern America in the 18–19th centuries], Moscow: Izd-vo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1944 Lebedev, D.M., Plavanie A.I. Chirikova na packetbote “Svyatoy Pavel” k poberezhjam Ameriki [Navigation of A.I. Chirikov with packetship St Paul to the coasts of America], Moscow, Izd-vo Akademii nauk SSSR 1951 Pasetskii, V.M., Russkie otkrytiya v Arktike [Russian opening in The Arctic Region], St Petersburg: Admiralteistvo, 2000 Pokrovskiy, A. (editor), Ekspeditsiia Beringa [The Berings’ Expedition], Moscow: Glavnoe arkhivnoe upravlenie NKVD SSSR, 1941 Yanikov, G.V., Velikaya Severnaya Expeditiya [The Great Northern expedition], Moscow, 1949

CHEMNITZ, LARS Lars Chemnitz, a Greenlandic politician, was leader of the Greenland council at a time when Home Rule was negotiated with Denmark (1979). He was first elected to the Landsråd (the Provincial Council of Greenland) in 1967, and was its elected chairperson from 1971 to 1979, when Jonathan Motzfeldt was elected as first Prime Minister of the Home Rule Parliament. Chemnitz was a member of the Home Rule Parliament, Landstinget, from 1979 to 1984 and again from 1988 to 1995, in which he served as its chairperson from 1988 to 1991. Politically, Chemnitz can be characterized as a moderate conservative. In the late 1970s, he was one of the founders of the political party Atassut, which emphasized the connection to Denmark as valuable to Greenlandic society and resisted a break to Home

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CHEREVICHNY, IVAN IVANOVICH Rule. He was leader of Atassut from 1979 to 1984. As a prominent Greenlandic politician, he was called upon to other services as well, among them membership of the Executive Council of Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) 1980–1986, and as the chairperson of “Det grønlandske Selskab” (the Greenlandic Society) from 1985 to 1987.

Biography Lars Chemnitz was born on October 26, 1925. His father Jørgen Chemnitz was an interpreter and his mother was Kathrine, born Josefsen. He was educated at the Teacher Training College in Nuuk 1946, and at the Teacher Training College in Haslev, Denmark, 1951. He taught at different schools in Denmark until 1958 and thereafter in Greenland. He soon became headmaster of different schools in Greenland. Chemnitz retired in 1995 and settled in Denmark. AXEL KJÆR SØRENSEN See also Atassut; Greenland Home Rule Act; Motzfeldt, Jonathan Further Reading Entry on Chemnitz, Lars, Dansk Biografisk Leksikon, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1979 Entry on Chemnitz, Lars, Grønlands Grønne Bog (The Green Book of Greenland), Grønlands Hjemmestyres Informationskontor, 1996

CHEREVICHNY, IVAN IVANOVICH The Soviet polar pilot Ivan Cherevichny was a pioneer in the exploration of the High Arctic by air. Cherevichny began his polar flights in 1934, conducting flights along the Yenisey River from Krasnoyarsk to Igarka and to Dudinka. In the winter of 1935, he was the first among the pilots working this route to fly from Krasnoyarsk to Igarka in one day, without stopping overnight. Soon he was transferred to the air route Irkutsk-Yakutsk-Tiksi. In the summer of 1935, he investigated a new air route, Yakutsk to the upper Kolyma River. In the winter of 1936, Cherevichny flew from Irkutsk to Yakutsk to Tiksi to the New Siberian Islands in an open-cabin R-6 aircraft to evacuate the staff of the Cape Shalaurova weather station, which had burned. Beginning in 1936, Cherevichny participated in airborne ice reconnaissance in the Arctic. And that year he surveyed the ice condition in the Laptev Sea. His total flying time created a new record for that period— 700 hours. The data he collected on the ice situation were used for setting a course for the F. Litke icebreaker, leading a group of military ships, which were the first in history to complete the North East Passage from the Baltic to the Pacific Ocean.

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In the summer of 1937, setting off for ice reconnaissance in the Laptev Sea in a Dornie-Walh hydroplane, Cherevichny conducted research on flight conditions along the new air route YakutskVerkhoyansk. In February 1938, Cherevichny in a Shavrov-2 aircraft, as a member of an air group based onboard the icebreaker Murman, participated in an expedition rescuing the members of the first drifting station North Pole-1 headed by Ivan Papanin in the Greenland Sea. In the winter of 1939, Cherevichny completed a long-distance flight on the route Moscow-KolymaKrasnoyarsk in only 15 days. In 1939, Cherevichny carried out ice reconnaissance in a Consolidated aircraft over a vast area from the western coast of Novaya Zemlya to the New Siberian Islands. On August 3, 1939, he flew to the unstudied area surrounding the Pole of Inaccessibility, and reached the bearing of 79°10′ N 167°30′ E. In the following year, again in a Consolidated aircraft, he investigated an extensive area from the Barents Sea all the way to the East Siberian Sea. An aerial photosurvey of the ice was carried out, together with a detailed mapping of its distribution. In the northern part of the East Siberian Sea, the boundaries of the famous Great Siberian polynyas (areas of open water in sea ice) were traced. On July 12–13, 1940, Cherevichny once again completed a flight into the “blank spot” around the Pole of Inaccessibility, reaching the bearing 82°17′ N 170°00′ E. The aircraft was in constant flight for 22 hours and 15 minutes, covering a distance of over 4000 km. In August-September 1940, Cherevichny participated in a special hydrological expedition by the Arctic Research Institute (ARI) in the Laptev Sea onboard the vessel Akademik Shokalskiy. The aviasextant set up on Cherevichny’s aircraft allowed the ship’s location to be determined with great accuracy. In December 1940, onboard an SSSR-N-160 aircraft, Cherevichny opened a direct air connection between Moscow and Port Provideniya. On the basis of the high-latitude flights in 1939–1940, a plan was developed for a new airborne expedition to the Pole of Inaccessibility; Cherevichny and a group of those who agreed with him submitted this plan to the ARI. The expedition took place under the direction of Cherevichny in a TB-3 airplane in the spring of 1941. The aircraft, equipped as a scientific laboratory with a research team onboard, flew out of Moscow on March 5. The flight path lay through Amderma–Cape Zhelaniya (Novaya Zemlya)–Rudolf Island (Franz Josef Land), Cape Arkticheskiy (Severnaya Zemlya)–Cape Chelyuskin (Northern Taymyr)–Kotel’ny Island (New Siberian Islands) to Wrangel Island, selected as the base of the expedition. The ice reconnaissance was carried out along the

CHERNETSOV, VALERY entire route. In the period April 3–29, Cherevichny, with a scientific group onboard, completed three flights from Wrangel Island toward the Pole of Inaccessibility with landings on pack ice at predetermined places in order to carry out an array of research. Altogether, Cherevichny spent 144 hours in the air, covering a distance of 26,000 km. The method (Airborne High-Latitudinal Expeditions Sever (North)) of investigating High Arctic with the help of air expeditions using landings on pack ice, developed with Cherevichny’s participation, won wide acceptance in the USSR in the period 1948–1993. During World War II, Cherevichny continued his work in polar aviation. He occupied himself with ice research, carried cargo and passengers, and executed command military tasks. In October 1943, carrying out a military command assignment, Cherevichny completed a flight under conditions of approaching polar night and in inhospitable weather from Dikson to Tiksi. Along the way, for the first time in history, ice reconnaissance was carried out in the polar night. In 1945, Cherevichny completed a high-speed transArctic round-trip flight from Moscow to Chukotka. In 1948 and 1949, Cherevichny participated in Sever-2 and Sever-4 expeditions. On April 23, 1948, his aircraft landed on the geographic North Pole for the first time in history. “For heroic exploits, shown in carrying out the special assignment of the government in the Arctic,” Cherevichny was singled out with the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. In 1951–1952, Cherevichny in an LI-2 aircraft, with ice reconnaissance and aerial photography, participated in the high-latitudinal expedition Toros (Hummock) organized by the ARI in the area of Vilkitskiy Starit. In 1954, Cherevichny headed one of the aerial crews of the Sever-6 expedition, which landed research groups on drift ice in various places in the Arctic Basin. As one of the most experienced Arctic pilots, Cherevichny was involved in developing the program for aerial operations in the framework of the First Soviet Antarctic expedition. In 1956–1957, he commanded the aerial crew of the Antarctic expedition. After his return from Antarctica in 1958, Cherevichny participated in support for the drifting research stations Severny polius-6 and Severnyi polius-7 and continued to be active in polar aviation until 1961.

Biography Ivan Ivanovich Cherevichny was born on March 31, 1909 in the Kherson province of Ukraine. He was one of six children in a working-class family. He gained his pilot’s qualification in 1933 at the United Military

pilots and technicians school while serving in the Red Army, and then worked as an instructor in the Central Aviation School of Osoaviakhim (the Society for Assistance to Defense, Aviation and Chemical Development). His career as a polar pilot commenced in 1934 and lasted for 27 years. Cherevichny was married to Antonina Dmitrievna Cherevichnaya (Shibasheva) and had three children. He died on February 15, 1971 in Moscow and is buried in the Novodevichii cemetery. VERONIKA ZAKHAROVA See also Drifting Stations; North Pole Air Expedition, 1937 Further Reading Belov, Mikhail, Istoriya otkrytiya I osvoeniya Severnogo moskogo puti, 4. Nauchnoe I khozyaystvennoe osvoenie Sovetskogo Severa 1933–1945 [History of the discovery and development of the Northern Sea Route, 4. Scientific and economic exploitation of the Soviet North 1933–1945], Leningrad: Hydrometeorologicheskoe izdatelstvo, 1969 (in Russian) Cherevichny, Ivan, V nebe Antarktidy [In the sky of Antarctica], Moscow: Morskoy transport, 1963 (in Russian) Gratsianski, Alexey, Uroki Severa [Lessons of the North], Leningrad: Hydrometeoizdat, 1979 Morozov, Savva, Krylaty sledopy zapolyaria [Winged trackers of the Arctic], Moscow: Zhurnalistskoe izdatel’skoe agenstvo “ZhAG-VM”, 2000 Vodopianov, Mikhail, Druziya v nebe. Gody I liudi [Friends in the sky. Years and people], Moscow: Sovetskaya Rossiya, 1971

CHERNETSOV, VALERY Valery Nikolaevich Chernetsov was a 20th-century Russian archaeologist and ethnologist who worked in close contact with indigenous peoples, learned the Mansi language and some of their folk tales and customs, and was one of the first to study the culture and history of Ob-Ugric (Khanty and Mansi) and Samoyed (Nenets, Sel’kup) peoples. In 1925, at the age of 20, Chernetsov became acquainted with the ethnologist Vladimir Bogoraz, who convinced the talented young man to enter the ethnographic department of the geographic faculty of Leningrad University. During his student years, Chernetsov participated in several large expeditions: in 1925, to the Mansi of Lozva river; from June 1926 until April 1927 to the Mansi of Northern Sosva river, where he participated in the Arctic population census; and in 1927 on the rivers Tagil and Lozva, where he studied rock art and ethnography of the Mansi. From June 1928 until December 1929, Chernetsov participated in the expedition to Nenets of Yamal peninsula. On this expedition he studied ethnography, but also

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CHERNETSOV, VALERY made partial excavations of two settlements of Arctic hunters of the 9th–10th and 15th–16th centuries: Tiutey-sale and Haen-sale. While still a student he published an ethnographic article “Sacrifice of Voguls” (1927), with a detailed description of sacrifices to the main spirits of Mansi. In 1930, Chernetsov finished at Leningrad University with a specialty “ethnography of the Finno-Ugric peoples.” From 1930, Chernetsov worked at the Institute of the Peoples of North (Leningrad). Here he devoted his work to the creation of a Mansi written language, producing the first Mansi dictionary (1932), a Mansi grammar (1933), and a digest of Mansi fairy tales (1935). In this work he was assisted greatly by his wife Irina Chernetsova. In 1935, Chernetsov began work at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, where he headed the Siberian department. In those years he continued active expedition work. From 1931 till 1939, Chernetsov spent a total of 2.5 years among Mansi and Khanty, studying rock art of the Urals, archaeology, ethnography, folklore, and language of these peoples. During this time he perfected his understanding of the Mansi language, became their great friend, and was accepted in one of the tribes of Mansi under the name Lozum-hum (“Man from the river Lozva”). In 1940, he moved to Moscow and began work at the Institute of History of Material Culture (later, the Archaeological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR), where he worked until the end of his life. From this time, the main theme for him became archaeological studies. In his candidate dissertation “The basic stages of a history of Ob-region from most ancient times up to tenth century AD” (1942), he summarized analysis of the genesis of ancient cultures of northwestern Siberia in connection with the ethnogenesis of Khanty and Mansi. In 1946, he headed an expedition on the Taz river to study the medieval Russian city Mangazeya and collect ethnographic data about the Sel’kup people. His second wife Vanda Moshzinska, a Russian archaeologist, helped him assemble ethnographic materials on this expedition. Chernetsov’s archaeological studies were fruitful and widespread. His investigations covered areas of the North of Ob region (study of archaeological monuments in Salekhard), basins of Northern Sosva and Konda (work on a number of monuments), the Tobolsk region (excavation of the medieval cities Suzgun and Potchevash), the Omsk region (excavation of settlements of Bolshoy log and Besymyannoye), and the neighborhood of Tyumen (prospecting and excavation of monuments on Andreevskoye Lake). His theoretical heritage is very great and manysided. Chernetsov became the founder of Russian Uralistic studies—both in ethnography and in archae-

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ology. In the 1930s–1940s, the question of a lack of Khanty and Mansi clan division was actively debated by scientists. Chernetsov detected relics of a classic tribe in these peoples and has demonstrated its existence in the past. He devoted two large essays to this problem: “Fratrial device of the Ob-Ugrians society” (1939) and “To a history of tribal building among ObUgrians” (1947). He gave great attention to traditional beliefs—describing unknown rites, detecting relics of totemism and a cult of ancestors in the Bear Ceremony, and reconstructed folk performances about souls (according to which men had five souls, and women four). These problems are mirrored in works such as “Performance about soul of ObUgrians” (1959) and “Rites and ceremonies of ObUgrians, connected with a bear” (1965). Recently, the reconstruction of performances about souls has been disputed by some Russian ethnologists, who find the performances to be only about two or three souls. But it is necessary to note that the modern field material is much poorer than that which Chernetsov had in the 1930s–1950s. Chernetsov’s archaeological studies were devoted, basically, to the ethnogenesis of Ob-Ugric and Samodians. He made the first discovery of the settlements of the pre-Nenets population and demonstrated their involvement in the ethnogenesis of the Nenets. Having studied a number of burial grounds and other monuments, he described Ust-poluyskaya archaeological culture in Western Siberia and connected it with the Khanty and Mansi. He put forward the theory about forming these peoples on the basis of two components—aboriginal and nomadic settlers arriving from the south. Many works are devoted to these problems: “An essay of ethno-genesis of Ob-Ugrians” (1941), “An ancient history of Ob region” (1953), and so on. In the late 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, Chernetsov worked on the study of rock art in the Urals. This work resulted in two monographs, in 1964 and 1971, and at the beginning of 1970 he defended his doctoral dissertation “Rock drawings of Ural.” Chernetsov’s theories are now updated and concretized as additional archaeological evidence is being discovered; major provisions of his concepts now find complementary confirmations.

Biography Valery Nikolaevich Chernetsov was born on March 17, 1905 in Moscow in the family of an architect. He received an excellent education, taking a great interest in geography in his school years. After leaving school, in 1923–1925, he worked in Northern Ural as a radio operator of the Northern-Ural geodesic expedition. He married twice, first to Irina Chernetsova and then to

CHERSKII, IVAN Vanda Moshzinska. Valery Nikolaevich Chernetsov died on March 29, 1970 in Moscow. ALEXEY ZEN’KO Further Reading Chernetsov, V.N., “Concepts of the soul among the Ob Ugrians.” In Studies in Siberian Shamanism, edited by Henry N. Michael, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963 Chernetsov, V.N. & W. Moszynska, Prehistory of Western Siberia, edited by Henry N. Michael (translations from Russian Sources, no. 9), Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1974 Lukina, Nadezda (editor), Sources on Ethnography of Western Siberia, Tomsk: Tomsk University Press, 1987

CHERSKII, IVAN Ivan Dementievitch Cherskii was a geologist, paleontologist, and one of the founders of the field of evolutionary geomorphology. He was a gifted and self-educated person, who never graduated from university. He studied and described the landscapes and geomorphology of Siberia, the coasts of Lake Baikal, and adjacent territories. His works are still of fundamental importance for understanding the geomorphology of East Siberia. He also amassed a significant collection of quaternary mammals of the New Siberian Islands. Cherskii was interested in earth sciences, and began his research in geology and paleontology. During his initial research activity in Siberia, he made the acquaintance of the famous Russian geographer Grigory Potanin, who became his scientific adviser. In 1868, Cheskii met with academician Alexander von Middendorff, who was interested in the shell collection of Cherskii. The first paper published by Cherskii was devoted to phenology (the scientific study of the seasonal timing of plant growth) of the Omsk region. In 1869, Cherskii was exempted from further military service due to health problems, and in 1871 he moved to Irkutsk. He got a position in the Siberian branch of the Russian Geographical Society and continued his scientific work. Studying the geological features around Irkutsk, he especially noted the dramatic difference between the mountains in the northern and southern parts of the Irkut river valley. The rounded shape of the Khamar-Daban mountain ridge to the south stood in contrast to the sharp, high, rocky, and snow-covered mountains in the northern part of the valley. He studied the Nizneudinskaia cave in the East Sayan Mountains and amassed a collection of fossil mammals from the Quaternary deposits. According to paleo data collected by Cherskii, the territories close to Irkutsk were once populated by species now common in the far north of the country, such as lemmings

and northern deer. Unfortunately, during the fire of 1879 all his collections and field books were burned, together with the building of the Geographical Society in Irkutsk. From 1877 to 1880, Cherskii studied the coasts of Lake Baikal and regional geomorphology. He carried out a geological survey and compiled the detailed 1:420,000 map of the coastal zone, which was published in 1886 by the Russian Geographical and Mineralogical societies. Lake Baikal is located in a zone of high seismic activity, and is more than 1500 m deep in some parts. The origin of the lake is still poorly understood, and one hypothesis holds that it was formed as a result of an abrupt catastrophic geological event. Geomorphological data collected by Cherskii did not uphold this hypothesis, and instead provided empirical evidence that the lake was formed as a result of an evolutionary geological process, which began in the early Palaeozoic era and continues in the present. In 1881–1882, Cherskii studied the Selenga river basin and conducted meteorological observations in the Lower Tunguska region. In 1885, he was invited to the Russian Academy of Science and moved to St Petersburg. In that same year, he carried out a geological survey of the main trans-Siberian railway between Irkutsk and the Ural Mountains, and found common geomorphic features between the Urals and the coasts of Lake Baikal. Cherskii developed the systematic approach in geological studies, describing the stages of the evolution of landscapes, and the transformation of mountains from sharp to round-shaped. His ideas about the role of erosion in landscaping made a significant contribution to evolutionary geomorphology. Cherskii studied and compared the collections of the Quaternary fauna in the museums of the Russian Academy of Science, and in Moscow and St Petersburg universities. Mammoth and rhinoceros bones in these collections were found close to the remains of the northern deer and Arctic fox, tiger, maral deer and saiga antelope. It was not known how species that typically live in quite different climatic conditions could be found together in one place. In 1885–1886, the expeditions of Alexander von Bunge and Baron Edward von Toll collected additional samples from northern Yakutia (Sakha Republic) and Novosibirsk Islands. Cherskii analyzed all available fossil data and wrote a monograph about the remains of post-Tertiary mammals in Siberia, which was published in 1891. The presence of the remains of polar species in southern Siberia, as well as other contradictory findings from fossil data, could be explained by extensive glaciation of Siberia in the geological past. Such a hypothesis was proven realistic in subsequent scientific studies. Cherskii, however, was strongly against the idea of past glaciation in Siberia. Following A.I. Voeikov

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CHIRIKOV, ALEXEI he thought that, due to a high degree of continentality, the Siberian climate is extremely dry, and thus extensive glaciation is not likely even if the temperatures were much lower. One of his arguments was that he did not find periglacial features in the deposits along the coasts of Lake Baikal. In 1891, Cherskii headed the expedition of the Russian Academy of Science to Yakutia. In his first report from Yakutsk, he wrote about the high mountain range, which he discovered between the upper Indigirka and Koluma rivers. Later he sent, from Verhnekolumsk, a detailed report with a landscape map and a description of the four mountain ranges, which he crossed on the way from Yakutsk. Three of them located behind the Verkhoyansk range were previously unknown. In the spring of 1892, the expedition began to study the Kolyma river basin, until Cherskii died on July 7. His field books and collections from his last expedition were shipped to St Petersburg and presently are in the Academy of Science. Cherskii was honored for his research with three medals from the Russian Geographical Society. The system of mountain ranges in Yakutia, three of which Cherskii discovered in his last expedition, and one mountain ridge near Baikal, were named after him.

Biography Ivan Dementievitch Cherskii was born into a noble Lithuanian family on May 15, 1845 in Drissen district, Vitebsk province, Russia. He was orphaned early on in his life. Having left school in 1860, Cherskii continued his education in the Noble Institute in Vilno. After his involvement in the Polish rebellion in 1863–1864, he was expelled from the Institute and exiled to Siberian city Omsk, where he served as a soldier. He became a batman in the officer’s club and, with access to the library, spent much time reading and self-educating. After a while, he became a well-known researcher because of his natural gifts and endless patience. He explored East Siberia over a course of approximately 20 years. In 1877, Cherskii married a Siberian woman, Mavra Pavlovna Ivanova. In 1886, a book about his investigations of Lake Baikal was published. His son Aleksandr was born in 1879. The family moved to St Petersburg in 1885. Cherskii worked on the osteological collections of St Petersburg University, MilitaryMedical Academy and Geological Committee. As a result, in 1891 the monograph Opisanie Kollectsii Posletretichnjih Mlekopitajustchih… (Description of the Post Tertiary Mammals Set of Samples, Collected by New Siberian Expedition) was published by Academy of Science. A year later this book was published in German. In 1891, Cherskii left St Petersburg for the Koluma expedition. He died on July 7, 1892 on

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the Omolon tract close to Koluma River in Yakutia (Sakha Republic). MARINA BELOLUTSKAIA Further Reading Aldan-Semenov, A.I., Cherskii [Cherskii], Moskva: Moldaia gvardia, 1962 Lomakin, V.V., Geomopfologicheslie idei Cherskogo [Geomorphologic Ideas of Cherskii], Priroda, No. 4, 1950 Obruchev, S.V., Otkryutie Khrebta Cherskogo [Discovery of Cherskii Range], Nauchnoe slovo [scientific word], No. 1, 1929 ———, Istoria Geologicheskogo Issledovaniia Sibiri [History of Geological Exploration of Siberia], Moskva-Leningrad: Izd-vo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1934–1937 Obruchev, V.A., Ivan Dementjevich Cherskii, Ljudi Russkoi Nauki [People of Russian Science], Volume 1, MoskvaLeningrad: Gos. Izd-vo Phiziko-math.literaturji, 1962, pp. 38–45 Revzin, G.I., Podvig Zhizni Ivana Cherskogo [Heroic Life of Ivan Cherskii], Moskva-Leningrad: Izd-vo Glavsevmorputi, 1952 Zarin, V.V., Puteshestvia Marii Pavlovny Cherskoi [Travel of M.P. Cherskii], 1952

CHIRIKOV, ALEXEI Alexei Ilyich Chirikov was a Russian captain-commander, scientific seafarer, participant of the First Kamchatka expedition (1725–1730), and one of the organizers and leaders of the Second Kamchatka expedition (1733–1743). The First Kamchatka expedition (1725–1730) was organized by Peter I to answer the question of a land connection between Asia and America. After an overland expedition to Kamchatka where Bering built his ships at the coast, in 1728 the ship St Gabriel (under the command of Vitus Bering with Chirikov as second in command) passed the Gulf of Anadyr and then, following the coast north, charted the Cresta gulf and Preobrazheniya bay. The ship then passed from the mouth of the Kamchatka river through a strait (now known as the Bering Strait) to the Arctic Ocean as far north as 67°18′ N, where St Lawrence Island and, on the return route, Diomede island (in reality, two islands) were mapped. No land connection to North America was sighted. After returning to St Petersburg in 1730, Chirikov was ranked a captain-lieutenant, and in 1732 as a captain of the 3rd rank. From 1733 to 1741, as second in command to captain-commander Bering, leader of the Second Kamchatka expedition, Chirikov worked in one of the expedition’s groups that planned to reach the American coast, located east of Kamchatka. The Second Kamchatka expedition marked the beginning of research of the ice conditions of the Arctic Region. The

CHIRIKOV, ALEXEI northern branch of the expedition passed by sea or land along practically the entire Northern Sea Route from Arkhangel’sk up to Cape Bolshoy Baranov east of Kolyma. The eastern groups undertook navigation to the coast of Japan, to Kuril and Aleut islands, and to the coast of North America. After leaving Petropavlovsk in Avacha bay in June 1741 by parallel routes, the two packetships Bering’s St Peter and Chirikov’s St Paul became separated because of constant fog. Continuing the way, Chirikov, on the night of July 15–16 at 55°36′ N, became the first Russian to see the American coast: the Alexander archipelago on Alaska’s southeast coast was accepted by Chirikov as a continent. St Paul followed the American coast north for about 450 km, charting islands and the area of mountains of St Ilya or St Elias. After losing part of the crew and both the ship’s boats that were sent ashore to find fresh water, he turned back toward Kamchatka at 58°21′ N for resupplying. By August 1–3, they were the first Russians to see the Kenai peninsula and Afognak and Kodiak islands, and by September 5 they reached Umnak island (from the group of Aleutian islands). On September 9, 1741, they mapped Hells island, where for the first time he met with Aleuts. On September 22, he mapped the Agattu and Attu islands (in the Near Aleut island group). By this time, supplies of food and fresh water were dangerously low, many crew were dead or ill, and Chirikov himself was dangerously ill, giving command of the ship to Ivan Elagin. On October 10, 1741, St Paul returned to PetropavlovskKamchatsky, which had been the base of the Second Kamchatka expedition since 1740. The official report of Chirikov to the Admiralty Collegium on December 7, 1741, presenting the results of his navigation, was the first ever Russian description of the northwest coast of America and of the Aleutian islands. Following Bering and Chirikov, Russian industrialists in the east opened the way to unknown islands in the northern part of the Pacific Ocean and the coast of the American continent, forming the basis for an extensive network of Russian trading stations, settlements, and advanced posts in Alaska, and Russia’s claim on the northwest coast of North America. In June 1742, Bering had still not returned and Chirikov again sailed to the east, this time only reaching Attu island, named by Chirikov as St Fyodor (Theodor) island. The basic purpose of this second journey was to confirm the nature of the lands seen during the previous journey, which he had initially wrongly believed to be parts of a connected continent. On the return route he secondarily surveyed Bering and Copper islands on July 22–23, accepting them as one large island named in honor of St Iyulian. On July 1, he returned to Avacha bay at Petropavlovsk-

Kamchatsky, and the end of the Second Kamchatka expedition was marked by the return of the St Peter two months later. On August 16, 1742, Chirikov set out to return to Yakutsk via Okhotsk, and in 1744–1745 he traveled to Yeniseysk. Chirikov played an important role in the generalization of materials collected by Russian sailors and explorers. On May 10, 1746 under his management, the officers of the Second Kamchatka expedition, Dmitriy Ovzyn, Sofron Khitorvo, Ivan Elagin, Stepan Malygin, Dmitriy, and Khariton Laptev, completed the drawing up of “Maps of general Russian empire, northern and east coast, next to Arctic and East Siberian oceans with a part having been found through sea navigation of western American coast and islands of Yapon.” Chirikov, together with Elagin, also presented to the Admiralty Board a further map, where the mappings performed by the First and Second Kamchatka (or Great Northern) expeditions of the Pacific ocean, including the east coast of Far East, Aleut and Commander islands, Kuril ridge, part of Hokkaido island, and the coast of Northwest of America, were reflected. These charts and maps, produced by educated Navy officers on the basis of careful surveys, were a great improvement over existing maps, and charted almost Russia’s entire Arctic coastline.

Biography Alexei Chirikov was born in 1703. In 1715, he entered navigation school in Moscow. In 1716, he was transferred as gardemarin (a junior officer rank established in the Russian fleet in 1716 for pupils of the Naval Academy) to the St Petersburg Naval Academy. He graduated successfully in 1721 with excellent results in sciences and was raised to the rank of under-lieutenant. In 1722–1725, he taught navigation. On January 20, 1725, he gained the rank of lieutenant and was directed to join the First Kamchatka expedition of Vitus Bering. He became superintendent of the St Petersburg Naval Academy, and by September 5, 1747 he was ranked captain-commander. He died in Moscow in December 1748. ANNA SHISHIGINA See also Bering, Vitus; Second Kamchatka Expedition Further Reading Divin, V.A., Velikiy russkiy moreplavatel A.I. Chirikov, Moscow, 1953; as The Great Russian Seafarer ?.I. Chirikov, Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1993 Frost, A.W. (editor), Bering and Chirikov: The American Voyages and Their Impact, Anchorage, Alaska: Alaska Historical Society, 1992

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CHORIS CULTURE Lebedev, D.M., Plavanie A.I. Chirikova na pecketbote “Svyatoy Pavel” k poberezhjam Ameriki [Navigation of A.I. Chirikov with packetship St Paul to the coasts of America], Moscow: Izd-vo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1951 Pasezkiy, V.M., Russkie otkrytiya v Arktike [Russian opening in The Arctic Region], St Petersburg: Admiralteistvo, 2000 Pokrovskii, A. (editor), Ekspeditsiia beringa: sbornik dokumentov [The Bering Expeditions: collection of documents], Moscow, 1941

CHORIS CULTURE Choris is the name of an archaeological culture from northwestern Alaska dating to between about 3500 and 2500 years ago. It is regarded by many as a phase of the Arctic Small Tool Tradition, derived at least in part from Denbigh Flint Complex. The type site is Choris Peninsula in the southern portions of Kotzebue Sound, but other sites are known from Cape Krusenstern just north of Kotzebue Sound, Walakpa on the coast just south of Barrow, Onion Portage on the Kobuk River, Trail Creek Caves on Seward Peninsula (called Middle Trail Creek), and along the Noatak River. Little is yet known of Choris settlement patterns, except that, as evidenced at the type site, some Choris groups lived year round at the coast. This is the earliest evidence of full coastal life from any of the Arctic Small Tool Tradition complexes. The Choris house form is semisubterranean and oval in floor plan, which contrasts with the rectangular semi-subterranean house forms characteristic of all of the later Norton and postNorton cultures in northwestern Alaska. Three of the large oval houses were found at the type site and another smaller one at Onion Portage; all of the other known Choris sites lack semi-subterranean houses, but are rather characterized by campsites. The oval houses at the type site were large constructions with heavy interior logs for roof and wall supports. The interior arrangement of one of the three houses included a central hearth, but the other houses may have been heated and lighted by lamps. The large size of the houses suggests occupation by more than single families. The house at Onion Portage was a more flimsy elongated bent pole frame construction with a single large central hearth and a short entrance passageway along one long side. The cultural inventory of the Choris people is varied. It includes stone lamps, ground slate knife and ulu blades, a wide variety of chipped stone implements, and both plain and decorated organic artifacts. Many of the chipped stone implements in Choris are weapon points hafted directly to wooden spears, or insets hafted to antler heads. Stylistically, the small chipped stone weapon parts relate to the earlier Denbigh Flint Complex from the same region, but the other stone tools have few local predecessors. The ornamented

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organic artifacts include an ivory labret, or lip plug, which suggests cultural links to southwestern Alaska, an ivory human figurine, and amber beads. Of particular interest, pottery was introduced into the American Arctic by the Choris people. Pottery from earlier Choris campsites such as at Cape Krusenstern is primarily cord-marked, but the sherds are too small to determine vessel shape. Choris pottery from the type site, which dates to about 2600 years ago and is thus relatively late in the Choris sequence, includes fibertempered pottery vessels with round or conical bases. Their exterior surfaces were decorated with linear- and check-stamped designs. The time of Choris culture also marks a period in northwestern Alaskan prehistory when Denbigh Flintderived cultures began to differentiate regionally throughout northwest Alaska, especially in the Kotzebue Sound region. Reasons for this regionalization effort may be that global environmental changes of the period had produced a greater variability in the regional climate to which different local groups of post-Denbigh peoples had to adapt. On the other hand, at Walakpa and in the interior tundra regions of the Arctic Slope, Choris culture shows a greater continuity directly out of Denbigh. Depending on the region, the Choris people subsisted primarily on seals, caribou, and waterfowl. Curiously, even at the type site on the coast, caribou account for the majority of the faunal remains. DOUGLAS D. ANDERSON See also Arctic Small Tool Tradition; Denbigh Flint Culture; Giddings, Louis Further Reading Giddings, J.L., Ancient Men of the Arctic, New York: Knopf, 1965 Giddings, J.L. & D.D. Anderson, Beach Ridge Archeology of Cape Krusenstern, Washington, District of Columbia: Government Printing Office, 1986

CHUGACH MOUNTAINS The Chugach Mountains, Alaska, are centered near 61.5° N and 147° W. They form a 500 km crescent from just east of Anchorage to the St Elias Mountains and are about 50 km inland from Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska. The highest peak in the range is Mt Marcus Baker at 4016 m. Steep, rugged mountains with many active glaciers are typical of the region. The mountains had more extensive glaciers during the Pleistocene epoch. Geologic formations of Cretaceous and Upper Jurassic sediments occur extensively and Tertiary to Cretaceous intrusive rocks occur in the southeastern

CHUKCHI portion. There is isolated permafrost primarily on the northern slopes. A destructive March 1964 earthquake was centered at Miner’s Lake, west of Columbia Glacier, and resulted in a local land offset of 13 m. Streams are short and swift with their origins in glaciers. The large Copper River bisects the range east of Cordova. Lakes lie in ice-carved basins. The climate is heavily influenced by the proximity to the Pacific Ocean. Maritime influences dominate the southern half of the range while the northern slopes are more continental with colder winters, warmer summers, and less precipitation. Storms from the Gulf of Alaska produce heavy precipitation. Rain falls at lower elevations in summer, but snow is common throughout the range from October through May. At Snowshoe Lake (700 m elevation) on the north side of the mountains, the average January temperature is − 23°C, the July average is 12°C, and annual precipitation is 300 mm. At sea level on the more maritime south side of the mountains, the January and July averages at Valdez are −5°C and 13°C, respectively, and the average precipitation is 1660 mm. The average annual snowfall at Valdez is 7700 mm. Snowfall at higher elevations of the Chugach Mountains may be among the greatest in the world with an average of over 20,000 mm. Perennial snow exists above 1000 m elevation. The average annual snowfall at Thompson Pass (845 m elevation) is 14,010 mm, the greatest at any weather station in Alaska, and 24,750 mm fell in the winter of 1952–1953. The average annual precipitation in the mountains is 2000–4000 mm. Lower elevations below treeline at 200–600 m elevation are dominated by coniferous forests of Tsuga heterophylla (hemlock), Abies lasiocarpa (subalpine fir), and Picea sitchensis (Sitka spruce). Dwarf shrubs of Phyllodoce aleutica (mountain heath) and alpine tundra cover the upper slopes where glacial ice is absent. Moose, Dall’s sheep, mountain goat, brown bears, black bears, wolves, and smaller mammals live in the region and salmon are found in streams. There is a history of mining for gold, copper, lead, zinc, and silver, and significant reserves remain. Human habitation is limited to the lowest elevations surrounding the Chugach Mountains. The region is home to the Native Chugach and Eyak peoples. Captain James Cook explored Prince William Sound in 1778. The passes of the Chugach Mountains were traversed by miners after 1898 who sailed into Prince William Sound destined for the Klondike and Eagle gold fields. Copper mining was common in the region by the early 20th century. Valdez is the largest community in the region with a 2001 population of 4336 (Alaska Department of Community and Economic Development). The Trans-Alaska Pipeline carries oil from the Arctic Slope to Valdez across the Chugach

Mountains and the oil terminus provides many jobs in Valdez. THOMAS W. SCHMIDLIN See also Trans-Alaska Pipeline Further Reading Alaska Department of Community and Economic Development website: www.dced.state.ak.us Burns, L.E., Geology of the Chugach Mountains, Southcentral Alaska, Fairbanks: Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys, 1991 Nelson, Steven & Marti Miller, Assessment of Mineral Resource Tracts in the Chugach National Forest, Alaska, Open-File Report 00-026, Anchorage: US Geological Survey, 2000 Orth, Donald, Dictionary of Alaska Place Names, US Geological Survey Professional Paper 567, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1967 Simmerman, Nancy Lange, Alaska’s Parklands, The Complete Guide, Seattle: The Mountaineers, 1991 Sirkin, L. & S.J. Tuthill, “Late Pleistocene and Holocene deglaciation and environments of the southern Chugach Mountains, Alaska.” Geological Society of America Bulletin, 99(3), 1987: 376–384 Sturm, M., D.K. Hall, C.S. Benson & W.O. Field, “Non-climatic control of glacier-terminus fluctuations in the Wrangell and Chugach Mountains, Alaska, USA.” Journal of Glaciology, 37(127), 1991: 348–356

CHUKCHI The Chukchi live in the extreme northeastern part of the Siberian Arctic (Russia). According to the 1989 Soviet census, the Chukchi number 15,100, located mostly in the Chukchi Autonomous Okrug (12,000), and partly in northeastern Yakutia (1300) and northern Kamchatka (1500). Chukchi constitute the most numerous indigenous group of the autonomous region (okrug) of Chukotka, which was named after them. The English appellation “Chukchi” comes from the Russian designation Chukcha (singular), Chukchanka (feminine), Chukchi (plural), which is supposed to be a derivation of the herders’ ethnonym or self-name. Traditionally, Chukchi are divided into two groups, depending on their means of subsistence: nomadic reindeer herders who designate themselves by the ethnonym Chavchu (ch, is often pronounced s), and sea mammal hunters who use the appellation Ank’alyn (ank’y, the sea). As a people, Chukchi call themselves Lyg’oravetl’an (lyg, “by excellence,” “which is really ours,” and o’ravetl’an, a “human being”), sometimes translated as “real men.” The Chukchi language belongs to the Paleo-Asiatic, also called Paleo-Siberian, group. This classification links together languages that cannot be connected either to Uralic or to Altaic families. Within this category, linguists make a distinction between the

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CHUKCHI

Chukchi family stand by their canvas tent, Yanrakynnot, Chukotka. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

Chukchi-Kamchadal group, termed “luorawetlan” by Vladimir Il’ich Iokhel’son (Jochelson) and including the Chukchi, Koryak, and Itel’men languages. Koryak and Chukchi are closely related and almost mutually understandable. Their culture, social organization, and economy are also similar. The Chukchi language was considered the lingua franca in Chukotka until the beginning of the 20th century. In 1931, the State Committee on the North created a Latin transcription of the Chukchi language, originally oral, followed in 1937 by a Cyrillic transcription. Chukchi is an agglutinative language, with male- and female-specific rules of pronunciation (for instance, “r” becomes “s” or “ts” for women, as in rygryg/sygsyg—hair). Today, the use of Chukchi is decreasing with the growth of Russian. Chukchi people are one of the few indigenous populations of the Far North that slowly increased in the 18th century. As they were more isolated, they did not suffer as much as Koryak or Itel’men from successive epidemics brought by the Russians. The first official census of 1897 reported 11,751 people. Despite a slow decrease in population in the 1950s, the Chukchi population increased from the 1970s. Chukchi became a minority in their own territory in the 1930s: while in 1926, 93.4% of the inhabitants of Chukotka were natives, in 1937, only ten years later, they represented 47% of the total population. In 1989, they represented even less than 10% (Chukchi, 7.27%). However, as settlers have been leaving northeast Siberia since the 1990s, the proportion of natives has again increased (around 25% in 2001).

Society Chukchis used to be reindeer hunters; some of them, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, in contact with Siberian Yupik, settled on the seashore, while others,

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from the 17th century, started herding. Indeed, Chukchi constitute two different groups depending on their environment. On the coast, they traditionally live by sea mammal hunting (walrus, seal, and whale; in particular, bowhead whale), and in the tundra, they practice reindeer pastoralism, shifting their encampment according to the herds’ needs. This traditional way of life is still flourishing, but complementary modern jobs such as postmen, teachers, or accountants have recently appeared. Herders and hunters used to exchange the products of their work. Even today, people enjoy eating the meat obtained by the other group, and need such things as seal oil for lamps or reindeer skins for winter clothes. In some places, there is a modern revival of this sort of bartering. Chukchi nomadic herders live in a cylindrical and semiconical tent covered with reindeer skins, called iaranga. Until the middle of the 19th century, coastal Chukchi used to live in a semi-subterranean house made from the jaws and ribs of whale and covered with grass and earth. Later they developed the iaranga. A coastal village could be composed of 2–20 tents. Tents in herder camps stand in a straight line from north to south. The northernmost iaranga belongs to the “leader” of the encampment; today it belongs primarily to the brigadir, chief of the working group, and before the Soviet period it belonged to the ermech’yn, the man who possessed the majority of the herd. A nomadic camp can comprise three to five tents. Today, Chukchi live in Russian houses or apartments and even nomadic herders have a place to stay in the village. The nuclear family constitutes the basic social unit among Chukchi. The kinship system is patrilineal, with a bilateral tendency, and can be linked to the Eskimo type. The rule of residence is traditionally patrilocal and sometimes uxorilocal: when a family has no son, the husband may come to live in the bride’s house. Men could be polygamous. Marriages were also possible among herders and hunters.

Religion Chukchi practice a so-called familial shamanism, in which the shaman does not play a key role as a specialist. Seasonal rituals assure the safety of the herds and success in hunting. Shamanism is then built on a mutual and symmetrical relationship of exchange between humankind and the spirits of nature. Traditional ceremonies, today often abandoned in coastal villages, are still alive in many herding regions. The first campaigns to convert the people to Christianity began in 1815. Orthodoxy had little impact on Chukchi people. However, they accepted conversion in order to receive gifts such as white shirts

CHUKCHI and, the following year, when the shirts wore out, returned to be converted again. At the beginning of the 20th century, official statistics registered 6% of converted Chukchi, but missionaries claimed that even among converted people, some had no idea of orthodoxy. Since the 1990s, protestant proselytes have been particularly active, mostly in urban centers, where they work with elderly people or students far from their home villages.

History The origins of the Chukchi population are unclear, although they are presumed to have come from northern China and Mongolia. The first human occupation in Chukotka dates back 10,000 years: Chukchi are thought to have arrived after their Siberian Yupik ancestors. The first recorded mention of the Chukchi was in 1641–1642 in a report from Cossacks exploring the territories and trying to convince the indigenous people to pay the Russian yasak, a fur tax collected by the Czar. In the middle of the 17th century, Cossacks began to settle in the area. They built the fort of Nizhnekolymsk and the Anadyr fort in 1644 and 1648–1649, respectively. Chukchi are well known for their warlike spirit: they resisted Russian colonization and, at the same time, fought against their neighbors, particularly against the Koryak people. They assaulted the Koryak in order to capture their reindeer, and used their prisoners to take care of their herds. For instance, in 1738, 2000 Chukchi came to raid the Koryak near the Anadyr fort. Nevertheless, in some regions, Koryak and Chukchi joined forces, as for instance in the attack on Nizhnekamchatsk fort in 1746. In the 1780s, Chukchi finally stopped raiding the Koryak. The Russians failed at imposing the fur tax on the Chukchi. They led several assaults on them: the first mention of it was made in 1690, when V. Kuznetsov fought Koryak and Chukchi, and was killed. This campaign was followed by those of S. Chernyshchevkii in 1701, I. Lokosov in 1709, A. Shestakov in 1729, and Major Pavlutskii in 1730–1731 and 1744–1747. Major Pavlutskii was notorious for his cruelty: in one battle, he is reported to have killed 450 Chukchi, a figure that may be slightly exaggerated. His troops were composed of Russians, Koryak, and Yukagirs. Used to the traditional practice of voluntary death, Chukchi would rather kill themselves and their families than surrender. These wars ended with the killing of Pavlutskii. These campaigns were expensive and took place in an area where furs were scarce. When Catherine II acceded to the throne, she decided to abandon the Anadyr fort in 1764. In 1822, the Statute of Alien

Administration in Siberia relieved Chukchi from all tax obligations, as they were categorized as “not completely dependent” people. They could voluntarily pay a tribute, which they did at the annual fairs. But although this was registered as a tax, it was more an unequal and ritual exchange of gifts between Chukchi and Russian traders: Russians used to give more expensive presents in order to attract them back to the next fair. Indeed, by the end of the 18th century, the relationships between Russians and Chukchi were characterized by the establishment of trade. The first market, on the Aniui River, was established in 1788. This trade was necessary for both groups; Russians needed skins and reindeer meat while the Chukchi wanted tea, tobacco, and sugar. In the early years of the 19th century, herders extended their territories. They spread west and south on Yukagir and Koryak settlements. In the 1820s, American traders and whalers appeared in Chukotka. Chukchi developed even closer economic relationships with them than with Russians. The Chukchi language still uses some English words today such as “soap” (sop) or “okay” (oki). Waldemar Bogoraz (1865–1936), who had been exiled in the 1880s in northeastern Siberia for political reasons, wrote the most comprehensive monograph on the Chukchi. He took part in several scientific expeditions, among them the Jesup North Pacific Expedition (1900–1901), in which he collected valuable ethnographic data. In the beginning of the Soviet period, colonization intensified. In the 1930s, traditional herding and hunting was progressively organized in collective farms, which became the basic social unit, divided into work brigades. Privately owned reindeers were to be appropriated by the state. Several herdsmen tried to escape and went further into the tundra, but were finally arrested or killed. Herding and hunting was considered as any other kind of economic area and was subjected to centralized planning, disregarding native knowledge and practice. Collectivization was implemented first among coastal Chukchi: in 1939, 95% of hunters worked in a kolkhoze, whereas almost 90% of reindeer were still privately owned in 1941. However, by the 1950s, the majority of reindeer herds became state-owned. As in every region of Siberia, shamans were arrested and religious life was forbidden. Children were sent to boarding school, where they were to learn how to become Soviet citizens, and eventually lost their traditional way of life.

Contemporary Society In the post-Soviet period (after 1991), a program of privatization was launched in 1992. Collective farms were privatized, although nothing prepared the

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CHUKCHI AUTONOMOUS OKRUG (CHUKOTKA) farmers for this change. Farms had to be viable and pay regular salaries, but some did not have any transport equipment for meat production. Since 1999, farms have been re-nationalized. Reindeer pastoralism suffered dramatically from these constant and inconsistent changes. Whereas in 1991, after a small decrease, there were still 465,000 reindeer, less than 100,000 remained in 2001. Modern Chukchi society is not homogeneous: the population is divided among coastal villages, tundra encampments, and herder villages, but there are also urban settlements. In 1990, the association of LesserNumbered Peoples of Chukotka was created, representing all the minorities of the region. Small associations have been founded dealing with different issues, such as Chychetkin Vetgav (“native word”), which attempts to revive the use of Chukchi language and Doverie (“confidence”), which deals with the problem of alcoholism. Contemporary Chukchi authors, such as Yuri Rytkheu, Valentina Veqet, or Ivan Omruvié, promote an understanding of Chukchi life, and their works have been translated into foreign languages. VIRGINIE VATÉ See also Chukchi Autonomous Okrug (Chukotka); Chukchi-Kamchadal Languages; Collectivization; Iokhel’son, Vladimir Il’ich; Koryak; Reindeer Pastoralism; Rytkheu, Yuri Further Reading Antropova, V.V. & V.G. Kuznetsova, “The Chukchi.” In The Peoples of Siberia, edited by M.G. Levin & L.P. Potapov, from the 1956 edition in Russian Narody Sibiri, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964 Bogoras, W., The Chukchee, The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, New York: G. E. Stechert, Leiden: Brill, 1904; reprinted New York: AMS Press, 1975 Fitzhugh, W.W & A. Crowell (editors), Crossroads of Continents, Cultures of Siberia and Alaska, Kingsport: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988 Forsyth, J., A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia’s North Asian Colony (1581–1990), Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992 Gray, P.A., “Chukotkan reindeer husbandry in the post socialist transition.” Polar Research, 19(1) (2000) Jakobson, R., “The Paleosiberian languages.” American Anthropologist, 44(4) (1942): 601–620 Krupnik, I.I., Arctic Adaptations: Native Whalers and Reindeer Herders of Northern Eurasia, Hanover: University Press of New England, 1993 Krupnik, I.I. & W.W. Fitzhugh (editors), Gateways. Exploring the Legacy of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, 1897–1902, Contribution to Circumpolar Anthropology 1, Washington, District of Columbia: Arctic Studies Center, 2001 Schweitzer, P.P. & P.A. Gray, “The Chukchi and the Siberian Yupiit of the Russian Far East.” In Endangered Peoples of the Arctic: Struggles to Survive and Thrive, edited by M.R. Milton, Freeman, Westport: Greenwood Press, 2000

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Turaev, V.A. & M.Ia. Zhornitaskaia, “Chukchi.” In Narody Rossii, entsyklopediia, edited by V.A. Tishkov, Moskva: Bol’shaia Rossiiskaia Entsyklopediia, 1994 Vakhtin, Nikolai, “Native Peoples of the Russian Far North.” In Polar Peoples: Self Determination and Development, edited by Mark Nuttall, London: Minority Rights Group, 1994 Vdovin, I.S., Ocherki istorii i etnografii Chukchei, MoskvaLeningrad: Nauka, 1965 Znamenski, A.A., “‘Vague sense of belonging to the Russian Empire’: the reindeer Chukchi’s status in nineteenth Century northeastern Siberia.” Arctic Anthropology, 36(1–2) (1999): 19–36

CHUKCHI AUTONOMOUS OKRUG (CHUKOTKA) Chukchi Autonomous Okrug is the most northeasterly region of the Russian Federation, a territory of 737,700 km2 located between 62° N and 72° N and separated from Alaska by the Bering Strait, a distance of 40 km at its narrowest. Over half of Chukotka is north of the Arctic Circle, and it shares land borders with the Sakha Republic, Magadan Oblast’, and the Koryak Autonomous Okrug.

Land and Resources Chukotka’s climate is severe, with annual average temperatures ranging from −4.1°C to −14.0°C, and winter temperatures reaching −45°C in coastal areas and −60°C inland. Located on the edge of the Eurasian landmass and on the Pacific Ocean, weather conditions are highly changeable. Chukotka’s eastern coast on the Bering Sea is the windiest region in Russia, with average winds above 15 m s−1 for 5.5 months a year. Annual storms bring sustained winds over 40 m s−1 in coastal areas, and the highest recorded winds have reached 80 m s−1 (Kotov, 1995). Low mountain ranges cover most of Chukotka’s territory, dominated by the Aniusk-Chukotka uplands, which separate the Pacific and Arctic Ocean basins. The entire okrug is within the permafrost zone, and the Anadyr River basin is the largest lowland region. Chukotka has proven deposits of gold, silver, platinum, tin, tungsten, mercury, uranium, and other nonferrous metals. There are potentially large deposits of oil and gas in the okrug, and the maritime shelf of the Bering and East Siberian seas continues to be the subject of large-scale hydrocarbon exploration. Domestic deposits of high-grade coal and natural gas are exploited for domestic energy generation. Chukotka’s vegetation zones range from transitional northern taiga in the southeast interior to high tundra along the north and northeastern coasts. Over 900 plant species, including over 400 species of moss and lichen, are native to the okrug.

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Chukotka is a major summer nesting territory for migratory birds with wintering grounds in both the western and eastern hemispheres. The Bering Sea and relatively untouched inland water systems support a very rich variety of fish and shellfish, including varieties of salmon. Larger native species include polar and brown bears, wolves, wolverines, polar fox, and elk, while species of walrus, seal, and whale migrate through coastal waters. Large herds of domesticated reindeer have traditionally migrated within the territory.

Population In 2003, there were approximately 65,000 registered residents in Chukotka; however, the population has fluctuated dramatically since World War II. At the time of the 1989 Soviet census, the civilian population reached a peak of 164,700, not including large numbers of military personnel. Since then, Chukotka has experienced the highest rate of outmigration of any subject in the Russian Federation. In 2003, the population density was roughly 0.085 per square kilometer and falling. Official population statistics typically overstate the actual population, as many registered residents in fact reside outside Chukotka: the difference may be as high as 15% . However, increasing numbers of nonregistered shift laborers and specialists now live in the okrug temporarily. The indigenous population presently comprises 22% of the population, a growing proportion as mainly nonindigenous residents migrate out (Goskomstat, 2002). Over 70% of the population live in urban areas, including the okrug capital, Anadyr (population about 7000 in 2002), at the mouth of the Anadyr River on the Bering Sea, and a series of Soviet-built industrial settlements: Pevek, Bilibino, Egvekinot, Ugolnye Kopi,

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Location and main cities and rivers in the Chukchi Autonomous Okrug.

and Provideniya. Most town-dwellers are nonindigenous settlers and their descendants, mostly Russians, Ukrainians, and Byelorussians, but also migrants from the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Baltics. While natives are migrating to urban centers, the rural population remains mostly indigenous. The Chukchi are the largest indigenous group, living in inland reindeerherding and coastal sea-mammal hunting communities. There is also a significant population of Yupik (Eskimosy) in settlements along the Bering Strait, as well as Even, Koryak, and Chuvan, the Métis descendants of early Cossack settlers.

Government and Education Since seceding from Magadan Oblast’ in June 1992, the Chukchi Autonomous Okrug has been an independent subject of the Russian Federation, with an elected governor and legislative assembly, or Duma. Roman Abramovich has been governor since January 2001. The Duma has powers of budgetary approval and must ratify okrug laws, but in practice administrative power resides with the governor’s administration. Chukotka has been represented in the federal Duma by Vladimir Etylin, a veteran Chukchi political leader, since 2001. There is little independent political activity in Chukotka, partly an outcome of the policies of Abramovich’s predecessor, Alexander Nazarov (1992–2000). The only active political party in 2003 was the federally sponsored Unity Party, which began operations in 2002 on the initiative of members of the okrug government. However, there are native organizations with a growing record of independence, including the Chukotka Indigenous Peoples Association and the Association of Marine Mammal

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CHUKCHI AUTONOMOUS OKRUG (CHUKOTKA) Hunters of Chukotka. Local media, including the regional newspaper Krainyi Sever, local television programming, and two local radio stations, are not a forum for political debate and criticism. Chukotka is considered a closed border zone, and the Federal Security Service (FSB) controls access for both Russians and foreigners through a special permit system. Secondary education in Chukotka is provided in major towns, but to complete the state-mandated nine years of schooling, rural children are usually compelled to attend residential schools away from their communities. Some postsecondary education opportunities exist, including training in a number of vocational institutes in Anadyr; however, Chukotka is the only Federation Subject without a university. Heavy investment in education since 2001 is enhancing secondary schooling and improving vocational training, and a new vocational college opened in Anadyr in 2003.

Economy Chukotka’s economy in the late Soviet period was based on mineral extraction, fishing and traditional hunting, and reindeer herding, but secession from Magadan Oblast’ and the effects of Russia’s economic collapse sent the okrug into deep decline. By 2000, Chukotka’s living standards were the second-most depressed in Russia after Chechnya. At the time of governor Abramovich’s 2001 inauguration, government debt exceeded the annual budget by four times and okrug assets had dropped in value by over 90% in a decade. Reindeer herds had dropped from half a million head in 1990 to below 100,000. In the 1990s, as its productive enterprises closed, Chukotka’s economy became almost entirely reliant on federal subsidies. Governor Roman Abramovich is one of Russia’s leading billionaire “oligarchs,” with interests in oil and gas, aluminum, real estate, airlines, and food production. Beginning in 2001, his companies invested over US$200 million a year in Chukotka on infrastructure and budget support, transforming the lives of Chukotka’s small population. Entire native settlements have been rebuilt, borrowing techniques and expertise from the Canadian North. Former state agricultural enterprises (sovkhozy) are the channel for investment in the traditional economy: mainly reindeer herding and marine mammal hunting. Anadyr is the focus of major infrastructural investment, renewing energy generation, transport facilities and public works, and hotels, government offices, and cultural and sports facilities have been built. Recent economic reforms have primarily sought to cut costs and reduce debt rather than open up new

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sources of revenue. The administration’s assessment is that Chukotka’s population remains too large and expensive to support, there are few viable economic exports, and the okrug will continue to rely on subsidies. “Cost economy measures” include closing the “unpromising settlements” of Beringovsky, Shakhtersky, and Mys Shmidt and funding the resettlement of thousands of residents to regions of central Russia. The administration’s target population is 30,000–40,000, almost half the current figure. Chukotka’s economic future hinges on the exploitation of its mineral wealth, including gold and silver mining and oil and gas extraction, fishing in the Bering Sea, and possibly tourism. Limited gold mining in surface deposits is ongoing, and in late 2002 a Canadian company bought a major stake in the Kupol subsurface gold and silver deposit in west-central Chukotka, the okrug’s first investment by a foreign company. Oil and gas exploration on the Bering Sea shelf may yield results, but the sea-ice conditions and weather would make production very expensive. Most of Chukotka’s present industrial infrastructure consists of coal mining and electricity generation, the capacity of which is largely unused, while the lack of transport infrastructure and the okrug’s extreme isolation make economic development very costly. Tourism, which might be expected to capitalize on Chukotka’s isolation and pristine expanses, is hindered by the bureaucratic restrictions of the border regime, high travel costs, and a complete lack of local experience. The traditional economy, including reindeer herding, is expected to require large state subsidies even after its recovery.

History Archaeological evidence suggests a human presence on the Chukotka peninsula before the disappearance of the Bering land bridge, which subsided 10,000 years ago, with finds dating to 70,000–50,000 BC. However, remains of the first known coastal marine mammal hunting cultures date to roughly 1400 BC. Inland Chukchi, Yukagir, Koryak, and Even moved to reindeer husbandry from subsistence hunting slightly later, possibly in the first or second centuries AD (Dikov, 1989). Semyon Dezhnev, a Cossack explorer, reached Chukotka by ship in 1648 and established a small fort on the upper Anadyr River, in the territory of the Chuwan Yukagir. By the early 18th century, however, the hostility of the inland and coastal Chukchi further east and the indifference of the Russian state had driven the European presence out of the region. The Chukchi expanded their territory and herds to fill the vacuum left by the Cossack invasions and subsequent

CHUKCHI AUTONOMOUS OKRUG (CHUKOTKA) retreat, and only in the late 19th century did Russian missionaries and traders return to Chukotka. Meanwhile, along the Arctic and Bering seas, American whalers and traders established relationships with the Yupik and Chukchi, which by the turn of the century threatened the sovereignty of the Russian state, in its own estimation. Communist control was established in Chukotka’s settlements by 1923, although until 1950 the European population was a small minority and the first efforts at collectivization began only in 1941. Only in 1955 were all Chukotka’s indigenous peoples fully institutionalized in collective farms; many Chukchi herders violently resisted the collectivization of reindeer herds and were suppressed by NKVD (secret police) troops. The Soviet industrialization of Chukotka occurred in roughly two phases: by forced labor until 1956 and by voluntary labor thereafter. Prisoners of the gulag system were used to mine uranium, tin, tungsten, and gold, and to build the port towns of Egvekinot and Pevek. After Stalin’s death in 1953, Soviet authorities were compelled to offer an array of “northern benefits” to attract voluntary labor to Chukotka’s harsh conditions: high pay, long holidays, early retirement and, with time, better living conditions in northern towns than in central Russia. Chukotka, then part of Magadan Oblast’, produced tin, tungsten, gold, and fish for the Soviet economy, although it is doubtful that the region contributed more wealth than was invested in the effort to settle and industrialize it. Chukotka, Alaska’s neighbor, was also a strategic outpost during the Cold War and heavily militarized. The indigenous population was both subject to policies of “enlightenment” and an adjunct to the industrialization effort, supplying settlers with meat and fish. In the postwar period, Soviet authorities implemented a series of “rationalizing” measures, including amalgamating traditional settlements into larger towns and forcing nomadic herders to settle, creating large state agricultural enterprises (sovkhozy) and institutionalizing native children in residential homes. In 1991, Alexander Nazarov was appointed the head of Chukotka’s administration, and he engineered the secession of the Chukchi Autonomous Okrug from Magadan in June 1992. Nazarov claimed that Magadan stifled the development of the okrug by monopolizing revenues, especially those from gold mining. However, Chukotka proved particularly vulnerable to Russia’s collapse, and the 1990s witnessed an exodus of skilled labor from the okrug, the failure of shipping deliveries upon which Chukotka’s isolated communities relied, and the liquidation of state enterprises. Poor governance compounded Chukotka’s crisis. Federal loans to renew Chukotka’s gold-mining sector disappeared and the Nazarov administration

introduced a virtual barter economy, withholding budget funds disbursed by Moscow. By the late 1990s, Chukotka was suffering a major humanitarian disaster, with starvation in the settlements, high suicide rates, and epidemic alcoholism, while the administration supported a professional football team in Moscow. Meanwhile, access to the okrug for Russians and foreigners alike was strictly controlled, and independent organizations, many based within the indigenous community, were harassed and controlled by state structures. Roman Abramovich, a Moscow oil magnate who became Chukotka’s Federal Duma representative, in 1999, won gubernatorial elections in December 2000 in a landslide victory against Nazarov. His administration promised to repair the damage inflicted on Chukotkans and “return a normal life” to the okrug. Abramovich’s companies have invested heavily in infrastructure, and support virtually the entire okrug budget. He has financed the departure of many longterm residents trapped in Chukotka during the crisis. His rural development programs aim to resurrect the traditional indigenous economy by returning to the Soviet sovkhoz model, while almost completely rebuilding indigenous settlements. The administration is also trying to create sources of revenue within the okrug, and secured the first major foreign investment in late 2002 from a Canadian gold-mining company. The okrug’s long-term economic future is not secure, however; Abramovich has promised not to run for a second term in 2004 and he warns that without his own charity, the okrug remains insolvent and a hostage to future federal subsidies. Consequently, reunification with former parent Magadan Oblast’ is a distinct possibility. NIOBE THOMPSON See also Anadyr; Bilibino; Chukchi; Chukotskoya Range; Dezhnev, Semyon; Pevek; Provideniya; Siberian (Chukotkan Yupik) Further Reading Baker, Peter, “An unlikely savior on the tundra: a Russian tycoon adopts abandoned Arctic region, but why?” Washington Post Foreign Service, March 2, 2001, p. A01 Bogoras, Waldemar (Bogoraz, Vladimir), 1904–9, The Chukchee, American Museum of Natural History Memoirs 11, Jesup North Pacific Expedition Publications, Volume 7, 1911 Dikov, N.N., Istoriia Chukotki, Moscow: Mysl’, 1989 Forsyth, James, A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia’s North Asian Colony 1581–1990, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992 Kertulla, Anna M., Antler on the Sea: The Yupik and Chukchi of the Russian Far East, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000 Kotov, A.N. (editor), Chukotka: prirodno-ekonomicheskii ocherk, Moscow: Art-Liteks, 1995

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CHUKCHI PLATEAU Krupnik, Igor & Nikolai Vakhtin, “In the ‘House of Dismay’: Knowledge, Culture, and Post-Soviet Politics in Chukotka, 1995–96.” In People and the Land: Pathways to Reform in Post-Soviet Siberia, edited by Erich Kasten, Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 2002 Romriell, Lucas, “On the road, tycoon touts Chukotka’s potential.” The Russia Journal, RJ Weekly Reports, Issue 17, May 4, 2001 Stephan, John J., The Russian Far East: A History, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1994 Znamenski, Andrei A. “‘Vague sense of belonging to the Russian Empire’: the reindeer Chukchi’s status in nineteenth century Northeastern Russia.” Arctic Anthropology, 36(1–2) (1999): 19–36

The shallow bottom of the Chukchi Sea is evidently a peneplain, formed on the sunken structure that connects the Verkhoyansk-Chukchi orogenic belt with the Brooks Range in Alaska, and also with Wrangel Island and Gerald Island. This Bering-Chukchi platform or land bridge is believed to have sunk beneath sea level at the end of the Pliocene, about one million years ago. VALERY MIT’KO See also Canadian Basin; Chukchi Sea Further Reading

CHUKCHI PLATEAU The submarine Chukchi Plateau is a topographic high measuring about 600 by 700 km situated to the north of the East Siberian shelf in the Canadian Basin (see the bathymetric map in Arctic Ocean). This plateau constitutes a north-trending extension of continental crust into the ocean basin from the Chukchi continental margin with a width of 200 km. The plateau rises steeply from the deep ocean floor and has a truncated and divided peak, which has apparently been eroded by iceberg keels during Pleistocene glaciation. The Chukchi Plateau has steep flanks of more than 1000 m, at angles of up to 45°. The highest points over the plateau are two flat ridges, the Chukchi Cap and Northwind Ridge, at depths of 600 and 1800 m, respectively. The foot of the Chukchi Plateau is defined at the abyssal depths of the bordering Mendeleev Basin (3200 m deep), Chukchi Basin (2200 m), and Northwind Basin (2000 m). The relatively small (150×250 km) Chukchi Basin separates the Mendeleev and Chukchi ridges. The Chukchi Plateau, together with the bordering Chukchi and Northwind basins, separates the Mendeleev and Northwind ridges. However, in spite of differences in their bathymetric level (up to 1000 m), the three ridges are morphologically related to the continental edge of Eurasia, and to the north of the Chukchi Basin form a connected system of crustal blocks, separated only by the narrow spur valley from the Chukchi Basin to the Mendeleev Basin. The slopes of plateaus in the Chukchi Basin are divided by canyons, forming a radial-centripetal pattern. This is a common feature of the Mendeleev and Chukchi plateaus. On this basis, both plateaus can be considered not as isolated edge plateaus, but as a common topographic system of residual relief. This system, together with the Chukchi Basin, is the natural continuation of the continental edge into the Arctic Basin. According to seismic data, the continental shelf of the Chukchi Sea represents continental crust, the thickness of which reaches 30 km here.

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Gorbatskiy, G.V., Physicogeographical–Zoning of Arctic, Volume 3, Arctic Basin, Leningrad: Leningrad University Publishing House, 1973 Gramberg, I.S. (editor), Orographic Map of Arctic Basin. 1:5000000, Helsinki: Karttaneskus, 1995 Gramberg, I.S. & G.D. Naryshkin, Peculiarities of the Arctic deep-water basin’s ground. SPb, VNII Okenologiya, 2000 (in Russian) Grantz, A., D.C. McAdoo P.E. Hart & S.D. Lewis, “Structure and origin of the Chukchi borderland, Amerasia Basin, Arctic Ocean, from seismic reflection and marine and satellite gravity data [abstr.]. EOS,” 80(46) (Suppl.) (1999): 99 Miller, E.L., A. Grantz & S.L. Klemperer(editors), Tectonic Evolution of the Bering Shelf-Chukchi Sea-Arctic Margin and Adjacent Landmasses, Geological Society of America Special Paper 360, 2002 Perry, R.K., H.S. Fleming, J.R. Weber, Y. Kristofferson, J.K. Hall, A. Grantz & G.L. Johnson, Bathymetry of the Arctic Ocean; Map 1:4,704,075, Washington: Naval Research Laboratory, 1985 Sweeney J.F., J.R. Weber & S.M. Blasco, “Continental ridges in the Arctic Ocean: Lorex constraints.” Tectonophysics, 89 (1982): 217–238

CHUKCHI SEA The Chukchi Sea is located east of the East Siberian Sea between Wrangel Island to the west and Barrow Cape in Alaska to the east; from north to south it is limited by the outer continental shelf boundary (approximately 75° latitude at the longitude of Wrangel Island and 72° near Barrow Cape). It has an area of 590,000 km2 and a volume of 45,500 km3. The sea is relatively shallow, with a wide continental shelf and an average depth of 77 m. The coastline has many small bays and gulfs. The climate is extreme with average winter temperatures of −21°C in the south and −27°C in the north, and minimum temperatures reaching −46°C. The average temperature in July is 2°C in the north and 6°C in the south. Arctic waters enter the Chukchi Sea through Long Strait, which divides Wrangel Island and Gerald Island from the mainland. Cold waters also enter episodically from the West Siberian Sea via Barrow Canyon.

CHUKCHI-KAMCHADAL LANGUAGES These waters bring a lot of ice and form a cold current, which flows by the northern coast of Chukchi and enters the western part of the Bering Strait and then the Bering Sea. On the southern Chukchi Sea, Pacific waters enter via the Bering Strait (and particularly from Kotzebue Sound). These waters are relatively warm (+4°C to 12°C) with low salinity, and are the reason why Chukchi Sea remains ice-free from midJune to October with surface waters reaching 7°C and higher. In general, the Chukchi Sea differs from the local seas by melting of its ice cover, which leads to a low salinity of the water below. There are three main pathways for the warm water pouring into the southern part of Chukchi Sea. Most moves to the area of Barrow Cape (Alaska branch), one part goes from the Gerald Island (Gerald branch), and the other one moves to the Long Strait passing to the north of the cold Chukchi stream flowing in the opposite direction (Longa branch). Here the mix of cold and warm streams forms vortices that make the ice situation more complicated and can cause chokepoints. Deep currents in the Long Strait may pass in the direction opposite to the movement of ice cover and the layer of water that lies beneath, which are influenced by local winds. The most difficult shipping conditions are found in Long Strait, because of ice jams and complicated tides along the strait due to the half-daily tides coming from the west. Tides in the Chukchi Sea are generally small (1.15 m near Barrow Cape) and are determined by the Atlantic Ocean. The influence of the Pacific Ocean is not large because of the closeness of Bering Strait. Choppiness is determined by the atmospheric circulation in the eastern sector of the Arctic. Northern and northwestern winds dominate in summer with average speeds of 5–6 m s−1 forming choppiness in the same direction. Sometimes southern and southeastern winds are formed in summer and autumn under the influence of the Pacific Ocean. Storms are infrequent, and can last 1–4 days per month in summer, and 7–9 days and sometimes more in November. Ice conditions are changeable. In practice, ice covers the sea during the year, although in summer southern districts can be totally free of ice. The sea floor is mostly at a depth of 40–60 m, approaching 100 m in the northern part. It is crossed by two large canyons—Gerald and Barrow—whose depths are about 100 m. Bottom relief is generally flat, with microrelief of different types formed by different factors including bottom ice. The bottom sediment is a thin layer of loose silt, sand, and gravel, reaching 10–12 m in the eastern part. In other parts sediment is confined to small trenches. Loose sediments reach 30 m and more (up to 200 m) at the border with the Bosphor Sea. The crustal structure is continental and part of the Bering-Chukchi platform uniting the Asian and North

American continents. According to a number of researchers, sea covered the land bridge between Siberia and Alaska during the Holocene after glaciers of the last Ice Age melted, and a modest sea level rise is still taking place. Geophysical surveys have proved that the crust of the Chukchi shelf is continental, gravitational anomalies at the shelf being slightly positive. Parallel to the Alaska coast, a zone of intense magnetic anomalies crosses the Chukchi shelf. The North Chukchi basin has a high potential for oil and gas by analogy with Alaska’s North Slope. The passive-margin sediments here are more than 8 km thick and are highly favorable for petroleum. Offshore oil exploration and exploratory drilling have been under way since the 1990s. The Chukchi Sea differs from the other polar seas in its relative richness of flora and fauna due to the warm waters from the Bering Strait that carry large amounts of nutrients. There are walruses, ringed seals, polar bears, gray and bowhead whales, cod, and salmon. In summertime on the coast, there are ducks, geese, eider-ducks, seagulls, loons, and guillemots. VALERY MIT’KO See also Arctic Ocean; Bering Strait; Chukchi Plateau; East Siberian Sea Further Reading Dobrovol’skiy, A.d. & B.S. Zalogin, Seas of the USSR, Moscow: Moscow University, 1982, p. 192 Fairbridge, Rhodes W. (editor), “Chukchi Sea.” In Encyclopedia of Oceanography, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1966 Gorbatskiy, G.V., Physicogeographical Zoning of Arctic, Volume 2, The Belt of Distant Seas with Islands. Leningrad: Leningrad University Publishing House, 1973 Gramberg, I.S. (editor), Orographic Map of Arctic Basin. 1:5000000, Helsinki: Karttaneskus, 1995 Miller, E.L., A. Grantz & S.L. Klemperer (editors), Tectonic Evolution of the Bering Shelf-Chukchi Sea-Arctic Margin and Adjacent Landmasses, Geological Society of America Special Paper 360, 2002 Musatov, E.E., The Russian Arctic. The Arctic on the Threshold of the Third Millennium, Moscow: Nauka, 2000 Vize, V.Yu., Seas of the Soviet Arctic: Novels on the History of Investigation (3rd edition), Moscow: Glavsevmorput, 1948 (in Russian) Weingartner, T.J., D.J. Cavalieri, K. Aagaard & Y. Sasaki, “Circulation, dense water formation and outflow on the northeast Chukchi Sea shelf.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 103 (1998): 7647–7662

CHUKCHI-KAMCHADAL LANGUAGES The Chukchi-Kamchadal or Chukotka-Kamchatkan languages are a closely related group of languages found in the Chukotka and Kamchatka peninsulas in the far northeast of Asia: the name of the languages is

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CHUKCHI-KAMCHADAL LANGUAGES derived either from the geographical names in Russian or from the names of the two main ethnic groups living, respectively, in Chukotka and Kamchatka: the Chukchi and Kamchadal (the old name of the Itel’men). Chukchi-Kamchadal languages are traditionally included into the so-called Paleo-Siberian languages. The speakers of Paleo-Siberian languages since the 19th century have been regarded as the descendants of the most ancient population of northeast Asia. Paleo-Siberian languages represent the set of Siberian languages that have no genetic affinity to other language families (the affinity of some of these language groups to each other is possible, although not yet proved by linguists). In addition to ChukchiKamchadal, Paleo-Siberian languages include the Eskimo-Aleut language group (numerous Eskimo dialects and the Aleut language), the Yukagir language (probably related to the Uralic family of languages), the Nivkh language (to the mind of some scholars, related to the Altaic language family, and even possibly to the Tungusic-Manchurian language group), and the Ket language, the only member of the Yenisey language family that had survived by the beginning of the 21st century (the other languages of the Yenisey family, the languages of the Arins, Assans, Kotts, and Pumpokols, disappeared in the 18th to 19th centuries, and the Jug dialect of Ket was lost in the second half of the 20th century). According to archaeological discoveries, the ancestors of Chukchi-Kamchadal speakers occupied a large territory in the interior of Asia from the basin of the Lena River to the East. The geographical names of Chukchi-Kamchadal origin are found in the territory of contemporary Yakutia (Sakha Republic) and also in the coasts of the Sea of Okhotsk southward up to the south of Okhotsk town and in the Arctic Ocean coast eastward to the mouth of the Lena River. The Chukchi-Kamchadal language group includes five languages: Chukchi, Koryak, Aliutor, Kerek, and Itel’men (Kamchadal), although the genetic affinity of Itel’men to the Chukchi-Kamchadal group, according to the opinion of some linguists and ethnologists, is in doubt. It is possible that the similarities in vocabulary of the Itel’men and Chukchi-Kamchadal languages is the consequence of long contact between the Itel’men language and the various dialects of Koryak. The Aliutor and Kerek languages for some time were regarded as Koryak dialects and were described as separate languages only in the second half of the 20th century. The Chukchi language is the language of the Chukchi, one of the most numerous people of northeast Asia. The total number of Chukchi in the allSoviet census of 1989 was 15,107, of which 10,636 (or 70.4%) name Chukchi as their maternal language, and

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this figure may also characterize the number of native speakers. In 1959, there were 11,727 Chukchi, and 94% named Chukchi as their maternal language. Today most Chukchi live in Chukchi Autonomous Okrug, in the Chukotka peninsula (whose administrative center is the town of Anadyr on the estuary of the Anadyr River). Approximately 100 Chukchi live in Koryak Autonomous Okrug (neighboring the Chukchi Autonomous Territory), 150 Chukchi live in Magadan, and 600 Chukchi live in the northeast of Yakutia in the lower part of the basin of the Kolyma River. The Chukchi language is spoken by representatives of the middle and older generations (some older Chukchi still do not speak Russian), as well as some youngsters living in small settlements and carrying out reindeer breeding or sea hunting. Since the 1930s when the language received its written form, it has been taught in primary schools as the language of instruction, and since 1960 as a subject for study. Since the 1990s in Chukotka, the teaching of Chukchi was introduced into secondary school till the 11th year, but teaching in secondary schools is not provided with Chukchi-language textbooks. Chukchi literature is well developed; more than 200 books of Chukchi prose (original literature and folklore and translations from Russian) and poetry (poems and songs of Chukchi authors) have been published. Chukchi writer Yuri Rytkheu (born in 1930) is well known in many Arctic countries, although he creates his best literary works in Russian, and some of his earlier stories were translated into Chukchi from Russian by professional translators. From 1953 to 1995 in Anadyr, a regional newspaper “Murgin nutenut” (“Our land”) was published in Chukchi. There are also radio and TV programs in Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. The Chukchi language has no dialects. Some lexical peculiarities of eastern groups of Chukchi reflect the former influence of spoken English in the shores of Bering Strait. The Koryak language is the language of the Koryak people, who inhabit both coasts and the northern part of Kamchatka peninsula. The administrative unit of the Koryaks is the Koryak Autonomous Territory (capital Palana on the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk). Most Koryak live in this territory, and about 600 Koryaks live in Magadan region in the territories neighboring Kamchatka peninsula, and several hundred live in the middle and in the southern parts of Kamchatka in Kamchatkan region outside the okrug. According to the census of 1989, their total number was 8942; 52.4% of them named the Koryak language as their maternal language (in 1979, the number of Koryaks was 7900, and 69.6% named Koryak as their first language), but according to linguists, only 5.4% of Koryak people speak their language fluently.

CHUKCHI-KAMCHADAL LANGUAGES The Koryak language is the language of mutual communication among the older and middle (older than 45 years) generations, primarily in the small collectives of traditional occupations (reindeer breeding). It is the subject of instruction in primary school for one to two years. The number of books published in Koryak (both original and translated from Russian) is less than 50. The use of Koryak language in radio broadcasts is irregular. The Koryak language consists of the following dialects: Chavchuven (the dialect of reindeer breeders who name themselves “chavchyva”), Paren, Itkana, Apuka, Palana, Karaga, and Kamenskoye (the names of the dialects derived from the names of Koryak villages, some of which have now disappeared). The Aliutor language is spoken by the inhabitants of several villages on the coast of the Bering Sea in the northern part of Kamchatka (Olutorsky district of the Koryak Autonomous Okrug). The total number of people in this ethnic group is not more than 2000, and the number of speakers of Aliutor is unknown because in census data the Aliutors were counted together with the Koryaks. The Aliutor language is very similar to the dialects of the coastal Koryaks and is closely related to them. For a long time, this language was regarded as one of the Koryak dialects and had no official written form; nevertheless in the 1960s, occasional materials in local newspapers were published in this language. Today Aliutor functions as the spoken language only among older people. The Kerek language is thought to be the offspring of a language spoken by the ancient inhabitants of the coastal territory between the mouth of the Anadyr River and Kamchatka peninsula. Until the end of the 1950s, it was regarded by specialists as a dialect of Koryak. Today Kereks live in some settlements of Beringovsky district of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. Russian linguists and explorers found two dialects in the Kerek language: Mainopylgen and Khatyrka (from names of villages where the Kereks live). The number of speakers of the first dialect has been reduced to three representatives of the older generation; the exact number of speakers of Khatyrka dialect is unknown because this dialect was never observed by the linguists. Most Kereks also speak and write Chukchi. The Kerek language never had a written form because of the small number of speakers. The Itel’men language is the language of the Itel’men (Kamchadals), who inhabited both coasts in the middle and in the southern part of Kamchatka peninsula in the 18th to 19th centuries. This language consisted of three dialects: western, eastern, and southern dialects. The latter two dialects disappeared during the end of the 18th to 19th centuries, and today only the language of western Itel’men can be consid-

ered as functioning in the role of a spoken language. The contemporary Itel’men live in some settlements of the southwestern part of the Koryak Autonomous Okrug. Their number was 2481 according to the census of 1989; 20% of them name Itel’men as their maternal language, but the actual number of people who can speak the language fluently has to be much less, perhaps several tens of older people. The Itel’men language gained its written form in 1932. However, in 1937 the teaching of Itel’men in schools was discontinued, and in 1988 a new Itel’men script based on the Cyrillic alphabet was introduced. Although Itel’men is not spoken by children and has not been taught in schools for a long time, it nevertheless presents a good example of language revival carried out by adults who desire to conserve their ancestral language for their proper ethnic identification. From the genetic point of view, the Chukchi and the Koryak languages are rather close to each other. According to Morris Swadesh’s glottochronological analysis of a core vocabulary of 100 words, Chukchi and Koryak separated from each other not earlier than 1000 years ago, and the speakers of these languages say their languages are mutually understandable. For a long time, Aliutor and Kerek were regarded simply as Koryak dialects. Itel’men differs much more; some linguists and ethnologists believe that Itel’men had no primary genetic affinity with the other languages of this group (Chukchi-Koryak), and their similarity in vocabulary and partly in morphology has to be the result of long contact and the influence of ChukchiKoryak languages (at least two different Koryak dialects) upon Itel’men. Although there is no doubt as to the close affinity of Chukchi, Koryak, Aliutor, and Kerek—the position of Itel’men in this group is the object of discussion—nevertheless there has never been a successful attempt to find traces of the affinity of Itel’men to languages outside the Chukchi-Koryak group. The further genetic relations of ChukchiKamchadal languages are unclear. It is possible that this group has ancient genetic relations with the Nostratic language family (which includes IndoEuropean, Semito-Khamitic, Kartvelian (Georgian and similar languages), Uralic, Altaic, and Dravidian languages). An ancient genetic affinity of ChukchiKamchadal languages with the Eskimo-Aleut languages is also probable in the mind of some scholars, although it is not proved by regular phonemic correspondences: contacting dialects of Eskimo and Chukchi have a considerable number of mutual lexical borrowings. The vowel systems of Chukchi and Koryak consist of six vowels; in Aliutor and Kerek there are four vowels. In Chukchi and Koryak there is vowel harmony based on the distinctive feature of higher/lower

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CHUKOTSKOYA RANGE rise with complicated morphonological rules: the vowel characteristics of the word can be determined with both the roots and suffixes, and the latter can occupy any position of the word from the very beginning (roots) to the very end (case markers, suffixes of converbs). There is no vowel harmony in Aliutor and Kerek; in the opinion of some scholars, it disappeared under the influence of Eskimo dialects. Consonantal systems of these languages are rather poor, and there is no opposition of voiced-voiceless and velar-palatal consonants. The main peculiarity of the set of consonants is the opposition of back and uvular consonants K/Q: in Chukchi, Aliutor, and in Palana Koryak there is a glottal stop consonant that corresponds to a pharyngeal spirant in Chavchuven Koryak. The Itel’men system consonants differ from other Chukchi-Koryak languages. Case forms of nouns are rather numerous; forms of quality equivalent to the adjectives of other languages are either similar to participial forms or behave as intransitive verbs. In verbal conjugation, there is opposition of two types of paradigms: intransitive verbs express number and person of subject, and transitive verbs express number and person of both subject and object. In the frames of three tense forms (present, past, future), there is opposition of nonprogressive/progressive forms (in Chukchi) of different modal forms (in Koryak). There are three categorial forms of mood: indicative, imperative, and subjunctive. The most remarkable feature in syntax of the Chukchi-Kamchadal language is the ergative construction of sentence with transitive verbs in the function of predicate; the incorporation as one of the ways of word derivation and as a type of syntactic construction exists in all languages with the exception of Itel’men. Chukchi-Kamchadal languages became the object of scientific research in the middle of the 18th century; most lexical materials collected at that time belong to those scholars who lived and worked in Russia (Stepan Krasheninnikov, Georg Steller, Yakov Lindenau). In the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century, research into these languages as well as into the culture of the peoples of the Chukchi-Kamchadal group is connected with the names of Waldemar Jochelson and Vladimir Bogoraz. Since 1930, linguistic studies in these languages have gained a practical orientation because of the need to train students in their own language. Today these languages attract the attention of scholars as the object of academic study or in connection with bilingualism, linguistic affinities, and other sociolinguistic problems of the languages of indigenous peoples of the Far North of Russia. ALEXIS BURYKIN See also Alphabets and Writing, Russia; Chukchi; Itel’men; Koryak; Languages of the Arctic 346

Further Reading Asinovskiy, A.S., Konsonantizm chukotskogo yazyka [The consonantal system of the Chukchi language], Leningrad: Nauka, 1991 Bogoraz, V.G., Materialy po izucheniyu chukotskogo yazyka i fol’klora, sobrannye v Kolymskom okruge, ch. 1 [Materials on the study of the Chukchi language and folklore, collected in Kolyma territory], Part 1, St Petersburg: Izd, Akademii Nauk, 1900 Bogoraz, W., “Chukchi.” In Handbook of American Indian Languages, edited by F. Boas, Washington: Government Printing Offices, 1922 Burykin, A.A., Narody Chukotki [The peoples of Chukotka], Moscow, 1995 Kibrik, A.Ye., S.V. Kodzasov & I.A. Muravyova, Yazyk i fol’klor alyutortsev [The language and folklore of the Aliutors], Moscow: IMLI RAN, “Nasledie,” 2000 Leontyev, V.V. & K.A. Novikova, Toponimicheskiy slovar’ Severo-Vostoka SSSR [The Toponymic Dictionary of the North-East of the USSR], Magadan: Magadanskoe knizhnoe izd-vo, 1989 Moll, T.A., Koryaksko-Russkiy Slovar’ [The Koryak-Russian Dictionary], Leningrad: Uchpedgiz, 1960 Moll, T.A. & P.I. Inenlikey, Chukotsko-russkiy slovar’ [Chukchi-Russian Dictionary], Leningrad: Nauka, 1957 Skorik, P.Ya., Russko-chukotskiy slovar’ [Russian-Chukchi Dictionary], Leningrad, 1941 ———, Ocherki po sintaksisu chukotskogo yazyka [Essays on Chukchi syntax], Leningrad, 1948 ———, Grammatika chukotskogo yazyka [The grammar of the Chukchee language], Volume I, Moscow-Leningrad: Izd-vo AN SSSR, 1960, Volume II, Leningrad, 1977 Vdovin, I.S. & N.M. Tereshchenko, Ocherki istorii izucheniya paleoaziatckix I samodiyskix yazykov [Essays on the history of researches in the Paleosiberian and the Samoyedic languages], Leningrad: Uchpedgiz, 1959 Volodin, A.P., Itelmenskiy yazyk [The Itel’men language], Leningrad: Nauka, 1976 Yazyki mira. Paleoaziatskiye yazyki [The languages of the world. The Paleosiberian languages], Moscow: Indrik, 1997 Yazyki narodov SSSR, Volume 5, Mongol’skiye, tungusomanchzhurskiye I paleoaziatskiye yazyki [The languages of the peoples of the USSR, Volume 5, Mongolian, Tungus-Manchu and Paleosiberian languages], Leningrad: Nauka, 1968 Zhukova, A.N., Russko-koryakskiy slovar’ [Russian-Koryak Dictionary], Moscow: Sov, entsiklopediia, 1967 ———, Grammatika koryakskogo yazyka. Fonetika i morfologiya [The grammar of the Koryak language. Phonetics and morphology], Leningrad: Nauka,1972 ———, Koryakskiy yazyk. Uchebnik dlya uchashchixsya pedagogicheskix uchilishch [The Koryak language. Manual for the pedagogical colleges], Leningrad: Prosveshchenie, 1987 ———, Yazyk palanskix koryakov [The language of the Palana Koryaks], Leningrad, 1980 ———, Materialy i issledovaniya po koyarkskomu yazyku [Materials and researches in the Koryak language], Leningrad: Nauka, 1988

CHUKOTSKOYA RANGE The Chukotskoya Range forms part of the AniuskChukotka mountain system in the Chukchi Autonomous Okrug in the extreme northeast of the Russian Federation. The range extends from Chaun Bay on the Arctic Ocean in the west to Bering Strait

CHURCHES IN GREENLAND AND THE NORTH AMERICAN ARCTIC (Pacific Ocean) in the east. It is bordered by the Chukchi Sea coastal plain in the north and the Anadyr River basin with its northern tributaries and the Anadyr Upland in the south. It is usually called an upland or plateau (in Russian nagor’ye), and has a maximum relief of 1843 m. Being a major watershed of rivers flowing to the Chukchi and Bering seas, the range is, in fact, a set of differently oriented ranges. The major ranges are Palavaamsky, Ekytyksky, and Iskaten’ in the central part, Ekiatapsky, Pegtymelsky, and Shelagsky in the north, and Pekulnej and Zolotoi in the south. The individual ranges have different origins. The oldest rocks of pre-Paleozoic age (nearly two thousand million years) are exposed in the low mountains of the easternmost part (Chukotka Peninsula). Most of the range (its central and southern ranges) is part of the arc-shaped Okhotsk-Chukotka volcanic belt, which extends from the Chukotka Peninsula to the Sea of Okhotsk. About one hundred million years old, the belt resulted from volcanic activity during subduction of the Pacific plate under the continental margin. The northernmost portion of the range represents the Mesozoic-Cenozoic orogen. Intrusive igneous and effusive rocks thus prevail throughout the range. The topography of the range is rather variable. Well-dissected medium-relief mountain landscapes with smoothed ridge landforms of mid-Pleistocene glaciation predominate; late Pleistocene alpine landforms appear only in southeastern slopes of the southern ranges (Pekulnej, Iskaten’) where higher precipitation coming in from the Bering Sea fell. The range is dissected by large valleys of the Paljavaam, Pegtymel’, Kuvet, and Amguema rivers running northward, and the Belaya and Tanyurer rivers running southward. Several mountains reach 1800 m above sea level (the highest, with no name, is 1843 m), although mediumrelief mountains of 800–1000 m prevail. Most of the range is characterized by a moderately continental Subarctic climate with an average annual temperature of −5°C to 8°C, although the northern slopes (Ekiatapsky and Shelagsky ranges) and the southeast of Chukotka Peninsula are Arctic maritime with milder temperatures and increased rainfall (up to 500 mm). Intermountain depressions and river valleys with a continental climate favor the distribution of relict tundra-steppe vegetation, which dominated in continental Beringia during dry and cold epochs of maritime regressions. In river valleys of southeastern Chukotka Peninsula, enclaves of alder and willow shrub vegetation occur, although the major northern limit of shrub vegetation lies at the southern foothills of the range in central Chukotka. Heath vegetation predominates throughout the range, which is dominated by dwarf and prostrate shrubs (such as dwarf birch Betula nana subsp. exilis, willow Salix sphenophylla,

bilberry and crowberries Vaccinium uliginosum and V. vitis-idea, black bearberry Arctostaphylos alpina, crowberry Empetrum subholarcticum, Northern Labrador tea Ledum decumbens, and white Arctic mountain heather Cassiope tetragona), fruticose and foliose lichens, and non-Sphagnum mosses. Exposed ridge habitats are vegetated by prostrate shrubs, rosette and cushion forbs (such as Dryas spp., Salix phlebophylla, Diapensia obovata, Oxytropis spp., Potentilla spp.), and foliose and crustaceous lichens. Terrestrial fauna of the ridge is represented by common birds and animals of mountain tundra landscape such as ptarmigan, Arctic fox, lemmings, bighorn sheep, and brown bear. The northeastern distribution limit of Siberian wild reindeer includes the western part of the range. The range was used by reindeer-breeding Chukchi mostly as summer pastures, and therefore there were no permanent settlements there until the mid-20th century when gold fields and tin-tungsten ore deposits were found, and Pevek expanded as a port to service the gold field settlements. Chukotka’s major road crosses the range from Kresta Bay (Egvekinnot settlement with port and electric power station) to the Iultin mine, ore dressing plant, and settlement. The latter was temporarily closed in the mid-1990s. For many years, gold and tin-tungsten ore mining was the foundation of Chukotkan industrial development. During the economic crisis in the 1990s, some mining settlements were closed. Presently the Chukotkan government supports investment in renewal of the gold-mining industry and development of the road network to connect the northern territories of Chukotka with Anadyr and other ports of the Bering Sea. VOLODYA RAZZHIVIN See also Chukchi Autonomous Okrug (Chukotka)

CHURCHES IN GREENLAND AND THE NORTH AMERICAN ARCTIC, ESTABLISHMENT OF Christian churches played an important role in changing the beliefs and practices among societies throughout Greenland and the North American Arctic. For a long time, missionaries traveled from various European countries, and in the field churches struggled actively for native souls. But today, these missionary trends no longer dominate within Arctic societies. Moreover, Inuit did not simply adopt Christianity in its imported format; rather, they interpreted the new religion in light of their beliefs and customs, integrating Christianity into their own culture. The adoption of Christianity by the Inuit thus involved complex cultural negotiations, to use an expression introduced by cultural anthropologist Ann Fienup-Riordan (1990). 347

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Christianizing the Arctic The role of churches in processes of social change is well documented in the Arctic. Missionaries exerted powerful intellectual influences on indigenous communities and parishioners; the dissemination of the Biblical Scriptures combined with the education of children served as the backbone of evangelism. Speaking Inuktitut, missionaries developed effective communication strategies. Isolated in their mission, some Christian missionaries competed openly alongside shamans, diverging when necessary from official Church instructions. For the Inuit, missionaries also provided access to Western ideas and products. Through the missionaries’ role in providing social services and health care at the mission site, they sometimes encouraged the nomadic Inuit to settle permanently nearby. Culturally, missionaries rejected many aspects of traditional cosmologies (such as infanticide, spouse exchanges, drum dancing, etc.) and demonized their rivals, the shamans. From an important historical perspective, missionaries also introduced many traditions to the Inuit such as literacy, musical instruments, and songs, elements that the Inuit have since assimilated as part of their cultural identity. But missionaries clearly failed in completely replacing shamanism and Inuit cosmology with Christian beliefs. Powerful Inuit intercessors (such as camp leaders, catechists, lay readers, and shamans) played a major role by spreading the gospels. Such a process resulted in all kinds of transformations as Christian images and notions— sometimes compatible with Inuit traditions, sometimes incompatible—could not be integrated without being received and thus somehow changed by cultural schemes (Laugrand, 2002). Beliefs and values such as meeting experiences of nonhuman beings, respect for animals, respect for ancestors, the importance of namesake relationships, and the sharing of food and other resources remain vital and yet common experiences among contemporary Arctic societies. Presently, the Arctic area is no longer considered as a field of mission. Within the Orthodox, Lutheran, and Anglican churches for instance, Inuit have become active participants in religious activities, replacing the Western missionaries and leading religious services and activities. This process started a long time ago, but the situation differs significantly depending on the Arctic regions. In Greenland, during the 19th century, the local missions employed catechists to become the elite. In the 1850s, many of them were thus educated in training centers and asked to write reports for the Mission. Catechists often contributed to the wellknown Christian newspaper Atuagagliutit. They received a small pension, although mission authorities frequently moved them from place to place. In Canada,

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at the end of the 19th century, Reverend Edmund James Peck was the first Anglican missionary among the Nunavik Inuit to hire native leaders as catechists, for example, the shaman John Melucto in the Little Whale River area where Peck arrived to carry out missionary work in October of 1876. At the beginning of the 20th century, Peter Tulugarjuaq and Luke Qillapik acted as the first lay readers at the Anglican mission of Uumanaqjuaq, South Baffin Island. In the western Arctic, the first official Inuk deacon Thomas Umaok was ordained in 1928, but the first Inuit Anglican priest Armand Tagoona was only ordained 30 years later in 1960. The Catholic Church remained slightly more conservative in its approach, and although the church appointed native catechists and deacons (especially in Alaska), it failed to ordain any native priests and to significantly adapt Christianity to the Inuit traditions. In Alaska and Canada, church authorities are aware that in the past, many social and cultural abuses occurred within their residential schools. Today church leaders encourage healing and reconciliation. Several Alaskan churches are thus participating in the reintroduction of native practices and spirituality. An example of such a movement can be found in Jesuit Father Rene Astruc’s initiatives to reintroduce the masked dances from the past. When Astruc began his ministry in southwest Alaska in 1956, dancing as part of Yup’ik feasts no longer existed as missionaries forbade it at the end of the 19th century. Many of these spiritual ceremonies, such as the Agayuyaraq, an intervillage ceremony associated with the performance of masked dances usually at the end of the winter season, were abandoned. Representing a new generation of Jesuits, Astruc decided upon becoming superior of St Mary’s Mission in southwestern Alaska in 1964, to help the Yup’ik reintroduce masked dances and drums with the aim of incorporating indigenous practices to cocreate a new form of Catholicism. Presently, Astruc asserts that the drum has found its place in the churches as a symbol of peace and that many elders rejoice in the recognition of their spirituality.

Contemporary Church Organization Throughout the Arctic, although Christianity has assimilated with Inuit traditions, the contemporary situation and organization of Christian churches remains complex and based on Western structures. In Greenland, the native church is part of the Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church, but has functioned as an independent diocese with its own bishop since 1993. The church is divided into three main deaneries (South Greenland; MidGreenland, Thule, and East Greenland; and North Greenland) with five to seven parishes each and numerous parochial councils. In 1999, about 25 ministers, 46 catechists, and 30 unqualified catechists worked in

CHURCHES IN ICELAND AND THE SCANDINAVIAN ARCTIC, ESTABLISHMENT OF Greenland. Lutheran church services are presently held at 83 localities, but similar to other parts of the Arctic, other churches and sects such as the Peqatigiinniat, Roman Catholic Church, Adventist and Pentecostal churches, and Baha’i Assembly are also active. In Labrador, where approximately four ordained ministers served in 1980, the church ceased to be considered as a mission in 1990. Among the five Inuit communities, Moravian worship is still characterized by pietism or a devotional atmosphere with an emphasis on singing and music activities. Since the 1950s, education is no longer the province of the church but that of provincial authorities. From 1941 to 1971, Reverend F.W. Peacock acted as superintendent of the Labrador missions, and in 1980 the first Inuk, Renatus Hunter, was ordained minister. In Alaska, many new churches appeared during the last 15 years of the 20th century, most notably of Baptist denomination. A huge diocese of Alaska, governed by the diocesan bishop, organizes the Orthodox Church in Alaska. The diocese consists of about 83 churches spread throughout the region. The contemporary organizational structure of the Catholic Church consists primarily of the archdiocese of Anchorage, the Diocese of Fairbanks, and the Diocese of Juneau. The Diocese of Fairbanks represents 33 major missions, 13 dependent missions that are visited by the priests, one radio station, and two schools with nearly 3300 children who receive religious instruction. The staff of the Fairbanks diocese includes 31 priests, two brothers, 15 sisters, 41 ordained deacons, and others who are involved in the Native Ministry Program. The Diocese of Juneau consists of 11 parishes and 13 missions spread along the Northwest coast. Anglicans are currently represented by many churches in Alaska. The Episcopal Church is well represented by a vast diocese divided into four deaneries. The Arctic Coast deanery consists of five congregations, all situated above the Arctic Circle that can only be reached by airplane. The Interior Deanery consists of 20 Episcopal congregations, and the South Central Deanery consists of 14 congregations with a remote group based on Kodiak Island and four congregations in the largest Alaskan city, Anchorage. The Southeast Deanery consists of seven congregations with a few located among the Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and Aleut that cannot be reached by road. The Anglican Church in America is also active in Alaska with a parish belonging to the Diocese of the West located in Fairbanks. In northern Canada, the Diocese of the Arctic is the main institution for the Anglican Church. Created in 1933, the Arctic diocese covers one-third of the geographic area of Canada with congregations in about 51 northern communities grouped into 31 parishes. The majority of Anglican parishioners are Inuit but also

Amerindian. The church appointed many Inuit as ministers who are presently in charge of many local parish churches. The diocese is governed by synods that meet every three years and define church mission and direction. The Roman Catholic Church is also present in northern Canada, notably through the vast Diocese of Churchill-Hudson Bay, which is divided into three regions with over 15 mission posts, six missionaries, seven sisters, and 22 Inuit couples acting as local catechists. The diocese aims to establish a strong local parish tradition and to develop a lay ministry tradition. The Diocese of Churchill-Hudson Bay has published a bilingual journal since 1944, and administers a museum in Churchill and a catechist center in Rankin Inlet. Today, in contrast to competition for souls in need of conversion of the past, Catholic and Anglican churches cooperate locally to face the challenges of incoming churches as well as secularization trends. The Pentecostal Church offers an interesting case: although the church unequivocally rejects shamanism, it has revived some of the old Inuit religious attitudes and rituals (personal relation with spirits, healing circles and confession rituals, etc.) within its practices. The sphere of religion thus remains a fascinating dimension of Inuit traditions. FRÉDÉRIC LAUGRAND See also Masks; Missionary Activity; Shamanism Further Reading Bobé, Louis, Hans Egede: Colonizer and Missionary of Greenland, Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1952 Fienup-Riordan, Ann, “Negotiated Meanings: the Yup’ik Encounter with Christianity.” In Eskimo Essays: Yup’ik Lives and How We See Them, edited by A. Fienup-Riordan, New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1990, pp. 69–122 ———, The Real People and the Children of Thunder: The Yup’ik Eskimo Encounter with Moravian Missionaries John and Edith Kilbuck, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991 Laugrand, Frédéric, Mourir et renaître. La réception du christianisme par les Inuit de l’Arctique canadien, Québec: PUL, 2002 Laugrand, Frédéric, J. Oosten & M. Kakkik, “Keeping the Faith.” Memory and History in Nunavut, Volume 3, Iqaluit: Nunatta-Campus, Arctic College/Nortext, 2003 Pierce, Richard (editors), The Russian Orthodox Religious Mission in America, 1794–1837, with Materials Concerning the Life and Works of the Monk German, and Ethnographic Notes by the Hieromonk Gedeon, translated by Colin Bearne, Kingston: The Limestone Press, 1978

CHURCHES IN ICELAND AND THE SCANDINAVIAN ARCTIC, ESTABLISHMENT OF In pre-Christian times in Iceland, as in Scandinavia, a single ruling base presided over both secular and

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CHURCHES IN ICELAND AND THE SCANDINAVIAN ARCTIC, ESTABLISHMENT OF religious matters. Therefore, it makes sense that the chieftains were probably responsible for the general conversion to Christianity and the establishment of the Christian Church in Iceland and Scandinavia. The chieftain leaders were in closest contact with neighboring countries, where the influence of Christianity was steadily increasing. The people were willing to accept the direction of the chieftains in religious matters. Until recently, it was generally accepted that the conversion to Christianity in the Nordic countries was a rapid and simple process. However, there is now a general consensus that the conversion process was gradual and marked by struggle. From the time of the introduction of Christianity in Iceland and the Scandinavian Arctic, it is possible to follow a twofold process in the Nordic countries. The Nordic people strengthened their unity inwardly. The power of the monarchy increased, and scholars began working within the newly established Church-affiliated institutions. Society in general began adopting the values of Christian ethics. Following these developments, society grew increasingly stable. The second process was marked by extensive contact with the wider world. Therefore, the conversion to Christianity set off an important transformation in the foreign relations and domestic politics of the Nordic countries. The structure of the Church in the Nordic countries was influenced by the model of the international Church, but it was also adapted to the social structure and systems of government in each country. The Danish Church was, however, soon linked to the Church on the continent. In Norway, Sweden, and Iceland, religious practice was based on domestic Church law as set forth by secular authorities. These laws were valid for certain regions and stated predominantly which religious obligations applied to the public, and what the rights and duties of the clergy were. This was important because everywhere in the Nordic countries the chieftains had great influence in the Church. The chieftains built the first churches and provided them with land and other possessions to secure their financial base. The chieftains also hired priests for service and guaranteed their income. Initially, the chieftains were also supposed to be the owners of the churches; they and their descendants had control over them even if they became parish churches. That is why the Church did indeed strengthen the position of the chieftains. Because of this, the Icelandic Church in its first period is given the name Chieftain Church. The same is basically true for the Christian Church in other Nordic countries, but there the monarchy had relatively more influence than the chieftain class. A watershed in the development of the Nordic Church came with the establishment of Nordic archbishoprics (1104 in Denmark, 1153 in Norway, and 1164 in Sweden). The establishment of archbishoprics

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was not only crucial in terms of Church history, it was also a significant political event. Therefore, it was natural that the Nordic kings were among the instigators of the archbishoprics and supported them with land and capital. The most important effect of the establishment of the Nordic archbishoprics was that it secured the independence of the Church from the archbishop in Hamburg-Bremen, but did not lead to more independence from local secular authorities. The most important moves to increase the internally based strength of the Nordic Church and give it more power in its dealings with the state came with the church political reform movement of Pope Gregory VII (Gregorianism). Its followers intended to make the church strong throughout Europe, and make it more free and independent from secular powers in society. This kind of church was totally different from the localized church system formed in the Nordic countries following conversion, and which operated on the basis of domestic Church law. In Denmark, the struggle for independence of the Church took place during the time of archbishop Eskil in Lund (1137–1177). He was a competent Church administrator and had close contact with one of the most influential theologians and Church leaders of Europe, Bernard of Clairvaux. When the archbishopric in Trondheim, Norway, was established, the envoy of the pope presented the demands of the Church for independence, the first time this had happened in Norway. The result was that the kings waived their claims to control over the property they and their ancestors had donated to the Church, and promised to respect the election of bishops in accordance with universal canon law. In Sweden, the demands for independence of the Church were first voiced at the Church council in Linköping. However, the Church was still in its infancy in Sweden, and its success in achieving its goals was more limited than in Norway. During the period of conversion, Nordic culture reached from the southern parts of Sweden and Norway across Denmark to a large part of Britain and to the new Nordic settlements in the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland. The indigenous Saami people did, however, differ from the Nordic people both in terms of culture and religion. This difference had led to little conflict until the advent of Christianity. However, Christianity alone cannot bear all the responsibility for the tension. The Swedes and the Norwegians wanted to establish control over the Saami and incorporate their land. To do so, they needed to assimilate Saami culture into the culture of the majority. This was most effectively done by Christian missionaries. Today, the majority of the inhabitants of the Nordic countries belong to the evangelical-Lutheran churches,

CHURCHES IN THE RUSSIAN ARCTIC, ESTABLISHMENT OF which have been termed national churches. All of them were linked closely to the state until the Swedish Church was separated from the state in the year 2000. Democratic development, an increasing interest in other religious groups, and a growing number of immigrants that adhere to different faith systems have sparked debate about the national church system, and whether it can coexist with a true freedom of religion. HJALTI HUGASON Translated by Thorsteinn Thorhallsson See also Missionary Activity Further Reading Bjerre Finnestad, Ragnhild, “The Study of the Christianization of the Nordic Countries. Some Reflections.” In Old Norse and Finnish Religions and Cultic Place-Names. Based on Papers Read at the Symposium on Encounters Between Religions in Old Nordic Times and on Cultic Place-Names held at Åbo, Finland, on the 19th–21st of August 1987, edited by Tore Ahlbäck, Åbo: The Donner Institute for Research in Religious and Cultural History, 1990, pp. 256–272 Foote, Peter, “On the Conversion of the Icelanders.” In Aurvandilstá. Norse Studies, edited by Michael Barnes, Hans Bekker-Nielsen & Gerd Wolfgang Weber, Odense: Odense University Press, 1984, pp. 56–64 Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson, Under the Cloak. The Acceptance of Christianity in Iceland with Particular Reference to the Religious Attitudes Prevailing at the Time [Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Studia ethnologica Upsaliensia (4th edition), Anna Birgitta Rooth], Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International, 1978 Refskou, Niels, “Missionary Aims.” In The Christianization of Scandinavia. Report of a Symposium held at Kungälv, Sweden, August 4–9, 1985, edited by B. Sawyer, P. Sawyer & I. Wood, Alingsås: Viktoria Bokförlag, 1987, pp. 22–23 Sawyer, Birgit & Peter Sawyer, Medieval Scandinavia. From Conversion to Reformation, circa 800–1500 (The Nordic Series, 17b), London, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993 Sawyer, Peter, “The Process of Scandinavian Christianization in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries.” In The Christianization of Scandinavia. Report of a Symposium held at Kungälv, Sweden, August 4–9, 1985, edited by B. Sawyer, P. Sawyer & I. Wood, Alingsås: Viktoria Bokförlag, pp. 68–87 Strömbäck, Dag, The Conversion of Iceland. A Survey, London: University College, Viking Society for Northern Research, 1975 Vésteinsson, Orri, The Christianization of Iceland. Priests, Power, and Social Change 1000–1300, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000

CHURCHES IN THE RUSSIAN ARCTIC, ESTABLISHMENT OF The northern areas of the Russian state and the indigenous people who populated it were in a zone of monopoly influence by the Russian Orthodox Church. Up to the 18th century, the Russian government had

restricted missionary activity. During the entire 17th century, christening the indigenous peoples by force was prohibited. Imprudent actions by missionaries could lead to disturbances in the regions that had recently joined and thus create a threat to the military, political, and fiscal interests of Russia. As a result, the Russian Orthodox Church limited propagation of Christianity to those aboriginals living close to Russian settlements. Special missionary expeditions were rare (e.g., a trip by Makariy, a monk of the Yakutsk Spassky monastery, to the Kolyma, Indigirka, and Alazeya rivers in 1668). As a rule, all aboriginals (interpreters, servants, hostages) coming into close contact with the Russians were baptized. Mass baptism of the northern peoples began in 1706 on the initiative of Peter I. The Czar’s radicalism and the more consolidated position of Russia in the northern region, together with reduced incomes from fur and society’s increasing control over the church, permitted the restrictions on missionary activity to be lifted. Philophei Leshinsky, a Tobolsky archbishop, received decrees to organize and head several missionary expeditions in northwest Siberia (1707–1727). As a result, the majority of the Ob’ Ugrians (the Khanty and Mansi) were baptized by the middle of the century. Endeavors to baptize the Nenets of the northern Priob’e failed, probably due to the greater independence of the Nenets from Russian colonial authorities and the patriarchal system of their society. Aboriginals of the Northeast also were left unbaptized, mainly because of distance from the church and secular administrative centers and, as a result, material and personnel difficulties of the Russian Orthodox Church. From 1720 to 1760, Christianization of the northern peoples was carried out slowly, which was connected with the economy of the state exhausted by wars, social and economic experiments by Peter I, and political instability of the state. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a mass baptism of the aboriginals of Eastern Siberia took place, connected with the ascension of Catherine II. A Yakutsk ecclesiastical mission was created in Irkutsk eparchy (diocese) and a post of special “faith preacher” was introduced (1764). By 1820, there were almost no unbaptized aboriginals in Yakutia. In the same years, the Russian Orthodox Church tried to spread its influence to the indigenous peoples of Chukotka and Russian America: in 1794, missionaries, headed by Iosaph, an archimandrite (abbot) of the Valaamsk monastery, and later Grigorii Sleptsov (1805), a priest of the Yakutsk Town Church, arrived at Kodiak Island. They set their particular hopes on a Christianization of the Chukchi, because this region was independent of Russia. In the 19th century, a change of methods took place for the spread of the Orthodox religion. “Rules on

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CHURCHILL management of aboriginals” (1822) gave the aboriginals freedom of faith. Baptism was encouraged, but it was not obligatory. As a result, missionaries began a detailed study of the traditions and cultures of the potential group of believers, created missionary schools for them, and translated divine service literature into their languages. The main events of this period were taking place in Chukotka and Alaska, and were connected with the names of A.I. Argentov, a priest who baptized several thousand of the Chukchi, Evens, and Yukagirs, and Innokentiy (Veniaminov), a Moscow and Kolomensky Metropolitan—the so-called Apostle of Alaska. The foundation of the Missionary Society in 1865 to assist Christianity spread among the pagans (since 1870 — Orthodox Missionary Society), through which they financed the missionary activity, promoted the success of the Orthodox preaching. As a result, by the late 19th century, the Russian Orthodox Church controlled the entire North with the exception of the most outlying districts. A mass baptism of the northern peoples was the beginning of a new stage of their development. Besides the Russian citizenship, the aboriginals became members of the Orthodox Church, that is, they were included in confession in common with the Russian population, which led to strengthening of the Russian statehood in this region and intensification of interethnic contacts. Russian priests, residing among the newly baptized people, became guides of not only intellectual but also material Russian culture. The creation of missionary schools and the study of languages and traditions of the North played an important role in forming the first generations of national intelligentsia and modern national culture. Mass baptism also meant the end of an autonomous, natural development of traditional beliefs of the northern peoples and the start of forming syncretic cults where honoring the Orthodox saints coexisted with animism, totemism, and “production” magic. Former mythological ideas were transformed and new motives (e.g., about the Upper divinity among the Ob’ Ugrs) appeared under the influence of the Orthodox dogmatics. Newly baptized persons adopted the Orthodox rituals. Shamanism received a serious blow. The organizing structure of the Russian Orthodox Church included the newly baptized northerners in the old eparchies, and then in the independent structures as new regions of the North joined. In 1620–1621, an archbishopric was established in Tobolsk. In 1727, the Irkutsk episcopacy was separated from Tobolsk’s staff because Tobolsk was in no condition to solve the problems of the East Siberian churches effectively. In the 19th century, the Kamchatsky eparchy was established as a result of successful actions of missionaries in Russian America (1840, Novoarchangelsk;

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later Yakutsk, with Yakutia transfer from the Irkutsk eparchy in 1852). In 1869, an independent Yakutsk episcopacy was created. The Russian Orthodox Church created special ecclesiastical missions (Obdorsk, Yakutsk, Chukotka) for preaching among the unbaptized aboriginals, acting autonomously and divided into missionary permanent establishments. Such church-administrative division existed up to the Revolution in the 20th century. An anticlerical policy of the Bolshevik leadership of Russia led to a general closing of churches, repression of clergy, discrimination against believers, and stopping of the missionary activity on the North. A militant atheism, determining the policy of the Soviet state for decades, was replaced by friendly relations with the Russian Orthodox Church in connection with the process of democratization. The 1000th anniversary of Russia’s baptism (1988), celebrated as a national holiday, marked a new stage of the Russian state as regards believers. The modern period of development of the religious situation in the North is characterized by a reconstruction of structures, proceeding against the spread of the Protestants’ (Baptists, Adventists, and so on) influence, connected with the activities of missionaries of foreign evangelist centers. This situation evokes dissatisfaction and anxiety from the direction of the Russian Orthodox Church, which considers the North as a traditional sphere of Orthodox influence. But an identification of the Orthodox with the Russians’ ethnic beliefs in conditions of cultural and national awareness among the ethnoses of the North creates serious problems for the Russian Orthodox Church. Although evangelist preachers emphasize the national feature of their confessions, at the same time endeavors to revive traditional beliefs are undertaken. But the consequences of atheistic education during the Soviet era prevent these initiatives from attaining a mass character. ALEXANDER NIKOLAEV See also Archbishop Innocent (Ivan Veniaminov); Missionary Activity Further Reading Shishigin, E.S., Rasprostranenie khristianstva v Yakutii [Christianization spread in Yakutia], Yakutsk, 1991 Yakutsk eparch registers, 1899, No. 14, p. 208

CHURCHILL The international seaport town of Churchill, Manitoba (population 1089), is located on the southwestern coast of Hudson Bay at the mouth of the Churchill River (58° N 94° W). Churchill is located in a unique

CHURCHILL

Landscape of Churchill with polar bear, Manitoba, Canada. Copyright Norbert Rosing/National Geographic Image Collection

ecoregion where the boreal forest evolves into the transitional forest (taiga) and Arctic tundra landscape. The region’s most famous resident, the polar bear (Ursus maritimus), is forced to spend three to four months ashore each year when the sea ice on Hudson Bay melts. The earliest inhabitants of Churchill, the PaleoEskimos (Pre-Dorset and Dorset cultures), arrived in the region as early as 1700 BC. The Hudson’s Bay Company established a fur trading post in 1717 with the assistance of a Dene woman named Thanadelthur. The Company’s post attracted other groups to the region, including the Caribou Inuit from the Kivalliq region to the north, the Chipewyan people, a Subarctic Dene culture from the west, and the Swampy Cree, a Hudson Bay Lowland culture from the south. Exploration for the North West Passage brought Churchill’s first white occupants from the ill-fated Danish expedition led by Jens Munck (1619–1620). British explorer Samuel Hearne chronicled his epic journey with Matonabbee (a Dene) from Churchill to the mouth of the Coppermine River in A Journey from Prince of Wales’s Fort in Hudson’s Bay to the Northern Ocean 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772. In 1870, Western Canadians actively proposed constructing a railway to transport grain from the Prairie Provinces to the world markets via a Hudson Bay terminal. The project became a reality when the rail reached Churchill in 1929. In 1997, Omnitrax Inc., a private company, acquired the ownership of the Hudson Bay Railway and the Port of Churchill. This deep-water port today facilitates large vessels shipping

grain or other commodities. A resupply operation for Inuit communities in the western Hudson Bay region operates out of the port. In 1942, American military forces arrived in Churchill and a joint Canadian/US military base, Fort Churchill (1946–1964), was constructed 8 km (5 miles) from the town. Originally conceptualized as part of the Crimson Staging Route to ferry wounded personnel from overseas during World War II, the Fort Churchill base became a northern research and cold weather-testing site until the late 1970s. In preparation for the 1957 International Geophysical Year, a rocket launching facility (Churchill Research Range) was constructed 16 km (10 miles) east of the base to study upper atmosphere phenomena. Today this facility is the location for the Churchill Northern Studies Centre (established in 1976). The town of Churchill has evolved from a small frontier town in the 1930s to a modern community with a mixed aboriginal and nonaboriginal population. A project in the mid-1970s constructed massive public housing and a town center complex, built to facilitate the social, recreational, and medical needs of the region. The leading private sector employers in Churchill deliver transportation services via air, rail, and sea (port). A new air terminal (1999) stands adjacent to a 2750 m (9000 ft) runway. For a small population, Churchill boasts an impressive array of services available to both the residents and a growing international tourism industry. The leading public sector employers in the town include the Churchill Regional Health Authority and the Town of Churchill.

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CHUVAN The region’s natural and cultural heritage can be appreciated by visits to the Cape Churchill Wildlife Management Area (Province of Manitoba), the Prince of Wales Fort National Historic Site, Wapusk National Park (established in 1996), and the famed Eskimo Museum (established in 1944). Spectacular Precambrian rock formations, stunning aurora borealis displays, rare birds, beluga whales, and the polar bear await Churchill’s visitors. LORRAINE E. BRANDSON See also Hearne, Samuel Further Reading Beals, C.S. (editor), Science, History and Hudson Bay, 2 volumes, Ottawa: Department of Energy, Mines and Resources, 1968 Bickle, Ian, Turmoil and Triumph: The Controversial Railway to Hudson Bay, Edmonton, Calgary: Detselig Enterprises, c.1995 Carroll, Patrick, Wapusk National Park: A Land Use History, Winnipeg: Parks Canada Western Service Centre, 2000 Hearne, Samuel, A Journey from Prince of Wales’s Fort in Hudson’ s Bay to the Northern Ocean, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, edited and introduction by Richard G. Glover, Toronto: Macmillan, 1958 MacIver, Angus & Bernice, Churchill on Hudson Bay, Churchill: Churchill Ladies Club, c.1982 Payne, Michael, Prince of Wales Fort:A Social History, 1717–1782, Manuscript Report Series No. 371, Ottawa: Parks Canada, 1979 Riewe, Roderick, Luke Suluk & Lorraine Brandson, “Inuit land use and occupancy in northern Manitoba.” The Northern Review, No. 3/4 summer/winter (1989): 85–95

CHUVAN The Chuvans are an indigenous people of the Russian Far North, living in Magadan Region and Chukotka Autonomous Region. Their self-designation is Etel’ or etal; other names are Chavan, Chaun (names from the Chukchi language, which are used in place names like Bay of Chaun and Chaun River), the Russian derivate Chuvan, which is the official name in the Russian Federation, and Sholilayi (name from the Yukagir language), and the Russian derivate Shelagi, which is used in the place name Cape Shelagskii, a point on the north coast of Chukchi Autonomous Okrug.

Ethnogeography The Chuvans are ethnically derived from Yukagir clans that resided in western Chukotka along the Anyuy, Chaun, Palyavaam, and the upper part of the Amguema rivers in the 17th century. During Russian colonization in the late 1600s and early 1700s, the Chuvans became one of the first groups that had to pay yasak (a tribute mostly raised in the form of furs).

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Subsequently the Chuvans were used by the colonialists as allies in their struggle to subdue neighboring ethnic groups, the Chukchi and Koryaks. After having suffered severe losses from these skirmishes, the Chuvan retreated to Russian villages and partly assimilated with Russians, Chukchi, and Koryaks in the middle of the 18th century. By the end of the 18th century, the main part of the population had emigrated to the upper Anadyr River area, separated into a sedentary group in the Markovo District, mostly living in the small town of Markovo, and a nomadic group. The latter resides in the upper reaches of the Anadyr River and its tributaries in the Chuvanskii Khrebet (Chuvanskoe, Lamutskoe, and Tavaivaam villages), and from the 1910s at the Penzhina River (Slautnoe and Aianka villages) where they have since died out. Most of these areas belong to the Chukchi Autonomous Okrug, except for the Penzhina area, which belongs to the Koryak Autonomous Okrug.

Population In the most recent official statistics, the All-Union population census of 1989, the Chuvans were officially counted as an individual ethnic group after having been assigned to the Chukchi for six decades. According to the census, 1511 Chuvans lived throughout the Soviet Union, of which 1384 lived in Russia and 944 in the Chukchi Autonomous Okrug. Almost half of all Chuvans (46.8%) lived in rural areas. Historical records mention 520 people in the early 1700s, and 600 around 1750. Early censuses indicate 452 individuals in 1897 (of which 40% were nomads) and 707 in 1926–1927 (of which 45% were nomads). From the 1930s to 1980, the Chuvan had no official indigenous status because of their mixed ethnicity. The large population increase during the 20th century is partly due to a natural increase, but partly also due to the modern trend that people of mixed blood prefer to assign themselves to some native origin in order to gain benefits such as the subsistence quota.

Language Modern Chuvans speak the Chukchi language and/or Russian. The original Chuvan language, which became extinct during the 19th century, was closely related to the Yukagir language and probably closest to modern tundra Yukagir. Some authors assign it to a dialect of the Yukagir language, while others prefer to consider it a distinct language of a so-called YukagirChuvan group. Views among linguists also diverge when it comes to defining the parent language family; the Yukagir-Chuvan languages are either considered as isolated languages or as belonging to the Uralic

CHUVAN language family. In any case, there is a distinct Uralic influence.

Lifestyle and Subsistence The Chuvans are traditionally nomadic reindeer breeders, hunters (hunting mainly wild reindeer, but also mountain sheep, wolf, and brown bear) and trappers (trapping squirrel, hare, fox, red fox, and Arctic fox), fishers (mainly salmon), and dog breeders. They also had small stocks of domestic reindeer for transportation. Prior to colonization, they also worked as traders and dog-drivers for the Chukchi, bartering trade with the population at the Sea of Okhotsk. They lived in Siberian chums, tentlike frameworks covered with birch bark. In the 19th century, after the major migrations, the remaining nomadic Chuvans developed a large-scale reindeer husbandry and lived in yarangas (hide-covered framework buildings of Chukotkan type). When in the 19th century a group of Chuvans in the Markovo District became sedentary, they generally retained their Yukagiran type of subsistence, fishing, and hunting wild reindeer during reindeer migrations. They lived together with starozhily (Russian “Old Settlers”) and Yukagirs in log houses with flat roofs and dirt floors, clay stoves, wooden beds, sometimes with sauna. For the summer months, they moved to summer residences at the riverbanks to catch Siberian salmon and humpback salmon using Russian boats (karbasses). Fish was caught with nets, rods, and salmon traps. In autumn, they hunted wild reindeer from kayaklike boats with spears. At the end of the 19th century, an average hunter would kill 40–50 animals per year. They also hunted or trapped squirrels, wolves, bears, hares, wolverines, foxes, and birds. The sedentary Chuvans in Markovo today work in fish processing and community services. Stock breeding (since the 1930s) and greenhouse vegetable gardening (since the 1950s) have also been introduced. Dog breeding has vanished as an economic activity. The other segment of the Chuvan population residing in the smaller villages still pursue seminomadic reindeer breeding, partly in common collective farms with Evens, Koryaks, and Chukchi, in the upper reaches of the Anadyr River. Traditional clothes are today used only occasionally by seminomadic people. The clothes are of Chukotkan type: a cotton shirt, a kukhlianka (double fur jacket) and fur trousers in winter, or a kamleika (cotton jacket) in summer, as well as shoes of sealskin.

Society and Social Structure The traditional kinship system is that of bilateral kin groups formed by extended families. They easily

incorporated relatives from both sides and in-laws. The precolonial kinship system has never been fully described. Russian influence changed the social structure very early on.

Religion The Chuvans are formally Orthodox Christians. They celebrate Orthodox holidays, and sacraments such as weddings are executed according to Orthodox practices. This is also true for funerals, although male graves are still supplied with tobacco, and those of females with household articles. The main spiritual heritage, however, is derived from old animistic beliefs, while elements of shamanism still influence their religious practices. Traditional spiritual elements are to a greater extent preserved within the reindeer-breeding population, where seasonal holidays reflect the cycle of reindeer-breeding activities, along with traditional sacrifices. Orthodox icons occur together with shamanistic, wooden, bone, or clay figures of humans and animals.

Folklore Both groups of Chuvans have preserved much of their traditional folklore and folk tales, which bring together fictional and real historical events. From Kamchatkan Cossacks, they adopted the dramatic Russian game Lodka (The Boat), which has been performed in Markovo since the 19th century. A unique folk choir has existed since the 1930s, which has been called Markovskie Vechorki (Markovo Evening Assembly) since 1967. The first Chuvan school was established in Markovo in 1883; a decade later the teacher M.F. D’iachkov wrote a book on the history and ethnography of the Anadyr District. WINFRIED K. DALLMANN See also Chukchi; Russian “Old Settlers”; Yukagir Further Reading D’iachkov, M.F., Anadyrskii krai. Rukopis’ zhitelia s. Markovo D’iachkova [The Anadyr region. A manuscript of the local dweller Markovo D’iachkov], Vladivostok: 1893 Gurvich, I.S., “Iukagiry chuvanskogo roda v seredine XVIII v. [Yukagirs of the Chuvan clan in the middle of the 18th century].” Trudy instituta etnografii, 35 (1966): 250–262 ———, “Chuvantsy (The Chuvans).” Etnograficheskoe obozrenie, No.5 (1992): 76–83 Gurvich, I.S. & E.P. Bat’ianova, “Sovremennoe razvitie mezhnatsional’nykh otnoshenii v Chukotskom avtonomnom okruge” [Modern developments in interethnic relations in the Chukotkan autonomous area], Issledovaniia po prikladnoi neotlozhnoi etnologii, dokument No. 16, Moscow, 1991

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CIRCUMPOLAR ARCTIC VEGETATION MAP Iokhel’son, V.I., “Iukagiry i chuvantsy” (The Yukagirs and Chuvans). In Iazyk - mif - kultura narodov Sibiri [Language, myths and culture of the Siberian peoples], Volume 3, Yakutsk: Iakutskii gos, universitet 1994, pp. 227–230 Krupnik, I., “Chuvans.”In Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Volume 6, edited by D. Levinson, Boston: G.K. Hall, 1991–1996, pp. 79–83 Leontiev, V.V., Khoziaistvo i kul’tura narodov hukotki (1895–1970 gg.) [Economy and culture of the peoples of Chukotka (1895–1970)], Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1973 Shentalinskaia, T.S., Markovskie vechorki, Magadan: 1983 Tugolukov, V.A., “Poezdka k chuvantsam [Journey to the Chuvan region].” In Polevye issledovaniia Instituta etnografii AN SSSR, 1974 [Field research of the Institute of Ethnography of the Academy of Science of the USSR, 1974], Moscow: Nauka, 1975, pp. 180–189

CIRCUMPOLAR ARCTIC VEGETATION MAP At present, Arctic ecosystems face a variety of threats from many different human activities. A more mobile and expanding indigenous human population is imposing greater demands on the sustainable use of natural resources, while increasing numbers of external interests such as resource development and tourism place far greater pressures on these fragile ecosystems. Global climate change is likely to shift existing biogeographical boundaries such as the northern boundary of the treeline, and thaw permafrost, releasing organic soil materials otherwise locked away from the general carbon cycle. Each could in turn cause feedback changes in global atmosphere and hydrological mechanisms. The need to monitor the extent and nature of Arctic vegetation in relation to climate change, land planning issues, and conservation management of Arctic biota and biodiversity was acknowledged in the early 1990s. Experts participating in an international workshop in Boulder, Colorado, in 1992 on the Classification of Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation identified the need for a single unified vegetation classification for polar areas and recommended the compilation of a map of the agreed types using common mapping methods. Independently of the Boulder workshop, the eight founder member nations of CAFF (the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna under the then Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy, now part of the Arctic Council) identified “the conservation of the Arctic flora and fauna, their diversity and their habitats” as one of their five major goals at their inaugural meeting in Ottawa in 1992. Under this objective, CAFF recognized the urgent need to address the general lack of data on Arctic vegetation and the chronic incompatibility of the classification systems in use at that time at the circumpolar level. The compilation of a Circumpolar

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Arctic Vegetation Map (CAVM) offered a process of resolving many of these conflicts, as well as providing a tangible end product of immediate benefit to many potential user groups. From these initial beginnings, the CAVM has grown to a major international initiative. The project is now funded through the Arctic System Science (ARCSS) program of the National Science Foundation in the United States, with additional funding from Canada, Norway, Greenland, Russia, and Iceland. The four basic objectives of the CAVM program are to produce (1) an internationally accepted geobotanical concept of circumpolar Arctic vegetation distribution and zonation for the whole Arctic territory, (2) a photoquality, cloud-free and snow-free, false-color infrared image of the circumpolar region derived from Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR covering visible, infrared, and far red spectra) satellite imagery, (3) a map of the relative vegetation greenness (i.e., biomass) of the circumpolar region as portrayed by the maximum normalized difference vegetation index, and (4) a geobotanical database and derived maps of the circumpolar Arctic region. The database will consist of an integrated map coded with landscape and vegetation information as interpreted on an AVHRR base map at 1:4,000,000 scale and reduced to 1:7,500,000 scale. The vegetation map is derived from infrared satellite remote sensing data at 1 km × 1 km pixels. Vegetation is interpreted from the satellite data and from existing maps of bedrock geology, surface geology, soils, hydrology, bioclimatic zones, and previous vegetation mapping. Regional experts in Canada, Norway, Greenland, Russia, Iceland, and the United States use uniform methods to compile the initial maps for later, continental-scale synthesis. Close coordination with other continental and circumpolar vegetation efforts is achieved through the Pan-Arctic Flora project, CAFF, the European vegetation mapping effort, and the Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Classification to ensure the adoption of common standards and protocols. Following three international CAVM workshops and one North American workshop, the first circumpolar synthesis base map was published in 2002. The large-scale map shows 18 vegetation categories, defined by dominant plant growth form, dominant moisture regime, characteristic plant communities, and a characteristic degree of vegetation cover. The level of detail varies due to variations in mapping approach, and areas such as Greenland need further mapping. The circumpolar map will represent a key component of circumpolar GIS databases and form the basis of a unifying framework for smaller regional maps useful for natural resource development, wildlife

CIRCUMPOLAR UNIVERSITIES ASSOCIATION habitat mapping, paleoecological reconstruction, and maps of anthropogenic impacts upon landscapes. TONY FOX See also Flora of the Tundra; Vegetation Distribution Further Reading The Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Map (CAVM) project website: http://www.geobotany.uaf.edu/cavm/ Walker, D.A., “Toward a new circumpolar Arctic vegetation map: St Petersburg Workshop.” Arctic and Alpine Research, 31 (1995): 169–178 ——— “An integrated vegetation mapping approach for northern Alaska (1:4,000,000 scale).” International Journal of Remote Sensing, 20 (1999): 2895–2920 Walker, D.A. & A.C. Lillie, “Proceedings of the Second Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Mapping Workshop, Arendal, Norway, May 19–24, 1996 and the CAVM-North American Workshop, Anchorage, Alaska, USA, January 14–16, 1997, ”INSTAAR Occasional Paper 52, 1997 Walker, D.A., C. Bay, F.J.A. Daniels, E. Einarsson, A. Elvebakk, B.E. Johansen, A. Kapitsa, S.S. Kholod, D.F. Murray, S.S. Talbot, B.A. Yurtsev & S.C. Zoltai, “Toward a new arctic vegetation map: review of existing maps.” Journal of Vegetation Science, 6 (1995): 427–436 Walker, M.D., F.J.A. Daniels & E. van der Maarel (editors), “Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation.” Special Features in Vegetation Science 7, Uppsala: Opulus Press; Journal of Vegetation Science, 5 (1995): 6 Walker, D.A., W.A. Gould, H.A. Maier & M.K. Raynolds, “The Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Map: AVHRR-derived base maps, environmental controls, and integrated mapping procedures.” International Journal of Remote Sensing, 23 (2002): 4551–4570

CIRCUMPOLAR UNIVERSITIES ASSOCIATION This professional association representing over 30 universities from across the northern circumpolar area came into existence in 1989 at a founding conference at Lakehead University in Canada. Its primary purpose has been to bring together, on a regular basis, administrators, faculty, and scholars from northern regions to exchange ideas and present research findings related to the impact of higher education on northern communities and regions. It has also encouraged collaborative investigations of social, economic, political, and environmental issues and concerns that have special relevance to northern areas of the world. It has sought to demonstrate how the northern circumpolar universities may respond effectively to these challenges. The Circumpolar Universities Association (CUA) has been an advocate for expanding higher educational opportunities in the north. In most recent years, it has lent its support to the creation of the new University of the Arctic. The CUA came into existence through the guiding efforts of Professors Geoffrey Weller (Canada), Esko

Riepula (Finland), and Douglas Nord (USA). These three northern university administrators and researchers had conducted joint investigations on the roles of new universities in the north throughout the decade of the 1980s. They came to the conclusion that there was an urgent need for administrators and scholars from these new institutions to share their experiences and insights with one another as well as to regularly assess the impact and progress of their universities on a comparative basis. With this in mind, the First Circumpolar Universities Cooperation Conference was convened in 1989 in northern Ontario with representatives from 15 universities from Canada, the United States, the USSR, and the Nordic countries in attendance and presenting their research findings related to the work of their northern educational institutions. This gathering was followed up by second and third conferences in Tyumen, Russia (1991) and Rovaniemi, Finland (1992). At the latter session, held at the University of Lapland, a formal constitution and governing council for the CUA was established. At its next meeting at the University of Northern British Columbia (1995), a continuing secretariat for the organization was created. The agenda for research presentations was also expanded to include northern health and aboriginal concerns. The CUA has convened four additional times since 1995—at the Luleå Technological University in Sweden (1997), the University of Aberdeen in Scotland (1999), the University of Tromsø in Norway (2001), and most recently at the Yukon College, Canada (2003). Proceedings from most of the sessions have been published and are available through the host institutions. The CUA continues to be a strong voice on behalf of postsecondary education in the north. Its membership continues to expand and its influence in directing public attention to northern concerns has steadily grown. Recent conferences have addressed issues related to the roles that universities in northern regions can play in preserving local histories, diversifying regional economies, and assisting northern communities in accessing information technology. DOUGLAS C. NORD See also Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies (ACUNS); University of the Arctic Further Reading Circumpolar Universities Association website: http://www.arctic.uit.no/CUA Nord, D.C. & G.R. Weller (editors), Higher Education Across the Circumpolar North: A Circle of Learning, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002 Weller, G.R., “The Association of Circumpolar Universities.” In Learning to be Circumpolar: Experiences in Arctic Academic Cooperation, edited by Richard Langlais and Outi Snellman, Rovaniemi: University of Lapland Press, 1998, pp. 129–135

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CLAVERING, DOUGLAS C.

CLAVERING, DOUGLAS C. Douglas Charles Clavering commanded the sloop HMS Griper during a voyage of exploration to Spitsbergen and the east coast of Greenland in 1823. The voyage is notable in that it was primarily undertaken for the British astronomer Sir Edward Sabine to conduct detailed measurements on the timing of the pendulum at a series of sites in the High Arctic, thereby complementing a series of similar measurements taken earlier at other widely separated geographical locations. Clavering’s orders were to “proceed to Norway, about the latitude of 70°, where Captain Sabine will make observations upon the pendulum. … make the best of your way along the west coast of Spitzbergen and … about the parallel of 80° make further observations. … proceed, if the ice will permit, … to the east coast of Greenland … proceed northerly as far as the ice will allow … afford Captain Sabine opportunity of repeating his experiments … in the highest latitudes that can be safely reached. … it is our intention … that you should return to England at the close of this season” (Clavering, 1830). Clavering’s achievements thus lie within the shadow of Sabine, who subsequently produced several seminal publications of his work. His journal largely eschewed mention of the pendulum experiments, merely providing a concise narrative of events; nevertheless, his geographical survey data, gathered during the voyage, were combined with those of William Scoresby Jr., the whaling captain and explorer who had visited East Greenland in the previous year, to produce the first reliable chart of the East Greenland coast from latitude 69 to 76° N Following a brief but eventful early naval career, Clavering met Sir Edward Sabine in 1821, while en route to assume a new command in West Africa. Sabine, a highly regarded natural scientist, was engaged in making observations on the variation in the timing of the pendulum at different geographical stations representing a range of latitudes and longitudes. During their subsequent voyage together on HMS Pheasant, a deep respect and friendship developed between the two men. Clavering, with his careful handling of delicate instruments while setting up pendulum stations on land and his highly accurate navigation at sea, proved an ideal complement for the experimental expertise of Sabine. Sabine thus requested Clavering as Commander of HMS Griper to accompany him on his expedition to study pendulum movement in the high Arctic. Griper was the icestrengthened ship that had accompanied Sir William Parry on his first Arctic expedition. Clavering sailed from Deptford, London and after some delays eventually left the Thames estuary on May 11, 1823, arriving in Hammerfest, Norway on June 2 where he received intelligence that the pack ice

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along western Spitsbergen was unusually open. The required pendulum observations were made before the Griper left Hammerfest on June 23, 1823. Passing Bjørnøya (known as “Cherry Island” to Clavering and his contemporaries) on June 27, they rounded Haklyutodden, the northern headland of Amsterdamøya, NW Spitsbergen on June 30. Abandoning their initial intention of setting up the pendulum observatory in Magdalenefjord, a small party was put ashore for this purpose on a small rocky island in Fair Haven that had previously been used by Constantine John Phipps on his attempt to reach the North Pole for the same purpose. Clavering then attempted to sail northward beyond the “farthest norths” of Phipps and Captain David Buchan, but only attained 80°21′ N before returning to rendezvous with the shore party on July 11, 1823. With his primary purpose on Spitsbergen completed, Clavering sailed on July 22 for Gael Hamke’s Bay, East Greenland (74° N), sighting the coast on August 4 and landing at Cape Borlase Warren on August 8, 1823. However, progress northward was impeded by ice and, from a high point on Shannon Island, Clavering observed high land as far as 76° N. Returning southwest to Sabine Øya in the Pendulum Islands, Sabine’s party was set ashore to make their pendulum measurements while Clavering set out in two small boats, provisioned for three weeks, to explore and survey the coast. Traveling southward he met and traded with groups of Inuit, visiting the island that was later to bear his name. This is probably one of the earliest recorded meetings between Europeans and Inuit in North East Greenland. He returned to the Griper after an absence of 13 days on August 29, 1823 and, after re-embarking the shore party, sailed on August 31. They made their way south along the coastline as far as Cape Parry, making occasional shore excursions to observe the trend of the land from high ground, such as at Cape Broer Ruys. Leaving Greenland waters on September 13, the Griper reached Trondheim Norway on October 6, where further pendulum observations were made, before Deptford was finally reached on December 19. A remarkable event, unrecorded in Clavering’s or Sabine’s writings, has recently come to light in a manuscript notebook of the voyage written by Archibald Smith of Glasgow. He recounts that Clavering’s shore party, set down in northwest Spitsbergen, somewhere near Fair Haven, unearthed a largely undecomposed body from a much earlier burial. The body bore the name of Henry Hudson, and it was surmised, improbably but not impossibly, that this was the undiscovered remains of the Arctic explorer set adrift by his crew in Hudson Bay, Canada, in 1611. The body was apparently taken aboard for shipment back to England but was later thrown overboard as it began to decompose.

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Biography Douglas Charles Clavering was born at Holyrood House, Edinburgh, on September 8, 1794, the eldest son of Brigadier-General Henry Clavering and Lady Augusta Cambell, daughter of the fifth Duke of Argyll. Entering naval service at an early age, he served as midshipman on the frigate HMS Shannon during the famous engagement with the American frigate Chesapeake off Boston, Massachusetts, in June 1813, when he was 18 years old. His courageous conduct was mentioned in dispatches from Captain Philip Broke. He later served as lieutenant on the sloop HMS Spey in the Mediterranean, and in 1821 was appointed commander of HMS Pheasant, then off the west coast of Africa. There he met with then-Captain Edward Sabine. During a voyage together across the southern Atlantic, Clavering and Sabine conducted observations on the pendulum at Sierra Leone, the island of St Thomas, Ascension Island, Bahia and Maranham (Brazil), Trinidad, Jamaica, and New York (United States). Precise observations were also made on the direction and velocity of the equatorial current. Clavering’s Arctic voyage took place in 1823. Soon after returning, Douglas Clavering was assumed lost at sea, aged 32, during the summer of 1827 when his ship, HMS Redwing, bound from Sierra Leone was sunk. Wreckage was found but all hands were missing. He bequeathed his name to Clavering Øya, the island off the coast of East Greenland, partly encircled by Øle Rømer Land and Wollaston Foreland, where he had named the eastern extremity Cape Mary. IAN D. HODKINSON See also Hudson, Henry; Hudson’s Bay Company; Ittoqqortoormiit (Scoresbysund); Sabine, Edward; Scoresby, William Further Reading Clavering, Douglas Charles, “Journal of a Voyage to Spitzbergen and the East Coast of Greenland, in His Majesty’s Ship Griper. By Douglas Charles Clavering, Esq. F.R.S., Commander. Communicated by James Smith, Esquire of Jordanhill, F.R.S.E. With a Chart of the Discoveries of Captains Clavering and Scoresby.” The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, 1830, 1-30 + map ———, Unpublished Collections of Letters and Documents Relating to the Voyages of HMS Redwing and HMS Spey (Ref. TD1/1106), the Provisioning of HMS Griper (Ref. TD1/1108) and the Voyage of HMS Griper to Spitsbergen (Ref. TD1/1107), Scotland: Glasgow City Archive Mitchell Library Sabine, Edward, An Account of Experiments to Determine the Figure of the Earth, by Means of the Pendulum Vibrating Seconds in Different Latitudes, Printed at the Expense of the Board of Longitude, London: Murray, 1825 ———, “On the measurement of an arc of the meridian at Spitsbergen.” Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature and Art, 21 (1826): 101–108

Smith, Archibald, A Descriptive Essay on Captain D.C. Clavering’s Voyage to Greenland, Unpublished Handwritten Manuscript, Family Papers of Archibald Smith (Ref. TD1/1109), Scotland: Glasgow City Archive, Mitchell Library Smith, Julia Llewellyn, “Did Epic Explorer, Cast Adrift, Sail 3,000 Miles to Norway?.” Electronic Telegraph, Issue 954, Sunday, January 4, 1998

CLIMATE The weather and climate of the Arctic have produced one of the most inhospitable and extreme environments on Earth, characterized by limited sunlight for much of the year, extreme temperature variations, and a short growing season. The Arctic is often defined by climatic parameters, for example, as the area where the average temperature for the warmest month is below 10°C (50°F). Sea ice, snow cover, glaciers, tundra, permafrost, boreal forests, and peatlands are expressions of this severe climate, as well as being sensitive indicators of climatic change. Their presence and extent are susceptible to subtle variations in sunlight, surface temperature, and heat transport through the atmosphere and ocean. The Arctic also plays an important role in the complex interactions of the Earth’s system. The mean global circulation patterns of the atmosphere and ocean are controlled by equator-pole temperature differences. Polar feedback processes affect the global climate, and global warming, due in large part to greenhouse gas emissions, amplifies this effect at high latitudes. The Arctic climate is thus governed by many complex interactions, which are part of the global climate system, and, in turn, climatic conditions shape much of the Arctic environment. This article attempts to provide a general picture of the Arctic climate, the processes controlling it, present climatic trends, past variability, and predictions of future climates, including greenhouse warming.

Factors Affecting Climate The variation of received solar intensity with latitude drives a simple air movement where air rises at the equator and sinks at the poles (Hadley cell), causing the polar high-pressure areas of cold, sinking air that inhibits precipitation. A second external factor affecting polar climate is the extreme seasonal variation in incoming solar radiation over the course of a year, from near-continuous insolation in summer to months of almost total darkness in winter. As a result, temperatures fluctuate less diurnally than they do between winter and summer. The daily temperature range may be only 3–6°C. Winters are sustained and extremely cold, while summers are short and cool.

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CLIMATE The high albedo of snow and ice ensures that even in summer much incoming solar radiation is reflected (negative energy balance), leading to surface cooling and air temperatures that can reach as low as −60°C (see Albedo; Energy Balance). The Arctic differs from the Antarctic in being an ocean surrounded by continental landmasses and open seas rather than a landmass surrounded by seas. Warm North Atlantic water flowing into the Arctic Ocean keeps temperatures to +2 to +4°C in the Fram Strait area and near 0°C even after reaching the other side of the Arctic Ocean. The climate of coastal Arctic areas is moderated by this maritime influence, while continental interiors have much more severe winters.

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Precipitation in the Arctic is difficult to measure since it is generally light and associated with storms, and also because for the greater part of the year it falls as dry snow, which is redistributed by winds according to exposure and local topography. With an annual

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precipitation of 200–300 mm and frequently less than 100 mm (104 mm/yr at Barrow (Alaska), 130 mm/yr at Resolute, and 95 mm/yr measured in the central Arctic Ocean on Soviet drifting ice stations), the Arctic is comparable to arid regions elsewhere (see Figure 2). Exceptions include some alpine permafrost areas and polar islands frequented by storms of oceanic origins. Much of the Arctic consists of cold deserts largely devoid of vegetation. It should be noted, however, that climatically arid regions can have wet surfaces when permafrost prevents drainage of the seasonally thawed layer, even though the precipitation may be low (see Polar Desert).

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causing traveling lows to intensify and develop into frequent strong cyclones between Iceland and southern Greenland and near the Aleutian Islands, respectively (see cyclone activity below). In winter, eastern Eurasia is dominated by the semipermanent Siberian High and persistent high pressure is also found over the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (the Beaufort High). These high-pressure centers are associated with stable and intense cold air that blocks cyclonic storms. A distinctive characteristic of the Arctic atmosphere is the surface weather systems associated with a largescale, cold-cored westerly circumpolar circulation in the middle and upper atmosphere (see Polar Vortex). Cyclones (low atmospheric pressure areas) and anticyclones (high pressure) are embedded in and steered by this flow, and variability in the path of these can radically affect the weather and climate beneath the vortex. The synoptic (large-scale instantaneous state of the atmosphere) activity in the Arctic has changed since the 1950s, with winter cyclone activity being most

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Figure 3: Mean atmospheric sea-level pressure (mbar) in the Arctic in January and July. From AMAP Assessment Report: Arctic Pollution Issues, Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, 1998. Reproduced with permission

Norwegian and Barents seas. Winter anticyclones are most frequent and strongest over Siberia and Alaska/Yukon, with additional but weaker systems over the central Arctic Ocean and Greenland.

CLIMATE During summer, cyclones are common in the same regions as in winter. Increased cyclonic activity over Siberia, the Canadian Arctic, and the central Arctic Ocean is related to increased cyclogenesis (cyclone generation) over northern parts of Eurasia and North America. These systems enter the Arctic Ocean from the Laptev Sea eastward to the Chukchi Sea. The Siberian and Alaska/Yukon anticyclones disappear, but anticyclones form over the Kara, Laptev, East Siberian and Beaufort seas, and southeastward across Canada. North of 65° N, cyclone and anticyclone activity peaks during summer and is at a minimum during winter. Since the 1950s, cyclone numbers in winter, spring, and summer have increased significantly, as have anticyclone numbers in spring, summer, and fall. An interesting recent finding is that the atmospheric circulation over the Arctic Ocean alternates between “typical” anticyclonic and cyclonic circulation regimes approximately every 10–15 years. This has important implications for the Arctic’s thermohaline (temperature and salinity) circulation, salinity anomalies observed in the Greenland Sea, and the variability of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean (see Arctic Ocean; Thermohaline Circulation).

current systems, are part of this global heat transfer system. The nature and conditions of the surface of the Arctic, including the presence of snow and ice for much of the year, further modify the climate through the regional heat energy balance. The available heat energy is distributed to warm the air or the ground, melt snow and ice, or evaporate water from the surface. Stable surface inversions (in which air temperature increases with height) form over most of the Arctic terrain and are caused by radiative cooling of the surface (loss of heat by infrared radiation), particularly in winter. Intense cold periods result through the combined effect of radiative cooling at the surface and anticyclonic conditions with clear skies. During summer, the temperature of the entire pack ice of the Arctic Ocean remains at 0°C and there are large stretches of open water. Fog and low stratus clouds are produced by the ice and open water, persisting throughout the summer in spite of changes in atmospheric circulation. Away from the coast and the chilling influence of the coastal waters, temperatures are much warmer, leading to a much more diverse flora.

The Earth’s “Heat Engine”

Arctic Oscillations

The weather and climate of the Earth are primarily controlled by the energy from the sun. Large amounts of solar radiation are received in the equatorial regions and much of this energy is then transported by the atmosphere and the oceans to the middle and high latitudes, where it is lost as infrared or heat radiation back into space. This system, which keeps the equatorial regions from overheating and the polar regions from continuously cooling, is sometimes called the Earth’s “heat engine,” with the low latitudes acting as a heat source and the high latitudes as heat sinks. The transfer of heat from the equator to the poles takes place within the atmosphere and the oceans. The horizontal transport (advection of heat) in the atmosphere occurs in the form of both latent heat (i.e., water vapor that subsequently condenses) and sensible heat (warm air or warm water masses). It varies in intensity according to latitude and season. The intensity of the poleward energy flow is closely related to the meridional (north-south) temperature gradient. In winter, this temperature gradient is at a maximum and in consequence the atmospheric circulation is most intense. Different air masses form, which have different characteristics and are separated from one another by fronts (sharp discontinuities in temperature, moisture, and wind speeds). The movement of these air masses transfers heat and moisture and is part of the general global atmospheric circulation. Similarly, different water masses, such as the Gulf Stream and other

The climate of the Arctic is also periodically influenced by driving forces that are cyclic or quasicyclic (e.g., sunspots and El Niño-Southern Oscillation). One of these climate-forcing cycles is the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), which has major impacts on the weather of northern Europe, Russia, and even Central Asia. The NAO is an oceanographic switch in the North Atlantic that apparently modifies atmospheric pressure gradients and causes changes in the climate. Typically, cyclonic circulation over Iceland and anticyclonic conditions near the Azores produce strong westerly winds across the latitudes in between. These westerly winds blow over warm Gulf Stream waters, as they did in the NAO high-index years in 1980–1995, delivering heat to Eurasia and creating unusually mild winters there. The oscillations have been observed to affect animal and plant populations in the UK and Norway. When the NAO swings to the other extreme, as it did in 1995, air pressure builds up in Iceland, weakening the pressure gradient and reducing the warm airflow to Eurasia. The effects in 1995/1996 were a very cold winter in Europe and unusual calm near Greenland. In 1996/1997, the NAO reverted to neutral again. Although the shifts in the NAO over the past century and their effects on climate have been observed in detail, the origins of the oscillations are still largely unknown. Some hypotheses have associated them with the occurrence of anomalously cold or warm water

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CLIMATE masses. On the Pacific side, there is a similar oscillation called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and the NAO and PDO have more recently been identified as linked phenomena, associated with a broader Arctic Oscillation (see Climate Oscillations).

Past Climates The climate of the Arctic is known to have undergone great variations in the past. PAGES, the Past Global Changes project of the International GeosphereBiosphere Program (IGBP, 1992), addresses two major time scales or time streams: (1) the last 1000–2000 years, the period of human impact on the planet, which includes climatic features like the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Interval, and (2) the last few glacial/interglacial cycles that cover several hundreds of thousands of years, when major changes happened to the climate/biosphere system. The Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period were the most recent examples of cooler and warmer climates, respectively. The North Atlantic region was unusually mild when the Norse first settled in Greenland in the 10th century AD, and then plunged into a 500-year cold spell known as the Little Ice Age, starting about AD 1300. By 1500, archaeological and historical evidence shows that the Norse settlers had completely disappeared. The changing climate was undoubtedly a factor in the disappearance of the Norse settlements and illustrates the potential impacts of climate change on humans and human activities. Historical climate records generally do not go back more than 2000 years, but past climates can be reconstructed from many different proxy indicators, including tree rings (1000 years), ice core records (100,000 years), lake sediments (million years), and marine sediments (10 million years), among others. The ice core record shows details of past climatic variability. At the end of the last Ice Age, about 13,000 years ago, the climate was beginning to warm during a period called the Bølling-Allerød when it suddenly plunged back to Ice Age conditions. This 1300-year-long cold period is named the Younger Dryas because the polar wildflower Dryas octopetala had a resurgence in Europe during this time. Temperatures in Greenland dropped by about 7°C back to full ice-age conditions. At the end of the Younger Dryas, the climate returned to warmer and wetter interglacial conditions. Ice ages occur at roughly 100,000-year intervals and are thought to be caused primarily by changing amounts and distribution of sunlight on the planet due to long-term variations in the Earth’s orbit and the inclination of its spin axis to the sun. These are the so-called Milankovich cycles after the Yugoslav mathematician who computed them 75 years ago. During

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ice ages when ice sheets covered large parts of the Northern Hemisphere continents, the Bering Strait between Asia and North America was above sea level and allowed humans to migrate from one continent to the other. Glaciers also temporarily covered other straits between Svalbard and Novaya Zemlya. Continental runoff was probably considerably reduced, particularly if an ice cap existed that dammed the big northward-flowing Siberian rivers. Results obtained from the deep ice cores recovered by European and American researchers from the Greenland ice sheet and from Antarctica have produced remarkable new insights into short- and long-term climatic changes, with the abrupt changes revealed by the ice cores being particularly surprising. During the last Ice Age, the ice core record revealed unexpected abrupt climate shifts that had not been seen before. These oscillations, called Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles, lasted from centuries to millennia, jumping abruptly from cold to warm climates before slowly reverting to cold conditions again. Many of these oscillations seem to be associated with the collapse of big ice sheets, which sent numerous icebergs into the North Atlantic, the so-called Heinrich events. While a full understanding of these abrupt climate changes is lacking at present, it seems likely that the collapse of ice sheets played a major role.

Future Climates The future climate of the Arctic may be strongly affected by the greenhouse effect, produced by industrial greenhouse gas emissions. The Earth’s greenhouse effect is produced by naturally occurring constituents of the atmosphere such as water vapor and carbon dioxide, and also increasingly by the worldwide combustion of fossil fuels. Numerous general circulation models (GCMs) have attempted to simulate the expected global warming due to the greenhouse effect. Global temperatures will continue to rise, with average global surface temperatures projected to increase between 1.4°C and 5.8°C above the 1990 levels by 2100. All the models show higher annual mean temperatures in the Arctic, compared to the rest of the Earth, and even higher temperatures in winter and spring (see Global Warming). These modeling results are the basis of the WMO/ UNEP (World Meteorological Organization/United Nations Environment Programme) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predictions that the Arctic will warm more than the global mean, particularly in winter. The IPCC report also predicts Arctic landmasses to warm more rapidly than the ocean, while some models show the greatest temperature increases over the Arctic Ocean. The potential future global climate impacts could be severe, including a rising sea level, more intense precipitation events in

CLIMATE CHANGE some countries and increased risks of droughts in others, and severe effects on agriculture, water resources, and human health. The environment and most human activities in the Arctic are likely to be affected adversely (see Impacts of Climate Change). Because of the growing evidence of climate change, and widespread concern about its consequences, a number of major international efforts are now under way to investigate, understand, and assess climate change and its impacts worldwide. GUNTER WELLER See also Climate Change; Climate Oscillations; High Arctic; Microclimates; Polar Desert; Precipitation and Moisture; Climate: Research Programs; Weather Further Reading Barry, R.G. & R.J. Chorley, Atmosphere, Weather and Climate, New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1970 CIA, Polar Regions Atlas, US Central Intelligence Agency, 1978 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change. The Scientific Assessment, edited by J.T. Houghton, G.J. Jenkins & J.J. Ephraums, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990 ———, Climate Change 1995. Impacts, Adaptations and Mitigation of Climate Change: Scientific-Technical Analysis Contributions of Working Group II to the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by R.T. Watson, M.C. Zinyowera, R.H. Moss & D.J. Dokken, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996 ———, Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by J. McCarthy, O.F. Canziani, N.A. Leary, D.J. Dokken & K.S. White, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001 Jones, P.D., “Hemispheric surface temperature variations: a reanalysis and an update to 1993.” Journal of Climate, 7 (1994): 1794–1802 Jones, P.D., S.C.B. Raper, R.S. Bradley, H.F. Diaz, P.M. Kelly & T.M.L. Wigley, “Northern Hemisphere surface air temperature variations, 1851–1984.” Journal of Climatology and Applied Meteorology, 25 (1986): 161–179 Weller, G., “The Weather & Climate of the Arctic.” In The Arctic: Environment, People, Policy, edited by M. Nuttall & T.V. Callaghan, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000

CLIMATE CHANGE Variations in climate occur on a global scale on time scales from seasonal to many millions of years. The Arctic affects global climate through strong feedback processes in global atmosphere and ocean circulation, and thus may have played a particular role in natural climate variations on time scales of thousands of years. The impact of recent and future climate change

on the Arctic is discussed in the entry on Impacts of Climate Change. Before embarking on the subject of climate change, a few terms should be defined. Climate is used to denote an average, mean, or integrated state of the atmosphere and the underlying land or water on time scales of seasons or longer. Climate is usually determined through observed meteorological parameters, including temperature, precipitation, pressure, humidity, wind speed and wind direction, cloudiness, and sea surface temperatures for a given place or region over a longer time span; the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) specifies that at least a 30-year record is necessary to specify the climate of a locale. Climate variability indicates changes in climatic conditions that are solely due to natural mechanisms and are unrelated to human activities; one may distinguish between external and internal natural variability indicating changes caused by processes external or internal to the Earth’s climate system. Examples for external natural variability are changes in the sun’s energy output (luminosity), variation of orbital characteristics of the Earth and resulting changes in solar energy received at the land surface, and more stochastic events such as meteorite impacts, which cause gas and particle clouds to be ejected into the atmosphere. Internal variability, that is, climate variation not forced by external agents, has been observed on all time scales from weeks to centuries and even millennia. They involve the components of the global climate system, particularly the atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, and the biosphere. The geosphere exerts an indirect influence on climate variability, which may however be decisive in controlling major shifts in the climatic state of the Earth (Clark et al., 1999). Climate change is a variation in climatic parameters that is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity. Such variations take place in addition to or despite natural climate variability observed over a given time period. Anthropogenic forcing mechanisms that contribute to climate change include the emission of greenhouse gases (i.e., carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, and chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs) and aerosol particles (e.g., soot), the excessive exploitation of natural resources and deforestation, increased urbanization, and land-use changes. Note that climate change can result in warming or cooling of the Earth’s nearsurface atmosphere and may involve a few or all of the climate variables mentioned above. While this definition of climate change is compatible with that used by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change uses this term to denote any change in climate over time, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity.

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Figure 1: An example for the temperature and trace gas record as derived from the Vostok ice core, East Antarctica; note the periodicity (i.e., with respect to the peak of interglacials) in both data sets and the high degree of correlation between the data. From Vital climate graphics, the impacts of climate change, UNEP and Grid Arendal, 2000

Global warming is commonly used to denote the enhanced greenhouse effect and the (supposedly) general increase in mean global surface temperatures. A strengthening of the greenhouse effect is caused by enhanced atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (see Greenhouse Gas Emissions). The most recent alteration of the natural greenhouse effect has been brought about through the large-scale utilization of fossil fuels and resulting increased emission of greenhouse gases since the end of the 19th century, with the onset of the industrial revolution. Major users of fossil fuels include industry, private households, and motorized vehicles. Global warming refers primarily to increases in surface temperatures and excludes cooling effects (which may similarly result from the processes involved) as well as changes in other climatic variables. Climate forcing can be defined as an imposed perturbation of the Earth’s energy balance (National Academy of Sciences, 2001) as an underlying cause of climate variability and climate change. The term indicates neither a natural nor anthropogenic origin. An increase in the sun’s luminosity constitutes a positive forcing that would result in a warmer Earth, while a large volcanic eruption and the resulting aerosols in the lower stratosphere would lead to enhanced reflections of incoming solar radiation and thus a cooler Earth. These are examples of natural forcings. Examples of anthropogenic forcings include emissions of

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greenhouse gases or changes in land use, for example, the conversion of forests into agricultural land.

Past Changes of the Global Climate System We will start off with a brief review of climate variability over a time span of about the last 2.5 million years to the present. A first analysis of the long-term climate development reveals a quasiperiodic oscillation with dominant periods of about 41,000 years prior to the middle Pleistocene and a shift toward a longer period of about 100,000 years at around 1.2 million years ago (Clark et al., 1999). A closer look at the climate record for the last 400,000 years confirms the periodic/oscillatory behavior of the climate system with a dominant frequency of about 100,000 years (Figure 1). In addition, there are periods of 41,000 and 23,000 years as well as millennial-scale, less periodic changes embedded into the 100,000-year cycle. Apparently, these climate variations occurred on a global scale, that is, on both the Northern and the Southern Hemisphere at approximately the same time. Evidence for these climate oscillations comes mostly from indirect sources, the so-called proxy records, since no direct measurements of past temperature are available. Paleontological data that link the fossil remains of certain animal and plant species in the geological record of a region to particular environmental conditions provide one such proxy record. The material

CLIMATE CHANGE to be analyzed comes mostly from scientific drillings into the continental or oceanic crust or from sediment cores in lake bottoms. The distribution of pollen species, for example, in old peat deposits, and isotopic and trace chemical analysis on tree rings provide other paleoenvironmental proxy records. Particularly useful proxy records have been derived from the analysis of polar and mountain-glacier ice cores (Figure 1; see Ice Core Record). The analysis of air entrapped in closedoff bubbles reveals past concentrations of atmospheric trace gases, while ratios of hydrogen and oxygen isotopes measured in molten samples of the ice provide a direct measure of paleotemperatures over the past few hundred thousand years (Alley and Bender, 1998). The analysis of such records and their interpretation provide insights into the underlying causes of climate variability, which will be discussed in the following section.

Underlying Causes of Climate Variability and the Role of the Arctic While variability of even longer duration than discussed above (i.e., on time scales of millions of years) is largely controlled by long-term changes in solar luminosity and shifts in the land-ocean distribution on the surface of the Earth as a result of plate tectonics, the 100,000–10,000-year variations in the Earth’s climate described above appear to be driven by periodic changes in solar insolation (the amount of incoming solar radiation over a unit area of the Earth’s surface) at high latitudes (the orbital variations have a relatively minor effect at lower latitudes). These insolation changes correspond to (Figure 2) the precession of the rotation axis of the Earth around a reference axis (similar to the phenomenon seen with a spinning top), which operates on a period of 23,000 years, changes in the tilt or obliquity of the rotation axis relative to the orbital plane that varies between 22.5° and 35° with a 41,000-year periodicity, and the variation of the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit (from nearly circular to slightly elliptical), which has a 100,000-year periodicity. The magnitude of the insolation change is significant for the 23,000- and 41,000-year cycles, whereas the absolute change in incoming solar radiation over the 100,000-year cycle is of only minor magnitude. Although insolation variations affect both northern and southern high latitudes, insolation changes at northern latitudes are most significant because of the greater continental area, which allows a greater accumulation of ice and snow. This may contribute to feedback mechanisms such as that due to albedo (described below). In the 1920s, the Serbian mathematician Milutin Milankovitch calculated, based on theories postulated

Figure 2: Schematic representation of major changes in the Earth’s orbital parameters and their periodicities.

by James Croll in the late 19th century, that the periodicities in the Earth’s orbital parameters and the predicted insolation changes at northern latitudes could explain cycles of glacial and interglacial periods observed in the climate record. This mechanism is known as Milankovitch forcing. Subsequent statistical analyses of paleoclimate data have largely supported the Milankovitch theory by showing that ice sheets of the Northern Hemisphere have developed and retreated with the Milankovitch cycles (23,000, 41,000, and 100,000 years). In particular, the 100,000-year cycle corresponds to the shift between glacial and interglacial periods (ice ages and warm periods, respectively) for at least the last one million years. It has been shown that the climate system at other latitudes shows similar periodicities of similar magnitude, although with significant time lags of 5000–15,000 years relative to the insolation forcing

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CLIMATE CHANGE at high northern latitudes. What may be the cause for this time lag? Various investigations have shown that the large northern ice sheets that grow with time constants of similar magnitude may have been responsible (Imbrie et al., 1992, 1993). They transmit and amplify changes that correspond to insolation changes at high latitudes due to orbital periodicities to other parts of the world through the global climate system. Thus, interactions between Northern Hemisphere ice sheets and other elements of the climate system may cause the transition from regional insolation changes to global climate variability at time scales of 10,000–100,000 years, with millennial-scale variations causing secondary variations in climate parameters (Bond and Lotti, 1995; Imbrie et al., 1992, 1993). However, despite these intriguing arguments, there are a number of more specific questions that need to be addressed. What are the underlying mechanisms that nearly synchronize the climate of the Southern and the Northern Hemisphere despite asynchronous insolation forcing? What is the reason for the dominant 100,000 cycle of the last 1.2 million years, despite the fact that the insolation varies significantly at 23,000- and 41,000-year periods and trivially at the 100,000-year period?

Role of the Arctic in Climate Variability With respect to the first question, a number of explanations have been invoked, including in the case of colder periods (glacials) the generally higher albedo due to increased snow and ice covers (Hansen et al., 1984; see Albedo), a larger concentration of aerosols as a result of increased aridity or higher wind speeds (Harvey, 1988), and lower concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases (Barnola et al., 1987; Raynaud et al., 1993). All of these factors contribute to a less positive radiation balance, that is, a decrease in net warming in the Earth’s surface. While important in a general sense, these factors do not suffice to explain the coupling between climate variability of the Northern and the Southern Hemisphere with respect to the 23,000- and 41,000year forcing. Atmospheric general circulation models results (Manabe and Broccoli, 1985) demonstrate that simulated albedo effects of ice sheet changes on one hemisphere such as those mentioned above do not effectively propagate across the equator to the other hemisphere through the troposphere (Alley, 1995). However, various paleoclimate proxy data show that global temperatures are linked to insolation at high northern latitudes. Thus, global warming is detected when insolation is large during summers in northern regions irrespective of insolation values in Southern Hemisphere summers (Imbrie et al., 1992). In particu-

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lar, a general warming trend is paralleled when summers are warm and winters are cold in the Arctic, while a global cooling trend is observed when northern winters and summers are cool (Imbrie et al., 1992, 1993). In summary, the comparison between paleoclimatic records and calculated orbital forcings of climate variability indicates that global climate variabilities at 23,000- and 41,000-year periods are strongly linked to variations in insolation at high northern latitudes (Alley, 1995). Various explanations have been invoked with respect to the 100,000-year climate cycle, which is not linked to insolation variations. It is important to note that the variation in eccentricity serves mainly to modulate the precessional cycle. The timing of the perihelion (the point in its orbit where the Earth is closest to the sun) has a significant effect on seasonal insolation at times when the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit is high, while a nearly circular orbit leads to lesser forcing by changes in the precession of the Earth’s rotation axis. Thus, it is expected that the amplitude of the precession cycle varies with a 100,000-year periodicity (Alley, 1995). Attempts to model the response of the climate system to the 100,000-year eccentricity cycle of the Earth’s orbit prove successful when a moderately slowly responding element is considered as part of the global climate system. Examination of paleoclimate records reveals a strongly asymmetric behavior of the 100,000-year climate cycle, with a slow onset of Ice Age conditions and a rapid transition from Ice Age conditions to interglacials. This characteristic is matched by numerical models if the aforementioned slow element of the climate systems leads to the observed rapid transition after a certain glaciation threshold is exceeded (Alley, 1995). While there may be several candidates qualifying as the slow climate element, the only plausible one seems to be represented by continental ice sheets at midlatitudes, for example, the Laurentide ice sheet in North America or the Fennoscandian ice sheet in northeastern Europe. Ice sheets are characterized by a highly asymmetric response to climate forcing. While the buildup of an ice sheet is fed by the relatively slow rate of snow accumulation, the collapse of an ice sheet takes place at the much faster rate of surface melting and/or dynamic collapse following the crossing of a glaciation threshold that gives rise to several positive feedbacks and accelerates ice sheet shrinkage. Thus, ice sheets in general and—due to their size— the large, Arctic-derived Laurentide and Fennoscandian ice sheets in particular appear to be well suited to translate the 23,000- and 41,000-year cycles into the 100,000-year climate cycle (Alley, 1995).

CLIMATE CHANGE While these conclusions still await further substantiation, it seems clear that orbital forcings of high northern latitude insolation in concert with the relatively slow response of large ice sheets such as the Laurentide or Fennoscandian ice sheets provide plausible explanations for climate variability on the millennial time scale. This underlines the role of the cryosphere in general and the Arctic in particular for natural climate variability and the glacial-interglacial cycles that have dominated the last million years of Earth’s history.

Recent Climate Variations and Possible Anthropogenic Causes After having considered long-term variations in the Earth’s climate, we will now turn to more recent changes of climatic parameters. However, before addressing these issues, we will briefly review the factors controlling climate at high northern latitudes. Climate variability in general is primarily driven by changes in the energy balance, the trace gas balance, and the hydrological cycle. As far as the Arctic is concerned, the energy balance in the Arctic is strongly influenced by the extreme seasonality of solar radiation with continuous sunshine in summer and near absence of sunshine in winter. The Arctic can either be a source or a sink of trace gases, depending on ambient conditions. The hydrological cycle is governed by exchange processes involving water in the frozen, liquid, and vaporous state.

Energy Balance Alterations of the global radiation budget exert the most direct influence on global climate. In addition to the solar elevation angle and the duration of sunlight, the radiation budget is controlled by atmospheric scattering and absorption, clouds and haze, atmospheric (trace gas) chemistry, and the surface albedo. These factors are intricately linked with each other through various feedback loops and represent major uncertainties in an assessment of the Arctic’s role in global climate (AMAP, 1998). Fluxes of latent, sensible, and conductive heat are largely controlled by the physical processes at the surface, including melting, evaporation, precipitation, and air-sea-ice interactions. Changes in sea ice characteristics (extent, thickness, snow cover) particularly affect the energy exchange between ocean and atmosphere and the surface albedo (see below). The cloud cover and the extent of sea ice, ice caps, and snow cover strongly influence the regional to global radiation budget through their effects on the planetary albedo and large-scale albedo gradients. The latter influence global atmospheric circulation patterns.

Trace Gas Budget The greenhouse effect, that is, the warming of the troposphere and the Earth’s surface through the absorption of infrared radiation by greenhouse gases, plays a major role in climate variability and change. Exchange processes in the marine and terrestrial ecosystems of the Arctic significantly influence global greenhouse gas concentrations. Perturbations in Arctic climate will influence these processes and may lead to regime shifts with respect to the role of the Arctic as a source or a sink for greenhouse gases. A rise in ground temperatures leads to processes (e.g., enhanced microbial activity in peat land deposits) that may result in substantial release of carbon and/or carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, thus initiating feedbacks and further warming. Although poorly understood, these feedback processes will have repercussions beyond the Arctic and may influence global climate at large (AMAP, 1998).

Hydrological Cycle The transport of water in the Arctic is significantly different from that in other parts of the globe. While much of the water is frozen most of the time, ambient temperatures in the Arctic are close to the melting point of snow and ice. Therefore, freeze-thaw cycles of sea ice, snow, permafrost, and glacial ice constitute important elements of the northern hydrological cycle. Melting and freezing also influence runoff and the riverine input (including the input of various trace materials) into the ocean. The extended shelf areas along the Arctic coasts comprise about 25% of the world’s continental shelf regions and are strongly affected by the freshwater influx. The freshwater discharge also controls the formation of nearcoastal sea ice and thus the regional albedo and the global radiation balance. Increased freshwater input to the oceans from melting ice would lower surface densities and could slow down thermohaline circulation. The strong seasonality of terrestrial water transport has a bearing on biospheric processes through the varying delivery of important nutrients (AMAP, 1998).

The Recent/Present Climate of the Arctic Compared to the climate variability of the distant past, present changes appear to be of a different quality. Firstly, the rate of change of climate parameters (less so their magnitude) seen today seems extremely high and is the underlying cause of major disturbances of natural and human systems. Secondly, while previous climate variability was entirely caused

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CLIMATE CHANGE by shifts and feedback within the global climate system, the present development is apparently influenced by anthropogenic factors and is therefore called climate change (see above). Before addressing anthropogenic forcing of climate development, we will briefly examine some of the indicators of climate change in the Arctic.

explained by a linear warming trend of 0.66°C per century. In Alaska, glaciers have also receded over the last 40 years (Weller and Lange, 1999). Typical thickness changes amount to a thinning of up to 10 m over this period. A sustained warming of 1°C apparently reduces the length of glaciers by about 15%.

Evidence from Permafrost Characteristics

Sea Ice Regime

Subsurface soils and bedrock, including the pore fluids they contain (mostly fresh water with trace amounts of various salts and other substances), that remain at temperatures below 0°C for at least two consecutive years are called permafrost (see Permafrost). Widespread continuous permafrost is distinguished from more patchy, sporadic, or discontinuous permafrost. While temperatures at depth remain at subzero temperatures for a long time (centuries to millennia), the zone close to the surface, known as the active layer, experiences seasonal melting and refreezing. However, small changes in climate will affect the active layer characteristics significantly and will lead to prolonged thawing of permafrost (see Permafrost Retreat). This has been observed recently in parts of the Russian Arctic, Canada, and in Alaska (Osterkamp, 1994; Osterkamp and Romanovsky, 1996). The consequence of such thawing actions is the formation of socalled thermokarst and enhanced erosion. Moreover, thawing permafrost will significantly affect man-made structures, including buildings, roads, bridges, and railroad foundations. Borehole temperatures in continuous permafrost provide a reliable record of past temperatures over the last few decades. Observations in Alaska have revealed a significant warming of up to 2–4°C over the last 50 years (Lachenbruch and Marshall, 1986).

Sea ice is an important climatological agent. A closed sea ice cover essentially diminishes exchanges of energy, matter, and momentum between the atmosphere and the underlying ocean. The high albedo of sea ice surfaces relative to open water strongly influences regional to global radiation budgets and thus climate. Sea ice also plays a less obvious role with respect to biogeochemical processes. Sea ice biota, that is, organisms particularly adapted to the harsh conditions in the sea ice pore space, utilize this medium as a habitat and are important seed species for the spring bloom and the growth of plankton in summer (Legendre et al., 1992; Thomas and Dieckmann, 1994). It is known that the global atmospheric carbon dioxide budget is strongly influenced by uptake at the near-surface layers by phytoplankton in polar waters. Without sea ice, which serves as a wintering-over habitat for planktonic organisms, these exchange processes would also be influenced, leading to increasing carbon dioxide concentrations and an enhanced greenhouse warming. There have been numerous indications for changes in the Arctic sea ice cover over the last few decades. Evidence for these changes comes firstly from observed ice thickness changes in parts of the Arctic Ocean. Sea-ice draft data, which were acquired on submarine cruises between 1993 and 1997, have been compared with data obtained between 1958 and 1976 (Rothrock et al., 1999). The results obtained indicate a thinning of 1.3 m in most of the deep parts of the Arctic Ocean from 2.1 to 1.8 m during the observational period. While the extensive thinning of Arctic sea ice as proposed by the Rothrock et al. study has been challenged (Winsor, 2001), the main conclusion of a sea ice cover in transition has been confirmed (Holloway and Sou, 2001). The second evidence for a changing Arctic sea ice cover comes from satellite remote sensing. Passive microwave observations reveal a reduction in areal sea ice extent of approximately 3% per decade since 1978 (Johannessen et al., 1999). This change amounts to a reduction of 14% in area of the multiyear ice (i.e., ice that has survived at least one summer) between 1978 and 1998. These conclusions are supported by comparisons between observations and results obtained from global climate models (Vinnikov et al., 1999). Moreover, the climate

Changes in Glacier Mass Balance Glaciers are among the most defining elements of the circumpolar North. Their characteristics, particularly their spatial extent and surface properties, are strongly coupled to climate. Glacier mass depends on precipitation and atmospheric temperatures. Their retreat has a bearing on the regional to global radiation balance as well as on sea-level rise (Gregory and Oerlemans, 1998; Haeberli, 1995; Haeberli et al., 1989). Global inventories of glacier properties indicate that there has been a coherent retreat of glaciers over the course of the last 100 years (Oerlemans, 1994; see Glacier Mass Balance). When modeling the climate sensitivity of glaciers, the observed retreat can be

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CLIMATE CHANGE model results reveal that the decrease in sea ice cover significantly exceeds rates that would be expected through natural climate variation. This leads to the question of to what extent presently observed changes in the climate system can be attributed to human influence or whether these changes are primarily an expression of natural variability. We will return to this question in the last section, after briefly reviewing the present trends in global surface temperatures.

Current Atmospheric Temperature Trends In the following, we will concentrate on the primary, though by far not the only, climate parameter of importance: surface temperature. Direct observations, which will be central to our discussion here, date back to the 1860s, that is, the dawn of the so-called industrialized revolution. It was at this time that humans first started to expand their sphere of activity, mainly through the extensive use of natural resources. Among them were fossil fuels (oil, gas, and coal) that were needed to drive industrial production at a previously unknown magnitude. The observed trends in surface temperature change correspond to the increased utilization of fossil fuel for energy production (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2001). Despite the significant interannual variation in global mean yearly temperatures, a few general observations are clearly pertinent: the global average surface temperature has increased by 0.6±0.2°C since the late 19th century; the trends are somewhat unclear for the 1940s to the 1980s, but have remained increasing ever since; the rate of temperature increase for the periods 1910–1945 and 1976–2000 amounts to 0.15°C per decade; and the 1990s have been the warmest years on record for the last 140 years (see Figure 3). An analysis of the spatial distribution of temperature changes over the period 1860–2000 reveals that the regional manifestation of change was different in the early parts of the 20th century compared to the last few decades (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2001). The latter period is characterized by almost unanimous warming (except for year-round cooling in the northwestern North Atlantic and the central North Pacific Ocean) and reveals the largest increases in temperature for the mid- and high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. It has been shown that the recently observed patterns of temperature change can be—at least in part—related to various phases of atmosphereocean oscillations, such as the Atlantic-Arctic Oscillation (Baldwin et al., 2001; see Climate Oscillations) The Arctic Oscillation phenomenon refers to opposing atmospheric pressure patterns in northern middle and high latitudes. The oscillation exhibits a

Figure 3: Measured surface temperatures for the period 1860–2000 and combined for land and ocean surfaces; seasonal deviations relative to the average temperatures for 1961–1990 as well as two-standard error uncertainties (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2001) are shown.

“negative phase” with relatively high pressure over the polar region and low pressure at midlatitudes (at about 45° N), and a “positive phase” in which the pattern is reversed. During the positive phase, higher pressures at midlatitudes drive ocean storms farther north, and changes in the circulation pattern bring wetter weather to Alaska, Scotland, and Scandinavia, as well as drier conditions to the western United States and the Mediterranean. In the positive phase, frigid winter air does not extend as far into the middle of North America as it would during the negative phase of the oscillation. This keeps much of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains warmer than normal, but leaves Greenland and Newfoundland colder than usual. Weather patterns in the negative phase are in general “opposite” to those of the positive phase. An important observation relates to the heat content of the global ocean. Characterized by a larger thermal inertia, oceans react much slower to shifts in climate compared to the atmosphere. Thus, they exert a damping effect on climate shifts whether they are positive or negative. On the other hand, once the oceans start to change, it will help to maintain an initial shift in climate. The observations show that there has been a significant increase in oceanic heat content over the last 100–140 years, and that more than half of this increase has occurred in the upper 300 m of the ocean. This increase amounts to an equivalent rate of average temperature increase in the upper ocean of 0.04°C per decade. While significantly smaller than the atmospheric warming trend, it is of the same sign and thus supports the conclusion of a generally warmer Earth since the late 19th century. Again, the question arises of whether this observation reflects primarily natural variations or an influence of human disturbance of the natural climate system. This will be addressed below.

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IPCC Assessment of Anthropogenically Driven Climate Change A major goal of the Third Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been to identify the possible role of humans in influencing the recent variations in global climate. In order to address this question, two central terms have to be clarified first (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2001). Detection is the process of demonstrating that an observed change is significantly different (in a statistical sense) than can be explained by natural variability, and attribution implies the establishment of cause and effect of an observed climate variation with a defined degree of confidence, including the assessment of competing hypotheses. The objective lies in detecting a shift in climate and attributing it to an anthropogenic cause. Since climate change (i.e., an anthropogenically caused change in climate parameters; see above) always occurs against the background of climate variability, the detection and attribution of anthropogenic factors amount to a statistical “signal to noise” problem. The first task lies in establishing that the recently observed changes deviate from the internal variability of the climate system. To that end, numerical global climate models are utilized to determine the magnitude of global mean temperature anomalies and compare these with the observed trends for the last 140 years (see above). This comparison clearly reveals that the recent changes cannot be accounted for by internal variability alone (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2001). Moreover, reconstructions of past temperatures over the last 1000 years indicate that the more recent temperature changes are unlikely to be entirely of natural origin, notwithstanding the uncertainties of paleotemperature reconstructions (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2001). The next step consists of determining whether or not the recent temperature changes can be attributed to a combination of natural and anthropogenic forcing. Here again, numerical fully coupled ocean-atmosphere climate models have been employed in the IPCC Third Assessment and have been run for the last 140 years with different forcing scenarios (Figure 4). In the first case, only natural forcings, that is, solar and volcanic variability, have been employed and the resultant temperatures have been compared with observed global mean temperatures. The agreement between the two data sets is reasonable during the first half of the 20th century, less satisfactory for the late 19th century, and poor for the later decades of the 20th century (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2001). A second set of models was run with anthropogenic forcings, that is, well-mixed greenhouse gases of

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Figure 4: Measured surface temperatures for the period 1860–2000 and combined for land and ocean surfaces; seasonal deviations relative to the average temperatures for 1961–1990 as well as two-standard error uncertainties (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2001) are shown.

increasing concentration, changes in stratospheric and tropospheric ozone, and the direct and indirect effects of sulfate aerosols. The comparison between model results and observed temperature is better than in the first set of models, but reveals significant differences for the second half of the 20th century (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2001). The third model run was performed by employing both natural and anthropogenic forcings. While showing minor discrepancies in detail, the overall agreement between model results and data is by far the best of all three simulations (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2001). More specifically, the IPCC assessment reveals that, over the last 50 years, the estimated range and magnitude of global warming due to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations alone are comparable with or larger than the observed increases in global mean temperatures (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2001). Thus, despite remaining uncertainties with respect to detection and attribution, the IPCC concludes that the human-induced increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations is a

CLIMATE: ENVIRONMENTAL INITIATIVES primary cause of the observed climate change of the last century. MANFRED A. LANGE See also Albedo; Climate Oscillations; Glacier Mass Balance; Greenhouse Gas Emissions; Ice Sheets; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); Permafrost Retreat; Quaternary Period; Thermohaline Circulation Further Reading Alley, R.B., “Resolved: the Arctic controls global climate change.” Arctic Oceanography: Marginal Ice Zones and Continental Shelves Coastal and Estuarine Studies, 49 (1995): 263–283 Alley, R.B. & M.L. Bender, “Greenland ice cores: frozen in time.” Scientific American, 278 (1998): 66–71 AMAP, AMAP Assessment Report: Arctic Pollution Issues, Oslo: Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), 1998 Baldwin, M.P., L.J. Gray, T.J. Dunkerton, K. Hamilton, P.H. Haynes, W.J. Randel, J.R. Holton, M.J. Alexander, I. Hirota, T. Horinouchi, D.B.A. Jones, J.S. Kinnersley, C. Marquardt, K. Sato & M. Takahashi, “The quasi-biennial oscillation.” Reviews of Geophysics, 39 (2001): 179–229 Barnola, J.M., D. Raynaud, Y.S. Korotkevich & C.J. Lorius, “Vostok ice core provides 160,000-year record of atmospheric CO2.” Nature, 329 (1987): 408–414 Bond, C.R. & R. Lotti, “Iceberg discharge into the North Atlantic on millennial time scales during the last glaciation.” Science, 267(5200) (1995): 1005–1010 Clark, P.U., R.B. Alley & D. Pollard, “Northern hemisphere ice-sheet influences on global climate change.” Science, 286 (1999): 1104–1111 Gregory, J.M. & J. Oerlemans, “Simulated future sea-level rise due to glacier melt based on regionally and seasonally resolved temperature changes.” Nature, 391 (1998): 474–476 Haeberli, W., “Glacier fluctuations and climate change detection—operational elements of a worldwide monitoring strategy.” WMO Bulletin, 44(1) (1995): 23–31 Haeberli, W., P. Müller, P. Alean & H. Bösch, “Glacier Changes Following the Little Ice Age—A Survey of the International Data Basis and its Perspectives.” In Glacier Fluctuations and Climatic Change, edited by J. Oerlemans, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989, pp. 77–101 Hansen, J.E., A. Lacis, D. Rind, G. Russel, P. Stone, I. Fung, R. Rudey & J. Lerner, “Climate Sensitivity: Aanalysis of Feedback Mechanisms.” In Climate Processes and Climate Sensitivity, edited by J.E. Hansen & T. Takahashi, Washington, District of Columbia: American Geophysical Union, 1984, pp. 130–163 Harvey, L.D.D., “Climate impact of ice-age aerosols.” Nature, 334 (1988): 333–335 Holloway, G. & T. Sou, “Is arctic sea ice rapidly thinning?.” Ice and Climate News, 1 (2001): 2–5 Imbrie, J., E.A. Boyle, S.C. Clemens, A. Duffy, W.R. Howard, G. Kukla, J. Kutzbach, D.G. Martinson, A. McIntyre, A.C. Mix, B. Molfino, J.J. Morley, L.C. Peterson, N.G. Pisias, W.L. Prell, M.E. Paymo, N.J. Shackleton & J.R. Toggweiler, “On the structure and origin of major glaciation cycles: 1. Linear responses to Milankovitch forcing.” Paleoceanography, 7 (1992): 701–738

Imbrie, J., A. Berger, E.A. Boyle, S.C. Clemens, A. Duffy, W.R. Howard, G. Kukla, J. Kutzbach, D.G. Martinson, A. McIntyre, A.C. Mix, B. Molfino, J.J. Morley, L.C. Peterson, N.G. Pisias, W.L. Prell, M.E. Paymo, N.J. Shackleton & J.R. Toggweiler, “On the structure and origin of major glaciation cycles: 2. The 100,000-year cycle.” Paleoceanography, 8 (1993): 699–735 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Summary for Policymakers. A Report of Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Geneva: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2001 (available at http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/spm22-01.pdf) Johannessen, O.M., E.V. Shalina & M.W. Miles, “Satellite evidence for an Arctic sea ice cover in transformation.” Science, 286 (1999): 1937–1939 Lachenbruch, A.H. & B.V. Marshall, “Changing climate: geothermal evidence from permafrost in the Alaskan Arctic.” Science, 234 (1980): 689–696 Legendre, L., S.F. Ackley, G.S. Diekmann, B. Gulliksen, R. Horner, T. Hoshiai, I.A. Melnikov & W.S. Reeburg, “Ecology of sea ice biota.” Polar Biology, 12 (1992): 429–444 Manabe, S. & A.J. Broccoli, “The influence of continental ice sheets on the climate of an ice age.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 90 (1985): 2167–2190 National Academy of Sciences, Climate Change Science— An Analysis of Some Key Questions, Washington, District of Columbia: National Academy Press, 2001 Oerlemans, J., “Quantifying global warming from the retreat of glaciers.” Science, 264 (1994): 243–245 Osterkamp, T., “Evidence for warming and thawing of discontinuous permafrost in Alaska.” EOS, 75(44) (1994): 85 Osterkamp, T.E. & V.E. Romanovsky, “Characteristics of changing permafrost temperatures in the Alaskan Arctic, USA.” Arctic and Alpine Research, 28(3) (1996): 267–273 Raynaud, D., J. Jouzel, J.M. Barnola, J. Chappelaz, R.J. Delmas & C.J. Lorius, “The ice core record of greenhouse gases.” Science, 259 (1993): 926–934 Rothrock, D.A., Y. Yu & G.A. Maykut, “Thinning of the Arctic sea ice cover.” Geophysical Research Letters, 26(23) (1999): 3469–3472 Storch, H.v. & K. Hasselmann, “Climate Change and Ocean Forecasting.” In The Ocean and the Poles: Grand Challenges for European Cooperation, edited by G. Hempel, Jena, Stuttgart, New York: G. Vischer Verlag, 1996, pp. 33–58 Thomas, D. & G. Dieckmann, “Life in a frozen lattice.” New Scientist, 142 (1994): 33–37 Vinnikov, K.Y., A. Robock, R.J. Stouffer, J.E. Walsh, C.L. Parkinson, D.J. Cavalieri, J.F.B. Mitchell, D. Garrett & V.F. Zakharov, “Global warming and northern hemisphere sea ice extent.” Science, 286 (1999): 1934–1937 Weller, G. & M.A. Lange (editors), Impacts of Global Climate Change in the Arctic Regions—Report from a Workshop on the Impacts of Global Change, Oslo, Norway: International Arctic Science Committee, 1999 Winsor, P., “Arctic sea ice thicknesses remained constant during the 1990s.” Geophysical Research Letters, 28(6) (2001): 1039–1041

CLIMATE: ENVIRONMENTAL INITIATIVES Over the past two decades, a number of national and international research programs and environmental initiatives have arisen to address the global challenges

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CLIMATE: ENVIRONMENTAL INITIATIVES posed by climate change. The Arctic is both an important part of the Earth’s climate system due to polar feedback processes and in turn predicted to warm more than the global mean during global warming. A number of climate initiatives addressed specifically at the Arctic or that relate to Arctic environments are described below.

Arctic Council (www.arctic-council.org/) The Arctic Council is a high-level intergovernmental forum that addresses common concerns and challenges faced by the Arctic governments and the people of the Arctic. The main activities of the Council focus on the protection of the Arctic environment and sustainable development as a means of improving the economic, social, and cultural well-being of the north (see Arctic Council). Programs of the Arctic Council relating to climate include the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP, see below); Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF), which will assess the impacts of climate change on Arctic ecosystems in collaboration with AMAP; and the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA, see below), set up in association with the International Arctic Science Committee.

International Arctic Science (IASC) (http://www.iasc.no/)

Committee

IASC is a nongovernmental organization whose aim is to encourage and facilitate cooperation in all aspects of Arctic research, in all countries engaged in Arctic research, and in all areas of the Arctic region (see International Arctic Science Committee (IASC)). The ACIA is one project of the IASC; there is also a current project on Mass Balance of Arctic Glaciers and Ice Sheets in Relation to Climate and Sea Level Changes.

Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) (http://www.acia.uaf.edu/default.html) ACIA is an international project of the Arctic Council and the Arctic Science Committee (IASC) to evaluate and synthesize knowledge on climate variability, climate change, increased ultraviolet radiation, and their consequences on environment, human health, and infrastructure. The aim is to provide useful and reliable information to the governments, organizations, and peoples of the Arctic on policy options to meet such changes. Three major volumes, completed in 2004, provide a peer-reviewed scientific volume, a synthesis document summarizing results, and a policy document providing

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recommendations for coping and adaptation measures. The assessment involves a broad range of experts from many disciplines and countries guided by an Assessment Steering Committee, in close cooperation with a group conducting a similar regional assessment as part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The ACIA Secretariat is located at the International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska (Fairbanks), and funding for the Secretariat is provided by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP) (http://www.amap.no/) AMAP is an international organization established in 1991 to implement components of the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS). A program of the Arctic Council, AMAP’s current objective is “providing reliable and sufficient information on the status of, and threats to, the Arctic environment, and providing scientific advice on actions to be taken in order to support Arctic governments in their efforts to take remedial and preventive actions relating to contaminants.” While AMAP concentrates on monitoring pollution, it has also covered environmental and biological effects of global climate change. Since pathways for contaminant deposition in the Arctic (winds, ocean current, snow, ice) are strongly influenced by changes in temperature and global circulation patterns, AMAP’s reports and recommendations will have an influence on planning for the impacts of climate change.

Arctic System Science (ARCSS) Program (http://www.nsf.gov/od/opp/arctic/system.htm) The ARCSS Program, established by the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States (ARCUS) in December 1991 and funded by the NSF, is an interdisciplinary program that seeks to understand the physical, geological, chemical, biological, and sociocultural processes of the Arctic system that interact with the total Earth system and thus contribute to or are influenced by global change. Within this framework, several projects examine the Arctic climate system and its variability.

Center for International Climate and Environmental Research (CICERO) (http:// www.cicero.uio.no/index_e.asp) CICERO was established by the Norwegian government in April 1990 as an independent research center

CLIMATE: ENVIRONMENTAL INITIATIVES associated with the University of Oslo. CICERO’s mandate is to conduct research and provide information about issues of climate change. CICERO’s three main areas of research are (1) impacts of climate changes and climate policy, (2) design and implementation of, and compliance with, climate policy instruments, and (3) integrated assessment, or the relationship between climate, other environmental issues, and development. CICERO works actively to keep other research communities, decision-makers, and the general public informed about recent developments in both the political and scientific arenas on climate change. CICERO actively participates in the work of the IPCC and does consulting work for business, industry, and national and international authorities.

Global Climate Coalition (GCC) (http:// www.globalclimate.org/index.htm) GCC is an organization of trade associations established in 1989 to coordinate business participation in the international policy debate on the issue of global climate change. Currently, GCC members collectively represent more than six million businesses, companies, and corporations in almost every sector of US business, including agriculture, forestry, electric utilities, railroads, transportation, manufacturing, small businesses, mining, oil, and coal. As a leading voice for business and industry both domestically and internationally, GCC volunteers and staff attend all international climate change negotiations. They also closely monitor the activities of IPCC and contribute to IPCC’s scientific assessment documents.

International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) (http://www.iclei.org/) ICLEI is an international environmental agency for local governments. ICLEI’s mission is to build and serve a worldwide movement of local governments to achieve tangible improvements in global environmental and sustainable development conditions through cumulative local actions. More than 445 cities, towns, counties, and their associations from around the world are full members of the Council, with hundreds of additional local governments participating in specific ICLEI campaigns and projects. ICLEI’s Cities for Climate Protection Campaign (CCP), which began in 1993, is a global campaign to reduce the emissions that cause global warming and air pollution. By 1999, the campaign had engaged more than 350 local governments in this effort, who jointly accounted for approximately 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

International Human Dimensions Program on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) (http:// www.uni-bonn.de/ihdp/) IHDP is an international, nongovernmental, interdisciplinary science program dedicated to promoting and coordinating research to describe, analyze, and understand the human dimensions of global environmental change. IHDP’s major international projects are designed around three main objectives: research, capacity building, and networking. IHDP works with the international social science community and other global environmental change science programs to identify emerging research opportunities. IHDP provides synthesis reports and policy-oriented summaries that contribute to decision-making, and supports research capacity building through its scientific activities and training workshops for young researchers. IHDP also provides opportunities for scientists to meet and collaborate at national, regional, and international levels. As one of four international global environmental change research programs sponsored by the International Council for Science (ICSU), IHDP works closely with the International GeosphereBiosphere Program (IGBP), the World Climate Research Program (WCRP), and DIVERSITAS.

International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP) (http://www.igbp.kva.se/cgi-bin/php/ frameset.php) IGBP’s mission is to deliver scientific knowledge to help human societies develop in harmony with Earth’s environment. The goals are to describe and understand interactive physical, chemical, and biological processes that regulate the total Earth system, the unique environment that it provides for life, the changes that occur in this system, and the manner in which they are influenced by human actions. IGBP is an international scientific research program built on interdisciplinarity, networking, and integration, and focuses its work in areas where an international approach is the best or the only way to provide an answer. IGBP works closely with IHDP, WCRP, and DIVERSITAS, the four international global environmental change programs sponsored by ICSU.

International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) (http://www.iisd.org/ climatechange.htm) IISD’s climate change program includes action projects, research and analysis, and reporting at national and international levels on climate change and adaptation.

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CLIMATE: ENVIRONMENTAL INITIATIVES Action projects include Climate Canada Newsletter, Inuit Observations on Climate Change, and Climate Change Knowledge Network.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (http://www.ipcc.ch/index.html) Recognizing the problem of potential global climate change, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) established IPCC in 1988. The role of IPCC is to assess the scientific, technical, and socioeconomic information relevant for the understanding of the risk of humaninduced climate change (see Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)). IPCC bases its assessment mainly on published and peer-reviewed scientific technical literature; it does not carry out new research nor does it monitor climate-related data. IPCC provides scientific, technical, and socioeconomic advice to the world community, and in particular to the 170-plus Parties to the UNFCCC, through its periodic assessment reports on the state of knowledge of causes of climate change, its potential impacts, and options for response strategies. IPCC completed its First Assessment Report in 1990, which provided an overall policy framework for addressing the climate change issue. It played an important role in establishing the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), adopted in 1992 and entered into force in 1994, by the UN General Assembly. Its Second Assessment Report in 1995 provided key input to the negotiations, which led to the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC in 1997. The Third Assessment Report, finalized in 2001, concentrates on new findings since 1995, and highlights regional (in addition to the global)-scale models.

Northern Climate ExChange (NCE) (http:// www.taiga.net/nce/) Located at the Northern Research Institute in Whitehorse, Yukon, the purpose of NCE is to provide an independent, credible source of information, develop shared understanding, and promote action on climate change in northern Canada. It accomplishes this by managing the northern node of the Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Research Network (CCIARN-North) and through a variety of education and outreach programs.

WWF Arctic Programme (http://www.ngo. grida.no/wwfap/) WWF’s Arctic Programme began in 1992. In addition to conservation work, WWF staff also work interna-

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tionally to highlight the impacts of climate change. The international climate change campaign is designed to raise public concern about the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, encourage policymakers to introduce effective measures, and form innovative partnerships with progressive businesses. The Campaign has published a series of studies on the impacts of climate change on coral reefs, life in the oceans, the Arctic, the world’s forests, national parks, popular tourist locations, bird migration, and public health. AYNSLIE OGDEN See also Arctic Council; Arctic Research Consortium of the United States (ARCUS); Climate: Research Programs; Health: Environmental Initiatives; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); Northern Climate ExChange; World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) International Arctic Programme

Further Reading ACIA, Implementation Plan, Arctic Climate Impact Assessment—An Assessment of Consequences of Climate Variability and Change and the Effects of Increased UV in the Arctic Region, 2000 AMAP, Arctic Pollution Issues: A State of the Arctic Environment Report, Oslo: Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, 1997 AMAP, AMAP Assessment Report: Arctic Pollution Issues, Oslo: Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, 1998 Arctic Council, Declaration on the Establishment of the Arctic Council, Ottawa, Canada, 1996 ARCUS, Arctic Information and Data: A Guide to Selected Resources (2nd edition), Fairbanks, Alaska: US Polar Information Working Group, 1996 Ashford, Graham & Jennifer Castledon, Inuit Observations on Climate Change Final Report, Winnipeg, Manitoba: International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2001 Christensen, Tove (editor), Arctic Bulletin, Oslo, Norway: World Wildlife Fund International Arctic Programme, see http://www.ngo.grida.no/wwfap/core/publications/arctic_ bulletin.html CICERO, Annual Report 2000, Oslo, Norway: CICERO, 2000 Eliott, Susannah, Global Change Newsletter, International Geosphere-Biosphere Program, Sweden Global Climate Coalition, Climate action agenda for the 21st century, available on-line at http://www.globalclimate.org/ Policy_00_0301.htm Houghton, J.T., Y. Ding, D.J. Griggs, M. Noguer, P.J. van der Linden & D. Xiaosu (editors), Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001 ICLEI, ICLEI 10th Anniversary Biennial Report 1998–99, 1999 Jacobson, Harold K. & Martin F. Price, “A framework for research on the human dimensions of global environmental change.” IHDP Report Series No. 1, 1990

CLIMATE OSCILLATIONS McCarthy, James, Osvaldo F. Canziani, Neil A. Leary, David J. Dokken & Kasey S. White (editors), Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Contribution of Working Group II to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001 Metz, Bert, Ogunlade Davidson, Rob Swart & Jiahua Pan (editors), Climate Change 2001: Mitigation, Contribution of Working Group III to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001 NOAA Magazine, Publication of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NOAA Public Affairs, Washington, District of Columbia Ogden, Aynslie, Northern Climate ExChange Annual Report 2000–2001, Whitehorse, Yukon: Northern Climate ExChange, 2001 Rogne, Odd (editor), IASC-Progress Newsletter, Oslo, Norway: International Arctic Science Committee Secretariat, available at http://www.iasc.no/Newsletters/default.htm WCRP, Annual Review of the World Climate Research Programme Report of the Twenty-First Session of the Joint Scientific Committee, Geneva, Switzerland: World Climate Research Program, 2000

CLIMATE OSCILLATIONS The weather in the Arctic, as in other locations, changes from day to day, month to month, and year to year. The climate, the average weather for a time of year computed over a few years or over many years, can change on many different time scales. For example, it can change from one five-year period to the next or one 30-year period to the next. When the climate moves from one mode to another and back again in slow, irregular patterns, we call the changes a climate oscillation. There are three related oscillations that are currently recognized as being important in the Arctic: the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the Arctic Oscillation (AO), and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). Each has a large impact on the regional climate of the Arctic. The most well known of these is the NAO. The weather in the North Atlantic, Europe, and eastern North America is dominated by two large (>1000 km) weather systems seen in the mean surface air pressure: the Icelandic Low and the Azores High. The Icelandic Low is an average low-pressure area centered near Iceland. It is the result of many storms forming, growing, or passing near the shores of Iceland, each with a low-pressure center. The Azores High is a large highpressure region, or anticyclone, located farther south, with the center between Bermuda and Africa. The strength of the Iceleandic Low is reflected in the difference in the surface air pressure measured at two stations, commonly taken as Lisbon, Portugal minus Stykkisholmur/Reykjavik Iceland. If the Icelandic

The indices for three climate measures are shown for a 100-year period. The points indicate the winter (December through March) average values and the lines indicate five-year running mean values. The indices are each normalized to have a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one. Sources: NAO index was obtained from Jim Hurrell (http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/~jhurrell/nao.html); AO index from David Thompson (http://www.atmos.colostate.edu/ ao/Data/ao_index.html); PDO index from the University of Washington’s Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Oceans (JISAO) (http:// jisao.washington.edu/pdo)

Low is strong, the difference is large, and the NAO index is high. When this occurs, more warm, moist air flows into northern Europe from the Atlantic (moving counterclockwise around the Icelandic Low), and Europe experiences relatively warm moist weather. Storms and warmer air intrude farther to the north and east, warming the Barents Sea region and even western Siberia. Eastern Canada and the Labrador Sea, on the other hand, are in a more northerly flow, with colder-than-normal weather and more extensive sea ice. The patterns reverse when the Icelandic Low is weak and the NAO index is low. There is a long historical record for the weather stations in Iceland and Portugal stretching back nearly 150 years, and climatologists have found that the

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CLIMATE OSCILLATIONS Climate characteristics associated with three climate oscillations Positive NAO

Positive AO

Positive PDO

Relatively lower pressure near Iceland.

Relatively lower pressure near the North Pole. More rapid ice transport across the Arctic Ocean and more ice export through Fram Strait. Warmer air temperatures in Europe, Siberia, and Alaska. Colder temperatures west of Greenland. More ice in the Bering Sea during the winter.

Warmer waters in the north Pacific near the Alaska and British Columbia coasts. Lower air pressure near the Aleutians.

Warmer and wetter winters in northern Europe and warmer winters in Siberia and Alaska. Less ice in the Barents Sea. Colder winters in Eastern Canada. More sea ice in Baffin Bay, Labrador Sea, and Hudson Bay. Increase in ice export through Fram Strait.

winter NAO index, while fluctuating considerably from month to month and year to year, on the average changes slowly from a positive value to a negative value and back again. This oscillation is accompanied by a string of relatively mild winters in Europe and harsh winters in Greenland and Eastern Canada when the index is high, and then a string of harsh winters in northern Europe and mild winters in Greenland and Eastern Canada when the index is low. The regional connections to the NAO index are strongest in the winter months. Encompassing the NAO is a hemispheric-wide fluctuation, the Arctic Oscillation, also known as an Annular Mode. This fluctuation is associated with the strength of the circulation of the winds that circle the globe in a west to east direction centered at midlatitudes, 40–60° N, called the polar vortex. The strength of these winds in the winter is also known to change from strong (positive AO index) to weak (negative AO index) and back again. The NAO is often thought of as a regional manifestation of the AO. Commonly, though not always, when the AO index is high, so is the NAO. Positive AO phases are associated with warmer winter temperatures throughout the Arctic, except in eastern Canada and the Labrador Sea. The positive AO index is also associated with low air pressures near the North Pole and greater ice export from the Arctic Ocean through Fram Strait, located along the northeast coast of Greenland. The circulation patterns associated with the AO and the NAO are known to extend well into the stratosphere. The causes for the changes in the atmospheric circulation reflected in the changes in the indices are not well understood. Evidence suggests they are related to natural modes of variability of the atmosphere, which do not need external causes to occur, but other factors may relate to the strength and timing of the changes in the indices. For example, the sea surface temperature has a strong influence on the atmospheric circulation. Solar activity, volcanoes, sea ice extent, or greenhouse gases may also play a role. The last 30

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Larger salmon catches in Alaska and smaller on the US west coast.

years have seen the AO and NAO indices in a mostly positive mode. A third climate oscillation influencing the Arctic is the PDO. The most distinctive patterns in this case are not found, in the air pressure, but in the sea surface temperature (SST). This oscillation is associated with warmer SSTs along the coast of Alaska and British Columbia in its positive warm phase. It is correlated with precipitation and snow pack depth in the Pacific northwest and in Alaska. Important changes in salmon catches are also associated with the PDO, with larger catches obtained in Alaska and lower catches in California, Oregon, and Washington during the warm phase. The air pressure patterns are also influenced by the PDO. The warm phase is associated with lower pressures in the north Pacific, in the region of the Aleutian Low, similar to what is found in the Atlantic with the NAO. An index based on air pressures has also been used, called the North Pacific Oscillation, but, so far, the one based on the SSTs has proven more useful in determining regional climate patterns. Another well-known climate oscillation is the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) that is located in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. This oscillation occurs in periods of three to seven years and is associated with a strong warming of the waters off Peru. The temperature and precipitation in many tropical and some midlatitude regions are strongly influenced by ENSO, but, so far, meteorologists have not discovered strong links between Arctic climate and the ENSO. There are, however, some weak correlations found with the air temperature, particularly in Arctic North America. The existence of these slow climate changes, in which the climate moves from one mode to another and back again, greatly complicates the analysis of climate change in the Arctic, a change that may be the result of the buildup of anthropogenic (from human activity) greenhouse gases. Much of the warming observed in the Arctic in the last half century can be attributed to changes in the AO. The AO is currently in a mostly positive mode. Will it shift back to a negative

CLIMATE: RESEARCH PROGRAMS mode as in the past, and bring with it cooling of the high Arctic? Or is the change to a mostly positive mode part of a long-term global climate shift brought on by increased levels of greenhouse gases? These are important questions that climatologists around the world are currently actively pursuing. R.W. LINDSAY See also Climate; Climate Change Further Reading Arctic Oscillation website: horizon.atmos.colostate.edu/ao/ index.html (David W.J. Thompson) Hodges, Glenn, “The new cold war. Stalking arctic climate change by submarine.” National Geographic, March (2000) 30–41 Hurrell, J.W., “Decadal trends in the North Atlantic Oscillation: regional temperatures and precipitation.” Science, 269 (1995): 676–679 Hurrell, J.W., Y. Kushnir & M. Visbeck, “The North Atlantic Oscillation.” Science, 291 (5504) (2001): 603–605 Kerr, R.A., “A new force in high-latitude climate.” Science, 284(5412) (1999): 241–242 Mantua, N.J., S.R. Hare, Y. Zhang, J.M. Wallace & R.C. Francis, “A Pacific interdecadal climate oscillation with impacts on salmon production.” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 78 (1997): 1069–1079 North Atlantic Oscillation website: www.cgd.ucar.edu/~jhurrell/nao.html (Jim Hurrell) Pacific Decadal Oscillation website: tao.atmos.washington.edu/ pdo/ Thompson, D.W.J. & J.M. Wallace, “The Arctic Oscillation signature in the wintertime geopotential height and temperature fields.” Geophysical Research Letters, 25(9) (1998): 1297–1300 Thompson, D.W.J., S. Lee & M.P. Baldwin, “Atmospheric Processes Governing the Northern Hemisphere Annular Mode/North Atlantic Oscillation.” In The North Atlantic Oscillation: Climate Significance and Environmental Impact, edited by J.W. Hurrell, Y. Kushnir, G. Ottersen & M. Visbeck, Washington, D.C: American Geophysical Union, 2003 Wallace, J.M. & D.S. Gutzler, “Teleconnections in the geopotential height field during the northern hemisphere winter.” Monthly Weather Review, 109 (1981): 784–812 Wallace, J.M. & D.W.J. Thompson, “Annular modes and climate prediction.” Physics Today, February (2002) 28–33

CLIMATE: RESEARCH PROGRAMS Climatological information was crucial to early air and sea route development in the Arctic, and early research on a national scale focussed on establishing a network of meteorological and drifting stations to aid navigation. Global climate modeling beginning in the 1970s recognized the importance of polar land and sea ice in climatic feedback processes, and international climate programs were initiated. Ice core records from polar ice have been particularly valuable in providing a long record of natural climate variability. Research programs addressing Arctic climate have since the 1980s focussed

on anthropogenic climate change. With the Arctic predicted to warm earlier and to a greater degree than the global mean, circum-Arctic countries and organizations have interest in more detailed regional models.

Early Endeavors: 1880s–1930s The foundations of Arctic science, and meteorology in particular, were laid by the first International Polar Year (IPY). This program was the outcome of a suggestion by Karl Weyprecht of Austria for an International Polar Expedition. Planning began at a conference in Hamburg in 1879, with 11 nations pledging support. Weyprecht died in 1881, but the first International Polar Year (IPY) was mounted in 1882–1883. Twelve principal stations were established in the North Polar Region, although the Dutch expedition bound for Dikson at the mouth of the Yenisey River became beset in ice in the Kara Sea. Important contributions to polar science were made during the IPY, but the widely spaced stations made it difficult to use the data for meteorological studies. Moreover, the drama of Adolphus Greely’s expedition to Lady Franklin Bay, Ellesmere Island, and the expedition’s “farthest north” (83°24′ N on the North Greenland coast) tended to overshadow the scientific achievements. A Second International Polar Year was conducted in 1932–1933, 50 years after the first one, with some 94 Arctic meteorological stations in operation (Laursen, 1959). However, World War II prevented much of the data from being published and fully analyzed. The first significant meteorological data for the central Arctic were collected by Henrik Mohn during the 1893–1896 drift of the Fram under Fridtjof Nansen (Mohn, 1905). Roald Amundsen organized the Maud expedition, 1922–1925, to perform a similar drift in the Arctic. The scientific program, led by Harald Ulrik Sverdrup (1933), is noteworthy because the observations of Finn Malmgren laid the foundation for modern sea ice research. Another major prewar milestone was the establishment by aircraft of the first of the Soviet Union’s Arctic drifting stations, North Pole 1, on an ice-floe in 1937; the four-man team was led by Ivan Papanin (see Drifting Stations). There were two major expeditions to Greenland in the 1930s. The British Arctic Air Route Expedition (Mirrless, 1932) and Alfred Wegener’s Greenland Expedition operated their stations—Watkins Ice Cap (67.1° N 41.8° W, 2440 m) and Eismitte (70.9° N 40.7° W, 3000 m)— during 1930–1931, yielding the first detailed information on the ice sheet climate (Loewe, 1936).

Postwar: International Activities The Soviet North Pole (NP) drifting station program resumed in 1950, and continued until July 1991, with

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CLIMATE: RESEARCH PROGRAMS stations NP-2 to NP-31 (Romanov et al., 2000). Most of these were established on multiyear ice-floes. The United States had two stations on “ice islands” that had broken away from the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf (Hattersley-Smith et al., 1952). They were T-3 (originally called Fletcher’s ice island) established in 1952 and the Arctic Research Laboratory Ice Station (ARLIS) II in 1961; the others were set up on multiyear sea ice (Sater, 1968). Sporadic work on T-3 lasted until 1974. ARLIS II had a more extensive and successful program from its occupation in 1961 in the southern Beaufort Sea until its evacuation in Denmark Strait in 1965. Many of the synoptic weather observations were reported by radio to the Global Telecommunications System (GTS) and thus incorporated into operational weather maps. The presence of even two reports from the central Arctic proved invaluable in detecting large-scale weather systems within the Arctic Basin. Meteorological data from the NP and US drifting stations, and other Arctic climate data for the period 1951–1990, as well as some historical records have been assembled on CD-ROMs (NSIDC, 1996; Arctic Climatology Project, 2000). Following World War II, it was decided to hold an International Geophysical Year (IGY), July 1957–December 1958. Considerable emphasis was placed on Antarctic observations, but in the Arctic some specific programs were carried out. For example, McGill University operated the first station in the interior of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago at Lake Hazen, Ellesmere Island (Jackson, 1959), whereas the permanent weather stations in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago were all at coastal sites. Ice Station Alpha in the Arctic Ocean was the first US drifting station with a large, multidisciplinary research program. Russian scientific expeditions were mounted to study the glacial meteorology of the ice caps of Franz Josef Land (Krenke, 1961). In the mid-1970s, a Polar Experiment (POLEX) was proposed by Soviet scientists at the Institute of Arctic and Antarctic Research, Leningrad, as part of the Global Atmospheric Research Program (GARP) of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The US contribution to POLEX-North focussed on increased exploitation of satellite soundings of the atmosphere and surface data buoys in support of improved weather forecasting for northern high and middle latitudes. Although a coordinated program failed to materialize, there was added momentum to the observational activities. In 1972–1976, a US-Canadian-Japanese program— the Arctic Ice Dynamics Joint Experiment (AIDJEX)—was carried out in the Beaufort Sea. Apart from advances in modeling sea ice dynamics, an important outcome was the improved understanding of the ener-

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gy balance over sea ice. Data from the main experiment in summer 1975 are archived at the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Drifting buoy technology for the Arctic was developed during AIDJEX and this led to new information on surface pressure, air temperature, and ice drift in the central Arctic Ocean. Beginning in 1979, the Arctic Buoy Program was initiated with GARP support by the University of Washington. In 1991, this became the International Arctic Buoy Program (IABP), which now involves eight nations (see Meteorological Stations). Initially, around 20 buoys were deployed, mainly from airdrops, but in the 1990s the number rose to over 30 operating at any time. Data from these are relayed via the Argos satellite system to the GTS. The quality of Arctic surface pressure analyses greatly improved as a result. The International Biological Program (IBP) included a tundra biome component in the 1970s. Each site carried out detailed climatological measurements, including energy budget studies. There were comparative field measurement programs in 1972 at Barrow, Alaska, Truelove Lowland, Devon Island, and Abisko, Sweden (Barry et al., 1981). In 1985, a Program for International Polar Oceans Research (PIPOR) was inaugurated by the European Space Agency (ESA). The focus was on satellite remote sensing of sea ice using passive and active microwave data. In particular, attention focussed on the use of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data from the ESA Remote Sensing Satellite (ERS)-1 in polar regions. In the 1990s, coordinated Arctic climate studies were organized by the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) (see http://www.wmo.ch/web/ wcrp/prgs.htm) under the Arctic Climate System (ACSYS) project (http://acsys.npolar.no/). Its central goal was to determine the role of the Arctic in global climate. Its specific objectives were: understanding the interactions between the Arctic Ocean circulation, ice cover, and the hydrological cycle; initiating long-term climate research and monitoring programs for the Arctic; and providing a scientific basis for accurate representation of Arctic processes in global climate models. A particular contribution of ACSYS is the organization of various Arctic data sets on climatic and oceanic conditions including sea ice. ACSYS implementation and achievements are documented on the Web. An important related activity undertaken jointly by Russia and the United States, through the Arctic Climatology Project (2000) of the Environmental Working Group, was the preparation of comprehensive atlases of Arctic oceanography, sea ice, and meteorology/climate on CD-ROM during the second half of the 20th century. Other WCRP projects with Arctic

CLIMATE: RESEARCH PROGRAMS components include the Global Energy and Water Experiment (GEWEX) projects for the Mackenzie GEWEX Study (MAGS) during 1992–1994 and the GEWEX Asian Monsoon Experiment (GAME) (see http://www.gewex.com/). MAGS involved large-scale hydrological, atmospheric, and land-atmosphere studies within the Mackenzie Basin to improve the understanding of cold region, high-latitude hydrological and meteorological processes, and their role in global climate. GAME began in 1998 with hydroclimatological measurements along the Lena River in Yakutia, related to the Asian winter monsoon. The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP) was established in 1991 to implement components of the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy. Its objective was to provide “reliable and sufficient information on the status of, and threats to, the Arctic environment relating to contaminants” (AMAP, 1997). A further follow-up to AMAP is the current Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) project described below.

Postwar: National Programs Following World War II, France resumed glaciological and geophysical work on the Greenland ice sheet. The Expedition Polaire Francaise (Mission P.E. Victor) operated from Station Centrale at the Eismitte site (70.9° N 40.7° W, 3000 m) during 1949–1950. This set the stage for the French-German-Swiss Expedition Glaciologique Internationale au Groenland (EGIG), which in 1959 surveyed a section through the ice sheet. Resurvey on the two EGIG flow lines in 1969 produced the first evidence of an ongoing change in the ice sheet shape. Important work on the radiation and energy balance of the ice sheet (Ambach, 1963) was also carried out. Station Northice (78.1° N 38.5° W, 2343 m) of the British North Greenland Expedition was occupied from November 1952 to August 1954. Its observations, together with the Station Centrale and EGIG data and the prewar records, provided the bulk of the information on ice sheet climate until the advent of automatic weather stations in the 1980s (Putnins, 1969). In the 1960s, the Canadian Defence Research Board (DRB) carried out extensive geophysical and glaciological work in Ellesmere Island under G. Hattersley-Smith. Climatological observations were maintained at Tanquary Fjord and also at Lake Hazen (Barry and Jackson, 1969). Numerous field camps of the Canadian Polar Continental Shelf Project, 1974–1993, in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago collected short-term weather observations, and these have recently been assembled into a database. They provide a valuable supplement to the sparse weather station network (Atkinson et al., 2000). Climate studies by the

McGill University, Montreal and the Geographical Institute, ETH, Zuerich were conducted during the Axel Heiberg Expedition, 1961–1985. They were mainly related to glacier research projects but included analyses of tundra energy budgets (Ohmura, 1982). The first deep ice core was recovered from a 1387 m hole drilled to bedrock in 1966 at Camp Century (71.2° N 61.1° W, 1885 m) in northwest Greenland. For many years, this provided the primary record of glacial and postglacial climate. Additional cores were obtained in Greenland and from ice caps in the Canadian Arctic, but major advances in paleoclimate research resulted from the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP 2) and the European Greenland Ice Core Project (GRIP). Holes drilled in 1989–1993 provided over 3000 m of ice core near Summit (72.6° N 34.6° W). These records had a major impact on our understanding of the climate of the last 130,000 years (Hammer et al., 1997). Especially notable was the recognition of abrupt climatic changes—on time scales only of a decade or so—occurring throughout the late Pleistocene and Holocene intervals. Among Cold War military programs that yielded climatological information were the “Ptarmigan” flights for Arctic weather reconnaissance, from March 1947 to 1955 (Anonymous, 1950), from Alaska to the North Pole and Project Bird’s Eye aerial reconnaissance flights of ice conditions (1962–1967), also to the North Pole. The Ptarmigan flights at the 10,000 ft level observed cloud and ice conditions and used dropsondes for lower tropospheric soundings. Bird’s Eye provided data on cloud cover that formed the basis of an improved climatology (Huschke, 1969). Field studies of the North Water, a polynya in northern Baffin Bay, were conducted by McGill University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich from 1972 to 1985 under the leadership of F. Mueller. This work was continued into the late 1990s using mainly satellite remote sensing and modeling studies (Barber et al., 2001). In the 1980s, there were a number of experiments addressing Arctic ocean-ice-atmosphere interactions and the use of satellite radar data. These included the Marginal Ice Zone Experiment (MIZEX) in 1983, 1984, and 1987 as a direct outcome of POLEX (Mizex ’87 Group, 1989), the Labrador Ice Margin Experiment (LIMEX) in 1987 (McNutt et al., 1988), the Coordinated Eastern Arctic Research Experiment (CEAREX) in winter 1988–1989 in the NorwegianGreenland Sea, and the Leads Experiment (Leadex) in March–April 1992. In 1988, as a US contribution to the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP), the National Science Foundation launched a multidisciplinary program on Arctic System Science (ARCSS). The

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CLIMATE: RESEARCH PROGRAMS primary goals are: “to understand the global and regional impacts of the Arctic climate system and its variability, to identify global change impacts on the structure and stability of Arctic ecosystems and to establish the links between environmental change and human activity.” Initially, its main components were the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP 2) and one addressing the Paleoclimate of Arctic Lakes and Estuaries (PALE). Then, following a series of workshops, modern process studies were organized for terrestrial and marine systems (ARCSS Workshop Steering Committee, 1990; LAII Science Steering Committee, 1997; ARCSS, 1998). During the 1990s, the Land-Atmosphere-Ice Interactions (LAII) component included several projects that examined climate and environmental changes in the Alaskan Arctic. Responses by plants and frozen ground conditions to recent warming were identified (Serreze et al., 2000). There was also a major focus on trace gas fluxes and the effects on these of changes in climate and associated responses in the soils, vegetation cover, and land cryosphere (Kane and Reeburgh, 1998). From October 1997 to October 1998, an icebreaker was frozen into the Beaufort Sea to support the Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean (SHEBA) project of ARCSS. Researchers collected data on sea ice, oceanic and atmospheric conditions, and their interactions over an annual cycle, as the vessel drifted from 75° N to 80.5° N. Central concerns of the project are the scaling of in situ field measurements to address parameterization of processes in coupled climate models, and the assessment of surface-based, airborne, and satellite remote sensing data. The project is closely linked to other programs—FIRE and ARM—discussed below. The US Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program includes a Cloud and Radiation Testbed site at Barrow, Alaska, installed in 1997. The objectives are: to describe quantitatively the radiation balance from the surface to the top of the atmosphere; to determine the atmospheric characteristics responsible for this balance; to improve the parameterization of cloud processes in climate models; to evaluate process models used in GCMs; and to provide ground-truth of satellite radiation measurements (Stamnes et al., 1999). Related aircraft, satellite, and in situ measurements of clouds, radiation, and aerosols were carried out over the Beaufort Sea in April–July 1998 during the First ISLSCP Regional Experiment (FIRE) Arctic Clouds Experiment (ACE), in association with the SHEBA ice camp (Curry, 2001). In Canada, a research group is investigating the Cryospheric System (CRYSYS) and its role in climate. The multi-institute project began in 1988 as a contribution to NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) program. Various projects are examining the

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development of parametrizations and the validation of regional to global climate models (http://www.crysys. uwaterloo.ca/). Recent climate studies in Greenland have been conducted through the Program for Arctic Regional Change Assessment (PARCA) (http://cires.colorado. edu/steffen/parca.html). This NASA project was formally initiated in 1995, combining several investigations begun in 1991, to assess whether airborne laser altimetry could be applied to measure ice-sheet thickness changes. Its primary goal is measuring and understanding the mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet (Thomas and Investigators: PARCA, 2001). Climaterelated studies include: shallow ice cores (10–200 m) at many locations to infer recent climate history, atmospheric chemistry, and interannual variability of snowaccumulation rates; investigations of surface energy balance and factors affecting snow accumulation and surface ablation; and installation of a network of automatic weather stations (AWS) around the ice sheet. In 1997, an Arctic subset of the Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (COADS) containing marine surface weather reports for the region north of 65° N from ships, drifting ice stations, and buoys was assembled at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado. The Arctic subset contains data collected over the years 1950–1995 on air and sea temperature, cloudiness, humidity, and winds (see http://nsidc.org/data/nsidc0057.html).

Future Projects The WCRP Climate and Cryosphere (CliC) project, approved in March 2000, will continue any unfinished elements of ACSYS when that project concludes in 2003, but it has a global focus on the climatic role of the cryosphere. Accordingly, Arctic land ice, frozen ground, and snow cover will receive attention, as well as Arctic sea ice. Major climatic concerns are the state of the Arctic sea ice in the mid-21st century, the parametrization of the cryosphere in climatic and hydrologic models, the interactions of snow and frozen ground in energy and moisture fluxes, and the effects of changes in snow and ice cover on hydrology (Allison et al., 2001; see http://clic.npolar.no). The Study of Environmental Arctic Change (SEARCH) is an interdisciplinary, multiscale US program with a core aim of understanding recent and ongoing changes in the climate-ocean-ice system of the Arctic. These changes include a decline in sea level atmospheric pressure, an increase in surface air temperature, cyclonic ocean circulation, and a decrease in sea ice cover. The physical changes produce changes in the ecosystem and living resources and affect the

CLIMATE: RESEARCH PROGRAMS human population (The SEARCH Science Steering Committee, 2001). The Arctic Climate Impacts Assessment (ACIA) is an international project of the Arctic Council to evaluate and synthesize knowledge of climate variability and change, including changes in ultraviolet radiation, and their consequences for the environment and its living resources, human health, and the economy of Arctic nations. It complements the IPCC studies with more detailed regional assessments. Its three-volume report was published in 2004 (http://www.acia.uaf.edu/). ROGER BARRY See also Climate Change; Climate: Environmental Initiatives; Drifting Stations; General Circulation Modeling; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); Meteorological Stations; Satellite Remote Sensing Further Reading Allison, I., R.G. Barry & B.E. Goodison (editors), Climate and Cryosphere (CliC) Project, Science and Co-ordination Plan,Version 1, WCRP-114, WMO/TD No. 1053, World Climate Research Program, Geneva, 2001, 75pp AMAP, Arctic Pollution Issues: A State of the Arctic Environment Report, Oslo, Norway: Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, 1997, 188pp Ambach, W., “Untersuchungen zum Energieumsatz in der Ablationszone des Groenlaendischen Inlandeises.” Meddelelser om Groenland, Copenhagen, 174(4) (1963) Anonymous. U.S, Air Force weather reconnaissance flights to the North Pole, Polar Record, 6 (42) (1950): 268 Arctic Climatology Project, Environmental Working Group Arctic Meteorology and Climate Atlas, edited by F. Fetterer & V. Radionov, Boulder, Colorado: National Snow and Ice Data Center, CD-ROM, 2000 Arctic Research of the United States, Volume 11, 2003. Special issue on the National Science Foundation’s Arctic Systems Science Program, available at http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/ 2003/nsf03048/ ARCSS Data Coordination Center at the NSIDC website: http://nsidc.org/arcss/ ARCSS Workshop Steering Committee, Arctic System Science, Ocean-Atmosphere-Ice Interactions, Washington, District of Columbia: Joint Oceanographic Institutions Incorporated, 1990, 132pp ARCSS, Toward Prediction of the Arctic System, Fairbanks, Alaska: The Arctic Research Consortium of the United States, 1998 Atkinson, D.E., B. Alt & K. Gajewski, “A new database of High Arctic climate data from the Polar Continental Shelf Project archives.” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 81(11) (2000): 2621–2629 Barber, D.G., J.M. Hanesiak, W. Chan & J. Piwowar, “Sea ice and meteorological conditions in northern Baffin Bay and the North Water Polynya between 1979 and 1996.” Atmosphere Ocean, 39(3) (2001): 343–359 Barry, R.G. & C.I. Jackson,. “Summer weather conditions at Tanquary Fiord, N.W.T. 1963–67.” Arctic and Alpine Research, 1 (1969): 169–180 Barry, R.G., G. Courtin, & C. Labine, Tundra Climate. In Tundra Ecosystems: A Comparative Analysis, edited by L.C.

Bliss, J.B. Cragg, D.W. Heal and J.J. Moore, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981 Curry, J.A., “Introduction to special section: FIRE Arctic Clouds Experiment.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 106(D14) (2001): 14985–14987 Hammer, C., P.A. Mayewski, D. Peel & M. Stuiver, “Preface (Special Issue, Greenland Summit Ice Cores).” Journal of Geophysical Research, 102(C12) (1997): 26315–26316 Hattersley-Smith, G., North of Latitude Eighty. The Defence Research Board in Ellesmere Island, Ottawa, Canada: Defence Research Board, 1974 Hattersley-Smith, G., L.S. Koenig, K.R. Greenaway, & M. Dunbar, “Arctic ice islands.” Arctic, 5(2) (1952): 67–103 Huschke, R.E., Arctic Cloud Statistics from “Air Calibrated” Surface Weather Observations, Rand Corporation Memo RM-6173, Santa Monica, California, 1969, 79 pp Jackson, C.I.J., Operation Hazen. The Meteorology of Lake Hazen, NWT Based on Observations made During the International Geophysical Year. Part I: Analysis of the Observations, Publications in Meteorology No. 15, Arctic Meteorology Research Group, Geography Dept., McGill University, Montreal, 1959, pp. 1–194 Kane, D.D.I. & W.S. Reeburgh, “Introduction to special section: Land-Air-Ice Interactions (LAII) Flux Study.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 103(D22) (1998): 28913–28915 Krenke, A.N., “The ice dome with firn nourishment in Franz Josef Land.” In 34 Selected Papers on Main Ideas in the Soviet Glaciology, 1940s–1980s, edited by V.M. Kotyakov, Moscow: Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences, 1961, translated 1997, pp. 132–144 LAII Science Steering Committee, Arctic System Science. Land-Atmosphere-Ice Interactions. A Plan for Action, Fairbanks: University of Alaska, 1997 Laursen, V., “The Second International Polar Year (1932/33).” WMO Bulletin, 31 (1982): 214–226 Loewe, F., “The Greenland Ice Cap as seen by a meteorologist.” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 62 (1936): 359–377 McNutt, Argus S., F. Carsey, B. Holy, J. Crawford, C. Tang, A.L. Gray & C. Livingstone, “LIMEX ’87. The Labrador Ice Margin Experiment 1987—a pilot experiment in anticipation of Radarsat and ERS 1 data.” EOS, 69(23) (1988): 634–635, 643 Mirrless, S.T.A., “Meteorological results of the British Arctic Air Route Expedition, 1930–31.” Geophysical Memoir 7, Meteorological Office, London, 1932 MIZEX ’87 Group, “Mizex East 1987.” EOS, 70(17) (1989): 545,548–549, 554–555. Mohn, H., “Meteorology, XVII.” In The Norwegian North Polar Expedition, 1893–1896. Scientific Results, Volume 6, edited by F. Nansen, New York: Greenwood Press, 1905, reprinted 1969 National Snow and Ice Data Center, Eastern Arctic Ice, Ocean and Atmosphere Data, CD ROM, Volume 1: CEAREX-1, version 1.0, 1999 ———, Arctic Ocean Snow and Meteorological Observations from the North Pole Drifting Stations: 1937, 1950–1991, National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, CD-ROM, 2000 Ohmura, A., “Climate and energy balance on the Arctic tundra.” International Journal of Climatology, 2 (1982): 65–84 Putnins, P., “The Climate of Greenland.” In Climates of the Polar Regions, World Survey of Climatology, Volume 14, edited by S. Orvig: H.E. Landsberg(editor-in-chief), Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1969, pp. 3–128

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CLOTHING Romanov, I.P., Yu.B. Konstantinov, & N.A. Kornilov, “North Pole Drifting Stations (1937–1991).” In Arctic Climatology Project, Environmental Working Group Arctic Meteorology and Climate Atlas, edited by F. Fetterer & V. Radionov, Boulder, Colorado: NSIDC, CD-ROM, 2000 Sater, J.E. (coordinator), Arctic Drifting Stations. A Report on Activities Supported by the Office of Naval Research, Washington, District of Columbia: Arctic Institute of North America, 1968, 475pp Serreze, M.C. et al., “Observational evidence of recent change in the northern high-latitude environment.” Climatic Change, 46 (2000): 159–207 Stamnes, K., R.G. Ellingson, J.A. Curry, J.E. Walsh & B.D. Zak,“Review of science issues and deployment strategy and status for the ARM North Slope of Alaska—adjacent Arctic Ocean climate research site.” Journal of Climate, 12(1) (1999): 46–63 Sverdrup, H.U., The Norwegian North Pole Expedition with the Maud, 1918–1925, Scientific Results, Bergen: Geofysisk Institutt, 1933 The SEARCH Science Steering Committee, SEARCH. Study of Arctic Environmental Change. Science Plan, Seattle: Polar Science Center, University of Washington, 2001, 83pp Thomas, Robert H. & Investigators, “Program for Arctic Regional Climate Assessment (PARCA): Goals, key findings, and future directions.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 106(D24) (2001): 33691–33706

Back of a man’s Saami tunic with broad bands of braiding, Kautokeino, Norway. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

CLOTHING People throughout the circumpolar North share similar problems in dealing with the climate. The severe cold of the Arctic dictates that garments have superior insulating properties, block the wind, and not trap moisture. Additionally, subsistence activities require that clothing be lightweight and durable. In precontact times, Arctic peoples solved these problems by using materials from land and sea to create garments that conserved body heat while allowing freedom of movement. These climate-related factors were only one influence on the design of clothing, however. Garments also functioned in a social and spiritual sense in order to identify groups; communicate gender, familial, and community affiliations; claim status; and mediate an individual’s spiritual relationships. These characteristics of clothing relate to the anthropologist Edmund Leach’s observation that cultural objects have both pragmatic and communicative functions; they not only do something in protecting their wearers from the weather but also say something by communicating group affiliation and personal identity. Clothing sets the stage for a person’s interactions with other humans, animals, and the spiritual world. The array of clothing across the North illustrates how widely separated groups developed common solutions to common problems and also how those same groups, using many of the same materials, created richly diverse expressions of identity.

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Before contact with the Europeans, northern peoples constructed tailored clothing from tanned animal skins, using sinew for thread. Sewing tools were ivory or bone needles, stone awls, knives with stone blades, and thimbles of hide. Caribou or reindeer skin was the most ubiquitous clothing material. Seals, polar bears, birds, and small furbearers such as the Arctic hare and ground squirrel were also used. Dehaired sealskin and gut from seals, walrus, and other mammals had waterproof properties and were fashioned into garments for wet conditions. The fundamental design of Arctic clothing was dictated by the climate. Available throughout the North, caribou and reindeer skins offered the warmest garments because the hairs were hollow and insulating. Layered garments provided the most warmth in cold weather. An inner garment was worn with the hair facing the person’s skin and an outer garment was worn with the hair facing out. The air space between the two garments insulated the wearer, who could further regulate the airflow with a belt or by adjusting the garment’s hood. In severe weather, Arctic inhabitants wore an additional fur parka or cloak. Once the requirements of physical function (warmth, breathability, and water repellence) were met, group-specific design took over, shaping clothing into distinct statements of identity. Arctic peoples adorned clothing with bands of contrasting skin, pieced in geometric or naturalistic patterns. They embroidered it with dyed reindeer hair, decorated it with bird beaks or

CLOTHING feathers, animal claws or tails, and trimmed it with all varieties of fur. Animal-shaped buttons were carved of ivory and belts were woven from the shafts of feathers or decorated with caribou teeth or wolverine claws. No aesthetic opportunity was ignored. In some instances, the importance of group-identifying stylistic conventions overrode physical functionality. The thin, tightfitting garments of the Even and Evenk, for example, including coats that did not close in front, sacrificed warmth for style, as did the wide-necked combination suits of Chukchi women. Spiritual considerations went hand in hand with aesthetics; in order not to offend the animals being hunted, clothing must be beautiful and in good repair. In most northern groups, seamstresses could not work on marine mammal skins during caribou hunting or sew caribou garments during the marine mammal hunting season because they believed they would put the success of the hunt or the hunters at risk. Amulets made from various animal skins or parts were attached to clothing to imbue the wearer with that animal’s characteristics or to protect the wearer from evil spirits. Shamans wore special garments that enhanced their powers. Decorated with fur tassels, human and animal spirit figures, and symbols of power, these parkas, caps, and gloves connected shamans with the spirits to accomplish tasks of healing, divination, and combating evil spirits. As contact with nonindigenous groups occurred, indigenous people adopted new tools, materials, and ideas. Practicality, the attraction of bright beads, fabrics and braids, and the imposition of the clothing mores of colonizing peoples transformed indigenous dress. Cloth covers were made for skin parkas in Canada, Alaska, and Siberia, for example, protecting the delicate skins from dirt and snow. These covers, taking the form of shirts for men and dresslike garments with flounces at the bottom for women, accommodated the civilizing goals of missionaries and teachers by hiding the skin garments. Over time, these garments came to be worn by themselves, without the insulating skin underneath. They have been adopted by native groups throughout Alaska, Canada, and in some areas of Siberia. Although transformations of traditional styles, these garments are clear declarations of indigenous identity and authenticity and are worn to political advantage in local, national, and international settings.

Alaska Early Alaskan Iñupiaq caribou or reindeer parkas were pullover and hooded with wolf and/or wolverine ruffs. Men’s parkas were hip length with nearly straight hems; women’s parkas fell to the knee or slightly below, with curving front and back flaps. Triangular gussets of contrasting colored skins extended from the

sides of the hood into the front of the garment. These hood roots looked like walrus tusks and were also common in Canadian Inuit parkas. Yup’ik Eskimo parkas from the Yukon-Kuskokwim rivers area followed the same general pattern but were longer and more often made of Arctic ground squirrel skins or other small furbearers. Many Iñupiaq parkas were trimmed with strips of colored skin, welts, and tassels of wolverine. The earliest trim consisted of bands of white skin set off with darker welts punctuated with tiny dots of red yarn or tabs of leather. In the late 1800s, seamstresses began to make elaborate geometric fur mosaic trim out of contrasting skins.

Canadian Inuit Arctic dwellers in Canada, from west to east, include the Inuvialuit or Mackenzie Delta Inuit, Copper Inuit, Netsilingmiut, Iglulingmiut, Sallirmiut, Caribou Inuit, and Nunatsiarmiut (Baffinland Inuit). Although each group had distinctive styles, the basic clothing patterns, materials, and construction were very similar. Men’s parkas were shorter in front than at the back and had tight-fitting, pointed hoods anchored at the back by a single hood root. The back flaps of men’s parkas were longer, suggesting tails. Women’s parkas, or amauti, also displayed similar features across the Canadian North. These garments had broad shoulders, large hoods, extra material at the back to create a pouch, or amaut, for carrying babies, and front and back flaps. The specific shape of these features varied regionally; for example, the back flaps of Copper Inuit amauti were long and straight-sided with sharply defined corners and the front flaps were small and narrow. Iglulingmiut amauti, on the other hand, featured broad, rounded tails in the front and back, more rounded shoulders, and elongated hoods. Decoration of most Canadian Inuit garments consisted of alternating bands of light and dark fur, fringes of dehaired caribou skin, and insets of white fur. In precontact times, the Inuvialuit traded with Alaskan Iñupiat, sharing in the intercontinental trade network that stretched across Bering Strait. As contact with Euro-Americans increased, the Inuvialuit suffered epidemics that decreased their population. Those who survived blended culturally with the Iñupiat to the west. This contact influenced Inuvialuit clothing styles so that Inuvialuit garments became nearly indistinguishable from those of the Alaskans. Copper Inuit clothing was also influenced by the western Arctic styles as Iñupiat and Inuvialuit migrated into the Copper Inuit territory after the demise of the whaling industry in the early 1900s. Copper Inuit adopted the longer, looser parka styles, in part recognizing that they were warmer and also because of the blurring of

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CLOTHING group boundaries and population shifts caused by commercial whaling activities and epidemics. Inuit groups further east were less influenced by the whaling industry and maintained their aboriginal clothing styles, adding elements introduced through trade but not forsaking traditional designs. Caribou Inuit, for example, decorated their inner parkas with beaded embroidery on the hoods, shoulders, cuffs, and flaps. Modern parkas generally follow the old styles, but there has been some blending of styles due to comfort and practicality. Contemporary Canadian Inuit clothing is constructed out of skins or cloth; men wear thigh-length parkas with straight hems. Women wear either the old style amauti with flaps or the evenhemmed western Arctic style, decorating them with beads, bias tape, braid, and rickrack.

Greenland In northern Greenland, the clothing of Inughuit (Polar Eskimo) men consisted of knee-high sealskin boots, polar bear skin trousers, and two parkas—the inner generally of bird skin with the feathers facing in, and the outer of sealskin with the hair facing out. The parkas were hip length and cut straight around the bottom. Warmer fox or caribou coats were worn in the winter. Women’s garments consisted of parkas similar to the men’s, but with larger hoods and roomier backs to accommodate a baby, short trousers of fox skin, and tall, stiff boots worn with caribou stockings edged with polar bear fur. The Kalaallit, or West Greenlanders, generally wore parkas of sealskin, but also used bird, fox, and caribou. Men’s garments reached almost to the knee and, after contact, had no flaps. Shorter jackets of gut were worn for kayaking. Women’s parkas featured flaps in the front and back, larger hoods, and room at the back for carrying a child. Their trousers met their boots just below the knee. Decoration consisted of linear bands of fur mosaic, appliqued gut attached with sinew, and, later, beads. Greenlandic parkas are distinguished by single hood roots in front, formed by joining extensions attached to the lower front edges of the hood. Beads, bands of sealskin, or dogskin trimmed hood openings. After contact with the Europeans, Greenlanders began using fabric to construct garments and lace and beads for trim. Contemporary Kalaallit clothing, worn for special occasions, consists of white anoraks for the men. Women wear tall skin stockings decorated at the top with lace and embroidery. Their boots are decorated with white skin strips that run up the front of the boots and split into a Y-shape just below the knee. They wear wide circular beaded collars that reach below their shoulders, almost to their waists.

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Saami The Saami of the northern regions of Finland, Norway, Sweden, and western Russia are largely reindeer herders and have depended upon the animals for clothing materials and food for centuries. Although contact with Europeans and Russians influenced Saami clothing traditions at least as early as the 16th century, the Saami retained their traditional skin garments. Indeed, contemporary Saami people still prefer reindeer skin clothing for winter activities. As in other northern regions, men’s winter clothing consisted of two reindeer skin coats, the outer with the hair to the outside. Saami outer coats were wide with gores in the back, small openings for the head, and tall upright collars. They were worn with leather belts. The inner coat had the hair facing inside and was of the same general cut. Their ankle-length trousers were either cloth or tanned skin. Reindeer skin shoes had distinctively turned-up toes and were lined with grass and/or skin stockings. Summer clothing was a similar design but of cloth with colorful bands of trimming. Women’s clothing was much the same as men’s but with some differences in the cut; after the 1700s, women’s coats did not have the high collar, for example. Tassels of red cloth triangles decorated Saami women’s coats and boots in Russia. They wore braided belts and their head dresses were of beaver or reindeer fur decorated with beadwork and cloth tassels. Men’s hats were made of reindeer skin and covered with black, blue, or green cloth, decorated with beads, and edged with fox fur. For hunting, men carried their gunpowder, steel and tinder, and other firearm supplies on beaded belts that hung around their necks. Leather belts at their waists held knives and bear claw amulets. Contemporary Saami wear traditional clothing for festivals and for winter herding and hunting. For people who do not work outside, traditional garments are a symbol of ethnic identity and are not viewed as practical dress. Women continue to make Saami garments: sewing cloth garments using fabric and ornaments procured from commercial sources and constructing skin garments from reindeer skins from the family’s own herd. The Saami, as with indigenous peoples in many northern nations, were once ostracized from mainstream national populations. This prejudice is lessening in the face of increasing aboriginal self-determination. Saami are reclaiming their rights and identity through political and social action. The wearing of traditional dress is one means of expressing this identity.

Russia Indigenous groups living in Arctic Russia include, besides the Saami, Nenets, Mansi, Khanty, Nganasan, Enets, Evenk, Dolgan, Even, Yukagir, Yakut, Chukchi,

CLOTHING and Siberian Yupik. Several of these groups lived in close proximity to each other, had similar subsistence strategies and trading associations, and developed similar clothing traditions. Nenets Nenets, occupying lands east of the Saami, herded reindeer and, after Soviet collectivization, fished on commercial fishing brigades. Traditional Nenets men’s clothing consisted of hoodless reindeer skin parkas trimmed with sealskin. In winter, they wore an additional outer coat along with a tall fur hat with earflaps. Women’s coats opened in the front and were double, with fur inside and out. Alternating strips of light and dark skin in lines and zigzags decorated women’s parkas; their hats featured flat fabric tassels that were similar to those of the Saami. Nenets’ reindeer skin boots reached the thighs and were decorated with welts of light and dark skin or colored fabrics. Mansi and Khanty In the past, these taiga dwelling groups lived seminomadic lifestyles, herding reindeer, and hunting and fishing. Although Khanty and Mansi generally used reindeer and moose skins for clothing, they also made garments from hare, squirrel, fish, and bird skins. Pullover reindeer skin parkas with hoods were worn as outer layers with hoodless parkas underneath. Some winter coats were lined with swan feathers; these types of garments are still worn by hunters. Hunters carried knives and other items on leather belts. Men and women wore skin pants under their parkas. Garments were embroidered, pieced, or beaded in elaborate geometric designs that identified their maker by their distinctive style. Khanty and Mansi women today wear fabric dresses decorated in traditional bead and appliqué patterns, demonstrating regional differences through variations in pleats and the height of the dropped waist. Nganasan and Enets Nganasan and Enets were reindeer herders, hunters, and fishermen. Men wore hooded reindeer skin parkas of two layers of skin sewn together: the outer ornamented with red and black strips of fabric or alderdyed leather, and the inner with the fur side in, edged with Arctic fox or white dog fur. Women wore a onepiece inner garment with copper pendants applied to the front and with black or yellow suede tassels at the hem. Their outer garment was similar to the men’s outer coats. Women wore white deerskin hats trimmed with black dog fur instead of hoods. Nganasan and Enets wore tall reindeer skin boots without a fitted ankle. Contemporary clothing preserves the older

styles, but is constructed from cotton cloth as well as reindeer skin and is worn in combination with purchased clothing. Evenk, Even, and Yukagir Traditional Evenk, Even, and Yukagir clothing consisted of knee-length reindeer skin coats with gores in the back to allow for riding. These coats were open in front and were worn with a chest piece or apron that was tied at the back and reached just above the knees, along with reindeer skin pants and tall boots. Evenk men’s chest pieces ended in a point while women’s were straight across the bottom. Chest pieces and the backs of coats were decorated with fur strips. Even created intricate beadwork designs on the front of their chest pieces. Women’s were decorated with leather fringes and metal trinkets. Men and women of all three groups wore tight-fitting caps decorated with beads and fur. In the 19th century, women adopted Russian unfitted gowns, adding flounces around the hem. Russian trade introduced shirts and trousers for men. More recently, Evenki, Even, and Yukagir living in tundra regions wear Chukchi-style pullover parkas. Dolgan The Dolgan, nomads who both herded and hunted reindeer, wore elaborately beaded, appliqued, and embroidered garments. Men’s hooded winter coats were open in the front, fell below the knee, and had gores in the back for fullness. Women’s coats were longer and hoodless. Winter coats were trimmed with fur at the hems and distinctive bands of embroidery and beadwork in chevrons, stripes, and other geometric designs. Men and women wore reindeer skin boots, also decorated with beads and embroidery. Yakut Yakut clothing, along with their language, pastoral economy, and other elements of material culture, suggests an ancestral relationship with the tribes of the steppe to the south. Winter coats for both men and women were long, open, caftanlike garments of fur with wide sleeves that narrowed at the cuff. Headgear was a tall pointed fur cap with earpieces. Women’s festive fur hats were decorated with cloth and a silver disk. Women wore a wide assortment of silver rings, necklaces, and bracelets. They decorated knee-high boots with embroidery in a heart and scroll pattern. Leg covering consisted of leather shorts with long leather leggings. By the 19th century, Yakut men adopted shorter reindeer skin jackets, pants, and chest pieces like those worn by the Even and Evenk; women retained the long fur coat. Currently, Yakut wear the old styles of fur clothing only for working outdoors.

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COAL MINING Chukchi and Siberian Yupik Chukchi and Siberian Yupik clothing styles were similar to each other and to the Koryak to the south. Men’s two-layer, hoodless winter parkas were pullover style and knee length. These parkas were wide, with square bibs that could be tied up to protect the face in cold weather. Openings were edged with dog or wolverine fur. Men wore two layers of ankle-length trousers and short boots. They covered their heads with hoodlike caps of reindeer skin. Chukchi and Yupik women wore one-piece combination suits of reindeer skin that were entered through wide, fur-edged, neck openings. The garment legs reached just below the knee and tucked into knee-high boots. Children also wore combination suits made of reindeer fawn skin, with the fur inside and with flaps that allowed the changing of diaper materials. Boots were made of reindeer leg skins and sealskin, insulated with grass insoles and skin stockings and decorated with reindeer hair embroidery. Some aspects of traditional clothing have been retained in modern times. Both men and women wear the men’s style parka, covering it with colorful shells of cotton fabric that are often worn alone as well. Parkas are worn with commercially made trousers, shirts, and dresses and, in the summer, rubber boots.

Contemporary Influences and Clothing Clothing in all Arctic groups was influenced by contact with Europeans and other indigenous groups. The introduction of manufactured materials such as fabric, thread, and beads, and new tools such as metal needles and sewing machines affected indigenous clothing, inspiring creative syntheses of traditional and introduced materials and techniques. Another influence was the social pressure to conform to the standards of colonizing newcomers. Contact with Europeans and others who formed the national governments of Arctic countries marginalized indigenous groups. Pressured to conform to so-called civilized standards of dress, language, and religion, many native peoples adopted commercially produced clothing, retaining traditional garments only for special occasions or for winter hunting or herding activities. More recently, however, native peoples have begun to renegotiate the conditions of imposed assimilation and are reclaiming their rights to their indigenous identities. Changes in the social and political environment in the circumpolar north have empowered indigenous groups, fostering a climate favorable to claims of ethnic identity and self-determination. Traditional clothing, worn in political as well as social settings, has become an important statement of indigenous rights and political power. CYD MARTIN

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See also Chukchi; Dolgan; Enets; Evenki; Evens; Iñupiat; Inuvialuit; Khanty; Mansi; Nenets; Nganasan; Saami; Shamanism; Siberian (Chukotkan) Yupik; Yakuts; Yukagir Further Reading Chaussonnet, Valerie, “Needles and Animals: Women’s Magic.” In Crossroads of Continents, edited by William Fitzhugh & Aron Crowell, Washington: Smithsonian, 1988 Gjessing, Gjertrud, Lappedrakten: en skisse av dens opphav, Oslo: Aschehoug, 1940 Hall, Judy, J. Oakes & S. Qimmiu’naaq Webster, Sanatujut. Pride in Women’s Work, Hull, Québec: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1994 Hatt, Gudmund, “Arctic skin clothing in Eurasia and America: an ethnographic study.” Arctic Anthropology, V(2) (1969): 3–132 Issenman, Betty, Sinews of Survival, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1997 Jannok Porsbo, Susanna, Samedrakter I Sverige, Jokknokk: Ajtte (Skrifter från Ajtte), 1999 Jenness, Diamond, Material Culture of the Copper Eskimo, Volume XVI, Report of the Canadian Arctic Expedition 1913–18, Ottawa: Edmond Cloutier, 1946 Levin, M. & L. Potapov, The Peoples of Siberia, edited and translated by S. Dunn, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956 Murdoch, John, Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition, Washington: Smithsonian, 1988 Nelson, Edward, The Eskimo About Bering Strait Washington: Smithsonian, 1983 Oakes, Jill & Rick Riewe, Spirit of Siberia, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998 Rinno, Soile, Länsi-Enontekiön saamelaisväeston puvuissa ja niiden käytössä tapahunerta muutoksia vuosina 1939–1969, Rovaniemi: Lapin maakuntamuseo, 1987 Simpson, John, “Observations on the Western Esquimaux and the country they inhabit; from notes taken during two years at Point Barrow, by Mr. John Simpson, Surgeon, R.N., Her Majesty’s Discovery Shop ‘Plover.’” In The Journal of Rochfort Maguire 1852–1854, edited by John Bockstoce, London: Hakluyt Society, 1988 Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, The Stefansson-Anderson Arctic Expedition of the American Museum: Preliminary Ethnological Report, New York: American Museum of Natural History, 1914 Volkov, N.N., The Russian Sami: Historical-Ethnographic Essays, St Petersburg: Russian Academy of Sciences, 1996

COAL MINING Coal is a nonrenewable fossil fuel, accounting for over 90% of the world’s fossil fuel reserves by energy content (natural gas, 5%, and oil, 4%, make up the remainder). Coal is widely distributed around the globe, having formed from decaying plant matter in ancient forests and swamps. This decayed plant material formed peat bogs that were in turn buried by sediment. As this overburden of sediment accumulated, it exerted both heat and pressure on the peat and transformed it into coal. More than 4.6 billion tons of coal are mined around the world each year. These mining

COAL MINING operations can be in the form of removing overburden to get at the coal seams (strip mining), working sideways into seams (drift or gallery mining), and sinking entries deep underground to obtain coal (shaft mining). Being formed from various types of plant matter and subject to varying amounts of time, pressure, and heat, coal can differ widely in its contents and quality. Coal is “ranked” according to the degree to which the original plant matter has been transformed into carbon. Anthracite is the hardest and most completely transformed into carbon, and as such is high in heating value and low in oxygen and hydrogen. Bituminous coal, ranked just below anthracite, can be metallurgical—used to make coke for the steel industry, or thermal-used to generate electricity. Subbituminous coal is softer and heavier than bituminous, with a higher water content, while lignite, the lowest-ranked coal, is softest and holds the lowest heating value. Coal deposits in the Arctic have been known since at least the 1600s, being observed by expeditions of the English whaler Jonas Poole to Svalbard as early as 1610. Coal was discovered and used by Captain Nathaniel Portlock at Port Graham on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula in 1786. Modest coal deposits are known to exist in Canada’s Yukon and Nunavut territories, but their remoteness has left them largely unexplored and undeveloped. Coal deposits along Russia’s vast northern coastline were not explored and exploited until well into the Soviet era. Coal mining began at Qullissat on Disko Island in Greenland in 1924. Throughout the North, short shipping seasons combined with logistical and labor difficulties involved in the construction and operation of mining operations have acted to constrain the history of coal mine development. In Alaska, the Russian American Company exported subbituminous coal from Port Graham to California from 1855 to 1865, and ships of the US Revenue Cutter Service refueled later in the 19th century using Arctic coal beds at Cape Sabine. From 1890 to 1910, mines along the Yukon and other Alaska rivers supplied fuel for river traffic, until coal was supplanted by oil. US mining laws were extended to the Alaska Territory in 1900, and a separate Alaska Coal Act passed in 1904 allowed for claims to be made without prior government land surveys. This led to several cases of fraudulent claims and a government scandal, and caused President Theodore Roosevelt to remove all Alaska public lands from potential coal claims. Initiation of construction of the Alaska Railroad in 1914 revived coal mining in the region, and production of both bituminous and subbituminous coal increased to 174,000 tons per year by World War II. Intensive geological study of coal-bearing deposits in Svalbard was undertaken in the Kings Bay region

by Swedish chemist and geologist Christian Wilhelm Blomstrand as a member of the Swedish Spitsbergen expedition of 1861. Coal was discovered further south, in the Isfjord region at Bohemanneset in 1862, and 1000 tons were brought to Norway in 1899 by the Tromsø sealing skipper Søren Zachariassen. After the turn of the 20th century, the development of Arctic coal mines provided the basis for settlement of previously uninhabited Svalbard. The English Coal and Trading Company operated an unprofitable mining camp at Hiorthhamn on the east side of Advent Fjord in the early 1900s. A Swedish expedition under Bertil Högbom claimed the area around the Pyramiden mountain in 1910, a claim bought by the Svenska Stenkolsaktiebolaget Spetsbergen in 1921 and sold in turn to the Anglo-Russian Grumant Company in 1926. The first significant capital investment in Svalbard coal was undertaken on the western shore of Advent Fjord by the Boston-based Arctic Coal Company owned by Frederick Ayer and John Munro Longyear. This company founded Longyear City (Longyearbyen), now the seat of government in the archipelago. The Arctic Coal Company operated its mine adjacent to Advent Valley, known as the American Mine or Mine No. 1, from 1905 to 1916, when it was sold to the Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulcompagni Aktieselskab (Great Norwegian Spitsbergen Coal Company). Russian interest in Svalbard coal is manifest at three major works in the Isfjord area: Grumantby, Barentsburg, and Pyramiden. A Russian expedition in 1912 under W.A. Rusanov made a claim to the coal-bearing area around Coles Bay—a claim hotly contested at the time by Longyear—and a mining operation commenced there at a place the Russians called Grumant (the Russian name for Spitsbergen) in 1919. Higher prices caused by World War I shortages intensified the investments already made in Svalbard coal. After sovereignty over Svalbard was conferred upon Norway by the Treaty of Svalbard (February 9, 1920), and Norway took formal possession of the islands (August 14, 1925), the regulation of mining activities and worker protection fell to the Norwegian Commissioner of Mines. Workings by the Svenska Stenkolsaktiebolaget Spetsbergen were undertaken at Braganza Bay from 1917 to 1925. The Swedish claim was eventually sold to Store Norske (1934), which sought to restart the mines prior to World War II. Competing claims to the coal seams around Green Harbor were eventually bought from the Arctic Coal Company and others by Store Norske (1916) and from the Dutch Nederlandsche Spitsbergen Compagnie by the Russian State mining company Arktikugol (1932). Arktikugol began operations at Barentsburg in 1932, and extended

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COAL MINING these workings throughout the decade first to Grumant and then to Pyramiden at the head of Billefjorden, both tracts having been purchased from the Anglo-Russian Grumant Company in 1931. Mining operations in the Arctic and Subarctic have historically been extremely arduous, leading to both predictable and unique labor and management situations. Some of the difficulties faced by the miners themselves are evident from a 1941 US Government report on Svalbard: “Entrance to the Longyearby mines is by cable railway running up the sharply sloping side of the hills to a height of about 800 feet. Horizontal galleries, or ‘adits,’ lead through the outcropping seams; their entries are wide enough to contain certain offices and mine-railway machinery. When the miner extracts coal from the seams he must lie face down for hours. The average seam thickness is twenty-four to forty inches... The temperature of the earth immediately surrounding the coal seams is well below freezing—the range is between 4° and 10°F, a satisfactory working temperature for the miners; it also precludes the formation of water and eliminates pumping; likewise at this temperature a minimum of shoring is required. Trouble with dust explosions, however, may develop, the common method of preventing such accidents is to dampen the atmosphere, but there are physical difficulties in sufficiently dampening air that is 20° below freezing, with the result that the moisture of the air condenses out and settles as rime” (Capelotti, 2000: 50). In many cases, the dark, cold, and cramped physical constrictions had psychological manifestations. There are ample reports of alcoholism, depression, insanity, and suicide among coal miners in these extreme environments. The laissez-faire attitude that prevailed toward the owners of capital in the late 19th and early 20th century also led to repeated confrontations between miners and management. Newspaper reports of alleged maltreatment of Norwegian miners by the American owners of the Arctic Coal Company helped to pressure the Americans to sell the mines to Norwegian interests in 1916. John Longyear, who in 1911 proposed that the Svalbard Archipelago be chartered as an independent international corporation, tended to blame the agitation on Scandinavian socialism and government reluctance to take action against it (see Dole, 1992, Volume ii, pp. 229, 266–267). On at least two occasions, Longyear contemplated importing miners from China, both to deflect strikes and because he could pay Chinese miners less than half the daily wage of Scandinavian miners. A trade union for Greenland miners was formed in 1947. Its descendant is today called Sulinermik Inuussutissarsiuteqartut Kattuffiat (SIK), meaning the “Organization of People who Live by Wage Earning.”

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In the Soviet Union, the work of mining coal in both Svalbard and along the vast northern coastal areas of Russia itself was, in the mid-1930s, brought under the control of a giant bureaucracy known as Chief Office for the Northern Sea Route (GUSMP or Glavsevmorput). Into this huge organization, as well as its counterparts, the Main Administration for Construction in the Far North (Dal’stroi) and the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (GULAG), went thousands of convict and forced laborers who worked coal deposits on Novaya Zemlya as well as Taymyr, Vorkuta, Pechora, Vaigach, and elsewhere. After the occupation of Norway in 1940, a raiding party was sent to Svalbard in the summer of 1941 to evacuate the populations of both Norwegian and Russian coal miners and to deny the Germans use of the mines. The combined British-NorwegianCanadian expedition to put the mines out of commission was accomplished only after a demolition team disabling the mining machinery at Barentsburg accidentally set fire to a wooden building. The fire soon became a conflagration and burned most of the town and set fire to the coal dumps. In September 1943, the Germans sent the battleships Tirpitz and Scharnhorst to Svalbard to destroy both Barentsburg and Longyearbyen, the final time the German Navy initiated surface action in the war. Arrayed against insignificant Allied opposition, the battleships and their destroyer escorts quickly leveled both mining settlements—setting a coal mine fire in Longyearbyen that burned into the 1960s—and left the Arctic. The mining operation at Kings Bay in Svalbard, called the Kings Bay Kullkompagnie, was taken over by the Government of Norway in 1929, and then closed in 1963 after a series of fatal accidents. The disasters at Kings Bay were felt as far away as Oslo, with the result that worker protection issues were removed from the portfolio of the Commissioner of Mines and placed under the jurisdiction of a special Commissioner of Labour Inspection for Svalbard. The Kings Bay area has since developed into a major international polar research village. Production in the Store Norsk mines in and around Advent Valley, taken over by the Norwegian State in 1976, has gradually slowed. Longyearbyen itself has in recent years taken on the character of a postmining tourism and research area, while mining activity has shifted in large part to Sveagruva at Braganza Bay. Post-Soviet-era coal mining in the Russian North has been characterized by almost insuperable management difficulties, leading to repeated strikes, such as the one at the Vorkuta mine in 1997 when 1200 miners struck over the issue of months of unpaid back wages. On Svalbard, the mining town of Pyramiden was closed in 1998, with considerable amounts of the

COASTAL EROSION constructions there being sold off as scrap. Approximately 900 Russian and Ukrainian miners continue to export some 300,000 tons annually from the Barentsburg mines, but schools and day-care centers were closed in 1994. Tourism—currently extremely limited—and a modest geophysical institute form the basis for a possible postmining existence. Postwar production in Alaska, supplying a growing military presence, reached 925,000 tons in the 1960s. The switch to gas power at these bases left the Usibelli strip mine at Healy as the last active mine in Alaska, producing some 800,000 tons of subbituminous coal. Much further north, the great logistical difficulties, combined with park designations and environmental concerns, will likely stifle any attempt to exploit the vast bituminous and subbituminous coal regions of Alaska’s North Slope. P.J. CAPELOTTI See also Glavsevmorput (Chief Office for the Northern Sea Route); Mining; Svalbard Treaty Further Reading Alaska Geographic, Alaska’s Oil, Gas and Minerals Industry, Volume 9, No. 4, Anchorage: Alaska Geographic, 1982 Capelotti, P.J. (editor), The Svalbard Archipelago: American Military and Political Geographies of Spitsbergen and Other Norwegian Polar Territories, 1941–1950, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 2000 Dole, Nathan Haskell, America in Spitsbergen: The Romance of an Arctic Coal-Mine, two volumes, Boston: Marshall Jones Company, 1922 Hoel, Adolf, Svalbard: Svalbards historie 1596–1965, three volumes, Oslo: Sverre Kildahls Boktrykkeri, 1967 McCannon, John, Red Arctic: Polar Exploration and the Myth of the North in the Soviet Union, 1932–1939, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998 Nordenskjöld, Otto & Ludwig Mecking, The Geography of the Polar Regions, New York: American Geographical Society, 1928 Norsk Polarinstitutt, The Place Names of Svalbard, Oslo: Norsk Polarinstitutt (Skrifter Nr. 80 and 112; Ny-Trykk), 1991 Østreng, Willy, Politics in High Latitudes: The Svalbard Archipelago, London: C. Hurst and Company, 1977

COASTAL EROSION The Arctic circumpolar coastline comprises a substantial portion of the world’s coast, bounding the polar Arctic Ocean and including the islands of northern Russia, Svalbard, the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, the intricate coast of Greenland, and extensive mainland coasts of Siberia, Alaska, and Canada. Arctic coasts are located within a broad spectrum of oceanographic environments and thus exhibit a corresponding variety of shoreline geomorphology and geology. Examples of this variety range from tidewater glaciers and steep-walled fjords, to high rock cliffs banked

with talus (rock debris), to low-relief coastal plain shores with a wide range of lithology, cryology, vegetation cover, shore-zone morphology, and erosion processes. Sediment production from the erosion of unlithified but frozen (ice-bonded) sediments on some Arctic coasts rivals or exceeds the inputs from large rivers such as the Lena, and the associated release of organic matter may be significant in the carbon budget of the Arctic Ocean. Some areas, notably in the central Canadian Arctic, are still rebounding from isostatic depression under the continental ice sheets of the last glacial maximum, with measured uplift rates as high as 1 m per century, while other parts of the Arctic coast are slowly submerging through a combination of crustal subsidence and rising sea level.

General Factors Affecting Coastal Erosion In general, coastal erosion is a function of shoreline exposure, atmospheric and ocean climate, and resistance to erosion. Exposure is determined by coastal topography, which defines the maximum extent of open water in various directions from a given point on the coast (in the absence of sea ice), and by bathymetric features affecting coastal currents and wave transformation across the shoreface. In the long term, it may also be affected by changing mean sea level. Climatic factors include temperature, precipitation, wind, storm surge, and ocean wave regimes, all of which may affect erosion rates and processes in the north. Coastal resistance to erosion is primarily a function of geology, including substrate lithology and geotechnical properties, but also depends on the adjustment of coastal morphology to environmental forcing and sediment supply.

Erosion Constraints and Processes on Arctic Coasts Shoreline exposure on many parts of the Arctic coast is limited by seasonal or multiyear sea ice. The duration and extent of open water determine the proportionate time exposure and may limit wave energy during that time. In the extreme, as on some islands of the northwestern Canadian Arctic Archipelago, yearround ice cover leads to near-complete elimination of wave activity. Sediment redistribution is severely limited and mostly effected by ice push on the resulting low-energy shorelines. The cold climate is obviously critical to the erodibility of Arctic coasts, where freezing temperatures produce permafrost and ground ice on land in addition to ice cover on the ocean. In places such as the Beaufort Sea and Siberia, permafrost (defined as a condition of perennial ground temperature <0°C), with

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COASTAL EROSION or without ice bonding or excess ground ice, extends beyond the coast under the seabed, with important implications for nearshore profile adjustment. In this case, erosion is not only a function of nearshore wave, current, and sediment dynamics, but may be limited by ice bonding at shallow depth below the nearshore seabed. Efforts to predict shoreline erosion in such cases have required the development of combined thermomechanical models of nearshore dynamics incorporating both wave-sediment interaction and thaw processes. The most severe coastal erosion problems affecting communities, infrastructure, or cultural heritage resources in the Arctic occur where structures are built on ice-rich terrain adjacent to eroding shores. Exposure of excess ground ice in the shore zone or on backshore slopes leads to the formation of many of the most distinctive erosional features on Arctic coasts, generally through resettlement as volume is lost on outflow of meltwater. Ice-wedge polygons (patterned ground formed when contraction and expansion of permafrost creates ice-filled cracks that meet in a geometric pattern to enclose a low or high central area) can facilitate large block failure through undercutting and thaw along ice wedges exposed in cliffs at the coast. In other situations, the development of high pore water pressure in the thin active layer (seasonal thaw horizon) near the ground surface can induce detachment slides or flows of the active layer, sometimes on very low-angle backshore slopes. Ice bonding in otherwise unlithified sediments also enables the development of thermal niches (undercut notches) beneath cantilevered cliffs. Such niches may cut several meters in from the cliff face before fracturing occurs to produce collapse. Perhaps the most spectacular erosion process associated with the presence of excess ground ice is retrogressive-thaw flow failure. This occurs where disturbance of an ice-rich slope exposes massive ground ice at the surface, leading to the development of a receding cliff face, usually some distance above sea level. The retrogressive failure may evolve into a growing amphitheater as the icy headwall expands and melts headward, losing volume through ice melt. Sediment liberated with meltwater from the receding cliff is transported downslope in persisting or recurring mudflows, often extending across a narrow beach into the nearshore. Retrogressive-thaw failures may exhibit cyclic patterns of expansion, stabilization, and later reactivation. In places, adjacent retrogressive failures may amalgamate as they expand to form long shore-parallel ice-rich cliffs, which can remain active for many years. Direct and indirect effects of sea ice in the shore zone also play important roles in high-latitude coastal

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erosion. Indirect effects include enhanced seabed scour associated with ice wallowing in nearshore waves, as well as snowmelt drainage through holes in fast ice off river mouths, forming eddy or “strudel” scour pits on the seabed. The most obvious direct ice impact involves scour and push when a landward component of wind stress results in ice pressure against the coast and cross-shore or alongshore grounded ice motion. Depending on the shoreline morphology and internal stresses within the moving ice, this may result in ice rideup penetrating as much as 100 m or more onshore, or in ice buckling to form pileup ridges at the coast. Nearshore scour may be significant in such events. In places such as along the northwest margin of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, persistent ice pressure forms prominent ice-pushed ridges up to 4 m or more in height. Ice rideup or pileup over coastal cliffs as high as 9 m is known from the Alaskan Beaufort Sea coast, where occasional deaths have been reported when ice buried human habitations. There is also evidence to suggest that ice scour on the shoreface may mobilize large volumes of sediment, playing a role in profile downcutting, thereby enhancing erosion at the shoreline. Ice rafting of sediment is another important process contributing to coastal erosion in high latitudes. This may occur by adfreezing of seabed sediments onto the base of grounded ice, which subsequently floats away, a process that contributes to the common occurrence of boulder-strewn tidal flats in some Arctic settings. More significantly in some places, sediment can be entrained by frazil ice and anchor ice, formed during freezing storms with turbulent supercooling in the water column. It has been reported that sediment incorporated into mobile slush ice and ultimately into the winter ice canopy by this means may amount to more than 15 times the annual river input of sediment on parts of the Alaska coast and may ultimately be transported tens or hundreds of kilometers from the point of entrainment. Given the range of distinctive and effective erosion processes on Arctic shores, it is not surprising that shoreline recession rates in some areas of seasonal open water on the Siberian, Alaskan, and western Canadian Arctic coasts (in some cases rates are as high as 20 m or more per year) are among the highest in the world, particularly if adjusted for the length of the erosion season. With projections of global warming at accelerated rates in high latitudes, some presently icebound shores may experience rapid readjustment if newly exposed to open water and waves. Other areas may see an extended open-water season (potentially exposing the coast to more storms) and increased open-water fetch (enabling the formation of larger and more damaging waves). With accelerated sea-level

COD rise, higher ground temperatures (leading to more rapid thaw), and reduced sea ice duration and extent (leading to higher wave energy at the coast), there is reason to believe that rates of coastal erosion in some parts of the Arctic may increase significantly in the coming decades. D.L. FORBES See also Impacts of Climate Change; Permafrost Further Reading Aré, F.E., “Thermal abrasion of sea coasts.” Polar Geography and Geology, 12 (1988): 1–157 Forbes, D.L. & R.B. Taylor, “Ice in the shore zone and the geomorphology of cold coasts.” Progress in Physical Geography, 18 (1994): 59–89 Kobayashi, N., J.C. Vidrine, R.B. Nairn & S.M. Solomon, “Erosion of frozen cliffs due to storm surge on Beaufort Sea coast.” Journal of Coastal Research, 15 (1999): 332–344 Rachold, V., M.N. Grigoryev, F.E. Are,S. Solomon, E. Reimnitz, H. Kassens & A. Antonov, “Coastal erosion vs. riverine sediment discharge in the Arctic shelf seas.” International Journal of Earth Sciences (Geologisches Rundschau), 89 (2000): 450–460 Reimnitz, E. & P.W. Barnes, “Sea-ice influence on Arctic coastal retreat.” Proceedings Coastal Sediments 87, New Orleans, New York: American Society of Civil Engineers, 1987, pp. 1578–1591 Reimnitz, E. & E.W. Kempema, “Field observations of slush ice generated during freeze-up in Arctic coastal waters.” Marine Geology, 77 (1987): 219–231 Trenhaile, A.S.,“Coasts in Cold Environments.” In Coastal Dynamics and Landforms, Chapter 12, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997, pp. 290–309

COD Cod are fish of the genus Gadus (family Gadidae, order Gadiformes, class Osteichthyes). The genus Gadus includes from one to five species, depending on which are counted as full species. The type species of the genus is Atlantic cod Gadus morhua. Other species are the Pacific cod, G. macrocephalus, and the Greenland cod, G. ogac, earlier thought to be subspecies of the Atlantic cod but recognized currently as full species. Baltic cod and White Sea cod are regarded as subspecies of the Atlantic cod at present but they differ enough to be recognized as full species. Cod is also used as a common name of some groups of fishes, mainly belonging to the gadids, but also other families: Antarctic rock cod (Nototheniidae, Perciformes), Arctic (polar) cod (genus Boreogadus saida and Arctogadus glacialis, both Gadidae), blue cod (Paragercichthys, Mugiloididae, Perciformes), blue rock cod (Indonotothenia, Nototheniidae), cultus cod (Hexagrammidae, Scorpaeniformes), deep-sea cod (Moridae, Gadiformes), eucla cod (Euclichthyidae, Gadiformes and Euclichthys), gray

rock cod (Lepidonotothen, Nototheniidae), grenadier cod (Tripterophycis, Moridae), moray cod (Muraenolepididae, Gadiformes), morid cod (Mora, Moridae), murray cod (Macculochella, Serranidae, Perciformes), rock cod (Epinephelus, Serranidae), southern rock cod (Nototheniidae), and toothed cod (Arctogadus, Gadidae and A. borisovi). Cod have three dorsal and two anal fins. The caudal fin is truncated or square. The upper jaw projects beyond the lower jaw. A barbel (whisker) on the chin is about as long as the eye diameter. The lateral line is light in color, with a slight curve above the pectoral fin. Color is usually greenish-brown with small dark blotches. Morphologically, the different cod species can be distinguished by differences in structure of the swim bladder anterior extension, interorbital width (least width between the eyes) and other ratios, and shape of the scale tubercles (small knobs projecting from the scales). Fish of the genus Gadus are distributed in cooltemperate to Subarctic areas of the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans and adjacent Arctic Ocean. All cod are bentho-pelagic, adapted to feed mainly near the sea bottom, and for catching prey on and below the bottom surface. Cod are omnivorous, eating plankton and other fish. Cod capture prey mainly by suction, but are also well adapted for seizing and biting and can swallow large and heavily spined prey. The chin barbel and extended pelvic fin rays, equipped with sensory cells, are used to locate food in the bottom substrate.

Atlantic Cod The Atlantic cod Gadus morhua is one of the most economically important fish in the world. They inhabit the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent Arctic areas, and are distributed in the western North Atlantic from Baffin Island and Newfoundland southward along the continental slope to the Gulf of Maine, rarely to Cape Hatteras, and even to Cape Lookout, North Carolina, at latitude 34°34′ N. They occur in the waters off Greenland, Iceland, and the Faroes, and in the eastern North Atlantic from the Bay of Biscay north and eastward to Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya, entering the White Sea; also in the western part of the Baltic Sea (eastward to Bornholm Island). In warm years Atlantic cod enter the Kara Sea in small numbers. The northernmost record is at latitude 81°52′ N. In some regions they occur sympatrically with the Greenland, Baltic, White Sea cods. The southern limit of distribution coincides usually with surface isotherm 10°C in winter. The northern limit is related to penetration of comparatively warm Atlantic waters into the Arctic.

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COD

Arctic (polar) cod, Resolute Bay, Nunavut. Copyright David R. Gray

Atlantic cod have many small spots on the body except the head and fins. They inhabit waters from inshore regions to the edge of the continental shelf at depths up to 500–600 m, more often from 180 to 300 m. Although they are adapted for bottom life, they may also spend much time off the bottom. Cool temperatures are preferred, generally in the range of −0.5°C to 10°C. Cod tend to move in schools, and undertake migrations. In some areas they move offshore in winter and inshore in summer. In other areas regular migrations from feeding areas to spawning grounds are about 1500 km long. The greatest recorded distance traveled by tagged cod was about 3300 km: from the central North Sea to the Grand Bank of Newfoundland. Cod are voracious feeders and their feeding habits may influence significantly the size of cod populations through cannibalism, and also the size of populations of other fishes such as redfish, capelin, and sand lance. As fry, cod feed on a variety of small creatures such as copepods, amphipods, and barnacle larvae. Juveniles and young adults continue to eat crustaceans such as euphausiids, mysids, shrimps, small lobsters, spider crabs, and hermit crabs. When about 50 cm long, fish become the predominant food. Depending on locality and availability, capelin, sand lance, redfish, and herring are important foods. But many other species of fishes are also eaten, including alewives, Atlantic and Arctic cod, cunner, flounders, haddock, hake, mackerel, shannies, snakeblenny, sculpin, and silversides. Squid, banks clam, mussels, and nudibranchs are also eaten. Cod also eat many other creatures such as tunicates, comb jellies, brittle stars, sand dollars, sea cucumbers, and marine worms; fish offal, including

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fish heads and entrails from fishing boats; and even occasionally seabirds. During courtship, the male makes a flaunting display of its median fins and produces grunting noises. It approaches the female from below or one side, presses the lower jaw onto the back of the female, and, pushing her downwards, swims onto her back. Once the male has mounted dorsally he immediately slips down one side of the female, still with the ventral surfaces of both fish and their genital apertures closely pressed together. Subsequently the fish spawn. The dorsal mount appears to be an essential forerunner of the ventral mount. Young cod fall prey to a number of predators such as older, larger cod, squid, and pollock. Larger cod are in turn eaten by marine mammals, particularly harbor, gray, and harp seals. Pilot whales prefer squid but eat cod in the absence of squid. In each of the different regions there are one or more identifiable cod stocks or populations, and the life cycle of each is related to the system of local ocean currents. The most important stocks are in (1) the Norwegian and Barents seas (spawn at the north Norwegian coast, feeding grounds in the Barents Sea and in Spitsbergen/Bear Island shelf waters), (2) Iceland waters (connected with the Irminger current, spawn near the south and southwest coast of Iceland, make feeding migrations to northern Iceland and in Greenland waters), (3) Greenland waters, (4) Labrador waters (connected with the circulation of warm Atlantic waters penetrating into the Davis Strait, spawn near northern Labrador; fry drift to the northwestern Newfoundland area), and (5) Newfoundland waters (connected with the frontal zone of Gulf

COD Stream from Cape Cod to the Great Newfoundland Bank). Smaller stocks also exist in the North Sea, near the Faroes, Ireland, Scotland, in the English Channel, and in the western Baltic Sea. The Arcto-Norwegian (Lofoten-Barents Sea) stock of the Atlantic cod is the most numerous and widespread. The usual length is 40–80 cm, the maximum length is 180 cm, and weight is up to 40 kg; known age is up to 25 years, but usually not more than 15 years. They attain sexual maturity usually at 6–10 years and at a length of 65–100 cm, but partly at age 3 or 4 years and lesser than 50 cm long or at 12–14 years. The main spawning grounds lie in northwest Norway (West Fjord and near the Lofoten Islands). They spawn in bays and above coastal banks at a depth of about 100 m, from February to May, mainly in March-April, at water temperatures of 4–6°C, and a salinity of about 34‰. In some years spawning also takes place near Bear Island and on the west Murman coast, with a center in Motovsky Bay in the Barents Sea. The spawning period of each female is about 2 months, during which it lays from two to eight clutches of eggs, each egg 1.2–1.5 mm in diameter. The number of eggs produced, correlating with age and length, varies from 170 thousand to 18 million. Pelagic eggs float up in the upper layer and drift with currents, partly in the direction of Bear Island, but mainly into the Barents Sea. During drifting migration the young feed by small plankton organisms. In June, the young of 3–4 cm length drifting northward reach 72–73° N, and drifting eastward reach about 33–34° E. In September, the young reach eastern and northern limits of the Barents Sea (western coast of Novaya Zemlya and Spitsbergen northward to 80–81° N), and descend to the bottom. During the first 2 years, young cod in the Barents Sea do not undertake large migrations; they are adapted to low temperature (about 0°C) and feed mainly on small crustaceans. From 3 years, the cod start feeding migrations: in summer on stream north- and eastward, and in winter against stream south- and westward. The extent of migrations enlarges continuously. The cod start to eat fish and grow faster: at age 3 years the weight is about 300–500 g, at age 4 about 600–700 g, and at age 5 about 1000–1200 g. Food includes animals of more than 200 species and consists mainly of capelin, herring, polar cod, young cod, molluscs, and crustaceans. Differences in food content are known, related to age, season, and locality. From, on average, age 8–10 years and weight 3–4 kg, the cod start to undertake spawning migrations. In summer, they use rich feeding grounds at the eastern and northern parts of the Barents Sea, and in September-October they form large schools and start to move to the Lofoten Islands, orientating in branches of the Nord-Cap

current. A distance of about 1500 km takes 5–6 months, at an average speed of 7–8 km per day. Coastal cod may be distinguished from this oceanic population. Coastal cod are known from the Norwegian and Barents Sea coast. In spite of simultaneous spawning in the same areas, the two groups of cod have significant differences in the shape and structure of otoliths (the calcareous concretion in the inner ear, which shows an annular growth pattern), as also in the frequency of some hemoglobin alleles, and of blood types. Coastal cod have a smaller number of vertebrae, faster growth, and reach sexual maturity at a younger age; the weight at the same length is higher. The body shape of oceanic cod is more slender than that of coastal cod. The latter prefer the shallow waters at the coast, while the Arctic cod prefer the open sea and deeper waters both offshore and inshore. In the Barents Sea region, the cod total catch comprised 39.4 million tons from 1946 to 1999, and the average annual catch comprised 729.6 thousand tons (ranging between 240 and 1397.1 thousand tons). Since the 1970s, the stock has been in a depressive state. The Iceland-Greenland stock of Atlantic cod has a wide feeding area and local spawning grounds. Iceland cod spawn off the south and southwest coast of Iceland from March to May with a peak at the end of April, at temperatures of 5–7°C and a salinity of 32–35‰. The incubation time is 3–5 weeks. Eggs and larvae drift in Irminger current northward: to northwest, north, and northeast coastal Iceland waters, where they feed and grow. In some years a significant number of the young (about 8–25%) drifted to the Greenland shelf, returning back as adults to spawn in Iceland waters. Catches of cod in Iceland waters comprised 300–400,000 tons, and have declined since the 1990s. The Greenland stock of Atlantic cod inhabits southern Greenland waters, on the west coast northward to about 70° N (region of Disko Island) and on the east coast to 65°35′ N (Ammassalik). They are distributed from inshore waters to about 600 m depth, usually above the continental shelf, occurring both on the bottom and some 50–80 m off the bottom. Fish migrate to deeper waters in summer. Tagging experiments have indicated that some mature cod migrate from West Greenland to East Greenland, with some moving as far as Iceland. The minimum average body length occurs in northern West Greenland, the length increasing from southern West Greenland to East Greenland. Growth varies considerably according to stock condition, locations, and other factors. On the eastern coast, cod spawn from 63°30′ N southward to Kap Farvel, at a depth of 200–400 m at bottom temperatures of 2.5–4.5°C. Main spawning

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COD grounds lie in Ammassalik area, where a peak of spawning takes place in April to the beginning of May. On the western coast, cod spawn in open offshore waters northward to 63° N, and then in fjords northward to 67° N. Spawning takes place here at the end of March, with a peak in April, and ends in June, at a depth 50–550 m, at bottom temperatures of 1.5–3.5°C. Incubation time varies from 50 to 17 days at temperatures of −0.6°C to +5.0°C. The Greenland stock of Atlantic cod was especially numerous in the 1820s and 1840s. Then cod stocks migrated and fishery greatly decreased. Another peak of high cod catches was in the 1920s–1970s. During 1961–1968, the total annual catch off West Greenland varied between 350 and 450,000 tons. Catches decreased to 6600 tons in 1986, but recovered to 110,000 tons in 1989. The estimated biomasses were 21–88,000 tons off East Greenland during 1980–1985 and 25–180,000 tons off West Greenland during 1982–1985. In the western North Atlantic, at least 12–14 stocks are recognized: southern Labrador–east Newfoundland stock, northern Labrador stock, west and east Scotian shelf stocks, the northern and southern Gulf of St Lawrence stocks, southern Grand Bank stock, Banquereau-Sable Island stock, St Pierre Bank stock, Georges Bank stock, and others. Over the entire Canadian Atlantic region, spawning begins in the north in February and ends in December. Cod spawn over a wide area on the continental shelf, but the area involved is so large and the conditions so varied that generalization would be misleading. The number of eggs produced increases with the size of the female: from 200 thousand to 12 million eggs. The eggs are pelagic, 1.2–1.6 mm in diameter. Incubation time varies from 50 to 60 days at surface temperatures of −1.5°C to 0°C, to 14 days at a temperature of 6°C. At hatching, embryos are 3.3–5.7 mm long. The young remain pelagic until they reach a length of 30–50 mm, when they descend to the bottom. Growth rates vary with stock and locality. In general, growth is slower (and fish live longer) off Labrador and eastern Newfoundland than on southern Grand Bank, and slower in the Gulf of St Lawrence than on the Scotian shelf. On average, 10-year-old cod from inshore Labrador measure 57 cm long, from the southwestern Gulf of St Lawrence 70.8 cm long, and from Grand Bank about 86.5 cm long. The average age of cod caught by commercial fishery in the 1970s was younger than in the 1950s—that is, the average age declined. Cod older than 20 years are rare; the maximum age is regarded as 29. The all-tackle world record is 44.79 kg for a cod caught off New Hampshire in 1969. The largest weight ever reported was 95.9 kg for cod from a line trawl off Massachusetts in 1895.

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Atlantic cod continue to be Canada’s single most important commercial species in terms of landed value. Canadian fishermen capture 70–75% of all fish caught in the northwest Atlantic, where at least 13 countries engage in fishery. In 1983, Canada landed 509,052 tons, and in 1984, 463,100 tons. Major fishing grounds are on the continental shelf off Labrador and off eastern Newfoundland and include the Grand Bank and northern Gulf of St Lawrence. Atlantic cod have been pursued on the fishing banks of the North Atlantic for centuries. Prior to the 1970s, the annual catch was 2.6–4 million tons, taking third place in the world fishery (after Peruvian anchovy and Atlantic herring), and gave 5–6% of the world catch. The stock decreased after 1975 and is in a depressive state until now. Cod stocks have been overfished in some areas (Atlantic Canada) and are at dangerously low levels in parts of the North Atlantic and North Sea. Atlantic cod are caught commercially by otter trawls, pair trawls, line trawls, Danish seines, handlines, jiggers, traps, and gill nets. The delicious flesh is used fresh, frozen, smoked, salted, and canned. Special parts such as cod cheeks and cod tongues are considered delicacies by many maritime peoples. Additional by-products include fish meal, cod-liver oil rich in vitamins A and D, and glue. Eggs are commercially used in Norway.

Kildin Cod The Kildin cod Gadus morhua kildinensis is a relict population of the Arctic cod, known from Lake Mogilnoe on Kildin Island, a small island in the Barents Sea near the Kola Fjord entrance. Earlier the lake was a sea bay; now it is isolated, c.500 m long, 17.5 m deep, with the upper 5 m layer being fresh water and the bottom layer (below 12–13 m) saturated by hydrogen sulfide. These cod live in intermediate salt water usually at salinities of 15–32‰, but also occur in the fresh upper layer. Their color is very spotted, including the head, dorsal, and caudal fins. The body length is up to 60–80 cm. Kildin cod spawn in February to March, and feed on crustaceans. Kildin cod are poorly studied; their population is not numerous and they may be endangered. They are included in the Red Book of the Russian Federation, which lists endangered wildlife species.

Baltic Cod The Baltic cod Gadus morhua callarias or Gadus callarias is adapted to live in sea water with a low salinity, and is one of the most important commercial fishes in the Baltic Sea. Whereas the Atlantic cod G. morhua morhua inhabits western parts of the Baltic

COD Sea, the Baltic cod occurs in the eastern part of the sea eastward of Bornholm Island: northward distributed to about 63° N, escaping freshened waters of Bothnian Bay and Finland Gulf. Baltic cod differ from Atlantic cod in the shape of the swim bladder anterior extensions, which are very long and rolled at the tips; they also differ in biochemical and genetic characters, life cycle, spawning regions, and migrations. The maximum length is usually 40–45 cm, and the known maximum age is 10 years. They attain sexual maturity at the age of 3 years at a length of 20–27 cm. Baltic cod spawn mainly in Bornholm, Gdansk, and Gotland basins from March to August with a peak in May-June. Spawning occurs at a depth of 80–100 m, in waters with salinity not less than 10‰ (usually 12–18‰), at temperatures of 4–5°C. Eggs are pelagic, 1.5–2.0 mm in diameter. During the first two years, the young feed mainly on crustaceans and worms (polychaetes), and later on fishes (Baltic herring, sprat, and others). From the end of the 1970s to the beginning of the 1980s, the total catch of both Atlantic and Baltic forms of cod in the Baltic Sea was 500–700,000 tons, and later decreased to less than 100,000 tons.

White Sea Cod The White Sea cod Gadus marisalbi inhabits most saline waters of the White Sea and usually does not occur in the freshwater Dvina, Mezen’, and Onega bays. Its color is usually a uniform dark olive-brown. The maximum length is usually 20–40 cm, rarely 58–60 cm, and the age is up to 12 years. In commercial catches, 3–5-year classes predominated, with lengths of 25–35 cm. They attain sexual maturity at 2–4 years. White Sea cod spawn under ice, at temperatures of −0.5°C to −1.5°C, from the end of February to the end of May, with a peak in March-April. They spawn in coastal zones at a depth of 9–20 m, and in inlets and straits above 10–100 m. They produce from 60 to 350,000 pelagic eggs. Incubation time varies from 35–40 to 12–13 days. On spawning grounds, the maximum number of eggs in the upper 1 m layer occurs usually in April-May, and the maximum number of larvae occurs in May-June. Planktonic young of length 3–4 cm are hatched in July. Adults in summer occur inshore, and in autumn migrate to wintering grounds, which are not far from the spawning grounds. In spring, after breeding they migrate to feeding areas. Young fish prefer depths of 3–12 m. Young fish feed on crustaceans (mysids, gammarids); adults eat fishes (sand-eel, capelin, herring, cottids, small cods) and invertebrates (mainly molluscs and worms). They feed intensively in shallow coastal waters from June to September. The White Sea

cod is of local commercial importance, comprising 4–5% of the annual fish catch in the White Sea.

Greenland Cod The Greenland cod Gadus ogac is more similar to the Pacific cod than to the Atlantic cod. They occur from Alaska (west to Pt Barrow), along the Canadian Arctic coast and archipelago, to West Greenland (from Kap Farvel to Upernavik, 72°55′ N), southward into Hudson Bay. They also occur in the Canadian Atlantic region from Ungava Bay and Hudson Strait, southward along the Labrador coast to Newfoundland, and are numerous in the Gulf of St Lawrence, southward to Bras d’Or Lake and Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. They inhabit cold temperate to Arctic waters, and are the most common cod in harbors and fjords, occurring less commonly in offshore waters. In the Hamilton Inlet and Lake Mellville region in Labrador, it is an estuarine species. They produced a lake population in Lake Ogac (Baffin Land, near the corner of Frobisher Bay), which is numerous and used by indigenous people. They also occur in Miramichi estuary and in Brass d’Or Lake. Greenland cod inhabit waters to a depth of 400 m. The body is brown dorsally and laterally, and white ventrally. This species differs from G. morhua in its darker coloration, it lacks distinct spots, has wider interorbital width, and has larger-scale tubercles (c.8.2% of scale length), which are easily visible with the unaided eye, detectable by touch, and club-shaped. Spawning occurs along Greenland shores in February and March. About 1–2 million eggs are produced. Eggs are pelagic. The young attain sexual maturity at 3 or 4 years at a length of about 70 cm. The maximum age is 11 years; also more commonly they attain an age of 8–10 years. They eat mainly fishes, especially capelin, polar cod, smaller Greenland cod, and Greenland halibut; among the invertebrates, amphipods, shrimps, crabs, molluscs, and polychaete worms are commonly eaten. The species is of minor commercial importance.

Pacific (Alaska) Cod The Pacific cod Gadus macrocephalus inhabits the northern part of the Pacific Ocean, from the Bering Strait to the Yellow Sea along the Asian coast and to Oregon along the American coast. The body length is up to 90 (rarely 100–120) cm. In the western North Pacific, at least ten local stocks exist. The stock of the Anadyr-Navarin region is the largest. In commercial catch, fishes of 32–74 cm length occur; 82.8% are 40–65 cm long and weight is 350–5950 g. Females are larger than males.

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COD WARS Pacific cod occur at temperatures of −1.5°C to 18°C, an optimum of 2–8°C in summer and of −0.5°C to 5°C in winter. In northern regions, Pacific cod spawn at temperatures of 0–3°C at a depth of 200–300 m. In the Anadyr Bay they spawn in April-May, and in southeastern and eastern Kamchatka in FebruaryMarch. Eggs are adhesive, demersal, that is, sinking to or deposited near the sea bottom (in contrast to all other cod species), and small (0.95–1.11 mm in diameter). Hatching embryos are 3–3.5 mm. Migrations usually are not prolonged: in summer inshore (to depths of 30–60 m) and in winter offshore. The total catch of Pacific cod comprised about 15–20 million tons. In the western North Pacific, the stock of the Anadyr-Navarin region yields about a half of the total annual catch of cod. In 1995–1996, the commercial stock of cod in the Anadyr Bay was estimated as 190 thousand tons. NATALIA CHERNOVA See also Cod Wars; Fish Further Reading Andriashev, Anatoly Petrovich, Fishes of the Northern Seas of USSR, Moskva-Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1954 Bakkala, Richard G., “Pacific Cod of the eastern Bering Sea.” Bulletin of International North Pacific Fishery Commission, 42 (1984): 157–179 Campbell, Jone S. (editor), Symposium on the Biology and Ecology of Northwest Atlantic Cod (1994; St John’s Newfoundland). Selected Proceedings of the Symposium on the Biology and Ecology of Northwest Atlantic Cod, St John’s Newfoundland, October 24–28, 1994, Ottawa (Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 54(Supplement I) (1997)) Hannesson, R., Fisheries Mismanagement: The Case of the North Atlantic Cod, Oxford: Fishing News Books, Blackwell Science Ltd., 1996 Horsted, Svend Aage, “A review of the cod fisheries at Greenland, 1910–1995.” Journal of Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Science (special issue), 28 (2000): 1–121 Jakobsson, Jakob (editor), Cod and Climate Change: Proceedings of a Symposium held in Reykjavik, August 23–27, 1993, Copenhagen: International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, 1994 (ICES Marine Science Symposia, 198, 1994) Jónsson, Jón, Tagging of Cod (Gadus morhua) in Icelandic waters, 1948–1986; Tagging of Haddock (Gadus aeglefinus) in Icelandic Waters, 1953–1965, Reykjavik: Hafrannsóknastofnunin, 1996 Jørgensen, Terje, “Long-term changes in age at sexual maturity of Northeast Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua L.).” Journal du Conseil, 46(3) (1990): 235–248 Kurlansky, Mark, Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, New York: Walker, 1997 Matishov, Gennady G. & Alexey V. Rodin (editors), Atlantic Cod: Biology, Ecology, Fishery, St Petersburg: Nauka, 1996 (in Russian with contents and summary in English) Morin, Bernard, Christiane Hudon & Friderick Whoriskey, “Seasonal distribution, abundance, and life-history traits of Greenland cod, Gadus ogac, at Wemindji, eastern James Bay.” Canadian Journal of Zoology, 69 (1991): 3061–3070

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Smirnova, Natalia Fedorovna & Nikolay Pavlovich Smirnov, Atlantic Cod and Climate, St Petersburg: Rossiysky Gosudarstvenniy Gidrometeorologicheskiy Universitet, 2000 (in Russian) Svetovidov, Anatoliy Nikolaevich, Gadiformes (Treskoobraznye), translated from Russian, Jerusalem, Published for the National Science Foundation, Washington, D.C. by the Israel Program for Scientific Translations, 1962 ———, “Gadidae.” In Check-List of the Fishes of the NorthEastern Atlantic and of the Mediterranean, edited by JeanClaud Hureau & Théodor Monod, Paris: UNESCO, 1973 Vladykov, Vadim D., Claude B. Rennauld & Sylvie Labramboise, “Breeding tubercles in three species of Gadus (cods).” Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 42 (1985): 608–615

COD WARS During the 15th century, English fishermen began to frequent Icelandic waters in defiance of the Danish government in Copenhagen. In response, the first fishing limits at the coast of Iceland were set in 1598, when English fishing was banned in the area between the islands and the Icelandic mainland, and for a limit of about 18 km northeast of the islands. This limit was later set at 16 (29.65 km) or 24 (44.47 km) nautical miles. Enforcement was limited and English fishermen continued their fishing in Icelandic waters during the 17th century. In 1774, a Danish frigate was sent to guard the fishing limits, which were then regarded as 12 miles. However, during the 19th century the Danish government retreated from its stance on fishing limits, and warships sent to guard the fishing limits limited themselves to the 4-mile line. The Icelandic parliament held different ideas, and in 1889 it banned all fishing by trawlers within the fishing limits. Such a ban was mainly aimed at British fishermen, who had recently introduced steam-driven trawlers. In 1901, the Danish and British governments came to an agreement that confirmed the 3-mile fishing zone. Additionally, the line of the limits was not set at the mouths of bays or fjords, with the result that the largest bays in Iceland became open fishing-grounds. This agreement was unpopular among the Icelanders, but it was not terminated until 1949 with the founding of the Republic of Iceland. On May 25, 1952, Iceland extended its fishing limits to 4 miles, and in the process closed large bays and fjords. The chief motivation was concern over depleted stocks of fish, notably cod. The United Kingdom, Belgium, France, and West Germany criticized Iceland’s action, and the United Kingdom imposed repressive measures upon Icelandic boats, which were forbidden to sell frozen fish at British harbors. Attempts at negotiation by the Icelandic government, which was eager to avoid quarrels with a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ally, proved fruitless, and the trade sanctions continued until 1956.

COLD HALOCLINE The Icelandic government planned further extensions of the fishing limits, but again possible repercussions for the NATO alliance led to a split within the government. In the end, those forces within the government that advocated a firm stance—led by the socialist fisheries minister Lúðvík Jósepsson (1914–1994)—prevailed, and the fishing limits were extended to 12 miles on September 1, 1958. This time, the United Kingdom sent battleships into Icelandic waters to prevent the Icelandic coastguard from capturing vessels that had violated the new fishing limits. After the extension was enacted, the Icelandic government refused to negotiate on the question of fishing limits. However, a new right-of-center government formed in 1959 proved more willing to compromise, and in 1961 it reached an agreement with the United Kingdom. In this accord, the British government acknowledged the 12-mile limit, but received permission to fish in certain areas within the limits. The agreement allowed that further disputes among the countries be settled at the International Court of Justice in The Hague (the Netherlands), which had hitherto been hostile to the extension of fishing limits. The deal with the United Kingdom remained controversial in Iceland, and the opposition pledged to terminate the agreement. A shift in political power occurred in 1971, one of the rare instances in Icelandic political history when control shifted directly from the governmental parties to the opposition. The new government, with Lúðvík Jósepsson serving as fisheries minister, set about to undo the work of the previous administration. On September 1, 1972, the Icelandic fishing limits were again extended, this time to 50 miles (80.5 km). This extension was contested by many nations, but only Britain and West Germany decided to resist the new limits. They appealed to The Hague at first, even though the Icelandic government did not acknowledge the International Court’s authority in these matters. Then British and German fishing vessels continued to fish within the set limits under the protection of the UK’s Navy. The Icelandic coast guard fought back using wire cutters that destroyed the British and German trawls. The European community placed trade sanctions on Iceland in support of its member states. By threatening to sever diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom, Iceland effectively endangered the NATO alliance, and talks were subsequently organized. The British and Icelandic governments reached a compromise, and British ships were allocated limited fishing rights within the set limits for a two-year period. No accord was reached with the West Germans, who continued to fish in Icelandic waters and kept tight trade screws on Iceland. The third extension of the fishing limits took place on October 15, 1975, this time under a right-of-center

government. Iceland again increased the fishing limit to 200 miles (322 km) an action the International Court of Justice refused to recognize. British trawlers continued to fish within the 50-mile limit, and when they came into conflict with Icelandic coastguard vessels, they were protected by British frigates. Again, the British relied upon a mixture of trade sanctions and naval power. Attempts to put the Icelandic coast guard vessels out of action were unsuccessful and often damaging to the British warships. In February 1976, the Icelandic government finally made good of its threat and broke off diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom, although this rift did not last long. In May new talks were set in Oslo, Norway, with the Norwegian government acting as mediator. On June 1, the governments reached a settlement wherein the British agreed to withdraw its trawlers from Icelandic fishing grounds on December 1. West Germans left Icelandic fishing grounds in November 1977, following a separate agreement. Iceland had won the cod wars. However, the poor state of many fish stocks led to the introduction of a quota system in 1984. SVERRIR JAKOBSSON See also Cod; Iceland Further Reading Fleischer, Carl August, Fiskerijurisdiksjon; en undersøkelse av folkerettens regler om jurisdiksjonskompetanse, saerlig med henblikk på fiskerisoner utenfor territorialgrensen, Oslo: J.G. Tanum, 1963 Jónsson, Albert, “Tíunda Þorskastríð 1975–1976.” Saga, 19 (1981): 5–106 Jónsson, Hannes, Friends in Conflict. The Anglo-Icelandic Conflict and the Law of the Sea, London: Hurst, 1982 Jósepsson, Lúðvík, Landhelgismálið í 40 ár. Þoð sem gerðist bak við tjöldin, Reykjavík, Mál og menning, 1989 Karlsson, Gunnar, Iceland’s 1100 Years. The History of a Marginal Society, London: C. Hurst, 2000 Þór, Jón Þ, British Trawlers and Iceland 1919–1976, Göteborg: Göteborgs Universitet, 1995 Þórðarson, Gunnlaugur, Landhelgi Íslands með tilliti til fiskveiða, Reykjavík: Hlaðbúð, 1952 Þorsteinsson, Björn, Tíu Þorskastríð 1415–1976, Reykjavík: Sögufélagið, 1976 Sæmundsson, Sveinn, Guðmundur skipherra Kjærnested, 2 volumes, Reykjavík: Örn og örlygur, 1984–1985

COLD HALOCLINE The cold halocline is a water layer within the Arctic Ocean that lies below the very fresh surface waters and above the saltier Atlantic layer. Where it is well developed, its low temperature serves to insulate the overlying sea ice from the heat residing in the Atlantic layer. The oceanographic term “halocline” refers to a layer of water across which there is a change in salinity. Its origin is Greek: “halo” from “hals” meaning 399

COLD HALOCLINE salt, and “cline” from “klinein” meaning “to lean.” In the Arctic seas, a halocline defines the transition between a fresher (i.e., less dense) upper layer and a saltier (i.e., more dense) lower layer. A related concept is “thermocline,” which refers to a layer where there is a change in temperature. At the cold temperatures found in the Arctic seas, temperature plays little role in determining density. This means that warm, salty waters can lie underneath cold, fresh waters without the heat in the lower layer necessarily rising upwards. Such is the case in the Arctic Ocean. Just above the halocline lies the ocean surface layer, which is constrained to be at or very close to the freezing point where it is in contact with sea ice. This 10–60 m thick layer is not very dense, mostly because of discharge from large rivers in Siberia and North America. Surface layer salinity in the Arctic Ocean ranges from about 33.5 north of Svalbard to less than 20 near the river mouths in summer. (Salinity is measured as the kilograms of dissolved salt in 1000 kg of sea water. Fresh drinking water has a salinity at or close to zero.) Below the surface layer, salinity increases downward but the temperature stays near the freezing point. This is the cold halocline. Actually, it is composed of several different layers, each originating in unique and only partly understood ways. The freshest (i.e., lightest) of these comes from various types of water that enter the Arctic Ocean through Bering Strait. In summer, the sun warms the water before it encounters the sea ice pack and flows under the cold surface layer. It retains some of this heat (up to perhaps 1°C above freezing) as it circulates through the Canadian Basin, although this heat usually dissipates in the vicinity of Lomonosov Ridge. This water can be divided further into a fresher layer that contains waters from the Yukon River and a saltier component that lacks this influence. The latter contains a relative abundance of dissolved chemical nutrients such as silica and nitrate, which come from the nutrient-rich North Pacific Ocean. Underneath this summer water resides a winter Bering Strait variety that is saltier and nearly freezing. It is even richer in dissolved chemical nutrients than the summer layer above it, since it picks up an additional load from bottom sediments as it moves northward across the very shallow Chukchi Sea. Below this layer lies the deepest halocline type, which probably forms in or just north of the Barents and Kara seas by a combination of several mechanisms. These include the cooling of salty Atlantic layer water and the salinization of cold continental shelf waters. Below the halocline, at depths of 150–800 m, lies the warm and salty Atlantic layer. This layer fills the entire Arctic Ocean, from its origins in the Norwegian

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Sea to its exit through Fram Strait into the Greenland Sea. Its salinity is typically 34.8–35.0, and its temperature varies from about 3°C north of Svalbard to less than 0°C north of Canada. Since the freezing point of this water is about −1.8°C, even the coolest Atlantic layer water is a few degrees above freezing. Although this seems small, it represents enough heat to completely melt away the overlying sea ice pack if it were somehow able to mix up into the surface layer. The most vigorous source of mixing in the Arctic Ocean is generally from surface processes such as winds, sea ice motion, and the sinking of heavy waters formed by air cooling or sea ice growth. In the absence of a cold halocline, such processes might easily mix the Atlantic layer heat up into the surface layer and thus bring this heat into contact with the sea ice pack. This generally does not happen, however, because the halocline represents a stable barrier to surface mixing, that is, it is hard to penetrate this gradient in density. Even if the surface mixing were vigorous enough to penetrate into the halocline, it would only entrain water that is quite cool, and thus have little thermal effect on the sea ice pack. This inhibition of upward heat flux from the warm Atlantic layer is the main physical consequence of the cold halocline. Recent studies have shown that Arctic wind and surface air temperature patterns vary substantially on a multiyear time scale. These climate oscillations have affected the cold halocline by influencing where fresh surface waters circulate. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, an unusual wind pattern persisted that diverted river water away from the surface layer of the Amundsen Basin. This led to a retreat of the cold halocline from this area, leaving the surface layers directly exposed to the underlying warm Atlantic layer. This presumably is suppressed by the growth of wintertime sea ice in this area, but not for too long: the halocline began to rebuild as wind patterns shifted in the mid1990s. If such climate oscillations persist or amplify in the future, then the Atlantic layer heat may play an increasing role in the ocean surface energy balance, that is, in keeping the sea ice pack thinner than it is now. This is the present situation in the Antarctic Ocean, which lacks a cold halocline and thus has a thinner sea ice pack that largely melts away every summer. MICHAEL STEELE See also Arctic Ocean; Atlantic Layer; Freshwater Hydrology; Oceanography; Thermohaline Circulation Further Reading Aagaard, K., L.K. Coachman & E. Carmack, “On the halocline of the Arctic Ocean.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 28 (1981): 529–545

COLLECTIVIZATION Coachman, L.K. & C.A. Barnes, “The contribution of Bering Sea water to the Arctic Ocean.” Arctic, 14 (1961): 147–161 Dickson, R., “All change in the Arctic.” Nature, 397 (1999): 389–391 Ekwurzel, B., P. Schlosser, R.A. Mortlock, R.G. Fairbanks & J.H. Swift, “River runoff, sea ice meltwater, and Pacific water distribution and mean residence times in the Arctic Ocean.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 106 (2001): 9075–9092 Johnson, M.A. & I.V. Polyakov, “The Laptev Sea as a source for recent Arctic Ocean salinity changes.” Geophysical Research Letters, 28 (2001): 2017–2020 Jones, E.P. & L.G. Anderson, “On the origin of the chemical properties of the Arctic Ocean halocline.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 91 (1986): 10759–10767 Martinson, D.G. & M. Steele, “Future of the arctic sea ice cover: implications of an Antarctic analogue.” Geophysical Research Letters, 28 (2001): 307–310 Shimada, K., E.C. Carmack, K. Hatakeyama & T. Takizawa, “Varieties of shallow temperature maximum waters in the western Canadian Basin of the Arctic Ocean.” Geophysical Research Letters, 28(18) (2001): 3441–3444 Steele, M. & T. Boyd, “Retreat of the cold halocline layer in the Arctic Ocean.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 103 (1998): 10419–10435

COLLECTIVIZATION Russian collectivization encompassed the solidification, indeed ratification, of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Arguing that the New Economic Policy (NEP), adopted in 1921 to improve the economy and gain the trust of the peasantry, was a betrayal of the Revolution, Josef Stalin, with the support of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, turned a different course by 1927, putting a halt to the NEP (Marples, 2002). In 1928, the Party adopted Stalin’s First Five-Year Plan in order to implement a highly centralized, planned economy based on collectivization of agriculture and intensive industrialization. The central concern was to make sure that the Party had control of the countryside and to create a proletarian class. The First Five-Year Plan aimed to transform Soviet agriculture from individual farms to a complex of large state collective farms. The Soviet government postulated that collectivization would improve agricultural production enough to be able to supply the growing demand for food by urban workers, as well as produce a surplus. Collectivization began in the Urals and West Siberia as early as 1928, with the forceful requisitioning of grain from peasants who were arrested and censured as “kulaks” (exploiters) if they withheld grain. In 1929, throughout the Soviet Union, peasant farmers destroyed their stores of grain and slaughtered their livestock rather than turn them over to the collective farms (Forsyth, 1992). The vastness of Soviet territory and the multiplicity of ethnic groups and nationalities made for difficult

and intricate economic policy-making processes because the central government was obligated to structure economic policies that accounted for the uneven development from one part of the Soviet Union to another. The Stalin government also took into account the differences in political outlook while at the same time putting the centrally planned economic policies into place. Adhering to these considerations proved difficult for the administration as it attempted to introduce and establish an ideal socialist economy and society that, although highly industrialized, existed within an environment based on a rural economy. The primary aim was to take control of the rural regions and to make proletarians out of the masses, but in order to appease the minority ethnic voices, collectivization and industrialization were permitted to take on traditional ethnic characteristics. Thus, in the Far North and Siberia, fishing, hunting, and reindeer herding were modernized and remodeled within the framework of collectivization. Collectivization in the North and Siberia meant the procurement of reindeer, fish, and furs to be done by establishing brigades that would operate under quotas to produce goods for the state. It was to be spontaneously seized by the masses, but confusion and disorder ensued especially in the major agricultural regions of the Soviet Union, and also in the North and Siberia, compounded by crosscultural misunderstandings and major language barriers. The most striking form of protest came from the nomadic reindeer herders in the mid-1930s when all throughout the Russian North they chose to slaughter or disperse their herds rather than turn them over to collective farms (Forsyth, 1992). Having learned from the violent reaction of peasants in European Russia, and on the advice of the Committee of the North, collectivization was to be accomplished more slowly in the North and Siberia, yet Soviet officials were ruthless in its implementation, often resorting to force and violence. So, massive collectivization was highly contentious when it began in the fall of 1930, particularly in territories that were near or overlapped Russian settlements. Collectives were usually not appropriately situated for the economies that Natives had practiced traditionally, and tended to be organized around one center. The Soviets hoped that most of the outlying villages would become depopulated, with Native youth attracted to the Russian luxuries of money and vodka. This was also a convenient way for the government to settle Northern indigenous peoples more centrally, supposedly making it less cumbersome to deliver services such as medical care, education, cultural socialization, and to engage in politicization, agitation, and policy implementation in very remote regions of the North and Siberia.

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COLLINS, HENRY B. As with other parts of the Soviet Union, a process of “dekulakzsation” accompanied collectivization. Native elites, shamans, and leaders were labeled “kulaks” and were liquidated, and so with the many contentious members gone by 1931, the great transformation proceeded rapidly with 42% Yakuts, 50% Altaiains, 61% Buryats, and 72% Khakas reportedly collectivized. In 1937, the rates were higher still with the Khakas 93.3% and the Yakut 71% collectivized (Forsyth, 1992). Moreover, many Natives already believed in the promises of the Soviet state and the benefits they would accrue as dutiful members. Hence, when Stalin decided to undertake collectivization in the vastness of Siberia, he found willing servitors of the state among the indigenous populations. Some Natives would eventually gain status among the Russians who outnumbered them in the large urban centers, and, gradually, the villages. More and more would be educated and be faithful members of the Communist Party. By 1937, the end of the Second Five-Year Plan, 93% of peasant households had been collectivized and a quarter of a million collective farms were in operation (Marples, 2002). However, in some remote regions of Siberia, especially among nomadic reindeer herders, the collectivization process continued until well into the 1950s (Golovnev and Osherenko, 1999). With economic transformation came social and cultural transformation. Natives were eventually collectivized, working in brigades of fishers, hunters, and reindeer herders throughout the North, and attempting to fulfill quotas that often went against the seasonal and traditional patterns of their economies. The most striking effects of these policies, seen today, in many Native communities are the loss of the Native languages, the modernization of traditional economies to satisfy commercial interests, the disappearance of reindeer herding in some areas, the settlement of once nomadic peoples, and the forgetting of myths, oral histories, and songs. AILEEN A. ESPIRITU See also Relocation Further Reading Forsyth, James, A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia’s North Asian Colony 1581–1990, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992 Golovnev, Andrei V. & Gail Osherenko, Siberian Survival: The Nenets and Their Story, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999 “Kolkhoz ‘Krasnaia zvezda’.’,” Sovetskii Sever, No. 1 (1933): 105–108. Marples, David R., Motherland: Russia in the 20th Century, London: Longman, 2002 Schroeder, Gertrude E., “Nationalities and the Soviet Economy.” In The Soviet Nationality Reader, edited byRachel Denber, Boulder: Westview Press, 1992, p. 261

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Slezkine, Yuri, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994 Suny, Ronald. G, Revenge of the Past, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993 Tabelev, V.F, “Na Iamalskom Severe.,” Sovetskaia Arktika, No. 7 (1936): 11–23 Viola, Lynne, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997

COLLINS, HENRY B. Henry Collins was among the founders of modern Arctic archaeology, and the first to prove that Eskimo cultures had their origin in Asia rather than Canada. His fieldwork on St Lawrence Island and in other parts of western Alaska, and later in Canada, addressed Eskimo origins and cultural development across the Arctic, from Alaska to Greenland. During his careerspanning association with the Smithsonian Institution, he trained several generations of specialists in Arctic prehistory. Collins graduated from Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1922 with a degree in geology (and later received an Honorary Doctor of Sciences degree from this institution). After working for three summers on Neil M. Judd’s expeditions to Pueblo Bonito, New Mexico, he received his M.A. degree in archaeology from George Washington University in 1925. Before he shifted his attention to the Arctic in 1927, Collins focused on archaeological research in various areas of the American South. He worked on the physical anthropology and archaeology of the Choctaw and Calusa, and also investigated the culture history and relationships among the inhabitants of the Gulf Coast. Years later, in 1980, his research in the Southeast was to win him a citation from colleagues at Harvard University. From 1927 to 1936, in collaboration with James A. Ford and others, Collins devoted most of his intellectual efforts to excavations in the Bering Sea and Bering Strait areas, on St Lawrence Island, Nunivak Island, the Diomede Islands, Punuk Island, Bristol Bay, Norton Sound, Pt Hope, Cape Prince of Wales, the Aleutians, and the Seward Peninsula. Collins and his colleagues concentrated on the problems of Asian affinities, Western origins, culture sequences, and nonEskimo influences on Eskimo/Inuit culture (e.g., Collins, 1929, 1930, 1937). He found evidence for an unbroken sequence of changes in Eskimo art styles reaching back at least 2000 years. His 1936 report on his St Lawrence Island research provided a major and lasting revision of Eskimo culture history (Collins, 1937), for which he was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. Recently, his archaeological work at the Hillside site

COLLINSON, RICHARD on St Lawrence Island has been the subject of a restudy (Dumond, 1998). In 1948, at the invitation of Diamond Jenness, Collins expanded his field research eastward into Canada and excavated sites at Iqaluit (Frobisher Bay), and Resolute, on Baffin, Cornwallis, and Southampton islands (Collins, 1957). He enlarged his scope of inquiry to take in further questions about the development of Eskimo cultures (e.g., Collins, 1951), and included inquiries into their relationships to European Mesolithic and Siberian Neolithic cultures. As a result of this work, he contributed important new insights into the Dorset and Thule cultures of that area. His research resulted in the earliest synthesis of Greenlandic, Canadian, and Alaskan prehistory (Collins, 1940). Throughout his career, Collins conducted museum research in addition to fieldwork, and actively contributed to his field, serving in various capacities with the International Congresses of Ethnological and Anthropological Sciences, including vice president of the second congress in Copenhagen in 1938, member of the permanent council in 1952, member of the organizing committee in charge of foreign delegations, and president of the seventh congress in Moscow in 1965. He served as honorary vice president of the 1956 International Congress of Americanists, which was convened in Copenhagen. Collins also held various elected offices with the Arctic Institute of North America (AINA). A founding member in 1944, he served as the board’s chairman in 1948. In 1946, he chaired the directing committee of the Arctic Bibliography, an AINA project. In 1960, he served as chairman of the advisory committee for AINA’s Russian Translation Project. From 1938 to 1939, Collins served as president of the Anthropological Society of Washington, and in 1952 he was elected vice president of the Society for American Archaeology. From 1943 until 1946, he held consecutive positions as assistant director and director of the Ethnographic Board, a World War II agency. In 1945, he was a voted member of the National Research Council’s Council on International Relations and Anthropology, where he directed a project to send CARE packages to European anthropologists.

Biography Henry Bascom Collins Jr. was born in Geneva, Alabama, on April 9, 1899. After receiving his M.A. in 1925, Collins was hired by the Smithsonian Institution where, a year earlier, he had been appointed an aid in the Division of Ethnology of the United States National Museum and was then promoted to assistant curator, becoming associate curator in 1938. In 1939, he was promoted to senior ethnologist with the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) and became its acting

director in 1963. In 1965, when the Smithsonian’s Department of Anthropology and the BAE amalgamated as the Smithsonian Office of Anthropology, Collins was appointed a senior scientist. He held emeritus status after his 1967 retirement, and kept an office at the Smithsonian until 1986, continuing his active publication record until the end of his life. In 1931, Collins married Carolyn A. Walker (1906–1988), a native of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, who became the first American Exchange Librarian at the Deutsche Bücherei in Leipzig, Germany, after graduating from the Framingham Teachers College in 1924. Henry Collins died on October 22, 1987 in Campbelltown, Pennsylvania, of injuries from a fall. MOLLY LEE AND PETER P. SCHWEITZER See also Jenness, Diamond Further Reading Collins Jr., Henry B., Prehistoric Art of the Alaskan Eskimo (Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections; 81, 14), Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution, 1929 ———, “Ancient culture of St Lawrence Island, Alaska.” Smithsonian Explorations (1930): 135–144 ———, Archeology of St Lawrence Island, Alaska (Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections; 96, 1), Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution, 1937 ———, “Outline of Eskimo prehistory.” Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 100 (1940): 533–592 ———, “Eskimo archaeology and its bearing on the problem of man’s antiquity in America.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 86(2) (1943): 220–235 ———, “The origin and antiquity of the Eskimo.” Smithsonian Report for 1950, Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1951, 423–467 ———, “Archeological work in Arctic Canada.” Smithsonian Report for 1956, Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1957, 509–528 Dumond, Don E., The Hillside Site, St Lawrence Island, Alaska: An Examination of Collections from the 1930s (University of Oregon Anthropological Papers; 55), Eugene, Oregon: Oregon State Museum of Anthropology and Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon, 1998 Fitzhugh, William W., “Deaths: Henry Bascom Collins.” Anthropology Newsletter, 29(1) (1988): 20 Glenn, James R., Guide to the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution (revised and enlarged), Washington, District of Columbia: National Anthropological Archives, 1996 Stevens, Ted, “Henry Bascom Collins.” Congressional Record — Senate, 133(22) (1987): 31059–31060 Washington Post, “Henry Collins, 88, Dies; Was Expert on Eskimos.” Washington Post, October 28, 1987, p. B-6

COLLINSON, RICHARD In the annals of exploration of the Arctic, Captain Richard Collinson, of the British Royal Navy, is often portrayed as a tragic figure who narrowly missed great discoveries because of his cautiousness. Between 1848 403

COLLINSON, RICHARD and 1859, Collinson headed one of the more than fifty naval and private expeditions that sought to discover and rescue the crews of Sir John Franklin’s ships the Erebus and Terror that had gone missing in 1845. Collinson sailed from England aboard the Enterprise in January 1850. The Investigator captained by the expedition’s second-in-command Sir Robert McClure set off with the Enterprise. The ships became separated in the Straits of Magellan and never reunited. Unlike the majority of the Franklin search expeditions, the Enterprise and the Investigator entered the Arctic via the Bering Strait and traveled east. The two ships were supposed to rendezvous in Hawaii, but Collinson became impatient and departed just one day before the Investigator arrived. They missed a second rendezvous near present-day Kotzebue because of what appears to have been McClure’s attempt to avoid Collinson’s command. Despite leaving Honolulu after the Investigator, the Enterprise arrived first at their next prearranged meeting and resupply point. Collinson sailed west of the Aleutian Islands, while McClure took a shorter route through them. Then, using the excuse that he had to catch up with Collinson, McClure forged ahead into the Arctic Archipelago. Although he was aware that McClure had gone ahead, Collinson delayed for two weeks before continuing North in September 1850. When the Enterprise finally did continue, it quickly encountered pack ice. Rather than attempt to take refuge at Pt Barrow, Collinson retreated to Hong Kong for the winter. Returning to the Arctic the following year, Collinson took the Enterprise through the Beaufort Sea into the Prince of Wales Strait, which separates Banks and Victoria Islands. Failing to find McClure, Collinson sailed south and west halfway around Banks Island and found a cache left by McClure at Cape Kellett, which indicated that the Investigator had passed that point only two weeks before. Again it was fall, and instead of following McClure, Collinson turned east to make winter harbor—this time at Walker Bay on Victoria Island. (This site, which appears on many older maps as Fort Collinson, was the location of Hudson’s Bay Company and the Canalaska Trading Company posts in the 1930s.) McClure’s ship spent that winter, and the next, locked in the ice on the northern coast of Banks Island and was eventually abandoned. His crew sledged several hundred miles east, where they were rescued and returned to England aboard another vessel. For having traveled from west to east through the Arctic Archipelago, McClure and his crew shared in the parliamentary prize for discovery of a North West Passage. Although McClure, rather than Collinson, received the credit for discovering a North West Passage, it was

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Collinson who actually navigated one. In 1852, he took the Enterprise through the narrow Dolphin and Union Strait that separates Victoria Island from the Canadian mainland, wintering in 1852–1853 at Cambridge Bay. As a result, he was able to fill in portions of the map of the region west of King William Island. Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who, half a century later, was the first to completely navigate the North West Passage by ship, described it as an injustice that Collinson was denied the honor of discovery while McClure had received acclaim. Amundsen noted that he had depended heavily on Collinson’s soundings and surveys of that “narrow and foul” channel (Dolphin and Union Strait) in order to guide through his much smaller ship. During the winters at Walker Bay and Cambridge Bay, Collinson sent out sledging parties to explore the region. At both places, they met groups of Inuit, but had difficulty communicating because the expedition interpreter Johann Miertsching was aboard the Investigator. Nonetheless, some ethnological data were recorded. The assistant surgeon on the Enterprise, Edward Adam’s, made detailed drawings and paintings of Copper Inuit on Victoria Island. Adam’s sketches are the earliest known images of Copper Inuit. At one encounter near Cambridge Bay, Collinson’s crew was able to get the Inuit to draw maps of the region. One of those maps, purportedly of the area around King William Island and the Boothia Peninsula, seems to have indicated two ships—possibly Franklin’s ships, but Collinson chose not to investigate the area. If he had he would likely have discovered the fate of Franklin. Explorers like Collinson were an important, if unpredictable, source of trade goods and exotic materials obtained by Inuit. Ethnologist and explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson recorded that one of his informants, an elderly man named Pamiungittok, reported visiting Collinson’s ship at Walker Bay. Pamiungittok was around 80 years old at the time and, according to Stefansson, described the crew of the Enterprise as “excellent people…[who] paid well for water boots, etc. [and] threw away much valuable stuff which the people picked up.” However, Collinson’s journal indicates that the Inuit they met on Victoria Island had relatively little interest in trading meat to the explorers. This situation differed markedly from that along the Alaska coast, where Collinson had found no shortage of Iñupiat anxious to trade with him. At the instigation of an Inuk near Cambridge Bay, Collinson did exchange a kayak he had obtained in Alaska for a local example. After failing to discover the whereabouts of either Franklin or McClure, Collinson sailed west back through Dolphin and Union Strait. He returned to England in 1855 via the Cape of Good Hope, thus

COLONIZATION OF THE ARCTIC circumnavigating the globe. The entire voyage was plagued with problems and failures caused in part by Collinson’s poor relations with his officers and crew. By the end of the voyage, he had placed all but two of his officers under arrest. Upon return to England, Collinson urged that they face court martial, and they too attempted to have him tried for drunkenness and tyranny. No one was tried, and Collinson was offered no new naval commands. PAMELA STERN See also Franklin, Sir John

Biography Sir Richard Collinson was born in Gatehead, Durham, England in 1811. The son of an Anglican priest, he was educated at Ovingham near Newcastle before joining the Royal Navy at the age of 12. After athreeyear posting at the Pacific Station on the west coast of South America, Collinson served on a number of ships charged with surveying. He received his first commission in 1835 aboard the Sulphur. Collinson served on the Sulphur during the first Opium War (1838–1842), and was promoted to Captain in 1842. Following the war, Collinson continued his survey work, returning to England in 1846. Although he received no commands following his Arctic voyage, Collinson was promoted to Rear Admiral in 1862, and was recognized for his Arctic service and knighted in 1875. Collinson was a member of several geographical societies and as such published The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 1576–78 (1867). He died in England in 1883. Further Reading Amundsen, Roald, The North West Passage: The Gjoa Expedition 1903–1907, Volume 2, New York: Dutton, 1908 Berton, Pierre, The Arctic Grail: The Quest for the North West Passage and the North Pole, 1818–1909, New York: Viking, 1988 Collinson, Richard, Journal of the Enterprise on the Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin’s Ships by Behring Strait, 1850–1855, edited by T.B. Collinson, London: Sampson, Low, Marston, and Rivington, 1889 Condon, Richard G., The Northern Copper Inuit, A History, Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996 Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, My Life with the Eskimo, New York: MacMillan, 1913, reprinted New York: Collier 1962

COLONIZATION OF THE ARCTIC Colonization is a term that describes the oppression of one distinct people by another, usually separated by a significant spatial distance. Colonization can occur in the political, economic, social, and cultural dimensions of human experience. The term metropolis or center is

used to describe a colonial power, while colony or periphery is used to describe the colonized. Colonizers have tended to look for one of two things from their colonies: space, to settle surplus populations, or resources, to add to their wealth. In a colonial struggle where the aim is the incorporation of colonized territories and peoples into dominant social and cultural forms so as to facilitate economic and political subservience, the term “totalization” can be used to characterize colonial power. In the Arctic, colonial power can be identified with any process that “totalizes”, working to reshape indigenous peoples and their lands so they will ultimately come to embody and reflect the colonized. This article will draw primarily on examples from the North American Arctic experience to illustrate circumpolar colonial processes and history. In the Arctic regions of the world, colonial processes have been distinct in that they have tended to be of more recent historical lineage, they have tended not to involve an influx of agriculturally based settlers, and they have not been as frequently accompanied by military violence. More importantly, colonialism has been characterized in the Arctic by the domination of one way of life or mode of production—the western or capitalist form—over another—the gatherer and hunter form. Gatherers and hunters, whereever they have been found around the world, are known for generally egalitarian social relations and practicing comparatively low impact, sustainable resource use strategies. In the Arctic as elsewhere, the cultural emphasis is on repetition (today the word tradition is used), although Inuit are known to also value innovation and flexibility. Western or dominant modes of production are characterized by hierarchical social organization, ecologically stressful economic patterns of land use, and an emphasis on accumulation or growth—hence their structural need to totalize through colonialism. The earliest European colonization attempts in the Arctic involved Viking settler-colony communities that were established at the end of the first millennium of the modern epoch on western Greenland and, for a brief time, on the northeastern corner of North America (see Archaeology of the Arctic: Scandinavian Settlement of the North Atlantic). There is an irony to the fact that although Arctic people were among the first to be encountered by Europeans in the modern epoch, they have been among the last to be colonized. Although the age of exploration, which followed, did lead to sporadic contact between indigenous people and Europeans, the failure to find an easy passage through northern waters to the orient, the lack of agricultural potential, and the similar lack of easily accessible mineral wealth limited these contacts and prevented them from developing

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COLONIZATION OF THE ARCTIC into systematic colonial exploitation. The prime reason for any interest in the North American Arctic was as a passage to the orient, an interest that waned with the discovery that no such easy passage existed. The earliest systemic contacts in much of the Arctic came in the 19th century with the whale hunt. Whales became a critical economic resource for industrializing Europe, providing oil, which lubricated industrial machinery, and providing baleen, which offered a wide variety of commercial uses (most famously as the stays in corsets). The whalers, coming from northeastern ports of the United States and from northern Europe, especially Scotland, would sometimes overwinter in the Arctic, but more frequently attempt to make the North Atlantic crossing early enough in the spring to be able to engage in whale hunting and return in the fall. Inuit were drawn into the whaling industry, providing support services for ships, engaging in trade, and most importantly providing skilled labor on smaller, whale-hunting boats that were attached to the larger ocean-going sail and steam vessels. Since the whale hunting was systematic, overexploited an important natural resource (bowhead whales were hunted to near extinction), and likely exploited Inuit labor (there are accounts of Inuit being abandoned, unpaid for their season’s work; there was no overseeing authority to monitor trade, which may also have been very advantageous to the newcomers), it can be characterized as a colonial presence. Sexual relations between male whalers of European origin and Inuit women left behind the children of these liaisons almost always in the care of the mother’s community with little or no paternal support—another common feature of colonial encounters. Unlike other colonized regions, no strongly identifiable and distinct “creole,” “métis,” or mixed blood people and culture emerged from these encounters: virtually all the children of such relations were accepted into Inuit culture. The Yukon gold rush at the turn of the 20th century inaugurated a more recent phase of colonial resource use in the Arctic, where minerals or oil and gas represented the resource of choice. The gold rush led to an influx of miners to the mid-Yukon, providing some employment opportunities for indigenous peoples there but more often entirely displacing people from traditional subsistence territories. Although Dawson City at the turn of the century seemed a potential northern settler colonial center, and the Yukon itself as a distinct territory with its own government was created, the bust that followed the boom led to an emigration leaving behind a few of the more lucky or hardy settlers to deal with the social and ecological problems that remained with them. This pattern has not been unfamiliar in the Arctic, with a variety of very costly nonrenewable resource development projects across

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the circumpolar Arctic creating jobs for a migrant newcomer population and sending unprocessed resources to southern areas for the benefit of southern consumers. Colonization of the Arctic was abetted during World War II. A massive immigration of short-term workers, mostly soldiers, in conjunction with improved transportation technologies, which made previously remote regions accessible, led to a dramatic increase in the colonial presence. Construction of the Alaska highway and the Canol pipeline in the western Arctic, for example, used aboriginal employees to some extent as guides and suppliers, while exposing isolated communities to southern influences and largely ignoring land rights. Militarization of some Arctic regions actually increased in the postwar period, as construction of the distant early warning (DEW) line—a series of air bases and radar stations— across the North American Arctic was countered by a similar set of facilities in the Soviet north. Many indigenous Arctic peoples gained their first exposure to southerners as late as the middle of the 20th century; from that time on, the contacts would be sustained and would tend to deepen. The contemporary pattern of totalizing colonial processes and local forms of resistance and subversion was established. Although each region of the Arctic has experienced its own variety of colonization—Greenland with a longer history of crown and state-directed settlement, the Soviet Arctic with its notorious influx of gulag populations in combination with limited regional autonomy, the American purchase and settlement of Alaska, and the comparative indifference of Canadian regimes—the pattern of Arctic colonization has exhibited similarities created in large measure by the distinct indigenous cultural forms that prevailed and the distinct ecology (including remoteness) of the region. This can be illustrated by examining colonialism as a totalizing process, and corresponding efforts to decolonize or resist, from political, economic, social, and cultural aspects. Politically, the localized nature of leadership structures among indigenous peoples of the Arctic, a leadership that was dispersed and generally diffuse, in an atmosphere of general egalitarianism and independence meant that colonial powers were not restrained in applying a doctrine of “terra nullius.” Arctic lands were declared uninhabited and with a minimum of effort—the expression “showing the flag” refers to this minimum—geographically contiguous southern neighbors (or any southern power with a historic or other interest) could claim substantial territories with little opposition. The 20th century in the Arctic largely consisted of foreign powers consolidating their colonial control over various Arctic regions. What

COLONIZATION OF THE ARCTIC opposition they encountered tended to be from other southern powers with a conflicting colonial claim rather than from indigenous peoples, and these were not worth the effort of serious military conflict. Arctic regions tended to be managed from afar, the colonial center, with a minimum of effort. In Canada, for example, the state presence was limited until mid-century to a few scattered police officers. Missionaries and traders joined them in supporting a policy of discouraging movement to settlements and encouraging continued self-sufficiency, until a dramatic about-face in the 1950s led to an intensive settlement effort. Today nearly the whole of the Arctic region is politically subservient to southern powers or ‘“totalized” on the political level, the sole exception being Iceland, although a case can be made for the significant autonomy that came to Greenland through the home rule legislation of the 1970s. However, in the last few decades of the 20th century, as indigenous people developed regional, national, and international political representation they have waged a successful struggle for Arctic autonomy within the colonial framework. The project of home rule in Greenland, Indian Self-Government in the United States as extended to Alaska (and distinct from the Alaska land claim), the creation of the Nunavut Territory and aboriginal self-government in Canada, are all manifestations of this. In most cases, the lack of large, agricultural-based settler colonies has allowed indigenous people to preserve a population majority and eventually wield it with electoral success on a regional basis. Hence, a degree of political decolonization has taken place, although within the framework of a national colonial context. Strikingly, the administrative apparatus of many of these regimes tends to be dominated by nonindigenous peoples, who usually prefer to copy southern patterns of administration over developing culturally appropriate programs and styles of operation. Governments that are politically controlled by indigenous people in the Arctic can therefore sometimes themselves be totalizing, embodying and carrying forward colonial projects. For example, in the Northwest Territories aboriginal politicians gained political control of the legislature in 1979 and were able to refashion the general policy orientation of the government there. However, they waged internecine warfare with a generation of civil servants who built careers with the previous government. Even when these administrators were replaced, the replacements were frequently more sympathetic southerners who eventually developed a distinct interest of their own. The outcome was a government more legitimate on the surface that continued to enact more subtle, totalizing policies. Similar developments have taken place in Greenland and Nunavut.

Economically, colonialism has worked to both harness and displace traditional economies. One feature that distinguishes Arctic colonialism from other historic and regional examples of economic colonialism is that, for the most part, it does not depend upon indigenous people as a labor resource or upon systematic exploitation of the colonized as workers. The traditional indigenous economies in the Arctic are sometimes mistakenly characterized as “subsistence economies,” although this term is a misnomer since indigenous people thrived as much as they subsisted in the Arctic. Since the Arctic whaling period followed a single boom and bust cycle in each of the regions it passed through, although it stimulated an interest in European goods among indigenous peoples, and relied more than the colonial projects that followed on indigenous labor, it did not tend to create dependence. The Arctic fur trade that followed it was much more successful at systematically drawing Arctic inhabitants into the world economy and creating dependency relations. Unlike the Subarctic fur trade, which was focused on beaver for use as felt, the Arctic fur trade involved luxury fur production, particularly white fox. The Arctic fur trade undoubtedly had more of an impact than whaling on traditional seasonal resource use patterns and establishing a need for European-made goods, but could also be engaged in while maintaining established values and ways of life. A more complex colonial dynamic emerged in the later 20th century around fur production. In the postwar period, seal fur became of value for both industrial and commercial purposes. It was a stable and strong source of income for many Arctic hunters, who were in search of seal for meat and could easily incorporate the sale of seal fur into traditional economic patterns (indeed, much more so than was the case with white fox). In the early 1970s, the emerging animal rights movement successfully sponsored a boycott of seal fur to the European community in an effort to stop the seal pup hunt in Newfoundland and Labrador. This in turn had disastrous economic consequences for seal hunting indigenous people in Arctic regions. Ironically, Europeans had for decades encouraged indigenous people to give up utter independence and engage in the fur trade, and suddenly, as prevailing ethics around animal rights changed in Europe, began to force Inuit and other indigenous peoples out of the fur industry. Given that the impetus for decisions about the ethical right to hunt for fur was made by southern constituencies who engaged in little or no consultation with northern peoples, the animal rights movement has effectively acted itself as an even more destructive, totalizing colonial force from the perspective of Arctic indigenous peoples. While fur trading activities attempted to harness traditional economic skills, developments in the area

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COLONIZATION OF THE ARCTIC of mineral and oil and gas exploration have tended to entirely displace the whole traditional economic sector. The production of nonrenewable resources in Arctic regions has been characterized by “mega-projects” of enormous expense. Much of the highly paid skilled labor involved has gone to southerners; most of the capital and equity produced has gone to southern regions; even taxation revenues have tended to be captured by southern jurisdictions; and, of course, the resource itself is sent to southern markets. The north, meanwhile, has tended to be left with the environmental degradation typically resulting from these forms of economic activity, and with specialized infrastructures of limited or no use. Although the Yukon gold rush in some respects established this pattern, numerous examples from the nickel mine at Rankin Inlet to the Nanisivik mine on north Baffin can be pointed to. Most large-scale nonrenewable resource projects are of limited duration, although their impacts in terms of acculturation and environmental impact can be much longer term. The notion of the Arctic as a “resource frontier” effectively is a colonial justification for this kind of totalizing economic activity, presuming that the Arctic is a kind of resource storehouse to be accessed as the need in southern areas increases enough to make the costs of a particular nonrenewable resource development project feasible. The recent phase of global economic development, so-called “globalization,” with its reconstruction of international connections and barriers, has created a context conducive to this form of economic development and augers a period of more intensive exploitation of resources and broader economic colonialism in the Arctic. Indigenous inhabitants of the Arctic have responded in a variety of ways, which can be categorized into three types. One form of response has resulted from the financial resources and legal jurisdictions gained by indigenous peoples as a result of land claims in Alaska and Canada and as a result of control of government financial resources in Greenland: this involves using those financial resources to gain an equity position in development projects and attempting to thereby ensure that increased jobs and profits remain in Arctic regions. Criticism of this form of economic decolonization has focused on the tendency of the indigenous managers of such wealth to become an elite class who could be seen as indigenous agents of colonialism (the term comprador class is used in other regions to describe this phenomenon). On a more systemic level, this approach also establishes an indigenous interest in forms of development that may not be sustainable and not in the long-term interests of Arctic peoples. A second form of response has been to refocus energies on traditional economic activities through

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combating animal rights-sponsored boycotts of fur products and through such mechanisms as hunter support programs. Some success has been achieved in this area, although critics express concern that this involves “living in the past” and condemns indigenous people to relatively low standards of living in modern terms. It should be noted, though, that what often appears from a middle-class perspective as poverty may actually be incidental constituents of a “good life,” wherein a hunter and seamstress are in control of their time and engaged in a rich tapestry of experiences whose quality defies easy assessment. A third form of response has been to develop wage sectors that use renewable resources and are compatible with traditional economies, such as cultural and ecotourism, commercial fishing and meat harvesting, or arts production. The relatively small scale and small impact of these projects has led critics to suggest that these will never become significant enough in scale to alleviate economic distress at the regional level. Taken as a whole, it is clear that indigenous peoples of the Arctic are actively in search of mechanisms to ensure a secure, sustainable, self-reliant economic future and that their resources will not be exploited solely for the benefit of colonizers. Socially, colonialism has involved the establishment of relations of hierarchy between the colonizers and the colonized, to the benefit of the former and with sometimes severely harmful consequences for the latter. In Arctic regions, the smallness of the settler colony and its comparative transience has lent a particular character to this dynamic. Whenever missionaries, traders, police personnel, soldiers, and administrators have traveled to the Arctic, and usually the early generations of nurses, teachers, and social workers who followed, they have occupied the best available settlement housing and usually have had the best of the material goods and technology available in any given community. Hence, this material fact has buttressed an ideological notion of superiority. It is still normally the case that southern transient professionals live in better circumstances than their indigenous neighbors, although admittedly this is usually if the comparison is made on southern standards and norms. Nevertheless, the misperceptions and material differences have led to the creation of separate social spheres for the colonizers and the colonized, a dynamic that continues to have influence into the present. The smallness of the settler colony in Arctic regions has frequently led to the establishment of very close relations among the small numbers of newcomers to a particular Arctic community. The comparative transience of this population has exacerbated the situation. One of the striking features of aboriginal communities where they have a land base intact is that they involve

COLONIZATION OF THE ARCTIC populations where intergenerational social exchange leading from an indefinite past into an indefinite future remains a viable possibility. In contrast, western society in the modern period is characterized by social transience and individuals are severed from particular communities in order to sell their labor power at the highest price. This transience is compounded in a northern context to which newcomers will immigrate most commonly for short periods of a few years. Those newcomers engaged in policing, medical work, and social work, in particular, frequently experience in their work the worst of the social problems that plague Arctic communities. Hence in leisure hours they often prefer each other’s company, where the tendency among them is to reinforce a highly pessimistic view of community life, which they will take back south with them when they emigrate. At a systemic level, this perceptual distortion leads to a sense that indigenous people of the Arctic are not capable of self-management and require state support and southern expertise to function. The social situation helps create a perception that buttresses a claim for the necessity of continued colonial involvement. In effect, this is a modern-day version of the reprehensible ideology that there exists a “white man’s burden,” which served colonialism in the late 19th and early 20th century. Aboriginal people of the Arctic were seen as a particularly far-flung and exotic version of “savages” or “primitives” on the low end of the social evolutionary scale, and the racism they experienced flowed from ethnocentric judgments of this type. Interestingly, the intellectual work of Franz Boaz, based on fieldwork with Cumberland Sound Inuit, helped develop the notion of “cultural relativism” (the idea that cultures should be assessed within their own standards and not expected to meet a universal, usually European inflected, standard), which in the 20th century displaced the 19th-century social evolutionary framework. Racism was a feature of colonial social life in the Arctic even after World War II, when official policies involving racism had been discredited. Indigenous peoples suffered under insidious forms of paternalism that assumed they were incapable of managing their lives. Such programs as handing out disks with “e-numbers” in Canada for use instead of proper names as a mechanism for administrative regulation and surveillance were the result. Ethnocentrism, which involves a systematic lack of appreciation for and denigration of indigenous cultures, continues to be a critical feature conditioning colonial social relations in the Arctic. In terms of social relations among the colonized, the most striking impact of colonialism has been in the area of gender relations, although the scholarly literature is quite divided over the question of how to characterize this. Those who maintain that traditional

gender relations were characterized by male dominance have argued that colonialism led to improvements in the conditions of women and severe hardships for men. However, there is strong evidence that gender relations were traditionally more egalitarian or balanced between women and men, and that colonialism involved the imposition of patriarchal social relations. Certainly the fact that colonial administrators presumed that males were heads of households and political leaders, that families followed male lineage, and that western notions of public and private distinctions should prevail all worked to specifically disadvantage indigenous women, whatever their traditional place may have been. The response to social divisions has varied strikingly, ranging from almost systematic attempts to accept the hierarchy and work one’s way up the scale to utter rejection of social intercourse with newcomers. With the improved political position of indigenous peoples in some Arctic regions, the older hierarchies have been partially displaced. Certainly an emergent class of western educated indigenous people and a cosmopolitan leadership have had a significant impact on social relations at the community level. Meanwhile, as ethnocentric judgments respecting quality of life ebb and are replaced by a somewhat better appreciation of traditional skills and competencies, even more traditional families are finding themselves somewhat better respected by a portion of the newcomers and those western educated individuals from their own culture. Social dynamics in Arctic communities are for the most part clearly led by indigenous community members, although problems, conflicts, and misperceptions across the colonial social divide remain a feature of Arctic social life. Culturally the impact of colonialism has been complex and far reaching. In general, it can be noted that the ethnocentrism that was presupposed by and simultaneously constitutive of colonialism in the Arctic was particularly egregious given the very poor understanding of indigenous cultures that prevailed. As a result, both systematic policies of cultural assimilation and accidental or only partly intentional impacts of the import of southern mass culture and technologies of mass cultural dissemination have had a powerful totalizing impact, particularly in regions of the Arctic attached to the Western Hemisphere. The commodification of indigenous cultures may represent the latest phase of cultural colonialism in the Arctic. Three aspects of culture serve as examples of the particular dynamic of cultural colonialism in Arctic regions: values, language, and spiritual belief. In terms of values, the most trenchant colonial divide is in the sphere of property relations. The possessive individualism that remains a foundation of

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COLONIZATION OF THE ARCTIC western social relations and values is in stark contrast to cooperative social forms and the values associated with comparatively communal property relations of indigenous gathering and hunting-based cultures. Cultural forms associated with possessive individualism frequently come into conflict with cultural forms associated with forms of generalized reciprocity (sharing), and although the former are visibly in evidence the latter have not disappeared. Hence, for example, nuclear family style housing has replaced nomadic architectures in much—not all—of the Arctic, signaling a space wherein private property is nurtured and protected. Yet the characteristic “open door” of Arctic life—wherein one enters without knocking—acts somewhat to subvert the private, possessive mode. Since legal structures developed in southern regions are frequently applied to northern jurisdictions, since contemporary popular culture presumes and constitutes desire for goods, and since wealth in the form of money has assumed a central role in Arctic economies, it can be said that an interlinked network of powerful totalizing forces is at work to displace and undermine traditional cultural values. Acting against these forces are the patient teachings of elders, the continued economic necessity of cooperation in hunting and meat distribution practices, and the more mysterious power of a tradition that is not static or hidebound but has proven to be adaptive and surprisingly resilient. In the sphere of language, a critical component of culture, something of a pattern may be discerned in the colonial 20th century. While the early part of the century tended to involve the increasing dominance of the language of the colonizers of Arctic regions— English, Danish, Russian, and so on—in the later part cultural revitalization movements working in conjunction with political decolonization projects have in many areas turned back the tide. For example, in Canada Inuktitut is one of the three aboriginal languages not in danger of immanent extinction. It is not unusual to find at the community level an older generation that speaks solely the indigenous language, a middle-aged generation that speaks either or both languages, a somewhat younger generation that speaks only in the words of the colonizers, and a newer generation that is bilingual. On the other hand, a totalizing linguistic device that has entrenched itself with somewhat more success is colonial nominalism. This involves the imposition of the colonizer’s style or mode of naming. The naming of an island in the Arctic as the Royal Geographical Society of Great Britain Island will serve as a particularly sorry example. Naming geographic features after people is a form of nominalism often foreign to indigenous inhabitants of the Arctic, to whom it may imply insulting the land, and certainly serve as a way of

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marking totalizing appropriation of land. The irony of a mapped Arctic containing the names of Davis, Baffin, Herschel, and so on should not be lost on contemporary observers. More pernicious than when applied to landscape, colonial nominalism in personal naming practices was a powerful colonial tool, disrupting an intricate, age-old practice of carrying on the names of recently deceased among Inuit, for example, an ancient practice that avoided inscribing either patri- or matrilineage. As late as 1967 in Canada, a deliberate state-sponsored project of developing last names worked to inscribe patriarchal social relations and to disrupt traditional naming patterns. On the other hand, Inuit have engaged in a powerful but understated resistance to colonial nominalism by adapting western names to Inuit linguistic forms and, to some extent, working within the existing confines to continue older naming patterns. The realm of spiritual belief involves among the most complex of cultural conflicts in Arctic regions. For the most part, varieties of Christian practice, involving the institutionalization of spiritual belief, took a strong hold of many Arctic regions through the 19th and early 20th century. These were deliberately disseminated by missionaries and, as in other parts of the colonial world, helped pave the way for colonial political, economic, and social forms. However, the manner of adoption of Christian messages and practices in many places owes a strong debt to more traditional approaches to spirituality and sometimes shares, at a formal level, features with what on the surface they utterly reject. For example, the gospel that stresses compassion and sharing may have had a strong appeal within the context of traditional indigenous values; similarly, the many indigenous prophet movements across the Arctic and Subarctic attest to indigenous attempts to refashion Christian messages. Also, widespread synchretic movements in the Arctic suggest resistance and are evidence of attempts to appropriate Christian messages within an indigenous cultural and spiritual context. The impact of increased secularization is being felt across the Arctic and itself may open the door to a resurgence of interest in traditional spiritual forms, as has been the case to some extent among indigenous peoples in southern regions of Canada and the United States, and in shamanism in Russia and Siberia. A contemporary cultural revitalization movement has swept across the Arctic, echoing similar developments among indigenous peoples in other parts of the globe, but again with unique characteristics. The most striking feature of this is the use of contemporary technologies of mass media to produce and consume Inuit cultural goods: the example of a quite vibrant Greenlandic Inuit music industry, which produces

COLVILLE RIVER Inuktitut popular music, serves to illustrate the sometimes startling and original character of these newer cultural products. The critically successful feature film “Attanarjuat: The Fast Runner,” produced by Isuma Productions of Iglulik, Nunavut, perhaps better illustrates the aesthetic potential and power of contemporary indigenous culture. These can be seen as more recent versions of the production of indigenous cultural commodities; an older modality that continues to thrive includes visual art productions such as prints and sculptures. A concern is that these kinds of products rely on their status as commodities in order to be made, and thereby bring production for the market, often a foreign market, into the heart of cultural activity. Commodification may be establishing itself as the most recent form of cultural colonialism in Arctic regions and its most subtle totalizing power. The last century in the Arctic has been historically defined by the dynamic of extension of colonial power and forms of indigenous resistance to it. Colonial power has been carried by the newer technologies, administrative languages, economic necessities, and cultural forms of this late phase in western modernism. Yet, the project of decolonization has had a remarkable degree of success. Identifiable indigenous communities continue to thrive in the Arctic and have gained unprecedented, albeit ultimately limited, political power. While the century began under the influence of a narrative of cultural disappearance—the vanishing race—that was supposed to be the story of indigenous peoples, the century ended by defying expectations. New narratives of cultural persistence are being written, and a newer appreciation for the strength of indigenous cultures and their ability to resist colonialism has developed. PETER KULCHYSKI See also Self-Determination; Self-Government Further Reading Berger, Thomas R., Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland, Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1988 Brody, Hugh, The People’s Land, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977 ———, The Other Side of Eden, Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 2000 Sleskine, Yuri, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994 Tester, Frank & Peter Kulchyski, Tammarniit (Mistakes), Vancouver; University of British Columbia Press, 1994 Vakhtia, Nikolai, “Native peoples of the Russian Far North.” In Polar Peoples: Self-Determination and Development, edited by Minority Rights Group, London: Minority Rights Publications, 1994 Watkins, Mel (editor), Dene Nation: The Colony Within, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978 Wolfe, Eric R., Europe and the People Without History, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982

COLVILLE RIVER The Colville River, named by Peter Dease and Thomas Simpson in 1837 in honor of Andrew Colville of Hudson’s Bay Company, is 603 km (375 miles) long and drains an area of 53,600 km2 (20,700 square miles) or about 29% of the area of the North Slope of Alaska. The Colville River Basin has a perimeter of 1650 km and includes parts of three of Alaska’s physiographic units: the Arctic Mountains (26%), the Arctic Foothills (64%), and the Arctic Coastal Plain (10%). Elevations range from sea level, where the river enters the Arctic Ocean, to 2324 m in the Brooks Range. For most of its course, the Colville River flows eastward near the northern boundary of its basin, where it is joined from the south by numerous tributaries that, after originating in the formerly glaciated portions of the Brooks Range, flow northward across the Southern Foothills. At a distance of about 125 km from the Arctic Ocean, the river turns north and flows across the Arctic Coastal Plain before entering Harrison Bay at a location 250 km east of Barrow, Alaska. The entire Colville River drainage basin is subjected to Arctic climatic conditions. It has long, cold winters and short, cool summers. Such climatic conditions are conducive to the formation of permafrost that is continuous throughout the basin, with the exception of those nonfrozen zones (taliks) beneath deeper (more than 2 m) lakes and rivers including some stretches of the Colville River. The area also experiences eight to nine months of complete, albeit thin, snow cover. These conditions, including a thin active layer (the layer above the permafrost that freezes and thaws seasonally), eliminate surface and subsurface water flow for most of the year. Thus, river discharge is highly seasonal, varying from near zero prior to the beginning of snowmelt to a maximum of more than 5000 m3 s−1 during breakup flooding. Nearly half of the discharge of the Colville River occurs within a three- to fourweek period in late May and June during prebreakup, breakup, and postbreakup flooding. This is also the period of time when ice jams occur along the river. Once river water reaches the head of the Colville River delta, which has an area of about 600 km2, there are more than 5000 possible courses it can take to the sea. The delta, although only about 2% as large as that of the Lena River delta in Russia, shares periglacial characteristics, including frost mounds, pingos, and ice-wedge polygons. Before breakup, Colville River water flows both over and under river and sea ice, where it deposits the sediment it brings from the basin. The Colville River has served as a transportation route for migrating Inuit for centuries. Nigilik, located near the mouth of the western distributary, was a meeting place for Inland Inuit coming down the river to trade with the Iñupiat Eskimo sailing east from the Barrow 411

COMER, GEORGE area. In 1973, one of the North Slope Borough villages (Nuiqsut) was established. It had a population of about 400 in 2000. Although petroleum production began at Prudhoe Bay in the late 1960s, it was not until the late 1990s that drilling began in the Colville River delta. H. JESSE WALKER See also Hudson’s Bay Company; Permafrost; Prudhoe Bay

Further Reading Arnborg, L., H.J. Walker & J. Peippo, “Suspended load in the Colville River, Alaska, 1962.” Geografiska Annaler, 49 (Series A) (1967): 131–144 Jorgenson, M.T., Y.L. Shur & H.J. Walker, “Evolution of a Permafrost Dominated Landscape on the Colville River Delta, Northern Alaska.” In Proceedings of the 7th International Permafrost Conference, Yellowknife, Canada, 1998, pp. 523–529 Walker, H.J., “Morphology of the North Slope.” In Alaskan Arctic Tundra, edited by M.E. Britton, Washington, District of Columbia: Arctic Institute of North America Technical Paper No. 25, September 1973, pp. 49–92 ———, “The Colville River and the Beaufort Sea: Some Interactions.” In The Coast and Shelf of the Beaufort Sea, edited by J.C. Reed and J.E. Sater, Washington, District of Columbia: Arctic Institute of North America, September 1974, pp. 513–540 ———, Colville River Delta, Alaska, A Guidebook to Permafrost and Related Features, Fairbanks, Alaska: Department of Natural Resources,1983 Walker, H.J. & L. Hadden, “Placing Colville River Delta Research on the Internet in a Digital Library Format.” In Proceedings of the 7th International Permafrost Conference, Yellowknife, Canada, 1998, pp. 1103–1107

COMER, GEORGE During the period 1860–1915, American and British ships made about 200 voyages into Hudson Bay in search of Greenland (bowhead) whales, and they exerted a powerful influence on Inuit life. Among the many whaling captains who operated in the bay, George Comer stands out for his profound interest in Inuit culture. His researches were of inestimable value to the anthropologist Franz Boas, author of the first significant studies of the native inhabitants of the Canadian Arctic. Comer’s association with the Arctic and its inhabitants began in 1875, when, at the age of 17, he sailed as a novice on the whaler Nile from New London, Connecticut, to Cumberland Sound, Baffin Island. After a few years in the American coastal trade, he took part in five sealing expeditions to Subantarctic waters. Then in 1889 he returned to the Arctic, serving as mate on the small unpowered whaling schooner Era (of the same port) during three summer voyages to southeastern Baffin Island. His first voyage into Hudson Bay,

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and first experience of an Arctic winter, was on the Canton (also from New London) in 1893–1894. The whaling grounds of Hudson Bay were a thousand miles from the Atlantic Ocean, and by the time ships forced their way through the drift ice and icebergs of Hudson Strait there was not much summer left in which to pursue whales. In order to extend their time on the grounds and be on hand for the productive floe edge whaling of spring, many captains undertook wintering voyages. Inevitably this brought them into close contact with Inuit who inhabited the coastal region from Marble Island in the south to Repulse Bay in the north. Inuit were attracted to the ships for trade, and whaling captains usually hired native men to man whaleboats, process whales, and provide fresh meat for ships’ crews during the idle months of winter. In 1895, Comer obtained command of the Era (by then registered in the port of New Bedford, Massachusetts) and during the next decade took this diminutive vessel on four voyages into the bay. For wintering he selected a snug harbor with stable ice cover near Cape Fullerton, within a few miles of the floe edge from which whales could be pursued by boat in May and June, while the ship was still frozen in. After the Era was wrecked near Newfoundland in 1906, he took the schooner A.T. Gifford on two voyages from Stamford, Connecticut, to Hudson Bay. Comer had no fear of the Arctic winter. His seven Hudson Bay voyages from 1893 to 1912 all included at least one winter, and four of them extended over two consecutive winters. Altogether, he spent 11 winters in Hudson Bay, and two more in northwestern Greenland after serving as ice pilot on the George B. Cluett, dispatched by the American Museum of Natural History in New York in 1915 to relieve Donald MacMillan’s Crocker Land Expedition. Although unschooled in any branch of science, Comer eagerly investigated many aspects of Inuit culture. In 1897, he offered some artifacts to the American Museum of Natural History, where Franz Boas, author of The Central Eskimo (1888), headed the Department of Anthropology. Boas had lived in Cumberland Sound for a year and had traveled widely with Inuit. This experience had provided the basis for his book but, as Hudson Bay was beyond the range of his own travels, he had been forced to rely on narratives by early explorers such as William Parry and George Francis Lyon. In order to build upon their somewhat outdated and geographically restricted accounts, Boas enlisted the help of Comer, who operated as his field arm on subsequent whaling voyages. Comer’s work contributed significantly to Boas’s Notes on the Eskimo of Baffin Land and Hudson Bay (1901), and its sequel (1907), and greatly enriched the ethnographic collections of the museum.

COMER, GEORGE The scope and variety of Comer’s researches in Hudson Bay are extraordinary. He compiled a census of Inuit, including names, ages, heights, and weights. He constructed plaster casts of many faces, hands, and feet, wrote down stories and legends, described shamanistic practices, and made more than 60 wax cylinder recordings of songs and dances (the first ever made among North American Inuit). He took photographs depicting costumes, facial tattoos, the interiors of snow houses, and methods of traveling and hunting. On behalf of museums in New York, Berlin, and Ottawa, Comer purchased Inuit artifacts and excavated abandoned settlement sites to retrieve items representative of earlier cultures. Comer’s collections for the American Museum of Natural History exceeded 2000 articles and objects. In addition to his ethnographic observations, he compiled statistics of air temperature and ice thickness throughout the winters, collected animal skeletons and skins, and identified errors on existing charts. Comer began taking photographs on his own initiative in 1893, and was soon using the relatively new medium to develop and print on board ship. In 1899, he made what were probably the first (and almost the only) photographs of the isolated Sadlermiut, who inhabited Southampton Island before succumbing to a disease introduced from a whaler a few years later. Among the Aivilingmiut he became known as “Angakok” (shaman) because they believed he caused images of people and things to appear on paper, as if by magic. More than 300 of Comer’s glass plate negatives, lantern slides, and prints (as well as many of his journals) are today housed at Mystic Seaport, Connecticut. Comer was able to achieve so much because he was accepted and trusted by the native people (mainly Aivilingmiut and Netsilingmiut), who were drawn to the winter harbor to work and trade. He admired and respected their traditions, achieved some fluency in their language, and had a continuing close relationship with Nivisenark, the woman he called “Shoofly,” who, through her association with Comer, became the first Inuk to own a sewing machine. After his last Hudson Bay whaling voyage (1910–1912), Comer spent more than two years in northwest Greenland with Donald Baxter MacMillan’s expedition. His archaeological investigations in what came to be called “Comer’s midden” at Uummannaq, in North Star Bay, unearthed artifacts of a distinctive style that led to the identification of the Thule Eskimo culture. Following this experience Comer obtained a commission in the US Navy (at the age of 60) and served during the remainder of World War I. In 1919, he made his last voyage to Hudson Bay, commanding the

schooner Finback on an expedition that intended to combine whaling and ethnographic research. After the ship wrecked in Roe’s Welcome Sound, Comer led the crew south to Fort Churchill without mishap, a voyage of almost 500 miles, in three open boats. WILLIAM G. ROSS

Biography George Comer was born in the province of Québec, Canada, on April 22, 1858, the youngest of several children of Thomas and Joanna Comer, both of British birth. When he was three years old, his father was lost at sea, and his mother moved to Hartford, Connecticut, where she placed him in an orphanage. At the age of ten, Comer was moved to the farm of William H. Ayres near East Haddam, and in 1875 he began his seafaring career. In 1878, he married Julia Louise Chipman. Following his last sea voyage in 1919, he served briefly in the state legislature, advised the Royal Commission investigating the feasibility of establishing reindeer and muskox industries in northern Canada, lectured widely on Arctic matters, attended meetings of the Explorers’ Club of New York, and corresponded with a number of polar experts, including Vilhjalmur Stefansson. On April 27, 1937, Comer died of Bright’s disease in a Massachusetts hospital, leaving his wife, a daughter, and a grandson. See also Boas, Franz; Inuit; Lyon, George Francis; MacMillan, Donald Baxter; Parry, Sir William Edward Further Reading Calabretta, Fred, “Captain George Comer and the Arctic.” The Log of Mystic Seaport, 35(4) (1984): 119–131 Comer, George, “Whaling in Hudson Bay, with Notes on Southampton Island.” In Boas Anniversary Volume: Anthropological Papers Written in Honor of Franz Boas, edited by B. Laufer, New York: Stechert, 1906, pp. 475–484 ———, “A geographical description of Southampton Island.” Bulletin of the American Geographical Society of New York, 42 (1910): 84–90 ———, “Additions to Captain Comer’s map of Southampton Island.” Bulletin of the American Geographical Society of New York, 45 (1913): 516–518 ———, “Notes by G. Comer on the natives of the northwestern coast of Hudson Bay.” American Anthropologist, n.s., 23 (1921): 243–244 Douglas, W.O., “The wreck of the ‘Finback.’” The Beaver, spring (1977): 16–21 Eber, Dorothy Harley, “Bringing the Captain back to the Bay.” Natural History, 94(1) (1985): 66–73 Eber, Dorothy, When the Whalers were Up North, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1989 Ross, W. Gillies, “George Comer (1858–1937).” Arctic, 36(3) 294–295 (Reprinted in Lobsticks and Stone Cairns: Human Landmarks in the Arctic, edited by Richard C. Davis, Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1996, pp. 260–262)

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COMMANDER ISLANDS Ross, W. Gillies, An Arctic Whaling Diary: The Journal of Captain George Comer in Hudson Bay 1903–1905, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984 Ross, W. Gillies, “George Comer, Franz Boas, and the American Museum of Natural History.” Etudes Inuit Studies, 8(1) (1984): 145–164 Ross, W. Gillies, “The earliest sound recordings among North American Inuit.” Arctic, 37 (1984): 291–292 Ross, W. Gillies, “The use and misuse of historical photographs: a case study from Hudson Bay, Canada.” Arctic Anthropology, 27 (1990):. 93–112

COMMANDER ISLANDS The Commander Islands, also known as the Komandórskis, comprise two major islands, Bering and Medny (or Copper), as well as a few smaller islands such as Toporkov. Approximately 713 square miles (1850 km2) in area, the Commander Islands lie to the east of the midpoint of the Kamchatka Peninsula. Just 200 miles (333 km) from the Aleutian Islands, some geologists speculate that the Commander Islands, composed of granite mountains reaching over 2000 feet, were once a part of the Aleutian Chain but have since slowly drifted. As evidenced by frequent earthquakes, the islands continue to drift toward collision with Kamchatka. The Commander Islands are part of the Russian political territory known as the Kamchatskaya Oblast’, and the primary settlement of Nikolskoye (or Nikolski) lies at 55°14′, on Bering Island. The islands experience a moderate maritime climate, characterized by rain and overcast skies, with cool summers and mild winters, although snow is prevalent in the mountains and may not melt until July. The environment is treeless, comprised of tundra, and populated by nasturtiums, hemlock parsley, and other bulb-rooted plants and herbs. Due to its climate as well as its relative isolation from human population, the Commander Islands are havens for avian and marine wildlife. Today nearly three-quarters of Bering Island comprises a UNESCO Man and Biosphere reserve. Millions of tufted puffins, ptarmigan, sea otters, and Arctic foxes reside among the islands, and the area harbors some of the most numerous northern fur seal rookeries in the world. The Commander and Aleutian islands do not just share a climate, flora, and fauna, but a human history as well. In an attempt to “westernize” Russia in the 17th century, Peter the Great sponsored the exploration of Siberia. The desire to understand the geography that lay between Asia and North America led to the Bering expeditions in the mid-18th century. On Vitus Bering’s return trip to Kamchatka from the coast of Alaska in 1741, his ship grounded on the island that would bear his name. Bering’s shipwreck had lasting effects not only upon the names of the islands but on 414

their subsequent history and environment. With a crew dying of scurvy and malnutrition, the German naturalist Georg Steller discovered that the sea cow, a marine mammal whose diet consisted largely of seaweed, was essential to survival, and by August 1742 they sailed back to Petropavlosk. It was primarily the work of Steller that popularized knowledge of the Commander Islands’ marine resources. Beginning in 1751, Steller’s account began its long publishing history, frequently reprinted, edited, and summarized over the following centuries in English, French, Russian, and German. His description of these resources inspired many exploring and hunting parties: expeditions such as those by Petr Krenitsyn, Joseph Billings, and Gavril Sarychev. From 1743, Siberian hunters occupied and harvested the furs of Bering Island; by 1754, the sea otter population had nearly been exterminated, and by 1768 the sea cow had become extinct. The 19th century saw further exploitation of the Commander Islands. In 1840, Mikhail Tebenkov created the first atlas of the region, and by the century’s end the Russian government officially ruled over the islands. Most significantly, the Russians relocated Aleut people from the Aleutian Islands to the new settlements of Nikolskoye on Bering Island, and Preobrazhenskoye on Copper Island to work as resident hunters, and an Aleut population still occupies the Commander Islands today. The late 19th and early 20th century flurry of archaeological expeditions was not primarily to study the ruins of Bering’s crew, but instead to investigate the premise that the Commander Islands served as stepping stones for ancient peoples who migrated from the Commander Islands to the Aleutians and North America. Although no such evidence has been found, archaeological expeditions to Bering Island continued nearly every decade since the mid-19th century. The United States’ Smithsonian Institution supported numerous expeditions, including that of Leonhard Stejneger in 1882 and Aleš Hrdlic Eka in the 1930s. Resident Aleuts have been largely isolated from their kin in Alaska as well as from their fellow Russians. The Cold War essentially sealed Aleuts from making contacts with relatives on the other side of the iron curtain; finally, within the past decade, alliances, both personal and political, with Aleuts in Alaska have been forged. ANNETTE WATSON See also Aleut; Aleutian Islands; Bering Sea; Bering, Vitus; HrdliJka, Aleš; Kamchatka Peninsula; Kamchatskaya Oblast’; Steller, Georg Further Reading HrdliJka, Aleš, The Aleutian and Commander Islands and Their Inhabitants, Philadelphia: Wistar Institute, 1945

COMMISSION FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH IN GREENLAND Hultén, Eric, Flora of the Aleutian Islands and Westernmost Alaska Peninsula, with Notes on the Flora of the Commander Islands (2nd edition), New York: Hafner, 1960 Jochelson, Waldemar, History, Ethnology and Anthropology of the Aleut, Netherlands: Anthropological Publications, 1968 Len’kov, V.D. et al., The Komandorskii Camp of the Bering Expedition (An Experiment in Complex Study), translated by Katherine Arndt, Anchorage: Alaska Historical Society, 1992 Shute, Nancy, “From Unalaska to Petropavlosk: warm welcomes amid geysers and snow.” Smithsonian, 22(5) (1991): 30–40 Stejneger, Leonhard, Georg Wilhelm Steller, the Pioneer of Alaskan Natural History, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936 Steller, Georg Wilhelm, Journal of a Voyage with Bering, 1741–1742, edited by O.W. Frost, translated by Margritt Engel & O.W. Frost, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988 Waters, Tom, “The Aleutians Long-Lost Brother.” Earth, 3(5) (1994): 18

COMMISSION FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH IN GREENLAND The objectives of the Commission for Scientific Research in Greenland (Kommissionen for Videnskabelige Undersøgelser i Grønland, KVUG) are divided between three major fields. A funding agency for promoting ongoing research activities taking place in, or of major interest to Greenland, the Commission for Scientific Research also promotes new research and networking initiatives. In addition, the Commission advises the Danish and the Greenland Ministers of Research regarding research cooperation between Denmark and Greenland. The Danish Ministry of Research funds the activities of the Commission, and its secretariat is located at the Danish Polar Centre in Copenhagen. The Commission consists of 11 members, five from Greenland and five from Denmark, and the chairperson consecutively appointed from Greenland and Denmark. The present chairperson is Ole Marquardt, Rector of Ilisimatusarfik at the University of Greenland. Members have been chosen to represent the five major research areas: humanities, social sciences, natural science, health and medicine, and the technical sciences. The Commission’s budget varies from year to year. In 2000, an annual appropriation of DKK 7.0 million (US$800,000) was reserved by the Ministry of Research for the implementation of special initiatives within polar research. Of this sum the Commission for Scientific Research distributed DKK 2.8 million (US$300,000) for the implementation of tasks with the particular scope of promoting Danish-Greenlandic scientific cooperation in polar research fields, with focus on four issues or goals: (1) development of projects with a DanishGreenlandic rationale; (2) recruitment of Greenlandic researchers; (3) transfer of knowledge and compilation

of knowledge between Danish and Greenlandic research institutions; and (4) presentation of papers by younger researchers at international conferences. The Commission was first established as an institution in 1878 but has seen marked changes in structure and goal setting over the course of 125 years. While the colonization process starting in 1721 resulted in an elemental interest in the language and culture of the Greenlanders, the trade monopoly established in 1774 resulted in an intensive registration of the population and their activities in relation to the living resources. But it was especially during the second part of the 19th century that an increased general interest in the available resources arose. The intensification of nonDanish scientific expeditions to Greenland, especially from Sweden, England, and Germany, caused a significant consideration of the responsibility of a colonial relationship to include an active policy with regard to investigations in the west coast area. The search for mineral resources for the industrial development in Denmark had turned the focus to geological research, and this initiative was highly stimulated by the potentials of mineral wealth confirmed, for instance, by the registration of massive coal formations in the Vaigat region and cryolite formation. (Cryolite = Na3AlF6; its name originates from the Greek kryos or “frost” and lithos or “stone.” Cryolite is a mineral used as catalyst in connection with aluminum smelting in Ivittuut.) One of the institutional consequences was the creation of the Commission for Management of Geological Investigations in Greenland in 1878. While the starting point for the Commission had been geological research, it became apparent that a more coherent mapping of the geographical and hydrographical conditions was a central issue; hence in 1879, it changed its name to the Commission for Management of Geological and Geographical Investigations in Greenland, and the same year the Commission began publishing its journal Meddelelser om Grønland. Due to the growing need for more comprehensive research activities, the Commission expanded its scope considerably in 1925 to include scientists from all the natural sciences as well as several representatives from the social sciences and humanities. As a consequence, the old name was abolished and replaced by the Commission for Management of Scientific Investigations in Greenland. The Commission’s historical emphasis on natural sciences continued with modernization in Greenland after World War II; it even became clear that there was a tremendous need for insight into the social and cultural consequences of these changes. Especially after the establishment of Home Rule in Greenland (1979), pressure from the Greenland government articulated the need for a stronger focus on the social sciences and

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COMMITTEE FOR ORIGINAL PEOPLES’ ENTITLEMENT (COPE) humanities as well as a deeper involvement of representatives from Greenland. However, the Commission continued to prioritize the natural sciences as well as an organizational structure dominated by Danish representatives. In 1999, however, a Joint Committee on Danish-Greenlandic Research Co-operation recommended a restructuring of the organization that resulted in the appointment of a new Commission in March 2000. In its revised form, the Commission has the task of proposing new joint Danish-Greenlandic strategies for polar research. The Commission proposes new activities, research, and provides general advice and guidance on polar research issues to the research councils and to other governmental bodies. RASMUS OLE RASMUSSEN Further Reading Bistrup, H, “Kommissionens Historie 1878–1943.” Meddelelser om Grønland, Bd. 134, Nr. 1, København: C.A. Reitzels Forlag, 1943 Björnsson, Axel, Ingvild Broch, Jóan Pauli Joensen & Mogens Holm, Forskningsaktiviteter på Færøerne og Grønland. Forskningssamarbejde i Vestnorden I, TemaNord, København: Nordisk Ministerråd, 1997, p. 553 ———, orskningspolitik og -strategi for Færøerne og Grønland. Forskningssamarbejde i Vestnorden II, TemaNord, København: Nordisk Ministerråd, 1997, p. 611 Commission for Scientific Research in Greenland (Kommissionen for Videnskabelige Undersøgelser i Grønland), National strategi for polarforskning 1998–2002, København, 1996 (in Danish; see www:kvug.dk/strategiplan.html) Sørensen, Axel Kjær, Danmark Grønland I det 20. Århundrede— en historisk oversigt, København: Nyt Nordisk Forlag Arnold Busck, 1983 Kommissionen for Videnskabelige Undersøgelser i Grønland website, http://www.dpc.dk/kvug/

COMMITTEE FOR ORIGINAL PEOPLES’ ENTITLEMENT (COPE) The Committee for Original Peoples’ Entitlement (COPE) was established in 1970 to represent the interests of the Inuvialuit, the indigenous people of Canada’s Western Arctic. In 1976, COPE assumed the added responsibility of negotiating a comprehensive land claim with the Government of Canada. Until then the Inuvialuit negotiated as part of the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada or ITC (today known as Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami or ITK), an umbrella group negotiating on behalf of the Inuit of the Northwest Territories. When the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada withdrew its proposed comprehensive claim, COPE sought and received a negotiations mandate from its members. Thomas Morehouse speculates that there may have been “greater urgency in the west, and

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more likelihood of an early settlement, because of pressures from oil and gas exploration and development in the Delta-Beaufort region” (1987). The Inuvialuit presented their claim “Inuvialuit Nunangat” or “Land of the People of the Western Arctic” to the Canadian government in March 1977, led by the COPE Chairman Sam Raddi. The claim included demands for land, control of natural resources, and a voice in the future development of the region. In exchange the 2500 Inuvialuit offered to relinquish their aboriginal claims to large sections of the western Arctic. The federal government accepted the claim for negotiation, and in July 1978 the parties released a joint position paper on the claim. This led to an Agreement-in-Principle (AIP), signed on October 31, 1978. A final agreement was to be completed within a year. However, the 1979 and 1980 Canadian federal general elections and changes to the federal mandate delayed negotiations. The parties initiated a new AIP in December 1983. The resulting Inuvialuit Final Agreement (IFA) was signed on June 5, 1984. It was the first comprehensive land claims settlement north of the 60th parallel in Canada since comprehensive claims negotiations began in 1973. The IFA applied to Inuvialuit living in the western Arctic communities of Sachs Harbour, Holman Island, Paulatuk, Tuktoyaktuk, Inuvik, and Aklavik. The financial compensation included $45 million (in 1977 US dollars) to be paid over 13 years, a $10 million Economic Enhancement Fund, a $7.5 million Social Development Fund, and a share in natural resource royalties. The IFA provides surface and subsurface title to approximately 5000 square miles of land near the six Inuvialuit communities and Cape Bathurst. The agreement also includes surface title to a further 30,000 square miles. The agreement stipulates guaranteed hunting and trapping rights (that also apply to the Yukon’s North Slope) and equal participation in resource management and environmental assessment bodies. During negotiations some discussion centered on the creation of a Western Arctic Regional Municipality as a governing structure for the Inuvialuit. However, when the IFA was signed, a corporate rather than governmental structure emerged. The IFA established the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation (IRC), an entity directly controlled by the Inuvialuit, to receive and manage lands and financial compensation. In exchange the Inuvialuit gave up their aboriginal title, rights, and interests to the land in their territory. For this reason the IFA was not universally popular with Canadian aboriginal groups, who believed that it set an unwelcome precedent.

COMMITTEE OF THE NORTH With the IFA negotiated and the IRC functioning as the representative institution for the Inuvialuit, COPE closed in 1988. FLOYD MCCORMICK See also Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami; Inuvialuit Final Agreement Further Reading Burnet, Peter, “Stokes Point Yukon.” Northern Perspectives, 11(2) (1983): 1–9 Cameron, Kirk & Graham White, Northern Governments in Transition: Political and Constitutional Development in the Yukon, Nunavut, and the Western Northwest Territories, Montreal: Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1995 Canadian Aboriginal Issues Database website: http://www.ualberta.ca/~walld/nunavut3.html Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, “Inuvialuit Land Rights: Summary of Joint Position Paper between COPE and the federal government.” Northern Perspectives, 6(4) (1978): 5–10 Committee for Original Peoples’ Entitlement, “COPE Statement on the Caribou Convention.” Northern Perspectives, 7(7) (1979): 11–12 Cumming, Peter, “Canada’s North and Native Rights.” In Aboriginal Peoples and the Law: Indian, Metis and Inuit Rights in Canada (revised first edition), edited by Bradford W. Morse, Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1991 Dacks, Gurston, “The Politics of Native Claims in Northern Canada.” In The Quest for Justice: Aboriginal Peoples and Aboriginal Rights, edited by Menno Boldt, J. Anthony Long & Leroy Little Bear, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985 Inuvialuit Regional Corporation website: http://www.irc.inuvialuit.com Morehouse, Thomas A., “Native claims and political development: a comparative analysis.” 1987 Annual Meeting of Western Regional Science Association, Kona, Hawaii, February 19, 1987 (paper presented), website: http://www.alaskool.org/projects/ancsa/international/ tmwrsa1.html Simpson, Elaine L., Aboriginal Claims in Canada website: http://www.ualberta.ca/~esimpson/claims/claims.htm Whittington, Michael S., “Political and Constitutional Development in the N.W.T. and Yukon: The Issues and Interests.” In The North, edited by Michael S. Whittington, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985

COMMITTEE OF THE NORTH The Committee for Assistance to the Peoples of the Northern Borderlands (often abbreviated to Committee of the North in English) was created by decree of the All-Union Central Executive Committee (AUCEC or VtsIK in Russian) of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic on June 20, 1924. Following the Revolution and civil war, the new Soviet administrators became increasingly aware of the need to define and manage northern areas. From 1924 to 1935, the Committee was responsible for coordinating the activities of central and local state enterprises engaged

in investigating and assisting northern aboriginal peoples. The main goal of the Committee of the North was to develop economic, administrative and judicial, cultural, education, and healthcare arrangements for the northern aboriginal peoples. Members of the Committee for the North included a representative of the Nationality Council (Narkomnats), and also representatives from industries interested in the northern territories, and researchers specializing in the northern peoples—anthropologists, ethnologists, and linguists. Vladimir I. Bogoraz and Lev Y. Shternberg, who had researched northern indigenous groups while living in exile (in Siberia and Sakhalin Island, respectively), were key members. Separate legal and administrative, finance and taxation, scientific research, health improvement, and educational commissions were created. Petr G. Smidovich, a prominent public figure, was appointed chairperson of the Committee. To discuss important problems, extended plenums of the Committee and its representatives working in the North were announced. From 1924 to 1935, there were ten such plenums. During 1924–1925, local and regional Committees of the North were created, in which representatives of the northern aboriginal peoples took part. Usually the local committees consisted of three persons, a chairperson and two members, who worked under the supervision of the Committee of the North and reported back to the state on conditions in the northern regions. The Committee began its work with the aim of investigating the way of life, needs, history, and culture of the small northern ethnic groups. In 1925, expeditions to the northern peoples’ settlements were carried out to gather ethnological and anthropological information on little-known groups. In 1926–1927, a polar census of the northern region was carried out as part of an All-Union population census. Results from the expedition and the polar census verified the population of groups numbered among the “small nationalities” and served as the basis for a system of land use, division into national districts (such as founding of the Nenets National Okrug in 1929), reconstruction of the economy, and also for the organization of boards of management, culture, education, health, and other enterprises. The initial main aims of the Committee and its local boards were to render prompt material assistance and to protect the aboriginal peoples’ traditional lifestyles. In October 1925, the government decided to partially release the northern peoples from all taxes, an exemption that lasted until 1930. From the mid-1920s, a bread supply system was created to protect the population against possible natural disasters. There were, however, some shortcomings, in particular, due to practical problems such as the remoteness of the

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COMMITTEE OF THE NORTH northern peoples’ regions, insufficient transport, lack of communication, and nomadic dispersal. Nevertheless, the population of the northern outlying districts began to get sufficient food. With the aim of strengthening the aboriginals’ traditional economy, integral (mixed) cooperatives were created, which bought and sold goods and gave credit. The cooperatives were engaged in purchasing the local population’s products such as furs, fish, and seat fat, in return for credit on guns and ammunition, fishing tackle, and materials for making fishing nets. The creation of a wide network of integral cooperatives improved the supply of necessary food and hunting equipments. The cooperatives became a leading form of trade organization in the North. Another important trend of the Committee of the North’s activity was the creation of local boards of administration among the aboriginal peoples. In 1926, the Central Executive Committee’s decree “Provisional rules about administration of the native nationalities and tribes of the northern outlying districts of the RSFSR” identified 26 indigenous ethnic groups designated as Malyw Narodnosti Severnykh Okrain RSFSR (“small-numbered minorities of the north”). Up to 1930 in accordance with the statutes, and taking into consideration traditional structures and traditions of tribal meetings, “native” executive committees (clan soviets) were created in each district. These new bodies were responsible for protecting aboriginals’ rights, economic prosperity, and for carrying out the decrees of the higher soviet authorities. In 1927, by the decree of AUCEC the authorities of the northern peoples were given judicial functions for internal clan affairs. From 1930, in connection with the creation of national districts, the tribal councils were replaced by national and territorial soviets. The Committee of the North made great efforts to strengthen social and cultural enterprises. Taking into consideration the aboriginals’ traditional way of life and their scattering over an enormous territory, the Committee established complex social and cultural enterprises—in particular, cultural bases (kul’tbazy) in the largest settlements. In the most remote, little-studied districts, mobile camps were placed close to traditional migration routes. The cultural bases included a school, a hospital, literacy courses for adults, Red chum or Red yaranga (tents used to promote the values of socialism), a bathhouse with laundry, and medical and veterinary services. Great attention was paid to a mobile way of working. Workers at the cultural bases often migrated together with the aboriginals, carried out propaganda work, taught reading and writing, and introduced simple sanitary skills. In addition, the cultural bases’ aims included scientific research work, such as a meteorological station.

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At the same time, the Committee took an active part in the organization of the education system, which was created in parallel with the study of native languages, creation of written forms for the languages of the northern peoples, and training of teachers for northern areas. In 1929–1930, there were 129 national schools (boarding schools for children of indigenous people), with about 3000 pupils. In 1932, alphabets were prepared for 14 northern peoples (Evenki, Nenets, Khanty, Mansi, Chukchi, Itel’men, Sel’kup, Even, Nanai, Koryak, Yupiget (Siberian Yupik), Nivkh, Aleut, and Kets). Publication of grammars, primers with short readings, and books by writers and poets writing in their native language began. With the aim of training aboriginal people for cultural and economic positions, the Seventh Extended Plenum of the Committee decided to create specialized schools. The first such school was the Northern Worker’s Faculty in the Leningrad State University, which was established in 1925–1926. Subsequently, it became the Institute of the Peoples of the North, and specialized in the study of the languages of northern minority groups and teacher training. There were also specialized northern departments in the Krasnoyarsk and Khabarovsk Medical Institutes, Irkutsk Huntsman Training, Ussurijsk Agricultural technical secondary schools, and independent national technical secondary schools in Khabarovsk, Yenisejsk, and Nikolayevsk on Amur. In the late 1920s, there was a change of state policy from helping minority peoples in their transition from traditional to Soviet structures, to a general, universal scheme of management on a socialist scheme (Stalin’s First Five-Year Plan). The main trend of the Committee’s activities became collectivization of the aboriginal peoples’ property. According to party and government instructions, the committees and local authorities increased collectivization rates without consideration of the aboriginals’ traditional way of life. A whole complex of measures was carried out, from introduction of income tax for prosperous farms, determination of fixed quotas for production and selling at increased prices, state confiscation of clan hunting lands, disfranchisement, and repressions. Socialization of hunting tools and another property was done in the collective farms (kolkhozes). Collectivization was done in parallel with resettlement of some of the northern peoples from nomadic camps and small settlements to a settled way of life. As a result, the traditional way of life of the nomadic peoples was destroyed (e.g., abandonment of reindeer herding as a way of life), leading to a disastrous decrease of land use efficiency, devastation of privately owned farms and herds, and loss of the northern peoples’ traditional culture and spiritual experience.

COMMON (HARBOR) SEAL In August 1935, the Committee of the North and its local bodies were abolished. Their functions were given to the Chief Office for the Northern Sea Route (Glavsevmorput), who primarily as an economic body had little interest in the administration of indigenous peoples. Disbanding of the Committee was conditioned by a change of state policy with regard to the peoples of the North, purposeful to their joining in the common process of the modernization of society. N.D. VASILIEVA See also Collectivization; Economic Inventory of the (Soviet) Polar North, 1926–1927 Further Reading Bobyshev, S.V., North Committees of the East Siberia and Far East, Vladivostok, 2000 (in Russian) Gurvich, I.S., Etnicheskaya istoriya Severo-vostoka Sibiri [Ethnic history of Northeast Siberia], Moscow: Nauka, 1966, pp. 213–262 ———, Novaia zhizn’ narodov Severa [New life of the northern peoples], Moscow: Nauka, 1967 ———, “Principles of Lenin’s National Policy and their Use in the Far North.” In Osushchestvlenie leninskoi natsional’noi politiki u narodov Krainego Severa [Realization of Lenin’s national policy among the Far North peoples], Moscow: Nauka, 1971, pp. 9–50 Petrov, Yu.D., Not Numerous Peoples of the North: National Policy and Regional Practice, Moscow, 1998 (in Russian) Sergeev, M.A., Nelcapitalisticheskii put’ rarvitiia malykh narodov Severa [Non-capitalist way of development of small peoples of the North], Moscow: Izd-vo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1955 Skachko, A., “Five years of works of the North Committee.” Soviet North, (1930): 2 ———, “Ten years of works of the North Committee.” Soviet North, (2) (1934): 9–21 Slezkine, Yuri, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994 Uvachan, V.N., Gody, ravnye vekam: stroitel’stvo sotsializma na Sovetskom Severe [Years just as much as centuries: building of socialism in the Soviet North], Moscow: Mysl, 1984

COMMON (HARBOR) SEAL Common or harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) are small, stocky seals found throughout the temperate and Arctic waters of the Northern Hemisphere. They have the widest distribution of any pinniped. In the eastern Atlantic, they are found throughout the British Isles, the North Sea, Iceland, and all along the coast of Norway, as far north as Finnmark. Their range extends across the Atlantic to Greenland, and in North America from Baffin and Hudson bays as far south as Long Island, New York City, and New Jersey. They can be found on both sides of the Pacific, from Herschel Island around Alaska and along the west coast of North America as far south as Baja California.

Harbor seals occur throughout the Aleutians, the Commander Islands, the Kurils and the Pribilofs, as well as Kamchatka and Hokkaido. A rough estimate of the world population of harbor seals is around 500,000. Throughout their vast range, there is much variation in size, morphology and behavior, and some workers recognize subspecies such as P. vitulina richardsi of the coastal eastern Pacific, P. vitulina stejnegeri of the western Pacific and the Sea of Japan, and P. vitulina kurilensis of the Kuril Islands, but others lump them all together. Most current studies recognize Phoca largha, the spotted seal, as a distinct species, although it used to be considered conspecific with P. vitulina. (Harbor seals breed on land, while spotted seals breed on ice.) There is great variety in the coloration of these seals, ranging from silvery gray with dark spots to dark brown and almost black with silvery or whitish rings. Pups are born with short coats like those of adults. Some populations are nonmigratory, breeding and feeding in the same area throughout the year, but others may migrate for hundreds of miles. Males and females mature at about 5–7 years of age, and females produce a calf every year. The life expectancy for both sexes is 25–30 years. In Alaska and the western Pacific, where harbor seals are larger than those of the Atlantic, adult males which are consistently larger than females can be over 6 ft (1.9 m) in length, and weigh up to 330 lb (150 kg). Compared to other similarly sized phocids, for example, the harp or ringed seals, the skull of P. vitulina is more thickly boned, and the teeth, especially the postcanines, are broad and heavy. In order to eat bivalves, they crush them with their teeth. Harbor seals are considered the least vocal of all pinnipeds; after weaning, their vocalizations are restricted to snorts, grunts, or growls, and they probably do not emit echolocation clicks. They can be confused with young gray seals because their ranges overlap in many parts of the Atlantic, but harbor seals are usually smaller, and they can be further differentiated by the nostrils: those of the harbor seal are arranged in a wide “V,” while those of the gray seal are nearly parallel. Like all the other phocids, the harbor seal uses its hind flippers for propulsion in the water, but on land it hitches along, using only its fore flippers, which are equipped with sturdy claws. When resting on land or rocks, harbor seals often assume a bananalike pose with the head and hind flippers elevated. Harbor seals occasionally haul out on rocks long before low tide, and remain on seemingly inaccessible positions until the tide comes in and they are able to swim off. Newly weaned pups feed on bottom-dwelling crustaceans and amphipods; adults eat almost anything they can catch, including various cephalopods and crustaceans, but the staple of their diet is fish, such as herring, anchovies,

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Common harbor seal (Phoca vitulina). Photo by Sue Matthews, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

trout, smelt, codfish, rockfish, greenling, sculpin, sandlance, and various flatfish. They are accomplished divers, and have been recorded as making feeding dives up to 1500 ft (446 m) In the water, they are preyed upon by sharks and killer whales; and northern sea lions and eagles take an occasional pup on land. In earlier days, Inuit hunters harpooned various species of phocids on the ice and in the water, but with the introduction of firearms they resorted to the more efficient method of shooting them. Unlike the ringed or bearded seals, harbor seals do not use breathing holes, but climb out of the water on sandbars or icefloes. They must be approached carefully because the first shot often drives the whole group into the water. Unlike other seals, which attempt to escape when wounded, harbor seals sometimes turn on the hunters or dive deeply, and are considered dangerous to hunt. Where the ocean surface does not freeze solid, seals come to open spaces between ice-floes for air; in these areas, Inuit hunters pursue the seals in kayaks or stand by the floes, hoping for a chance to throw their harpoons. After the Inuit hunter locates such a space, he stand with a poised harpoon, awaiting the quivering of a small, slender piece of baleen, or whalebone, stuck through the thin ice surface, which signals the seal’s surfacing. Often the hunter has to stand this way for hours in the bitter cold. When the baleen marker began to jiggle, he threw the harpoon, which was constructed so as to embed itself and remain fixed in the fat layer of the stricken animal. The harpoon head, connected to a float of inflated sealskin by a line about 33 ft (10 m) long, would not only mark the location of the wounded animal but would also hamper its escape.

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Traditionally, Inuit used nearly all the parts of killed seals; the blubber fuelled the soapstone lamps that provided light and warmth, and the skin was fashioned into hooded parkas, mittens, pants, and waterproof boots, which were particularly well adapted to cold and wet climatic conditions. The skin of the harbor seal is thicker and heavier than that of the ringed seal, and was also used to make whips, boots, and dog harnesses. The skins were also processed into tents and boats, and the bones were made into weapons, but seal meat and oil were the staples of the Inuit diet. Some Inuit still wear sealskin clothing, but it has largely been replaced by commercially available waterproof fabrics and down-filled garments. Europeans hunted harbor seals in Alaska, Greenland, northern Canada, and Russia with nets and guns. Their short, silky fur was made into sports clothing in Europe, particularly ski parkas. The seals’ raids on fish stocks and fishermen’s nets have made them unwelcome in various countries, and hundreds of thousands have been killed by bounty hunters in Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts, Norway, and the British Isles. Many are also drowned in gill nets. In recent years, various populations of harbor seals have been decimated by phocine distemper virus (PDV), a pathogen that closely resembles and, indeed, seems to have been derived from canine distemper virus (CDV). In 1979–1980, some 400 harbor seals died in New England, and in 1988, nearly 18,000 died in the North Sea, along the shores of Denmark, Sweden, and Great Britain. RICHARD ELLIS

COMMON PROPERTY MANAGEMENT See also Spotted Seal Further Reading Bigg, M.A., “Harbour Seal—Phoca vitulina Linnaeus, 1758 and Phoca largha Pallas, 1811.” In Handbook of Marine Mammals, Volume I1: Seals, edited by S.H. Ridgway & R.J. Harrison, San Deigo: Academic Press, 1981, pp. 1–27 Burns, J.J., “Harbor Seal and Spotted Seal.”In Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals, edited by W.F. Perrin, B. Wursig & J.G.M. Thewissen, London and San Diego: Academic Press, 2002 Bruemmer, F., Encounters with Arctic Animals, New York: American Heritage, 1972 Clark, A.H., “The North Atlantic Seal Fishery.” In The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States. Section 5, Volume 2, edited by G.B. Goode, Washington: General Printing Office, 1887, pp. 474–483 Kennedy, S., “Morbillivirus infections in marine mammals.” Journal of Comparative Pathology, 119 (1998): 201–225 King, J.E., Seals of the World, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983 Nelson, R.K., Hunters of the Northern Ice, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969

COMMON PROPERTY MANAGEMENT In theory a commons is a shared geographic space that is used by a well-defined multi user group. An important defining characteristic of common property is that it is physically, biologically, and culturally bounded. A second characteristic is that the conduct and access of users is based on well-understood rules, for example, expressed as property rights. Property rights are usually one of two types: individual (corporate or private) or collective (aboriginal or state). Property is a modern means whereby use of land and enjoyment of its bounty is secured. Conceptually, common property enables managers to consider the effect of property rights and regimes on the ways in which resources are conceptualized. Living resources as common property are a class of resources for which control of access and exclusion from them is difficult to maintain. Furthermore, each person using the commons will, when optimizing their own production, subtract from the productivity of all others. These two features, access and subtractability, have led to the development and application of a number of strategies, models, frameworks, practices, and processes. Property mirrors social relations; it is defined as functional and instrumental, and it holds an assigned and fluctuating benefit and value. These descriptions of property are cultural, based on a distinctively western capitalist worldview. In relations to management, common property does not convey exclusive entitlements to individuals and it acknowledges that competitive use can lead to depletions. Generally, it can be thought of as both a historic and instrumental arrangement, as well as a modernist

response to the privatization of property. What becomes common property and how it is managed are important issues reflecting certain historical and cultural characteristics. Collective rights confer to the holders a claim to a benefit from property or from the right of holding it. Common property describes a certain social relationship that is instrumental in that it enables a community to secure a claim to a benefit stream. As property becomes scarce, it increases in value when there is a constant demand for it. Where there is no demand, value will fade. Common property rights and regimes have responded to the rise of nation states in their search for creating order in the exploitation and development of natural and social resources by challenging the legitimacy and exclusive jurisdiction of the states. To illustrate, a lake is an example of common property. As a source for drinking or for hydroelectric power production, lake water cannot be confined to a simple definition of a single use resource. Lakes are part of a complex web of relationships, the hydrological cycle, it exists as a gas, solid or liquid. If the cycle is interrupted so as to impair or limit its resilience, the ecological effect will be far greater than from the immediate drawing of water for drinking or damming for hydroelectricity. This example highlights ecosystems thinking, meaning that we conceive of lakes as common property in a larger context. Common property management fits well with ecosystems thinking because it considers the larger context of social relationships. In contrast to the example of lakes as common property, water, which makes up these lakes, is more difficult to conceive of as common property. Human activity is legislated in relations to water for transportation, but water is increasingly being degraded as a sink for pollution. The management of water is a complex equation. Likewise, the physical geography of the land, such as minerals and trees; also air resources, being a medium susceptible to the transport of pollutants, need critical attention of common property managers. Significant issues for atmospheric scientists and communities are declining air quality, ozone depletion, in particular a hole almost directly over the North Pole, and persistent contaminants that are accumulating in Arctic ecosystems. It is important to note that air, water, and land is captured as property to reflect and support dominant social relationships. Common property management, articulated formally as such, dates to the 1960s. However, its practice can be traced to traditional systems of conducting human activities in specific environments that pre-date the rise of formal property management and modern civilization. Each period has lent something toward the current theory and practice. To some extent this approach flourished in response to new knowledge

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COMMON PROPERTY MANAGEMENT generated through interdisciplinary scholarship in ecology, thinking that has been advanced thanks to scholars such as Rachael Carson, Herman Daly, and Aldo Leopold. Advances in the social sciences, through study of human social organization and land relationships, have benefited common property management. A significant influence came from responses to Garrett Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons” thesis. Hardin (1968), by way of metaphor, described an open to all pasture, invariably overgrazed while each pastoralist increased his/her herd size, so optimizing individual production without due regard for other herders and without regard for the pasture. Hardin advocated that the tragedy of overexploitation and population growth could only be overcome by abandoning the commons. He argued for the incorporation of formal property rights, restricting access through state processes or privatization. A significant criticism of the commons tragedy has been that it is overly pessimistic about human behavior, in particular, the development of competition over cooperation; critics have found land use that has not inevitably lead to loss of the commons. It is argued that Hardin’s commons was an open access pasture. The commons dilemma remedy of conversion to private property holding under state control, that is, the commons saved by the benevolence of individual landowners, corporations, or under the guiding hand of government regulation, is naive. The argument that the commons are doomed ignores instances where humans do not act as rational self-interested capitalists, where the commons are not depleted and where human behavior enhances them. Many Common Property Rights theorists argue that solutions of privatization, central administrative control, and minimized local-level input, negate common property management premised on participatory approaches, which recognize and support preexisting community-based institutions and processes. Despite the criticism, a goal of management is to formulate solutions to the commons dilemma, to find general constructs for designing success by controlling access. Ultimately, management must strike a balance of property use rights between local communities and outside agents, such as corporations and states, which sustains ecosystems, including humans. Common property is often held in overlapping combinations of open access, private, common, and state property. According to global history, a consistent discouraging pattern of resource exploitation is being demonstrated by researchers. Natural resources are a categorical description for biological units, such as trees or fish and specific species, such as black spruce (Picea mariana) and Arctic char (Salvelinus alpinus). Renewable resources, in crude terms, are material

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units that have been assigned a value, which can under favorable conditions be replaced. Nonrenewable resources, such as minerals and petroleum, are thought to be finite in supply. As soon as a resource is identified and commodified, is it inevitably overexploited? Small-scale production is an exception to the rule of overexploitation. In the Arctic, historical resource exploitation has been greatly influenced by two distinct perspectives, use by indigenous peoples and use by newcomers. Aboriginal peoples have tended to be small-scale producers, while newcomers have almost always sought larger-scale production in step with technological capabilities. In the past technology hampered or proved too expensive for the extraction of Arctic resources. As resources become scarce and technology improves, Arctic resources are susceptible to the same form of overexploitation experienced historically elsewhere. Traditional societies in the Arctic had very little success in assimilating newcomer societies into their various resource management regimes and institutions in existence prior to contact. By claiming terra nullius, land without title, colonials transformed commons through commercial and industrial resource exploitation via open access. Overall, the thinking by newcomers excluded, for the most part, those who had subsisted and relied on lands and resources for generations. In the Canadian Arctic, common property management has become incorporated as a planning strategy in development activities, often embedded in comprehensive land claims, which acknowledge traditional use and occupancy. The Gwich’in Final Agreement (1992), the Sahtu Dene and Métis Final Agreement (1993), and the formation of Nunavut (1997), are all examples of comprehensive claims that are, in a way, instances where common property management is becoming institutionalized into state resource management systems. Common property management is becoming an institutional arrangement for environmental management, in many cases framing new territorial agencies, aboriginal governance structures, and planning and resource management boards. The pressure to institute management has been in both resistance and response to development pursued by industrialists and resource extraction. Aboriginal land use continues to be dominated by wildlife hunting and socioeconomic management. The Arctic subsistence (hunting/fishing/whaling) sector in Canada has been estimated at an annual value of $15,000 per household, which is approximately a quarter to half of the total local economy. The subsistence sector is not declining and it is not being replaced by the wage economy. Managers are finding that—traditional— knowledge and communal resource institutions are collectively shared by well-defined communities,

CONCENTRIC SPHERES AND POLAR VOIDS, THEORY OF communities who are considered dependent on what are defined as common property, who have successfully managed their affairs as a way of life, that is, management embedded in cultural practices. Cultural factors shape many local institutions and traditional management systems have often been overlooked by outside resource managers because management practices are imbedded in aboriginal languages and cultural practices, such as dances, which are overlooked by those who are well trained in western scientific approaches, but not in other cultures. Common property management tends to focus on either specific areas, for example, the Bering Sea; species, for example, whales; or populations, for example, the Saami people. Prior to the 1950s there was no specific or formal resource management in the Arctic. In circumpolar counties such as Greenland and Russia, the modern idea of common property management is viewed as a cushion between traditional ways and competing western systems. Industrial development and various industrial resource extraction projects have been carried out in the North with little consideration for local peoples, a form of colonization that is familiar the world over. Because of the relative newness of its application, there are few examples of common property management in the Arctic that are concrete examples of having either succeeded or failed at resolving the dilemma. However, there are examples that can be shown to demonstrate better management or instances where greater efforts are necessary. The full spectrum of natural capital, whether whales, Arctic foxes, mining, forestry, or natural gas, transcends the exclusive jurisdiction of any single authority and natural influences. Environmental impacts, including atmospheric and climate changes, cumulatively build and alter the health and resiliency of populations and ecosystems. Much of the natural capital of the Arctic has yet to be realized, and in the destruction of biodiversity and cultural traditions we lose a significant understanding of property arrangements that have worked for hundreds of years. Many scholars, in a number of disciplines, are today interested in learning about the sustainability exhibited by lands controlled through the traditional authority of tribal communities. Common property management is part of a suite of approaches, a tool that may be successfully applied in the Arctic. The role of property rights, regimes, and their influences on resources is a key to developing successful environmental management. Access and subtractability makes common property management of relevance to Arctic development and degradation. It is important to acknowledge that commons are in conflict with sui generis rights held by indigenous users who actively resist, guard and restrict access to their

traditional lands. In practice, common property management understands that resources are often held in overlapping combinations of open access, private property, communal property, and state property, and that the present state of property rights can vary across time and space. The main goal of management is to formulate an adaptive resolution to the commons dilemma, and to find general constructs for designing successful resource management by eliminating open access conditions. Most property management seeks to strike a balance for resource use rights of local communities, which sustains ecosystems and target populations, together with management responsibilities of outside agencies, such as corporations and states. CHRIS HANNIBAL-PACI See also Political Issues in Resource Management; Property Rights Further Reading Berkes F. (editor), Ecology and Community-Based Sustainable Development, London: Belhaven, 1989 ———, “Community-Based Management of Common Property Resources.” In Encyclopedia of Environmental Biology, Volume1, San Diego: Academic Press. 1995, pp. 371–373 Berkes, Feeny, McCay & Acheson, “The benefits of the commons.” Nature, 340(6229) (1989):91–93 Bromley, Making the Commons Work: Theory, Practices and Policy, San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies Press, 1992 Hardin (editor), Population, Evolution and Birth Control. A Collage of Controversial Ideas, San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1964 ———, “The tragedy of the commons.” Science, 162 (1968):1243–1248 Ludwig, Hilborn & Walters, “Uncertainty, resource exploitation, and conservation: lessons from history.” Science, 260 (1993):17, 36 Stevenson, Common Property Economics: A General Theory and Land Use Application, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991 Wall (editor), Securing Northern Futures: Developing Renewable Partnerships, Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1999 Woods (editor), Knowing the North: Reflecting on Traditions, Techniques and Strategies, Edmonton: Boreal Institute for Northern Studies, 1988

CONCENTRIC SPHERES AND POLAR VOIDS, THEORY OF The theory of concentric spheres and polar voids was conceived by John Cleves Symmes (1780–1829) and best described in his own words: “I declare that the earth is hollow and habitable within; containing a number of solid concentric spheres, one within the other, and that it is open at the poles twelve or sixteen degrees. I pledge my life in support of this truth, and

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CONIFEROUS FORESTS am ready to explore the hollow, if the world will support and aid me in my undertaking” (from Circular Number 1, April 10, 1818). Symmes was born in New Jersey (United States of America), received an ordinary education, and enlisted in the US Army in 1802. He distinguished himself as a captain in the War of 1812. Following his retirement from the army, he became a military provisioner. During this time he read books on geology and developed his theory, publishing the circular quoted above as well as seven more circulars over the following year. By observing hollow and concentric structures in plant stems, bones, and other natural materials, Symmes reasoned by analogy that the earth must also be composed of concentric spheres. He believed that the centrifugal force due to the earth’s rotation would create a void along the axis of rotation, resulting in holes at the poles through which one could reach the inner spheres. He also believed that his theory could explain a variety of natural phenomena such as animal migrations and ocean currents. His ideas were roundly rejected by scholars, but Symmes persisted, launching a lecture tour of Ohio and Kentucky in 1820 to promote a polar expedition to test his theory. By 1822, he had enough popular support that the US Senate considered a proposal for such an expedition, but it was tabled. The following year the US House of Representatives tabled or struck down nine more bills aimed at funding an expedition. Finally, Symmes took his proposal to the Ohio general assembly, where it also failed. One of Symmes’s followers, Jeremiah Reynolds, persuaded him to tour the urban areas of the northeastern United States. Despite Symmes’s ill health and stage fright, he set off with Reynolds in 1825. Their traveling show, which played to enthusiastic audiences, included a wooden globe with concentric spheres inside, and other gadgets to demonstrate the theory. As Symmes’s health deteriorated, Reynolds took on more of the lecturing, but he also started omitting Symmes’s hollow earth idea and simply promoted a polar expedition. They parted company, and Symmes’s continued alone through New England and into Canada. In 1827, he was forced to call off the tour due to ill health. He spent two years in New Jersey trying to recover, then returned to the family farm in Ohio, where he died. In the meantime, Reynolds had secured President Adam’s approval for an expedition, only to have his successor, President Jackson, cancel it. However, Reynolds recruited a wealthy Dr. Watson of New York to fund an expedition to Antarctica. They set off from New York by ship in 1829. Upon reaching Antarctica, they were repulsed by icebergs and sea ice, and failed to find the polar void. On the return voyage, the crew mutinied and turned the ship to piracy, stranding

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Reynolds in Chile. Eventually he signed on with another ship that took him around the world (1831–1834) before returning to the United States. He resumed lecturing on the hollow earth theory and polar exploration, capturing the imagination of Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote a novel in which the narrator discovers an Antarctic island inhabited by natives of Symzonia. Jules Verne read the works of Symmes, Reynolds, and Poe prior to writing his famous Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864). By the early 20th century, explorers had reached within a few degrees of the poles. Peary claimed the North Pole in 1909, and Amundsen attained the South Pole in 1911. No holes barred their way. Symmes’s theory faded from memory. A monument to Symmes, erected by his son in the 1840s, stands in Hamilton, Ohio—a stone sphere with a hole drilled through the middle. HARRY L. STERN Further Reading Collins, Paul, Banvard’s Folly: Thirteen Tales of People Who Didn’t Change the World, New York: Picador, 2001 Symmes, Americus, The Symmes Theory of Concentric Spheres, Demonstrating that the Earth is Hollow, Habitable Within, and Widely Open About the Poles, Compiled by A. Symmes from the Writings of his Father, Louisville, Kentucky: Bradley and Gilbert, 1878 Symmes, John Cleves, Symmes’s Theory of Concentric Spheres: Demonstrating that the Earth is Hollow, Habitable Within, and Widely Open About the Poles, Cincinatti: Morgan, Lodge & Fischer, 1826

CONIFEROUS FORESTS Immediately south of the Arctic tundra lies a circumpolar band of forest variously termed the northern coniferous forest biome or the boreal forest or the taiga. Taiga is broadly defined here, but it should be noted that some ecologists would consider taiga to be only that band of conifers that lies roughly between 50° and 60° N latitude in both hemispheres where the growing season lasts about 130 days, total annual precipitation ranges from 40 to 100 cm (15.7–39.4 in), and the treeline (timberline) roughly approximates the average summer isotherm of 10°C (50°F) (the treeline often lies far to the south of this isotherm). At the tundra-taiga interface or ecotone, the landscape often looks more like tundra than forest, for here the trees are few and far between. Cone-bearing trees (Coniferales, Gymnospermae) are the dominant forms, but there are many species of deciduous trees and herbaceous plants, along with mosses, fungi, and lichens. Most taiga trees belong to four genera—Pinus (pines), Abies (fir), Picea (spruce),

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and Larix (tamarack, larch)—all members of the pine family (Pinaceae) and all evergreen except for the deciduous larch. Survival of all the plant forms and of all the year-round animal residents depends on successful adaptation to long, cold, dark winters and short summers. Moreover, plants must accommodate to soils that are poor in nutrients and, in many places, permanently frozen just a few inches/centimeters beneath the surface. Winter subjects plants to continuous drought conditions because water lost through transpiration cannot be replaced until the spring thaw. In the forests of central Alaska, the rains of summer combined with snowmelt yield an annual precipitation total of 10–20 in (c.250–500 mm). Such a modest total would produce near-desert conditions were it not for the fact that the sphagnum mosses (Sphagnum spp.), often so abundant on the floor of the taiga, accumulate and retain water, and that where permafrost occurs, rain that does fall cannot sink far into the subsurface, thus remaining available to the root systems of the plants. The rootlets of many kinds of plants, especially conifers, exist in a mutualistic relationship with fungi (mycorrhizae) that facilitate water and nutrient absorption.

Distribution of coniferous (boreal) forest in the Arctic and Subarctic.

The needles of the evergreen conifers are narrow, contain chlorophyll, and usually have their stomata deeply sunk into a waxy coating. Because the stomata are deep-set, they are more or less protected from the winds of winter, and thus from excessive transpiration. The waxy coating also limits transpiration and the narrow needles present minimal surface area to drying winds. Because chlorophyll is present year-round in the dark green, heat-absorbing needles, photosynthesis can begin with the arrival of the sun. The tall, slender habitus of evergreens tends to prevent branch-breaking buildups of snow on the tree boughs. Trees of the boreal forest may occur in extensive stands of a single dominant conifer species, as mixed stands of a dominant conifer with a codominant conifer, and as mixed stands of coniferous and hardwood trees. Further, understory plant communities vary widely, depending on soil type, permafrost, altitude, latitude, duration of direct insolation, and rainfall/snowfall amounts. These same factors also shape the makeup of the dominant conifer communities. The interior forests of Alaska and the taigas of Canada and Siberia are generally characterized by very cold winters and modest annual precipitation totals.

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A herd of barren-ground caribou runs past a snow-covered boreal forest, Northwest Territories, Canada. Copyright Maria Stenzel/National Geographic Image Collection

Because of the influence of relatively warm ocean currents (and, in the case of northern Europe, warm winds from the tropics), winters are much more moderate and annual precipitation is more abundant in the Pacific Forest of northwestern North America (200 in(5080 mm) not uncommon) and in the boreal forests of northern Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula of the Russian Federation (22% of the world’s forests are in the Russian Federation; in contrast, Canada has 7% and the United States has 6%; Brazil has 16%). Collectively, the world’s boreal forests constitute a vast carbon storehouse; the forests of the Russian Federation hold 20% of the world’s carbon. In North America there are three major manifestations of the coniferous forest. Stretching about 3000 miles (4828 km) from the Santa Cruz Mountains in California to Kodiak Island in Alaska is the Pacific Forest or the Temperate Rain Forest. Moist air off the Pacific Ocean, cooling as it rises over the coastal mountains, produces copious amounts of winter rainfall (snowfall if the temperature is right) and summer fog over the western slopes and creates conditions that support the huge conifers characteristic of this region such as coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens in California and Oregon), Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (= P. taxifolia), especially in Washington and Oregon), grand fir (Abies grandis), white fir (Abies concolor), Pacific silver fir (Abies amabilis), Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis), western red cedar (Thuja plicata), Alaska cedar (Chamaecyparis nootkatensis), subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa), and western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla). The second major forest region, the Rocky Mountain Forest, is obviously associated with the flanks

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of this mountain range. While dense stands of conifers are not uncommon, the more general condition is that the trees are rather widely spaced and that the stands are separated from each other by large and small expanses of subalpine meadows. Some common tree species of this region are the limber pine (Pinus flexilis), whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis), western larch (Larix occidentalis), Englemann spruce (Picea engelmannii), Douglas fir, western white pine (Pinus monticola), ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) ,and lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta), a species that often becomes established after fires. By far, the largest forest region in North America is the Northern Forest. From a narrow strip along the higher elevations in the Appalachian Mountains, where red spruce (Picea rubens) and Frazer fir (Abies fraseri) are common, this forest expands across the breadth of Canada and extends into Alaska. The most common tree species are white (Picea glauca) and black (Picea mariana) spruce, but many other species of conifers, such as eastern white pine (Pinus strobus), northern white cedar, eastern hemlock (Thuja canadensis) and balsam fir, and deciduous trees, especially aspens, alders, birches, and poplars, are well represented. Forest fires are the supreme natural arbiters of survival and succession in the Northern Forest and in the comparable taiga zones of Eurasia. Each of these three major forest regions of North America can be characterized in a very general way by its plant and animal communities, all finding expression within certain parameters of climate, altitude, latitude, slope, soils, and other aspects of the geographic setting. But, like their counterparts in Eurasia, each major region has been further divided into numerous ecoregions or ecozones,

CONSERVATION each one of which, in turn, has its own set of biological and physical characteristics. For example, Canada is composed of 15 defined ecozones and the Yukon Territory has 23 defined ecoregions. Alaska has 13 ecoregions and at least 30 different forest types within the general category of boreal forest. Large and small accumulations of water are very common all across the taiga (see Freshwater Ecosystems). The smaller, shallower ponds tend to fill in with sphagnum mosses and other plants forming bogs (called muskegs in North America), where decomposition of plant materials proceeds very slowly. Trees surrounding the bogs, especially black spruce and larch (Larix laricina in Alaska and Canada; various species in Eurasia such as L. siberica in east central Russia and the Dahurian larch, L. gmelinii (=L. dahurica), the dominant conifer in the permafrost regions of Siberia east of the Yenisey River), tend to encroach upon the bogs and eventually transform them into forest. Because tamaracks (L. laricina) are intolerant of shade, other invading conifers usually eventually replace them. While tamaracks may be found on upland sites, they are more typical of boggy sites (muskegs), acid peatlands (pH usually 6.0–6.9 but can be as low as 4.3), and lake and stream borders. Typical larch root systems, being very shallow and wide spreading (often exceeding in diameter the height of the tree), are well suited for moist soils underlaid by permafrost. While forest fires easily kill larches, these trees are often early invaders of burned peatlands and open bogs. But because their seed dispersal distance is very limited, larches do not quickly spread over large burns. Because larch trees cast a light (diffuse) shadow, larch forests of the Nearctic Region typically have a thriving understory of shrubs, herbaceous plants and fungi and other primitive plants such as, among many others that could be named, red-osier dogwood (Cornus stolonifera), bog birch (Betula glandulosa), various berry-bearing shrubs (Vaccinium spp.), swamp birch (Betula pumila), leatherleaf (Chamaedaphne calyculata), hoary alder (Alnus incana), various willows (Salix spp.), bog-rosemary (Andromeda glaucophylla), Labrador tea (Ledum groenlandicum), bush cinquefoil (Potentilla fructicosa), bunchberry (Cornus canadensis), various grasses (cottongrass, Eriophorum vaginatum) and sedges (Carex spp.), running ground pine (Lycopodium clavatum), reindeer lichens (Cladina mitis, C. rangiferina, C. stellaris) and sphagnum (Sphagnum spp.), and other mosses. Again because of their shade intolerance, tamaracks often grow in evenaged stands. In mixed stands, especially on peatlands, their most common associate is black spruce. In Alaska, quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) rarely stands with tamarack, but it is a common associate in the Lake States, New England and Canada. Other com-

mon associates in the Lake States are red maple (Acer rubrum), white spruce (Picea glauca), black ash (Fraxinus nigra), red pine (Pinus resinosa), white pine (Pinus strobes), balsam fir (Abies balsamea), and arbor-vitae (northern white cedar, Thuja occidentalis). Common Canadian associates include paper birch (Betula papyrifera) as well as white spruce, quaking aspen and balsam fir. Balsam fir is the dominant tree species in the eastern region of the Canadian boreal forest biome. Red pine (Pinus resinosa), often codominant with the jack pine (Pinus banksiana), occurs in extensive stands around the Great Lakes and eastward into New England and southeastern Canada. J. RICHARD GORHAM See also Boreal Forest Ecology; Taiga; Treeline Further Reading Alden, J.N., “Planting trees in the Aleutians.” AgroBorealis, 32(1) (2000): 4–9 Bailey, Robert G., Ecoregions of North America (map), Washington, District of Columbia: Forest Service, US Department of Agriculture, 1997 ———, Ecoregions of North America, Explanatory Note, Washington, District of Columbia: Forest Service Miscellaneous Publication Number 1548, US. Department of Agriculture, 1998 Chapin III, F. Stuart, & Robert L. Jefferies, James F. Reynolds, Gaius R. Shaver, Josef Svoboda & Ellen W. Chu (editors), Arctic Ecosystems in a Changing Climate: An Ecophysiological Perspective, San Diego: Academic Press, 1992 Eyre, F.H. (editor), Forest Cover Types of the United States and Canada, Washington, District of Columbia: Society of American Foresters, 1980 Gawthrop, Daniel, Vanishing Halo: Saving the Boreal Forest, Vancouver, British Columbia: Greystone Books, 1999 Joint Federal-State Land Use Planning Commission for Alaska, Major Ecosystems of Alaska (map), Fairbanks: US Geological Survey, 1973 Juday, Glenn Patrick, “Climate change and the growth of white spruce near Anchorage, Alaska.” AgroBorealis, 32(1) (2000): 10–14 Lakehead University, Faculty of Forestry and the Forest Environment, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, website http://www.borealforest.org, 2002 Linder, Lars Östlund, “Changes in the boreal forests of Sweden 1870–1991.” Svensk Botanisk Tidskrift, 86 (1992): 199–215 Senkowsky, Sonya, “Land of little sticks.” Alaska, 68(5) (2002): 44–47, 60 Van Cleve, K., C.T. Dyrness, L.A. Viereck, J. Fox, F.S. Chapin III & W. Oechel, “Taiga ecosystems in interior Alaska.” BioScience, 33 (1983): 39–44

CONSERVATION Conservation can be defined as planned management and protection of a natural resource to prevent exploitation or destruction by human activities. A related term is preservation, which means to literally

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CONSERVATION stop something from changing. With regard to the environment, preservation refers to the maintenance of individual organisms, populations or species by planned management; a preservationist is one that advocates preservation, as of a biological species. A third term, environmentalism, entails concern for the environment and its preservation from pollution and degradation. Thus, an environmentalist is one who believes in environmentalism, and who is concerned with or involved in the protection and preservation of the environment. These may seem to be subtle, semantic distinctions; upon closer inspection, however, they are important for reasons that will be presented here. George Perkins Marsh’s seminal book, Man and Nature, first published in 1864, is considered by many to be the fountainhead of the conservation movement. Since at least the late 19th century, and the establishment of Yellowstone National Park in the United States, the idea of designated protected areas has long been associated with conservation. In fact, Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) has reported that the creation of protected areas, including national parks, wildlife refuges, and so-called “wilderness areas,” is one of the most common conservation approaches worldwide, although managing consumptive use (fishing, hunting, gathering) is the oldest form of conservation. The rationale behind protected areas is that they restrict human influence, allowing natural processes or areas of great aesthetic beauty to remain undisturbed. However, as Russian anthropologist Konstantin Klokov notes, “the designation of strictly protected areas in the Arctic is frequently in conflict with the interests of indigenous peoples and may sometimes adversely affect their prosperity and welfare. As a result, ecologists and indigenous affairs activists disagree on a number of key issues relevant to environmental conservation although they strive after the same goal, that is to safeguard northern nature and ensure sustainable use of biological resources” (Bolshakov and Klokov, 2000). For these and other reasons, since the earliest days of the movement, conservation has been at the center of controversy because of the intense emotional arguments and high stakes involved, coupled with a tendency for invested individuals and groups to lapse into an “us against them” mentality. At the beginning of the 21st century, both “preservationist” and “environmentalist” have come to be considered somewhat derogatory characterizations in many mainstream media. Part of this is due to the difficulty for those outside the debate to distinguish among the multitude of players in the modern arena of environmental conservation. The result is that both radical and moderate activists who demonstrate or otherwise lobby for a cause are often conflated with the lawyers who represent them,

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whose words or ideas, in turn, are often assumed to be those of research scientists whose basic or applied environmental research forms the basis of lobbies. Many of those involved, not least the biologists who strive to conduct “objective” research meant to withstand repeated and duplicable sampling subject to rigorous statistical tests, lament this situation. To be tainted with the subjectivity associated with environmentalism has traditionally been anathema to their academic existence. As a result, there has been an intense debate among conservation biologists about whether to “engage” the public and government authorities more effectively to ascertain that their increasingly critical research findings are not ignored or, even worse, misinterpreted. There is an instinctive fear among practitioners that if they do so they will be branded as “environmentalists” and their reputations as professional scientists will be degraded. The alternative—to let go unnoticed data on which the fate of an endangered habitat or species may rest—is equally unpalatable at this point in time. In the international arena of circumpolar conservation, issues often fall into three groups: shared resources; common concerns; and strategic coordination and support. Despite the circumpolar distribution of much of the northern flora and both marine and terrestrial wildlife, problems arise because of the variety of different approaches and perspectives with regard to conservation. For example, whereas formerly the focus was on the protection of individual species, in recent decades the importance of comprehensive habitat protection has been recognized. The issue of scale is of increasing relevance because the scale at which “nature” is viewed determines the patterns and processes detected. According to conservation biologist Reed Noss, “many of the most persistent controversies in ecology can be traced to different parties viewing a situation at different spatial or temporal scales” (Noss, 1992). Another conflict concerns whether humans are considered as integral components of Arctic ecosystems, as northern indigenous peoples consider themselves, or whether they are external, as “southerners” tend to consider all humans. In keeping with the emphasis on protecting intact habitats and ecosystems, Global 200 is an attempt by the World Wildlife Fund (known as Worldwide Fund for Nature outside North America) to achieve conservation of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems and habitat types (ecoregions) whose biodiversity and representation values are outstanding on a global scale. The 200 ecoregions are ranked as critical or endangered (CE), vulnerable (V) or relatively stable (RS). They observe that although Arctic tundra “may not support the rich communities seen in tropical rainforests or coral reefs, it contains species assemblages

CONSERVATION adapted to distinct environmental conditions that reflect different evolutionary histories. To lose examples of these assemblages, and the ecological processes and evolutionary phenomena they contain, would represent an enormous loss of biodiversity.” Of the five Arctic ecoregions listed in Global 200, two are considered vulnerable: the Alaskan North Slope and Fennoscandian alpine tundra and taiga. In general, Arctic tundra vegetation has low species diversity, simple structure, and low annual productivity. Nonetheless, tundra ecosystems support large populations of wild and semidomestic animals that are highly valued by indigenous and nonnative peoples. Such ecosystems supply critical nesting habitat for immense numbers of shorebirds, waterfowl, and other birds. In addition to terrestrial ecosystems, contemporary conservation conflicts encompass Arctic renewable resources in freshwater and marine ecosystems. Taken together, the main uncertainties and issues include rapid changes in land use, especially impacts of industrial development on subsistence resources; industrial contaminants in renewable resources and consumption by humans; barriers to trade resulting from “animal rights” legislation; securing indigenous rights to subsistence resources and climate change and ozone depletion. According to University of Alaska anthropologist Richard Caulfield, renewable resource conflicts often have less to do with science than with questions of ethics and values. Caulfield has stated, “whose ethics and values will prevail is a major issue. Some stakeholders view the Arctic as a fragile wilderness that must be ‘saved’ at all costs. Others see it as a resource hinterland rich with energy and mineral resources vital to industrial societies to the south. Still others view it as a cultural homeland of indigenous peoples, where cultural preservation and subsistence economies are paramount” (Caulfield, 2000). As mentioned, many of the Arctic’s renewable resources are “shared resources”—meaning that they are shared by two or more northern jurisdictions because (a) the animals migrate across a boundary, (b) hunters cross a boundary to hunt the animals, or (c) the sea or drainage basin extends across a boundary. Only a few of the exploited species spend the entire year in one location, or even within the Arctic, such as hare, muskox, polar bear, and ptarmigan. For this reason, studies often involve cooperation between different nations. For example, Greenland regularly conducts joint research with neighboring Canada, Iceland, and Norway. In marine environments, seals, whales, walrus, polar bear, and other marine mammals are prominent in local economies. Ringed seals, bearded seals, and hooded seals are widely used by hunters for food, clothing and other products, and as a source of cash income. Fish species used by Arctic societies include

salmon and Arctic char. Other Arctic species used locally include Atlantic salmon, lake trout, white fish, pike, and grayling. Marine fish are valued by Arctic societies both for food and as a mainstay for contemporary economic life. Arctic cod is used for domestic consumption but also has a long history of use for commercial purposes. In Greenland, deepwater shrimp is the major source of export income. Arctic residents are concerned about reports that the long-range transport of contaminants contributes to levels 2–10 (or more) times higher in their bodies than in those of residents in temperate regions. Indigenous peoples and others dependent on traditional subsistence diets are especially vulnerable. Even access to subsistence resources can be a problem because of conflicts over rights to land. Dartmouth researcher Gail Osherenko observes that “Russian law emphasizes rights to use lands for ‘traditional activities’—hunting, fishing, reindeer herding, trapping— and calls for protection of lands and resources where such activities occur; but the law does not anticipate transfer of unrestricted rights to indigenous peoples to use lands and resources as they might choose” (Osherenko, 2001). This contrasts with the situation in North America where “transfer of title to vast areas of land has been a primary (though not the sole) means of increasing the control that indigenous peoples have over their own lives.” Another, related difference between Eurasia and North America is the development of comanagement in the latter over the past 20–30 years. Comanagement is defined as a shared decision-making process, formal or informal, between a government authority and a user group for managing a species of fish and wildlife, or other resources. Property rights and comanagement are important because without them indigenous peoples have no authority. Together they have come to be seen, at least in North America, as increasingly necessary for sustainable development. In this way, many researchers have embraced the notion of sustainable development, defined as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Nevertheless, the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) believes that sustainable development is a sensitive issue. Unless it clearly recognizes the rights of indigenous peoples to their territories and control over resources, it can easily become another way of exploiting indigenous peoples and other vulnerable groups. The ICC president, Aqqaluk Lynge, has further argued that “the surest guarantee of long-term environmental protection and sustainable development in the Arctic is to have Inuit on the land hunting, fishing, trapping, and gathering—and acquiring and passing down traditional ecological knowledge and wisdom

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CONSERVATION from one generation to the next. But staying on the land is expensive, for now we use snowmobiles and other modern technology. To continue to hunt, fish, and trap, we must sell our animal products in the world market” (Lynge, 1997). Unfortunately, many animal rights organizations and some governments oppose the consumptive use of wild species, even when the best science available demonstrates that catches are sustainable. Increasingly, conflicts arise because of ethical objections by southerners to the killing of wild animals for subsistence by Arctic residents. Indigenous peoples resent the inference, often coming from environmentalists or preservationists, that they have not been good stewards of the lands they inhabit and that they lack respect toward the animals they have procured for food, clothing, and other products for millennia. In Canada, cultural ecologist George Wenzel has observed that by switching their rationale from “morality” to conservation and back again, the net effect of the activists who drive the debate has been to undermine their own argument. Nonetheless, the Alaska Natives Commission notes that the subsistence debate has profound implications for the future of indigenous peoples and must be treated delicately. In terms of marine resources, there are key differences between mammal and fish populations that have direct relevance for conservation strategies. One is the method of reproduction and thus the recruitment of new animals to the population. Marine mammals generally live longer than fish, but they do not produce as many offspring. Fish spawn enormous numbers of eggs, resulting in great numbers of fry and young fish, but mortality is high in all three stages. Populations of marine mammals are not capable of profiting from favorable conditions in their environment as rapidly as fish stocks. Most importantly for management purposes, estimating populations of either can be difficult. Management of a marine mammal population comprises a number of different goals. For example, the intent may be to maintain hunting at a certain level for the sake of those that live off it or to allow the population to grow to the level at which the greatest surplus can be taken from it. Or the objective may actually be to reduce the population because it negatively affects the exploitation of other resources. Which management strategy is ultimately chosen is usually the result of political considerations based on the advice of biologists and, in certain jurisdictions, local or traditional ecological knowledge, coupled with the interests of trade and industry. Throughout the Arctic, plans to encourage tourism, with its effects on living resources, and to expand mining and oil and gas exploration, which might eventually lead to actual exploitation, will place greater demands

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on nature management in the future. Depletion of ozone is already increasing the amount of ultraviolet radiation reaching the earth’s surface, in particular, the shorter wavelengths that are most damaging to living systems. Renewable resources in the Arctic could also be affected by global climate change. Impacts of climate change are likely to include the melting of ice caps and glaciers and the associated rise in sea levels; changes in winds and water currents; disruption of permafrost due to warmer temperatures; enhanced nutrient cycling due to warmer soils; influxes of new plant and animal species from the south, including pathogens; longer growing seasons; and possibly expanded fisheries.

Organizations Alaska Native Science Commission was created to bring together research and science in partnership with the Native community. It serves as a clearinghouse for proposed research, an information base for ongoing and past research and an archive for significant research information, referral and networking services for researchers seeking active partners in the Native community. http://www.nativescience.org/ American Fisheries Society (AFS) Native Peoples’ Fisheries Section is committed to understanding and encompassing the views of native peoples with regard to fishery and aquatic resources. AFS members include representatives from many Indian Nations and First Nations from the North American continent. http://www.lapratt.com/npfs/ Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP) is an international organization established in 1991 to implement components of the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS). Now a program group of the Arctic Council, AMAP’s current objective is providing reliable and sufficient information on the status of, and threats to, the Arctic environment, and providing scientific advice on actions to be taken in order to support Arctic governments in their efforts to take remedial and preventive actions relating to contaminants. http://www.amap.no/ Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on Alaska’s coastal plain is the focus of debate about oil and gas exploration and development. It is the most northern and one of the largest refuges within America’s National Wildlife Refuge System. The Arctic Refuge is managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. http://arctic.fws.gov/index.htm Beverly and Qamanirjuaq Caribou Management Board is a group of hunters, biologists and wildlife managers working together to conserve Canada’s vast Beverly and Qamanirjuaq caribou herds for the welfare of traditional caribou-using communities and others. http://www.arctic-caribou.com/ Canadian Arctic Resources Committee (CARC) has been a “voice for citizens on the Canadian North for

CONSERVATION over 30 years.” It advocates ecological responsibility in the North and distributes publications such as Northern Perspectives, a policy journal analyzing regional, national and international issues in the North. http://www.carc.org/ Circumpolar Conservation Union (CCU) is dedicated to protecting the ecological and cultural integrity of the Arctic for present and future generations. It works to promote understanding and cooperation among Arctic peoples, environmental organizations and other diverse interests, to raise public awareness of and build a global constituency for the Arctic, and to advocate on behalf of environmental protection, sustainability and human rights to achieve a comprehensive legal and policy regime for the Arctic. http://www.circumpolar.org/ Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) is a Working Group of the Arctic Council. Its mission is to conserve Arctic biodiversity and to ensure that the use of Arctic living resources is sustainable. http://www.caff.is/ Indigenous Peoples’ Secretariat was established to facilitate the involvement of the indigenous peoples of the Arctic in the work within the Arctic Council, including the environment and sustainable development. http://www.arcticpeoples.org/ Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) is the international nongovernmental organization representing approximately 150,000 Inuit living in the Arctic regions of Greenland, Canada, Alaska, and Chukotka. The principal goals of ICC include, among others, to: promote Inuit rights and interests on the international level; ensure and further develop Inuit culture and society for both the present and future generations; develop and encourage long-term policies which safeguard the Arctic environment. http://www.inuitcircumpolar.com/ Program for the Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment (PAME) is one of the five programs of the Arctic Council. PAME was established in 1993 with the mandate to address policy and nonemergency pollution prevention and control measures related to the protection of the Arctic marine environment from both land and sea-based activities. These include coordinated action programs and guidelines complementing existing legal arrangements. http://www.pame.is/ WWF’s Arctic Program works to increase the awareness of decision makers and the general public regarding the global significance of the Arctic through campaigns, environmental education, lobbying, press releases, and newsletters. http://www.ngo.grida.no/wwfap/ WWF Canada’s Arctic Program has a goal that is threefold: to safeguard Arctic wildlife, to protect key habitats, and to reduce toxic contaminants. http://www.wwfcanada.org/en/cons_pgms/cp_arctic. asp

BRUCE FORBES

See also Environmentalism; Impacts of Climate Change; Sustainable Development; Wilderness; Wildlife Management: Environmental Initiatives Further Reading AMAP, Arctic Pollution Issues: A State of The Arctic Environment Report, Oslo: Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, 1997 Andreasen, Claus et al., Nature Conservation in Greenland, Nuuk: Atuakkiorfik, 1991 Bolshakov, N.N. & K.B. Klokov, “Protected Areas in the North of Russia and Problems of Northern Minorities.” In Heritage of the Russian Arctic, edited by B.S. Ebbinge, Yu.L. Mazourov & P.S. Tomkovich, Moscow: Ecopros, 2000, pp. 572–577 Caulfield, Richard A., “Political Economy of Renewable Resources in the Arctic.” In The Arctic: Environment, People, Policy, edited by Mark Nuttall and Terry V. Callaghan, Amsterdam: Harwood, 2000, pp. 485–513 Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF), Arctic Flora and Fauna: Status and Conservation, Helsinki: Edita, 2001 Ebbinge, Barwoult S., Yuri L. Mazourov & P.S. Tomkovich (editors), Heritage of the Russian Arctic; Research, Conservation and International Co-operation, Moscow: Ecopros Publishers, 2000 Forbes, Bruce C., “Reindeer herding and petroleum development on Poluostrov Yamal: sustainable or mutually incompatible uses?” Polar Record, 35, (1999): 317–322. Jørgensen, Mads-Peter Heide, “Modern Hunting—and Research.” In The Ecology of Greenland, edited by Erik W. Born & Jens Böcher, Nuuk: Atuakkiorfik Education, 2001, pp. 365–380 Lynge, Aqqaluk, Remarks to the United Nations Commission for Sustainable Development, 1997, http://www.inuitcircumpolar.com/inter.htm Marsh, George Perkins, Man and Nature, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1864; reprinted Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003 Noss, Reed F. “Issues of Scale in Conservation Biology.” In Conservation Biology: The Theory and Practice of Nature Conservation and Management, edited by Peggy L. Fiedler & Subodh K. Jain, New York: Chapman & Hall, 1992, pp. 239–250 Olson, David M. and Eric Dinerstein, “The global 200: a representation approach to conserving the earth’s most biologically valuable ecoregions.” Conservation Biology, 12 (1998): 502–515 Osherenko, Gail, “Indigenous rights in Russia: is title to land essential for cultural survival?”, Georgetown International Environmental Law Review, 13 (2001): 695–734 Peepre, Juri & Bob Jickling (editors), Northern Protected Areas and Wilderness, Whitehorse: Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society and Yukon College, 1994 Riewe, Richard R. (editor), Nunavut Atlas, Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute and Tungavik Federation of Nunavut, 1992 Smith, Elaine (editor), Sustainable Development through Northern Conservation Strategies, Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1990 Thomassen, Jørn, Winfried Dallmann, Kjell Isaksen, Vladimir Khlebovich & Øystein Wiig, Evaluation of INSROP Valued Ecosystem Components: Protected Areas, Indigenous People, Domestic Reindeer and Wild Reindeer, International Northern Sea Route Programme, INSROP Working Paper No. 112, Lysaker, Norway: Fridtjof Nansen Institute, 1999

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CONTAMINANTS Wenzel, George W., Animal Rights Human Rights: Ecology, Economy and Ideology in the Canadian Arctic, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991 Young, Oran & F. Stuart Chapin III, “Anthropogenic Impacts on Biodiversity in the Arctic.” In Arctic and Alpine Biodiversity: Patterns, Causes and Ecosystem Consequences, edited by F. Stuart Chapin III & Christian Körner, Berlin: Springer, 1995, 183–196

CONTAMINANTS Much of the contamination in the polar region originates from human activities in southern latitudes. A broad range of organic and metal pollutants, acidifying compounds, and radioactive contaminants is carried north by winds, rivers and ocean currents. A second major source of contaminants is from localized areas that are severely contaminated as a direct result of activities within the Arctic. The first comprehensive program to examine levels of anthropogenic pollutants and assess their effects in all the polar countries was undertaken by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP) established in 1991.

Contaminant Sources As described in the entry on Local and Transboundary Pollution, major atmospheric, oceanic, and river pathways converge in the Arctic, delivering contaminants from remote sources and circulating them within the Arctic. These processes are referred to variously as the grasshopper effect, the global distillation hypothesis, and long-range transport. The atmosphere contains relatively few contaminants compared with the total burden in Arctic soil, sediments, and water. It is nonetheless an important pathway to the Arctic and is the fastest route from the source of pollution, delivering contaminants from locations around the world in days or weeks. Ocean currents move more slowly, taking months or years to carry compounds to the Arctic. Industrial impact on the large Russian rivers that originate to the south and discharge into the Arctic (specifically the Ob’ and Yenisey) is considerable. Suspended solids carrying contaminants are deposited in sediment in estuaries, deltas, and on coastal shelves, leading to local and regional dispersal of radionuclides, some heavy metals, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), and oil. There is little industrial impact on Canadian river systems flowing north. Sea ice may be important in transporting contaminants from coastal sediments and from atmospheric deposition. In heavily industrialized parts of the Russian Arctic and in eastern Finnmark (Norway), metal and organic contamination from air emissions and effluent is intense and has had catastrophic ecological impacts in

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some locations. Former military sites in Canada and the United States provide chronic, low-level inputs of some metals and PCBs. Contamination from these local point sources are the second major pollution concern in the Arctic.

Types of Contaminants The following groups of contaminants exist in the Arctic under conditions that are potentially damaging or threatening to certain ecosystems or human health: persistent organic pollutants (POPs), heavy metals, acidifying sulfates and nitrates, petroleum hydrocarbons, and radioactive contaminants. Among the POPs found in the Arctic, the most prevalent in air and snow are pesticides such as DDT, hexachlorocyclohexanes (HCH), and chlordane, and technical products such as PCB mixtures and chlorobenzenes. These are most likely to have traveled from the midlatitudes of the Northern Hemisphere via air currents. The Canada Basin and Canadian Arctic Archipelago have the highest HCH concentrations among the world’s oceans. These are attributed mainly to remote sources. The highest PCB and DDT concentrations in Arctic biota and sea water occur near Svalbard, the southern Barents Sea, and eastern Greenland. A significant contribution to these comes from Russian rivers carrying compounds into Arctic waters from sources further south. PCBs from decommissioned military sites in Canada and dioxins/furans from smelters in Norway are examples of sources within the Arctic. Heavy metal contamination is associated primarily with the combustion of fossil fuels, mining and smelting, and manufacturing industries. Volcanic activity, forest fires, rock weathering, and other natural processes contribute to contaminant levels in the Arctic, but are less significant than anthropogenic releases. Heavy metals emissions in the Urals, Kola Peninsula, Noril’sk, industrial Central and Eastern Europe contribute more than half of the air pollution in the Arctic. Industrial sources in Europe and North America account for up to one-third. The most severe effects from heavy metals result from local pollution. The nickel-copper smelters on the Kola Peninsula and at Noril’sk have severely polluted nearby terrestrial and freshwater environments. Although most of the smelter emissions are deposited close by, they still represent a major source of circumpolar contamination. Emissions from Kola Peninsula are the major source of metals in northern Fennoscandian air, and emissions from the Urals and Noril’sk increase air concentrations over Alaska and northern Canada. Mercury found in lake and ocean sediments comes in part from remote sources, and increasing concentrations may

CONTAMINANTS

Red hot slag from a nickel foundry in Noril’sk is poured onto a heap, Western Siberia, Russia. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

reflect global increases. Anthropogenic sources of mercury within the Arctic are minor on the global scale but may cause local pollution, especially in lakes and rivers. The amount of anthropogenic cadmium that enters the Arctic Ocean from the atmosphere is less than 1% of the cadmium that enters from natural sources, and is mostly from mining in the Kola Peninsula. Petroleum hydrocarbon contamination associated with exploration, development, and the transportation of oil and gas has caused localized contamination. Contributions come from sources within and outside the Arctic, with the highest concentrations occurring at the mouths of the large Russian rivers. Except in a few areas affected by spills, however, the Arctic is relatively free of hydrocarbon contamination. Where spills do occur, effects tend to be more severe and persistent in the Arctic than elsewhere. Outside the Arctic, large releases of petroleum hydrocarbons associated with oil and gas operations have had devastating impacts on local marine ecosystems and bird species. Growth in Arctic oil and gas operations is increasing the risk of similar releases in the Arctic. Acidifying sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from global sources associated with industry, energy production, and transport results in low-level but widespread contamination throughout the Arctic. Within the Arctic these contaminants are produced by nonferrous smelters on the Kola Peninsula and at Noril’sk. The impacts of acidification are apparent in the Kola Peninsula and in a limited area in Norwegian eastern Finnmark. Damage to forests, fish and invertebrates has occurred near the Kola smelters. Extensive

vegetation damage is evident in a region surrounding the smelter of Noril’sk. In specific areas that are particularly sensitive, the effects of acidification from longrange transported pollutants can also be found. In Svalbard, a decreasing trend in air concentrations of sulfates and nitrates is attributed to reductions in European sulfur emissions. Concentrations in the Canadian Arctic and Alaska have not decreased. Soil and freshwater are particularly sensitive to acidification where the soil is acid and shallow. Most of northern Fennoscandia, the northern part of the Kola Peninsula, and parts of the Canadian Shield are vulnerable. Radioactive contamination comes from three primary sources: past atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, releases from European nuclear reprocessing plants (e.g., Sellafield in the UK), and fallout from the Chernobyl accident. Long-range marine transport has resulted in some radioactive accumulations in Arctic sediments. Arctic sources such as dumped nuclear waste, nuclear storage sites, accidents, and underground explosions have led to localized contamination. The greatest concerns about radioactive contamination in the Arctic arise from the consequences in the event of an accident. Radioactive sources, including numerous operating and decommissioned nuclear reactors, are highly concentrated in northwestern Russia, and represent a potential for the release of considerable quantities of radioactive contamination.

Impact of Contaminants For various reasons, relatively low levels of contamination may have a greater impact on the Arctic

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CONTAMINANTS environment than the same levels would have on other environments. Arctic ecosystems have adapted to the harsh conditions of the Arctic in ways that make them unique and more sensitive. Adaptation to cold, for example, gives fat a more dominant role in the metabolism of Arctic animals, resulting in the transfer of larger quantities of lipids and fat-soluble compounds up the food chain. Thus, the potential for low concentrations of fat-soluble environmental contaminants to accumulate and have effects at the top of the food chain increases. Some indigenous peoples who rely on a traditional diet are consequently among the most exposed in the world to certain contaminants. The rate of biological productivity is limited under Arctic conditions, affecting attenuation processes such as microbial degradation. This is important, for example, in evaluating the significance of metal and petroleum hydrocarbon contaminants, which are detoxified or degraded by natural processes in more temperate environments. POPs are similar in that they are unusually resistant to degradation and are fat-soluble. Among the most persistent of these are the organochlorines, which resist degradation in virtually any environment. Although the concentrations of POPs are generally lower in the Arctic than anywhere else, the distribution varies and high levels accumulate in some biological species. Food chains provide the biological links for uptake, transfer, and sometimes magnification of contaminants by plants and animals. The more hydrophobic organochlorines partition quickly onto soil and plant surfaces, from which they are assimilated in the food chain through diet. The most persistent are found in predatory birds and mammals high up in the food chain, with various compounds dominating in different species, depending on metabolism capabilities. For example, PCBs, chlordane, and DDT reach high concentrations in seals. In polar bears, PCBs and chlordane continue to accumulate but DDT is metabolized, leaving only traces. In some Arctic species, DDT and dioxin-like compounds are present in concentrations that are likely to produce effects. For humans, food is the major exposure route to contaminants in the Arctic. While reductions in production have caused a decline in the environmental levels of some Arctic contaminants, lower human exposure is not yet evident for many contaminants. Since the ban on above-ground nuclear weapons testing in the 1960s, human exposure to radionuclides has generally declined. Populations that rely on country food from cadmium-rich areas may have very high cadmium intakes. The degree of mercury and cadmium uptake in mammals varies geographically, possibly due to differences in diet or processes related to temperature, or the contamination may be introduced to

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the food chain through returning migratory species that acquire high contaminant burdens in the South. The first controls on POPs began 25 years ago. Since then, Arctic levels have declined in the environment but have not decreased in people with traditional diets. In certain geographic areas, human exposure to mercury, cadmium, and organic contaminants including toxaphene, PCBs, and chlordane is high enough to indicate a need for public health measures. It is not obvious what approach should be taken to reduce exposure. Changes to current patterns of traditional food consumption have not been recommended because, while the health-promoting effects of this diet are well documented, the associated risks are not, and there is no convincing evidence of adverse health effects. Evaluation of the risks is complicated because there are both scientific and social issues that must be taken into account. The levels of many contaminants in the Arctic are likely to remain at or close to existing levels for decades. For the most part, local and regional contamination can be reduced through legislation and with adequate financial and technological resources. Where contamination is part of a global process, long-term reductions can only be achieved through continuing global reforms. ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES GROUP, ROYAL MILITARY COLLEGE OF CANADA See also Heavy Metals; Hydrocarbon Contamination; Local and Transboundary Pollution; Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs); Radioactivity

Further Reading AMAP, Arctic Pollution Issues. A State of the Arctic Environment Report, Oslo, Norway: Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, 1997 Assessment and Remediation of Contaminated Sites in Arctic and Cold Climates (ARCSACC), Proceedings of the 2001 Workshop, Edmonton, Canada: ARCSACC, 2001 Bernhoft, A., O. Wilig, & J.U. Skaare, “Organochlorines in polar bears (Ursus maritimus) at Svalbard.” Environmental Pollution, 95(2) (1997): 159–175 Gubala, C.P., D.H. Landers, M. Monetti, M. Heit, T. Wade, B. Lasorsa & S. Allen-Gil, “The rates of accumulation and chronologies of atmospherically derived pollutants in Arctic Alaska, USA.” Science of the Total Environment, 161 (1995): 347–361 Hansen, J.R. (editor), The State of the European Arctic Environment, Copenhagen: European Environment Agency, 1996 Jensen, J., K. Adare & R. Shearer (editors), Canadian Arctic Contaminants Assessment Report, Ottawa: Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 1997 Kirk, Elizabeth J. (editor), Assessing the Risks of Nuclear and Chemical Contamination in the Former Soviet Union, NATO ASI Series, New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996

CONVENTION FOR THE PROTECTION OF THE MARINE ENVIRONMENT Layton. D., R. Edson& B. Napier, Radionuclides in the Arctic Seas from the Former Soviet Union: Potential Health and Ecological Risks, Office of Naval Research, USA: Arctic Nuclear Assessment Program (ANWAP), 1997 MacDonald, R.W. et al., “Contaminants in the Canadian Arctic: 5 years of progress in understanding sources, occurrence and pathways.” Science of the Total Environment, 254(2–3) (2000): 93–234 Reimer, K.J., D.A. Bright, W.T. Dushenko, S.L. Grundy & J.S. Poland, The Environmental Impact of the DEW Line on the Canadian Arctic, Ottawa, Canada: Director General Environment, Department of National Defence, 1993 Yablokov, A.V. (editor), Russian Arctic: On the Brink of a Catastrophe, Sophia: Pensoft Publishers, 1996

CONVENTION FOR THE PROTECTION OF THE MARINE ENVIRONMENT OF THE NORTH-EAST ATLANTIC (OSPAR) The Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR) unified and updated the 1972 Oslo Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping from Ships and Aircraft, and the 1974 Paris Convention for the Prevention of Marine Pollution from Land-based Sources. The OSPAR Convention is a framework agreement that covers obligations to prevent and eliminate pollution from land-based sources, from dumping and incineration, and from offshore sources, and broader issues of scientific research, access to information, reporting, compliance, and regionalization. The objectives of the Convention are twofold: first, to safeguard human health, to conserve marine ecosystems and, where practical, restore marine areas that have been adversely affected. Second, the Convention takes all possible steps to prevent and eliminate pollution and to enact measures to protect the sea area against the adverse effects of human activities. The geographic maritime area covered by OSPAR includes the North-East Atlantic (westward to the east coast of Greenland and southward to the Strait of Gibraltar) including the North Sea. The Convention also comprises the internal waters and territorial sea of the contracting parties, as well as the sea beyond and adjacent to the territorial sea that is under the jurisdiction of the coastal state to the extent recognized by international law, and extends to the high seas, including the bed and subsoil. Several international incidents heightened public awareness of the problems of marine pollution in the postwar period. In 1967, the tanker Torry Canyon accident resulted in the contaminating spillage of 30 million gallons of crude oil. Just four years later in 1971 the Stella Maris, a Dutch freighter loaded with chemical waste, prepared to dump its cargo in the Northern North Sea. The United Nations Conference

on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972, provided the impetus for an international conference on regulations for dumping waste at sea. As a result, the Oslo Convention for the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping from Ships and Aircraft was concluded and signed in Oslo on February 15, 1972. The momentum pushed the same states to create the Paris Convention for the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Land-based Sources in 1974. The OSPAR Convention was adopted on September 22, 1992 at the first Ministerial Meeting of the Oslo and Paris Commissions, held primarily to merge the 1972 Oslo Convention and the 1974 Paris Convention. The Oslo Convention regulated ocean dumping and incineration, while the Paris Convention addressed marine pollution from land-based sources, including coastal areas and river basins, from the air and atmosphere, and from offshore oil and gas activities. The purpose of the OSPAR Convention was to create a comprehensive regime in a single legal instrument for the protection of the marine environment of the NorthEast Atlantic. A single OSPAR Commission, serviced by a single secretariat identical to the old joint secretariat, replaces the Oslo and Paris Commissions. Compared to the previous conventions, perhaps the most important aspects of the new Convention include the increased scope of coverage, the inclusion of the precautionary principle, the incorporation of best available techniques (BAT), and best environmental practice (BEP). Incorporating these provisions into the Convention gives them legally binding status, the possibility of permitting nongovernmental organizations to participate in subsidiary bodies, and the competence of the Commission to adopt legally binding decisions. The OSPAR Convention represents nearly 30 years of cooperation among all the coastal states of the North. The main themes of the Convention include “the importance of the marine environment, the need for international cooperation to protect it, the developments in international law that led to Part XII (Protection and Preservation of the Marine Environment) of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the need for more stringent measures in a regional context than are provided in conventions with a global scope, the consequent need for a new convention that addresses all sources of pollution of the marine environment, and the adverse effects of human activities upon it.” The OSPAR Convention came into force on March 25, 1998. Its contracting parties are Belgium, Denmark, the European Union (EU), Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

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CONVENTION ON INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN ENDANGERED SPECIES (CITES) The main work of the OSPAR Commission has been the implementation of five strategies dealing with hazardous substances, radioactive substances, eutrophication, the environmental impacts of the offshore oil and gas industry, the protection of the marine ecosystem and biodiversity, and the maintenance of a joint assessment and monitoring program. With the increasing influence of the EU, considerable overlap exists between the EU and OSPAR, leading to duplication between these and other organizations such as the International Conferences for the Protection of the North Sea and the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. Although scientists have conducted a great deal of research in this region, the need for additional data is still a crucial precursor to management. Despite the scope of the Convention, it does not deal with fishing, one of the greatest threats to biodiversity and marine ecosystems. And while the Convention introduced the contemporary precautionary and polluter pays principle into environmental protection in the region, it does not specifically address issues associated with coastal development. SHANNON BENTLEY See also Pollution: Environmental Initiatives; Pollution: Research Programs

Further Reading Andresen, S., T. Skodvin, A. Underdal & J. Wettestad, “Scientific” Management of the Environment? Science, Politics and Institutional Design, Lysaker: Fridtjof Nansens Institute, 1994 Czybulka, D. & P. Kersandt, Legal Regulations, Legal Instruments and Competent Authorities with Relevance for Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and the High Seas of the OSPAR Maritime Area, Bonn: Bundesamt fur Naturschutz, 2000 Dotinga, H., “Conservation of Biological Diversity in the North Sea: The Role of the OSPAR Convention,” People and the Sea: Maritime Research in the Social Sciences—An Agenda for the 21st Century, MARE Conference Proceedings, 2001 Gosseries, A., “Marine pollution in the north sea: the position in international law.” European Environmental Law Review, 3(2) (1994): 53–63 Hey, E., “The precautionary approach: implications of the revision of the Oslo and Paris conventions.”Marine Policy, 15(4) (1991): 244–254 Hey, E., T. Ijlstra & A. Nollkaemper, “The 1992 Paris Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North East Atlantic: a critical analysis.” The International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law, 8(1) (1993): 1–76 OSPAR Commission website, http://www.ospar.org/eng/html/ welcome.html Pallemaerts, M., “The North Sea and Baltic Sea land-based sources regimes: reducing toxics or rehashing rhetoric?” International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law, 13 (1998): 421

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Plasman, C., “The state of the environment of the North Sea.”” International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law, 13 (1998): 325 Schmidt-van Dorp, A.D., Comments and Suggestions from the World Wide Fund for Nature to the Draft Text of the “Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North East Atlantic,” Godalming: WWF International (North Sea Programme), 1992 Wettestad, J., “The effectiveness of the Paris Convention on Marine Pollution from Land-based Sources.” International Environmental Affairs, 4(2) (1992): 101–121

CONVENTION ON INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN ENDANGERED SPECIES (CITES) The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) is an international agreement regulating trade in certain species of wild animals and plants, as well as their parts and derivatives. Approved in 1973 in Washington, DC, CITES came into effect in 1975. With more than 150 parties, it is one of the largest conservation agreements. States comply voluntarily, although the Convention is legally binding upon its parties, who must adopt national legislation to implement it. CITES was originally aimed at developing countries, where wildlife trade is important to supplement peoples’ income but where it was often unregulated. The annual global trade in wildlife and plants is now worth billions of dollars, involving hundreds of millions of specimens. CITES seeks to stop trade in endangered species, but also to prevent other species from becoming endangered. The Convention regulates import, export, and transport of species and their products. Over 30,000 species are now listed, in three appendices that indicate the degree of their vulnerability. Appendix I species are rare or endangered; trade is not permitted except in certain circumstances. Appendix II species could become rare or endangered if trade were not regulated; trade in these species must be accompanied by permits from the exporting country. Appendix III species are not endangered, but they are managed within the listing nation, and trade is also controlled by permits. Permits are issued only for legally traded specimens, and if they are traded or transported live, only if the specimen will be shipped so as to ensure health and humaneness. The implication of CITES for Arctic peoples is that while it responds to a real need in global biodiversity conservation, it can reflect the value-differences that pervade the debates about aboriginal uses of wildlife. Northern hunting products and by-products, such as furs, ivory, and whalebone all require CITES permits to enter the European Economic Community, even though they may not come from endangered populations. Animal rights activists are increasingly influencing CITES decisions, with the controversial

COOK, FREDERICK elephant ivory ban in 1989 serving as a warning to Arctic peoples that even well-managed harvests of charismatic animals (such as certain African countries’ elephant herds) are subject to closure as if they are unsustainable. Conservation biologists recognize that most species extinctions occur as a result of habitat loss rather than hunting. Given the nature of land use in the Arctic regions, such habitat loss is unlikely, except in certain locales/seasons such as, perhaps, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or the Yamal Peninsula gas fields, where calving caribou or migrating reindeer may be affected. Of the relatively few Arctic species listed as threatened, endangered or vulnerable, most are whales or marine mammals that were brought to that status by nonnative or southern resource exploitation. The Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK, formerly Inuit Tapirisat of Canada) monitors CITES activities to ensure that only those species that are really endangered become listed. ITK notes no immediate conflicts between Inuit and CITES, but that beluga whales in certain regions of the Arctic and walrus are being monitored by CITES and therefore by the Inuit. Should these species be listed, it could seriously affect Inuit livelihoods. The Inuit Circumpolar Conference response to CITES, in its Comprehensive Arctic Policy, states clearly that Inuit will watch the scope and intent of CITES rulings: ... Inuit should continue to monitor and otherwise participate at CITES meetings. In this way, unjustified attempts to use the Convention to unfairly restrict native harvesting and trade may be effectively countered ...

The continuing significance of whales, polar bears, seals, and other marine mammals to Inuit, as a coastal aboriginal people, must be appropriately recognized. HEATHER MYERS Further Reading CITES website: www.cites/org/eng/whatis.shtml Checklist of CITES Species: A Reference to the Appendices to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora 1998, WCMC, Cambridge: WCMC, Geneva: CITES Secretariat, 1998 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna, Washington, March 3, 1973. London: Her Majesty’s Parliament, 1973 Hemley, Ginette (editor), International Wildlife Trade: A CITES Sourcebook, Washington, District of Columbia: World Wildlife Fund/Island Press, 1994 Text of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora: signed March 3, 1973; entered into force July 1, 1975, US Fish and Wildlife Service; Office of Management Authority, Arlington, Virginia,1997

COOK, FREDERICK Frederick Cook, the American polar explorer, volunteered for Robert Peary’s North Greenland Arctic expedition shortly after passing his medical exams in1889. Peary offered Cook a position as expedition surgeon and the expedition sailed in June 1891, establishing a base on the western coast of Greenland near Whale Sound. Cook impressed Peary with his stamina, calm temperament, and positive attitude. Confident of Cook’s abilities as a leader and explorer, Peary placed Cook in charge of his base camp while he trekked across the interior ice of Greenland to Independence Bay (82° N latitude). Cook’s experiences in the Arctic with Peary whetted his appetite for further polar voyaging. When the expedition returned home in 1892, Cook worked to return to the polar regions as soon as possible. In 1893, he joined the Zeta expedition which sailed up the northwest coast of Greenland. In 1894, he organized the Miranda expedition which reached Greenland only to be aborted when Miranda struck a reef off Sukkertoppen (now called Maniitsoq). From 1897 to 1899, Cook sailed with the Belgian Antarctic Expedition aboard the Belgica. There he met and became friends with Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. When the Beligica became the captive of Antarctic pack ice, scurvy soon broke out among the crew. Cook ordered them to eat raw penguin meat, an action that helped keep the deadly disease at bay. Cook’s actions and cheerful spirit earned him the respect of fellow expedition members. “Cook was the most popular man of the expedition,” Amundsen declared, “and he deserved it.” After his return from the Antarctic, Cook increasingly treated exploration as a professional rather than a vocational interest. He published a book on his Antarctic expedition, went on an extensive lecture tour, and toured England meeting with other polar explorers such as Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton. Although Cook attempted a less itinerant life, he dropped everything when presented with the opportunity to return to the Arctic. In 1902, he joined a relief expedition organized by the Peary Arctic Club. In 1903, he attempted to climb Mt McKinley (Denali) in Alaska. Although unsuccessful, it raised interest in his second bid for the summit in 1906. Cook returned from this trip claiming to have reached the summit of McKinley, a feat for which he was honored by the press and the National Geographic Society. In 1907, Cook embarked on the most significant and controversial voyage of his career, an expedition to reach the North Pole. When he left for the Arctic, Cook made no announcement of his goal, sailing instead as the guest of the wealthy big-game hunter, John Bradley. Thus, press and public were taken by 437

COOK, FREDERICK surprise when, in September 1909, Cook emerged from Northern Greenland claiming to have reached the polar axis. He reported that he and two Inuit Greenlanders, Etukishuk (or Ittukusuk) and Ahwelah (or Apilak), had crossed Ellesmere Land in 1908, and sledged up the coast of Axel Heiberg Land. From there, he claimed that they crossed the Polar Sea and reached the polar axis on April 22, 1908. Although many reporters and explorers praised Cook’s achievement, others waited for more proof. Demands for evidence grew louder when Robert Peary, returning from his own North Pole expedition, claimed discovery of the North Pole and dismissed Cook as a fraud. The controversy which ensued cast doubt on the claims of both explorers. At first, the American press and public generally supported Cook’s account, viewing Peary’s attack to be the result of his frustration at losing the North Pole race to Cook. Peary supporters did not help his case by criticizing Cook’s extraordinary rate of travel or his failure to bring qualified witnesses to the North Pole, charges that applied equally well to Peary’s expedition. Nevertheless, even Cook’s supporters became increasingly frustrated with his failure to provide convincing evidence that would refute Peary’s charges. The tide of popular support turned against Cook in October 1909 when a member of his 1906 McKinley expedition, Edward Barrill, reported that he had collaborated with Cook to fake his ascent of the mountain. In December 1909, Cook attempted to bolster his case by presenting a set of records to Danish officials in the hope that they would verify his North Pole claim. The Danes concluded, however, that Cook’s records did not contain “any proof whatsoever of Dr. Cook having reached the North Pole.” Although Peary’s records also contained significant errors and omissions, they were quickly accepted by a National Geographic Society committee sympathetic to Peary, an action which solidified his public standing as the rightful discoverer of the North Pole. Most exploration scholars today dismiss Cook’s claim to be the discoverer of the North Pole. To be sure, Cook demonstrated great skill as an explorer, possessed extraordinary physical stamina, and cultivated close relationships with fellow Inuit explorers. Yet even if such qualities offered sufficient means for Cook to reach the North Pole, he lacked the navigational skills necessary to find his goal. As Robert Bryce has convincingly argued, Cook’s writings show that he had precious little knowledge of navigational equipment. Moreover, his writings suggest that he did not understand how to calculate his geographical position from his astronomical observations. The absence of such observations and calculations proved critical in the rejection of his claim by the 1909 Copenhagen

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Committee. Even when Cook published tables of his “original” observations two years later in his narrative My Attainment of the Pole (1911), they were in error. In 1915, Cook sought to reestablish his credibility as an explorer by ascending Mt Everest. The outbreak of World War I prevented him from reaching the Himalayas, however, and he spent most of his time traveling through Borneo. Cook then pursued interests closer to home, entering the oil business, where he used his name to raise capital for petroleum exploration. In 1923, Federal authorities indicted Cook for mail fraud, charging that he had made numerous false claims about his business in promotions sent to investors. Cook was sentenced to 14 years in prison, but was paroled in March 1930 after serving six years in Leavenworth Penitentiary. After his release, Cook continued to defend his claim to discovery of the North Pole.

Biography Frederick Cook was born on June 10, 1865 in Hortonville, New York, the son of German immigrants Theodor Albrecht Koch and Magdalena Long. Cook was only four years old when his father died, an event that forced Cook’s mother and older brothers find work to support their family. They moved to Port Jervis in 1878 and soon afterwards to New York City. There Cook found work delivering milk, eventually building his delivery service into a full-scale business with his brothers. In 1887, Cook enrolled in medical school at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. He married Libby Forbes in 1889, but she died in childbirth the following year. In 1902, he married Marie Hunt. They had two children, Ruth and Helen. He died in New Rochelle, New York on August 5, 1940. MICHAEL F. ROBINSON

Further Reading Frederick Cook Papers, Washington, District of Columbia: Library of Congress Robert Peary Papers, Peary Family Collection, Maryland: National Archives Bryce, Robert, Cook and Peary: The Polar Controversy, Resolved, Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1997 Cook, Frederick To the Top of the Continent, New York: Doubleday, Page, and Co., 1908 Cook, Frederick, My Attainment of the Pole, New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1911 Herbert, Wally The Noose of Laurels: Robert Peary and the Race to the North Pole, New York: Atheneum, 1989 Peary, Robert, North Pole: Its Discovery in 1909 Under the Auspices of the Peary Arctic Club, New York: Frederick Stokes Company, 1910

COOK, JAMES

COOK, JAMES The three expeditions led by James Cook developed during the second great age of European exploration, a new intellectual frontier demarcated by the insights of the Scientific Revolution. The Cook expeditions were arguably the first journeys dedicated not to trade or romantic exploration exclusively, but whose primary goal was to advance scientific knowledge. But the context that led to the Cook expeditions also involved the influence of the wealthy Sir Joseph Banks, who worked toward the professionalization of naturalists. Through the Royal Society of London, the premier scientific institution in England, Banks selected Cook, a commissioned naval officer, to lead a scientific journey to observe the 1768 transit of Venus in Tahiti. The second expedition, 1772–1775, found him circumnavigating Antarctica—and upon his return England celebrated Cook as a national hero. For his third expedition Cook sailed the North Pacific, attempting to discover the fabled North West Passage. But a component of all his orders was to collect specimens so that naturalists could establish an ontology for the discovered lands—an integral aspect of imperialism. Cook and his crew left England in July 1776 in the Resolution and Discovery, just before King George III received the Declaration of Independence from American colonists. On his ships were eight officers and 102 men, as well as two highly erroneous maps of the region, one by Gerhard Müller and one by von Stählin. They became the first Europeans to make contact with Hawaii, and then sailed north to what is today the Canadian Pacific Northwest: Nootka Sound at Vancouver Island, British Columbia. After a month Cook proceeded north, encountering southeastern Alaska on May 1. On May 12, they reached Kayak Island; at Cape Hinchinbrook they encountered their first group of Alaska natives in their umiaks, or kayaks. After exchanging gifts, Cook’s ship left amid fog to Snug Corner Cove, where they traded furs with more natives. Cook and his artists tried to understand the relationship between these people and other races; the Englishmen compared them most with the Chinese rather than either the natives at Nootka Sound or Greenlandic Eskimo with similar craft. Cook named many physical features, such as the volcanic Mt Edgecumbe, as well as Cross Sound and Cape Fairweather, and estimated the height of Mt Saint Elias. The party was constantly under pressure to push northward, yet their goal necessitated they explore every nook for a possible mouth to the North West Passage. All along the southern coast, however, were many such promising nooks, bodies such as the later-named Prince William Sound and Cook Inlet. To determine whether this body of water was the entrance

Vintage print depicting Captain James Cook’s third expeditions (Resolution and Discovery) to the Bering Strait. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

to the North West Passage, Cook sent Master William Bligh to explore Knik Arm, and Lieutenant King to the mouth of Turnagain Arm to claim the land for England. After the persistent fog lifted on May 26, Cook determined that the inlet was not a part of the North West Passage, and after much delay sailed northward, along the Alaskan Peninsula through the Shumagin Islands. Close to Unga Island, natives again met the ship in their umiaks and gave Cook a note written in Russian. However, very little knowledge of Russian eastern expansion had penetrated Western Europe by the time Cook sailed; thus, he did not have the foresight to employ a Russian speaker on his crew—this shortcoming troubled all subsequent communications with the local population, Aleut and Russian alike. They sailed on through the Sanak Islands, and then encountered Mt Shishaldin, the large volcano on Unimak Island. On June 25, the party landed for a few days at Unalaska Island; the Aleut village there was the first they were able to explore since coming to Alaska. Soon the party headed into the fog of Bristol Bay; when the fog lifted, the men wrote that the landscape was depressing. By August 9, they reached what would be known as Bering Strait; however, Cook thought the land to the west was an island, not Russia. Through the strait they sailed northeast, struggling against the ice, finally being forced to turn back at Icy Cape, Alaska, just over

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CO-OPERATIVES 70° N. They attempted to go west, north of Siberia, but here too the ice prohibited the ships’ progress. The ships returned to Unalaska for three weeks, their longest sojourn in Alaska; the crew made many trips to shore, attempting to communicate with the Aleuts. The Englishmen determined that the Russians had impressed the Aleuts into service, and although crew members wrote about the Aleut traditional homes, or barabaras, with distain, John Webber sketched many exotic portraits and lush panoramas. On October 10, they met Russian mariners engaged in the fur trade; the head of the fur factory then helped Cook reconcile his maps with Russian maps and this, combined with their encounter with the Siberian Chukchi, convinced Cook that the western land at the strait was Asia. On October 20, Cook sent a sketch of Alaska along with his letter to the Admiralty, upon which the later 1784 published map would be based. Cook’s party left Unalaska for the Hawaiian Islands in late October, and before he could return north for a second season in the Arctic, he was killed in a minor scuffle in February 1779. Unlike his other two South Pacific trips, Cook had both little time and immense language barriers—factors that greatly inhibited an account broaching the detail of his other expeditions. John Webber’s drawings accompanied the 1784 official publication of Cook’s journals, a three-volume set that juxtaposed the south seas expeditions with the northern. But the journals of Cooks’ crew would also be published, including those of John Rickman, John Ledyard, and William Ellis. All would be highly influential in the conception of the Arctic. Although the North West Passage had not been achieved, Cook’s voyage inspired further exploration. For example, George Vancouver, a midshipman on Cook’s journey, led a 1794 exploration to be sure that Cook Inlet was not the mouth of the North West Passage. But perhaps the most direct impact that Cook’s third journey had was to communicate to western Europe the extent of Russian eastern expansion— and especially the wealth of the fur trade. By the 1790s, many expeditions had therefore been launched to engage in this trade along the Northwest Coast and southern Alaska, lasting well into the 19th century.

Biography James Cook was born on October 27, 1728 to James Sr. and Grace Pace Cook in Marton-in-Cleveland, England. The son of laborers, James Jr. received his primary education in exchange for chores at the home of his tutor. Later when his father became a farm manager, he attended the Postgate School at Ayton. By 1745, he was a shop-boy in Staithes, but soon became a merchant seaman largely in the coal trade; ten years

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later he volunteered for the Navy. As a sailing master Cook charted the approach to Québec City via the St Lawrence River in 1758, and by the age of 34 rose to the rank of Captain, marrying Elizabeth Batts in 1762. Cook sailed again to Newfoundland each summer season, from 1763 to 1767, spending most winters back in England with his growing family. In the summer of 1768, the Admiralty sent Cook on the first of what would be known as his three great voyages, the first to observe the transit of Venus at Tahiti, in the South Pacific. From 1772 to 1775 Cook circumnavigated Antarctica. Then in 1776 he began his final journey, landing in what he named the Sandwich Islands, but what is known today as the islands of Hawaii. From Hawaii, Cook attempted to discover the North West Passage, sailing through Bering Strait, but returned to Hawaii for the winter of 1778–1779. In February during a minor scuffle, Cook died, but the Admiralty published the narrative of his journey in 1784. ANNETTE WATSON Further Reading Beaglehole, J.C. editor, The Journals of Captain Cook on his Voyages of Discovery, Volume III, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961 Beaglehole, J.C., The Life of Captain James Cook, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974 Clayton, Daniel, Islands of Truth: The Imperial Fashioning of Vancouver Island, Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 2000 Grove, Richard, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995 Haycox, Stephen & Barnett, James, Enlightenment and Exploration in the North Pacific, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997 Ledyard, John, A Journal of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, and in Quest of a North-West Passage, Between Asia and America: Performed in the Years 1776, 1777, 1778 and 1779; Illustrated with a Chart, Shewing the Tracts of the Ships Employed in this Expedition…, Hartford: Nathaniel Patten, 1783 Mackay, David, In the Wake of Cook: Exploration, Science, and Empire, 1780–1801, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1985 Rickman, John, Journal of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, New York: Da Capo Press, 1967 (reprint of 1781 edition) Shalkop, Antoinette editor, Exploration in Alaska: Captain Cook Commemorative Lectures, June—November 1978, Anchorage, Alaska: Cook Inlet Historical Society, 1980

CO-OPERATIVES Arctic aboriginal peoples relied upon spontaneous cooperation within families and bands for survival, whether it was in jointly fishing the mouth of a river or hunting seals on an ice pack. To many observers outside of the Arctic, this “natural” co-operative tendency

CO-OPERATIVES suggested that Arctic peoples tended embrace formal co-operative enterprises in their economic and social development as if by design. The extent to which such observations were correct remains unclear, although the concept does make some rather glib assumptions about the relationship between custom and institutionalized behavior. The formal co-operative movement began in the industrializing nations of Europe in the 19th century, but it was not until the 1950s that southern countries controlling the Arctic regions began seriously— although unevenly—to foster co-operatives in their northern territories and dependencies. It was part of a growing consciousness in many European and North American countries that the North was strategically important, that there were lingering questions of sovereignty despite centuries of incursions, that they contained vitally important resources, and that the southern governments had social and economic responsibilities to their northern citizens. It was also a natural extension into the northern reaches of the development theories of the time. Elsewhere in the world, experts in economic development, within such organizations as the United Nations and the emerging international development community, were turning to co-operatives as formal, legally incorporated institutions as an effective tool of community enrichment and individual empowerment. Although there were some efforts by the Scandinavians to develop co-operatives among the Saami, and others by the Americans among the “Eskimos,” the main efforts were made in Canada and Greenland. In Canada, the government began discussing the possibility of co-op development as a way to mobilize the northern aboriginal art industry that had first become an export trade under the Hudson’s Bay Company. That possibility was promoted by James Houston, one of the first Canadian artists to visit the region, the established southern Canadian co-operative movement, the Canadian Handicrafts Guild (which helped in the early years to organize the trade) and officials within the then Department of Northern Affairs. Houston made his greatest contribution in Dorset where, along with his wife Alma and others, he helped nurture a strong traditional commitment to artistic endeavor into a viable art community. The first legally incorporated co-operatives were established at George River and Port Burwell in 1959, originally to develop the fishing industry and to encourage the production of Inuit art for sale in the south and overseas. During the next two decades, government officials established over 70 co-operatives in the Canadian North, one in almost every community of significance. The driving force behind this development was a group of committed officials within the

Department of Northern Affairs, notably Don Snowden, Aleks Sprudz, and Paul Godt, the latter two with considerable experience within the European cooperative movement. They focused first on the communities of the Ungava region and Baffin Island, but soon gave their attention to other regions as well. They worked through the Development Officers that the Department appointed to the region and also locally with Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers, missionaries, and schoolteachers. In a sense then, co-ops were part of the southern expansion into the region that became a feature of Northern Canadian history from the 1950s onward. The most celebrated part of the northern co-op business was the development of the art industry, and its most prominent proponents were Houston and Snowden. The industry, in fact, was largely controlled through the co-operatives, which undertook training of Inuit artists and craftspeople in southern art media, the on-site evaluation of the art, its marketing in the South, and its promotion within art circles Infait, in the 1960s, Inuit art became the most common forms of Canadian art presented to visiting royalty and other prominent dignitaries. It also became increasingly diverse, moving beyond the original ivory and stone carvings to include prints, embroidery, wall hangings, calendars, and parkas. It engaged the interest of women and men in nearly every community, becoming one of the few exports small enough to be shipped in quantity and attractive to enough to compete in the international art markets. The development of the art business was also particularly satisfying to both buyers and Inuit: it chronicled the past and the religious views of some of the most thoughtful Inuit; it was a comforting reminder of who they were as a people, a way to record their stories and experiences, and a reflection of the changes they were experiencing. The co-operatives, however, quickly became far more than institutions for the development of the art industries: they became essential instruments for other kinds of economic development as well. In most northern communities the only retail outlets had been those provided by the Hudson’s Bay Company. This monopoly had led to charges of price gouging and some resentments, meaning that northerners, including both aboriginal people and southern sojourners, welcomed the entry of the co-ops into the consumer goods retail trade. It was one way to monitor expenses and to assure fair prices. Gradually, two networks of co-ops emerged, one in Nunavik (Nouveau Québec) the other in the northern reaches of what was then called the Northwest Territories. The stores were developed first among Inuit, largely because officials in Northern Affairs were far more supportive of co-operatives than their

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CO-OPERATIVES colleagues in Indian Affairs, some of whom had had difficult time trying to establish co-ops among southern Amerindians. In time, though, co-ops did start to emerge in essentially Dene, Cree, and Innu communities as well. As the co-ops developed, they imitated the practice of co-operatives elsewhere and formed federations, La fédération des cooperatives du Nouveau Québec in 1974 and Arctic Co-operatives, created in 1984 by amalgamating the Canadian Arctic Co-operative Federation, an educational and lobbying organization, and Canadian Arctic Producers, which marketed northern products in the south. The federations performed a variety of functions, including the ongoing marketing of art, but more importantly the complicated purchasing of supplies and their delivery into the northern communities. They also provided extensive training for Inuit in how to operate businesses and conduct meetings. Many Inuit political and business leaders were trained first by the co-ops, who early developed training programs taking northern aboriginal leaders south to Québec City, Montréal, and Saskatoon. The co-ops also played an important role in the development of northern and northern aboriginal consciousness. During the 1960s, they sponsored some of the first Arctic regional meetings of Inuit, bringing together representatives from both the Eastern and Western Arctic. During the 1970s and 1980s they provided one of the first successful pan-Arctic structures for Inuit, one of the few opportunities that existed for creating a regional Inuit consciousness. The two federations, however, developed somewhat differently. In Nunavik, where the communities were relatively close together, a dynamic leader, Peter Murdoch emerged, and the model of the Québec cooperative movement, notably its powerful co-operative banking movement, Mouvement Desjardins, stressed a strong central organization. The result was a federation with strong central direction, one that characteristically assumed responsibility for many of the key business decisions for all the co-ops and provided considerable direction to local co-op boards and managers. In contrast, the co-ops in the rest of the Canadian Arctic, scattered across a large region and among quite diverse communities, reflected the cooperative traditions of the Anglophone co-operative movement in the South; it developed a weak federation at first, one that provided an immense challenge for its leaders, notably Andrew Goussaert and Bill Lyell, who emerged in the 1970s as the most important co-operative leaders in the region. One consequence of this difference has been that the decentralized movement in the old Northwest Territories has placed great pressures on its managers,

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requiring the kind of diverse training in business practice that few aboriginal people possess—and once gained means that they can demand better salaries and fringe benefits in the public service or in private business. The result has been that it has always been simpler to bring managers from the South, usually on short-term assignments, to run the co-ops. In contrast, the more centralized system in Nunavik was less demanding of local managers, meaning that greater permanence of managers has been possible and the roles of Inuit in managing them has been more clearcut and more secure. The contributions of both federations, however, have been vitally important in explaining the successes of the northern co-operatives. Over the years they have been significant employers of Inuit, typically distributing that employment so that many families benefit, and accommodating the desires of people to live on the land for portions of the year. Moreover, Inuit (and gradually other aboriginal peoples) have overwhelmingly dominated the boards of the co-ops, so much so that there is doubt as to where co-ops as reflections of northern identity and aboriginal consciousness end and their roles as characteristically southern institutions transplanted into the North—like so many other institutions—begin. To some extent they are both. There is no doubt, though, that they became reflections of community pride—their annual meetings are among the best attended of any co-ops in Canada— and have served as incubators for Inuit political and economic leaders. About half of the members of the Nunavut legislature have received a part of their training within the democratic process of the co-operatives. The Arctic Co-operatives have also become known for their business innovation. The northern climate and distances, originally the limited transportation access through the summer ships, have meant that survival for any kind of business in the region has always been at question. The early co-ops experienced some very difficult times and nearly went bankrupt on several occasions. At first, they relied largely on government support to survive, but they have developed their own ways of overcoming obstacles. Within the group of coops associated with Arctic Co-operatives, have developed their own financial system to provide loans to local co-operatives and to assist them in developing businesses. It is one of the most remarkable self-regulating and self-financing systems within the Canadian co-operative movement. The Arctic Co-operatives are notable for their entrepreneurship and their diverse business operations. In addition to their retail stores and art businesses, they typically operate a range of businesses such as hotels, guiding operations for southern tourists, postal services, sell local fish and animal products, skidoo repairs,

COPPERMINE RIVER and video rentals—anything that a community needs and that can be met in a businesslike manner. As Inuit and Dene have taken more responsibility for their own development, the co-op model has not had the same public presence as the aboriginal organization, the land claims process or the development corporations, even though the co-ops helped provide the context within which they developed and despite their remarkable success as aboriginal-led institutions. In Greenland, co-operatives were natural extensions of the strong and influential Danish co-operative movement, although the ties have not been as strong as the Arctic co-ops in Canada have with the southern movement of that country. They conformed to the conventional co-operative principles and served a range of purposes between the public and private sectors, but they were largely dependent upon state support. They provided some useful services—operating stores or cold storage facilities for processing fish and animals—in communities struggling to remain viable when government support declined. Even more than in Arctic Canada, though, they have had difficulty in preserving their place—and making the case for a cooperative approach to economic and social development—amid the growing interest in the private business model and the growing social predilection for modern forms of individualism. The history of cooperatives in the Arctic suggests the complexity of economic development in the region, invites further understanding of how “southern” policies can be best implemented, provides options for how northern communities can mobilize their resources, and raises issues about whether northern aboriginal peoples can adapt the structured co-operative form to best meet their economic and social needs. It raises the question of how far it is possible to utilize traditional notions of collaboration can be applied in a modern society…of whether those who have assumed there could be a natural correlation might have been right. IAN MCPHERSON See also Hudson’s Bay Company; Trade

COPPERMINE RIVER The historic Coppermine River flows north for 845 km (525 miles), from the barrenlands of the central Canadian Arctic to the Arctic coast at Coronation Gulf, in Nunavut. Today named for the native copper deposits traditionally used by the Copper Inuit and First Nations peoples, the river’s original local name was “Kogloktok” or “Qurluqtuq” meaning “the place of moving water.” Rising in the center of the barrens at Lac de Gras, the Coppermine flows northwest through Point Lake,

winds through forested areas, and then flows north through tundra and impressive rock outcroppings and clay banks to the coast. The river’s average annual rate of flow is 262 m3 s−1 at Copper Creek. The watershed of the Coppermine River has an area of about 50,800 km2 (19,600 square miles). In late glacial time much of the Coppermine River valley was occupied by a major lake, known as Glacial Lake Coppermine, formed when a glacial lobe prevented the northward flow of meltwaters. At that time the outlet was probably westward through to Great Bear Lake. Archaeological sites provide evidence of the use of the river by Inuit and Dene people for thousands of years. The Copper Inuit have travelled up the river to Bloody Falls, just 5 km from the mouth, to harvest Arctic char for hundreds of years. The first European to see and use the river was Samuel Hearne, who traveled overland in 1771 from Fort Prince of Wales on Hudson Bay to the Coppermine. He followed the river to the Arctic coast in search of the local deposits of copper. The infamous Bloody Falls near the mouth of the Coppermine was named by Hearne following a bloody massacre of a group of Inuit by Hearne’s Chipewyan companions on July 17, 1771. The “copper mines” observed by Hearne were located about 50 km SSE of the river mouth. Other well-known early explorers who travelled on the river include Sir John Franklin, George Back and John Richardson. The lower river was part of a traditional travel route from Great Bear Lake to the Arctic coast and from Great Slave Lake via the Snare or Yellowknife rivers. The first scientific exploration of the river was in 1915 and 1916 when members of the Canadian Arctic Expedition traveled up the river by dogsled in winter, carrying out biological, geological, and archaeological studies on the lower third of the river. The village of Kugluktuk (formerly Coppermine) developed at the mouth of the river around 1928, following the establishment of a trading post in 1916 at a traditional Copper Inuit fishing and sealing camp. In connection with local economic developments, various studies of the river have been made, including hydrology and water quality. An assessment of the potential for hydroelectric development at Bloody Falls concluded that such a project might be marginally viable. However, it is recognized that such development would adversely affect the existing fisheries and recreational use of the Coppermine River. Today the Coppermine is a favored canoe route for northern adventurers and attracts many anglers. The people of Kugluktuk have built hunting and fishing cabins along the river from the mouth to near Bloody Falls and the river remains an important part of community

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Historic site of Bloody Falls on the Coppermine River (photographed in September 2002). Copyright David R. Gray

life. Rafting and canoe expeditions are presently an established part of summer on the Coppermine. With a fascinating history and ecological significance, the Coppermine was nominated for Heritage River status under Parks Canada’s Heritage River system in 2002. DAVID R. GRAY See also Back, Sir George; Hearne, Samuel Further Reading Brand, Michael J., “Samuel Hearne and the massacre at Bloody Falls.” Polar Record, 28(166) (1992): 229–232 Government of Nunavut, Coppermine River, Nunavut, Nomination Document, Iqaluit: Government of Nunavut, Department of Sustainable Development, 2002 Raffan, James, “Coppermine.” Nature Canada, 8(4) (1979): 12–19 St-Onge, Denis A., “Glacial Lake Coppermine, north-central district of Mackenzie, Northwest Territories.” Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, 17(9) (1980): 1310–1315 ———, “The Coppermine River: art and reality.” Canadian Geographic, 102(4) (1982): 28–31

COPSE Copse is a word rarely used in the context of Arctic environments. In the Greenlandic context, copse is used to describe the vegetation of bushes less than 3 m high consisting mostly of Salix glauca (willow), Alnus crispa (alder), and Betula pubescens (birch). A survey of floras and scientific publications identifies the word on only one occasion: The Flora of Greenland by Böcher et al. (1968) uses “copse” in the English edition as a translation of the Danish Krat.

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Generally, copse (or sometimes coppice) is defined as “a thicket, grove, or growth of small trees” and forest originating mainly from shoots or root suckers rather than seed. Copse is probably a degenerated form of coppice, which originated from the French copeiz, from couper or “to cut.” When used as a verb, coppice applies specifically to the traditional woodland management practice of repeatedly cutting broadleaf trees at their base to stimulate the production of multiple, relatively thin and even-sized stems from a common stump. The overall form of the managed trees is reminiscent of the short stature, polycormic (multiple stemmed) mountain birch trees (Betula pubescens spp. Czerepanovii) of the Fennoscandian Subarctic and similar growth forms of trees such as alder and willow that extend into the tundra of North America (Wielgolaski, 2001). While copse can be used to describe trees of shrubby growth, it also has a popular, but apparently unrecorded, use in the United Kingdom (and perhaps elsewhere) to describe small isolated stands (patches) of woodland in an otherwise open, agricultural landscape. In such cases, “oases” of trees in Arctic landscapes are relicts of former, more extensive forests that have either retreated southward during climatic cooling and inhabit particularly favorable sites or remain after forest fires. Some patches of conifers and deciduous trees such as aspen can survive in the tundra by reproducing from root suckers and form clones. This behavior fits one of the above definitions that is usually applied to situations outside the Arctic. Although the term copse is rarely used today, it could be applied more generally and become increasingly used as scrub vegetation penetrates into the tundra during climate warming (Sturm et al., 2001).

CORNWALL ISLAND Recent warming in some Arctic areas has resulted in an increase in shrubbiness of the tundra, a northern and upward advance of the treeline, and future warming is likely to also result in an expansion of individual trees and small groups of individuals currently beyond the treeline (Callaghan et al., 2002). At the same time, abandonment of coastal agricultural lands in coastal areas of northern Norway and a decrease in human populations and land use activities elsewhere is leading to increasing encroachment of patches of forest onto former species-rich hay meadows. TERRY V. CALLAGHAN See also Coniferous forests; Treeline; Tundra Further Reading Böcher, T.W., K. Holmen & K. Jakobsen, Flora of Greenland (English translation by T.T. Elkington and M.C. Lewis), Copenhagen: P. Haase and Sons 1968 Callaghan, T.V., B.R. Werkman & R.M. Crawford, “The tundrataiga interface and its dynamics: concepts and applications.” Ambio Special Report (Tundra-Taiga Treeline Research), 12 (2002): 6–14 Payette, S., C. Morneau, L. Sirois, & M. Desponts, “Recent fire history of the northern Québec biomes.” Ecology, 70 (1989): 656–673 Sturm, M., C. Racine & K. Tape, “Increasing shrub abundance in the Arctic.” Nature, 411: (2001) 546–547 Wielgolaski, F.E. (editor), Nordic Mountain Birch Ecosystems. Man and the Biosphere, Volume 27, Parthenon: UNESCO 2001.

CORNWALL ISLAND Cornwall Island (2358 km2, 910 sq mi) is located in the Queen Elizabeth Islands (Sverdrup group) of the Canadian High Arctic Archipelago, Nunavut Territory. The landscape is similar to the surrounding islands, with gentle hills covered with sparse tundra vegetation. The interior of the island contains several plateaus rising to 250 m elevation. Soil cover is primarily composed of exposed sandstone and siltstone from the Mesozoic Sverdrup Basin group. Igneous rock has intruded to form diabase dykes and sills that resist erosion and produce narrow ridges and occasional isolated highlands, including the highest point on the island, Mt Nicolay (416 m). A thin veneer of glacial sediment composed of local sediments, gravel, and boulders covers the bedrock, although mud is the most common soil material. Thick successions of marine sediment are found in valley bottoms and were deposited after the late Wisconsinan ice sheet retreated, and the sea filled the (then) depressed landscape to 120 m during the early Holocene (approximately 9000 years before present). Like much of the region, the climate is cold and dry. During the short melt season (June-August), snow

melts rapidly and floods the rivers for 2–3 weeks. Thereafter, rivers recede and are low through the rest of the summer, only rising in response to rare rainstorms. There are no glaciers, but snow frequently remains all summer in sheltered locations and the large lakes remain partially ice covered in late summer in most years. The entire island is underlain by continuous permafrost and the soil surface thaws to a depth of 0.3–1.0 m during the summer. Cold summers, underlying permafrost, and muddy soils combine to make surface travel on foot and vehicle particularly difficult. The tundra vegetation is best developed in lowlying, wet locations and is composed primarily of stunted willow (Salix arctica) and other sedges. Wildlife is also sparse and limited to a small number of species. Peary caribou and muskox occur in small herds, and support a small population of Arctic wolves, although animal populations vary due to winter food availability. Other mammals include Arctic fox, snowshoe hare, and lemmings, while very occasional polar bears and walruses are found near the coastline. Migratory birds, particularly black-tailed jaegers nest during the spring and remain during the summer. Arctic char is found in some coastal lakes. No permanent settlements or facilities are located on the island and visitors are rare. Cornwall Island was found and named by Edward Belcher in 1852 during the search for the missing British explorer John Franklin. The next recorded visit was by Otto Sverdrup’s companions Gunnar Isachsen and Sverre Hassel during a 1901 sledge trip into the northwestern Arctic. Mapping and initial geological studies were carried out in the 1950s and several exploratory wells were drilled on the central north and south coasts during petroleum exploration in the 1970s, although no reserves were identified. SCOTT LAMOUREUX See also Nunavut; Queen Elizabeth Islands Further Reading Balkwill, H.R., Geology of Amund Ringnes, Cornwall, and Haig-Thomas Islands, District of Franklin, Memoir 390, Ottawa: Geological Survey of Canada, 1983 Berton, P., The Arctic Grail: the Quest for the North West Passage and the North Pole, 1818–1909, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1988 Edlund, S.A. & B.T. Alt, “Regional congruence of vegetation and summer climate patterns in the Queen Elizabeth Islands, Northwest Territories, Canada.” Arctic, 42 (1989): 3–23 Hodgson, D.A., Surficial Materials and Geomorphological Processes, Western Sverdrup and Adjacent Islands, District of Franklin, Paper 81–9, Ottawa: Geological Survey of Canada, 1982 Lamoureux, S.F. & J.H. England, “Late Wisconsinan glaciation of the northwest sector of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.” Quaternary Research, 54 (2000): 1882–1888

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CORNWALLIS ISLAND Maxwell, J.B., The Climate of the Canadian Arctic Islands and Adjacent Waters, Hull: Canadian Government Publishing Centre, 1980 Sverdrup, O.N., Arctic Adventures, London: Longmans, 1959 Woo, M.-K., “Hydrology of a drainage basin in the Canadian High Arctic.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 73 (1983): 577–596

CORNWALLIS ISLAND Cornwallis Island is located in the south central part of Canada’s Queen Elizabeth Islands. With generally flat or rolling terrain, the island is 6996 km2 (2700 sq mi) in size with only a few small bays breaking the island’s basically circular outline. With a high Arctic, polar desert climate and relatively few well-vegetated areas, Cornwallis Island is not as productive biologically as the neighboring islands, Bathurst and Devon. Few muskox or Peary caribou exist on Cornwallis Island, but they occasionally move across the sea ice when conditions on other islands make feeding difficult. Polar bears, beluga whales, and seals are seen regularly along the coast. Arctic char are abundant in several large lakes on the island. Traces of ancient settlements of the Thule Eskimo and earlier cultures are common along the south coast. The island was named in 1819 by Sir William Parry in honor of the British Admiral Sir William Cornwallis who died in 1819. Parry surveyed part of the coast while on his way to Melville Island. In 1845, Sir John Franklin sailed north up Wellington Channel along the eastern coast of Cornwallis Island and returned by the west side of the island before wintering at Beechey Island. When Franklin’s expedition was reported lost, Cornwallis Island became the scene of much activity associated with the Franklin search. In 1850, there were five expeditions in the area, three of which wintered on or near the island’s south coast. Four major bays along the southern coast of Cornwallis Island— Pioneer, Intrepid, Resolute, and Assistance—are named for ships of Captain Austin’s 1850 naval search expedition. At Abandon Bay on the east coast are the remnants of a Royal Navy whaleboat abandoned by Captain Penny in 1851. In August 1906, Captain Joseph-Elzear Bernier, in command of the Canadian Government ship Arctic, landed on Sheringham Point on Cornwallis Island and formally took possession of the island for Canada, leaving a cairn and record of the event. In spite of the many coastal surveys in the 1850s, it was not until 1947 that a US Air Force aerial photographic mission established that what is now called Little Cornwallis Island is separated from Cornwallis Island by a strait. When a US-Canadian task force was unable to reach Melville Island to establish the

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westernmost of the planned high Arctic weather stations in the summer of 1947, Cornwallis Island was selected as the most suitable alternate. The weather station and year-round airstrip were built in 1947 at Resolute Bay. In 1950, a three-person geological survey party circumnavigated Cornwallis Island in a 22-foot freight canoe, and demonstrated that the geological stratigraphy of the Arctic islands was not as simple as suggested by early geologists. In 1953 and 1955, Inuit families were moved from Port Harrison and Pond Inlet to Resolute Bay, the only community on Cornwallis Island. Now also known by the name Qausuittuq, Resolute Bay is served by commercial jets and is the commercial, research, and tourism center of Canada’s High Arctic. DAVID R. GRAY See also Bernier, Joseph-Elzéar; Franklin, Sir John; Nunavut; Parry, Sir William Edward; Queen Elizabeth Islands; Resolute Bay Further Reading Dunbar, Moira & Keith R. Greenaway, Arctic Canada From the Air, Ottawa: Defence Research Board, 1956 Harington, C. Richard (editor), Canada’s Missing Dimension: Science and History in the Canadian Arctic Islands, Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Nature, 1990 Taylor, Andrew, Geographical Discovery and Exploration in the Queen Elizabeth Islands, Ottawa: Department of Mines and Technical Surveys, 1955

COUNCIL FOR YUKON FIRST NATIONS (CYFN) Originally known as the Council for Yukon Indians, the Council for Yukon First Nations (CYFN) was established to negotiate native land claims and selfgovernment with the government of Canada. The Council continues to serve as a public service agency for 11 of 14 First Nations of the Yukon Territory. Concerted efforts by Yukon First Nations to address public policy concerns began in 1972, when the Yukon Native Brotherhood submitted a petition to the Canadian government protesting the effects of petroleum exploration in Yukon on the homeland and culture of indigenous people. The publication of Together Today for Our Children Tomorrow by Yukon Native Brotherhood leader Elijah Smith in 1973 advanced the cause of securing a land claim for aboriginal peoples of the territory. The Council for Yukon Indians (CYI) was formed that year to enter negotiations for a land claim with the government of Canada. Yukon Territory joined the negotiations as a third party when the territory was granted responsible government in 1979. Issues debated by the Council for Yukon Indians and the Canadian government included the size and

COUNCIL FOR YUKON INDIANS UMBRELLA FINAL AGREEMENT value of the land claim, subsistence hunting and fishing rights, and the definition and recognition of rights of indigenous peoples and “nonstatus” Indians in the territory. Completion of the treaty proved difficult, the CYI General Assembly rejected tentative agreements between the government of Canada and the CYI leadership in 1976 and 1984. An agreement in principle was ultimately reached in 1988, which transferred over 25,000 square miles of land and over $230 million to the CYI over a period of 15 years. The agreement also allowed for the development of Yukon Indian self-government. The treaty, known as the Umbrella Final Agreement, was signed in 1990, and a model for Yukon native self-government was reached the following year. Four Yukon First Nations—Champagne-Aishinik First Nation, Nacho Nyak Dun, Teslin Tlingit Council, and Vuntut Gwich’in First Nation—participated in negotiations to establish the model for land and cash allocations. They reached an agreement in 1992, and federal legislation enacting the land claim and First Nations self-government passed in 1994. In 1995, the CYI adopted a new constitution and changed its name to the Council for Yukon First Nations (CYFN). Three additional groups—the Little SalmonCarmacks First Nation, the Selkirk First Nation, and the Tr’ondek H’wechin First Nation—signed the Umbrella Final Agreement by 1998. Four groups—the Carcorss-Tagish First Nation, the Kluane First Nation, the Ta’an Kwachan First Nation, and the White River First Nation—have also entered negotiations to establish self-government. Three other groups (Liard First Nation, Kwanlin Dun First Nation, and Ross River Dena Council) elected to operate outside of the CYFN. In addition to administering First Nations land claims and self-government, the CYFN also provides educational and health services to First Nations people and lobbies for political concerns at the federal and territorial level. J. BRENT ETZEL See also Council for Yukon Indians Umbrella Final Agreement; Schulz, Ed Further Reading Biggs, Bill, Jurisdictional Responsibilities for Land Resources, Land Use and Development in the Yukon Territory and Northwest Territories, Ottawa: Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 1998 Cameron, Kirk & Graham White, Northern Governments in Transition, Montreal: Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1995 Canada, Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Guide to the Yukon Indian Land Claim Agreement-In-Principle, Ottawa: Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 1989

Council of Yukon First Nations website: http://www.cyfn.ca/ Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Umbrella Final Agreement Between the Government of Canada, the Council for Yukon Indians and the Government of the Yukon, Ottawa: Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 1993 Yukon Native Brotherhood, Together Today for Our Children Tomorrow; a Statement of Grievances and an Approach to Settlement by the Yukon Indian People, Whitehorse: Yukon Native Brotherhood, 1973

COUNCIL FOR YUKON INDIANS UMBRELLA FINAL AGREEMENT The Council for Yukon Indians (CYI) Umbrella Final Agreement (UFA) provides a template with which each of the Yukon’s 14 First Nations is to negotiate its own final (land claim) and self-government agreements. Each First Nation’s final agreement includes all provisions of the UFA, plus specific provisions that indicate how particular sections apply to that First Nation. The UFA is not a legally binding document. However, since the entire contents of the UFA are contained in First Nations final agreements, the content of the UFA is legally protected. The 292-page UFA is comprehensive, its 28 chapters covering all issues to be included in Yukon First Nation (YFN) final agreements. These issues include (but are not limited to) subjects for self-government negotiations, the amount of land to be retained by YFNs, financial compensation, tenure and management of settlement lands, and economic development measures. The UFA also creates boards, commissions and committees to provide for the comanagement of, among other subjects, Yukon’s fish and wildlife, water, renewable natural resources, and heritage resources. The UFA also includes appendices that apportion the overall compensation and land amounts to individual YFNs. The UFA is the product of 20 years of claims negotiations. On February 14, 1973 chiefs representing the Yukon Native Brotherhood (YNB) presented their statement of claim Together Today for Our Children Tomorrow to Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Later that year the Government of Canada accepted the YNB claim for negotiation. This was not the first time YFNs tried to negotiate a treaty with the Government of Canada. In 1902, Chief Jim Boss of the First Nations in the Lake Laberge area asked the federal government for a settlement. His request was rejected. Before negotiations could begin with YFNs, Canada and the Yukon had to address the role the Yukon Government would play in the claims negotiations. Legally, the territorial government had no role to play, since (unlike the situation in Canada’s provinces) the federal government controlled Crown Land in the

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COUNCIL FOR YUKON INDIANS UMBRELLA FINAL AGREEMENT Yukon and could therefore conclude a land claim bilaterally with YFNs. Politically, however, this would be difficult given the views of nonaboriginal Yukoners and the territorial governments desire to expand its resources and jurisdiction. An added difficulty was that the territorial government, at the time, adamantly opposed YNB’s demands. Territorial opposition was based on the very purpose of claims negotiations. To put it simply, in the 1970s Canadian governments saw claims negotiations as glorified real estate transactions. Aboriginal groups would receive money and small amounts of land in exchange for title to their traditional territories. As Together Today for Our Children Tomorrow made clear, YFNs had a very different view. To them the purpose of negotiations was to establish an ongoing set of political, economic, and social relations that would enhance the status and well-being of aboriginal people in the Yukon. Although negotiations have been long and difficult, and YFNs have not had all their demands satisfied, the YFN vision has prevailed. Through the early years of negotiation, the Yukon was represented by a single member on the federal team. A 1979 memorandum of understanding among the CYI, Canada, and the Yukon established the territorial government as a separate party to the negotiations, though not a signatory to any agreements. In 1985, a new memorandum of understanding established the Yukon as a signatory. The negotiations that began in 1973 lead to a series of agreements in principle (AIPs) concluded in the early 1980s. YFN ratification votes showed a low level of support for the AIPs. Some YFNs refused to vote on them. In August 1984, the CYI General Assembly called for major changes to the AIPs. These changes included the affirmation, not extinguishment, of aboriginal rights, the recognition and protection of subsistence hunting rights, more land, and the strengthening of YFN government. The federal government resisted these changes and on December 20, 1984 David Crombie, Canada’s Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs, declared the AIPs rejected. Efforts to revive the negotiations process began almost immediately. Meanwhile the federal government commissioned a special task force to study its comprehensive claims policy. The task force recommended changes (particularly with regard to the extinguishment of aboriginal rights) some of which were incorporated into a new federal comprehensive policy in 1987. The Yukon negotiations were subsequently revived. This led to a new agreement in principle in May 1989 and the UFA, which the CYI ratified in December 1991. However before the UFA could be signed it was agreed that four YFNs (the Vuntut Gwich’in,

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Champagne-Aishihik, Nacho Nyak Dun, and the Teslin Tlingit Council) would negotiate final and selfgovernment agreements to show what the concluded agreements would look like. Once these agreements were negotiated and ratified, they and the UFA were signed at a public ceremony in Whitehorse on May 29, 1993. The Canadian Parliament passed the enabling legislation for the final and self-government agreements in 1994. Subsequently, the first four sets of final and self-agreements became effective on February 14, 1995. Since then three other YFNs (Selkirk, Little Salmon-Carmacks, and Tr’ondek Hwech’in) have negotiated, signed and ratified final and self-government agreements. As modern treaties, YFN final agreements are protected by section 35 of Canada’s Constitution Act, 1982. This includes the self-government chapter (Chapter 24) that obligates Canada and the Yukon to negotiate a self-government agreement with any YFN that requests such negotiations. However, self-government agreements negotiated pursuant to Chapter 24 are not constitutionally protected. This difference occurred because in 1993 federal government policy was that the right to self-government was not a treaty right protected by section 35. As such YFNs must negotiate self-government agreements separate from their final agreements. YFNs have always disagreed with this policy and the UFA’s self-government chapter allows constitutional protection to be extended to self-government agreements “as provided in future constitutional amendments.” In August 1995, the Government of Canada changed its policy on the constitutional protection of self-government. Since then negotiations have taken place to see how the new policy might be applied to Yukon agreements. FLOYD MCCORMICK See also Council for Yukon First Nations (CYFN); Land Claims; Self-Government Further Reading Council for Yukon Indians, Together Today For Our Children Tomorrow, Brampton, Ontario, Charters, 1977 (Available on the CYFN website: http://www.cyfn.ca/) Council of Yukon First Nations, Government of Yukon, Understanding the Yukon Umbrella Final Agreement: A Land Claim Settlement Information Package (4th edition), Whitehorse: The Council of Yukon First Nations and the Government of Yukon, 1997 (Available on the CYFN website: http://www.cyfn.ca/.) Government of Canada, Living Treaties, Lasting Agreements, Report of the Task Force to Review Comprehensive Claims Policy, Ottawa: Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, 1985 ——— Council for Yukon Indians Comprehensive Land Claims Agreement in Principle, Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1989

COURNOYEA, NELLIE ——— The Council for Yukon Indians, The Government of Yukon, The Council for Yukon Indians Umbrella Final Agreement, Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1993 (Available on the CYFN website: http://www.cyfn.ca/. Other land claims and self-government agreements are also available at this site) Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Comprehensive Land Claims Policy, Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1987 McCormick, Floyd, Inherent Aboriginal Rights in Theory and Practice: The Council for Yukon Indians Umbrella Final Agreement, Ph.D. dissertation, Edmonton: University of Alberta, 1997 ———, “Still Frontier, Always Homeland: Yukon Politics in the Year 2000.” In The Provincial State in Canada: Politics in the Provinces and Territories, edited by Keith Brownsey & Michael Howlett, Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 2001 Yukon, Legislative Assembly (28th Legislature), Special Committee on Land Claims and Self-Government Report, Whitehorse: Yukon Legislative Assembly, 1993

COUNCIL OF ATHAPASKAN TRIBAL GOVERNMENTS Formed in September 1985, the Council of Athapaskan Tribal Governments (CATG) is comprised of ten tribal governments located in the Yukon Flats, in Northern Alaska. At a traditional gathering memorializing the last traditional chief Esias Loola, the tribal leaders and peoples recognized the need to address the impacts of globalization and colonization affecting their ways of life, and reassert their ability to govern their lands and people. Thus, the Council created an organization that unified the tribes founded on the principles of tribal self-governance, and focus on the empowerment and capacity building initiatives of their local tribal governments. The tribal governments on the Council consist of Gwich’in and Koyukon tribes. The Arctic, Beaver, Birch Creek, Canyon, Chalkyitsik, Circle, Fort Yukon, Rampart, Stevens, and Venetie comprise this tribal consortium. They inhabit ten remote villages in the Yukon Flats, ranging from populations as low as ten residents in Canyon, to 600 in Fort Yukon. The tribes still maintain a predominantly traditional subsistence lifestyle. Traditional foods such as moose and caribou, ducks and geese, as well as berries and other food plants make up the majority of the diet. The tribes’ activities and livelihood depend upon the seasonal changes and landscape. Since there is no road access to the villages, the river system provides the primary means of transportation in the summer months, while travel by snow machine is predominant in the winter months. The Constitution of the Council of Tribal Athapaskan Governments states that the organization will work toward conserving and protecting tribal land and other resources. Further the Council supports the

exercise of tribal powers of self-government. It also aims to aid and support economic development, promote the general welfare of each member tribe and its respective individual members, and preserve and maintain justice. The means to achieving these goals is served through the Council’s implementation of programs in the areas of self-governance, programs development and technical assistance, health and education, including accredited tribal university training, environmental health, and natural resource management. The Council is recognized as nonprofit tribal consortium that administers federal, state, and private foundation grants and contracts through the authorization of the tribally elected chiefs. With central offices in Fort Yukon, the Council employs members from each tribe. It is the largest employer of tribal peoples in the region, with over 60 positions, and manages an annual budget of over four million dollars. The Council is organized through a board of directors, consisting of the tribally elected chiefs from each community. Since the chiefs work directly with their tribal councils and within their respective villages, the input of the community becomes an integral part of the functioning of the Council. Public participation, community outreach, and educational awareness are essential parts of the operation. Board meetings are open to the public and held throughout the villages. Since its formation almost 20 years ago, the Council of Tribal Athapaskan Governments has successfully provided statewide leadership in the movement of Alaskan tribes to revitalize the spirit of self-government that has sustained the peoples of the Yukon Flats throughout history. RACHEL OLSON See also Self-Government

COURNOYEA, NELLIE Nellie Cournoyea is a contemporary Inuvialuit known for her diligence and dedication in her efforts to assist northerners, particularly the Inuit of the Northwest Territories, to keep pace with northern development while maintaining their traditional culture. She was one of the founders of the Committee for Original People’s Entitlement (COPE), a negotiator and signatory to the Inuvialuit Final Agreement (IFA), member, minister, and premier of the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories and the first aboriginal woman to lead a provincial or territorial government in Canada. In 1996, Cournoyea was elected chairperson/chief executive officer of the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation and continues in that role. Inuvialuitowned corporations are significant players in northern

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COURNOYEA, NELLIE development. They are involved in preservation of their land base and in maintaining traditional cultural activities. Activists Cournoyea and Agnes Semmler (a Gwich’in representative) founded COPE because they were concerned about how oil exploration activities were disturbing the environment and interfering with hunting and trapping activities. COPE helped unify northern aboriginals and determine common goals. Subsequently, COPE and other regional Inuit organizations formed the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (presently known as Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami). Cournoyea was one of the negotiators of the 1984 IFA which gave the Inuvialuit mineral rights to 11,000 km of land, wildlife harvesting rights, wildlife and habitat protection measures, participation in land uses to an area of 90,000 km, as well as a cash settlement and other benefits. The Final Agreement however stopped short of self-government. Cournoyea was twice elected and twice acclaimed to the Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly in the riding of Nunakput district. She was a member for the riding of Nunakput for 16 years beginning in 1979. Her ministerial responsibilities included Renewable Resources and Culture and Communications from 1983 to 1985, Health, Energy, Mines and Resources and the Public Utilities Board in 1987, Public Works and Highways in 1988, and responsibility for the Workers’ Compensation Board in 1988–1999 and the Northwest Territories Power Corporation in 1989. As minister of Renewable Resources from 1983 to 1985 and Energy, Mines and Resources in 1987, she worked toward a Northern Accord that would transfer the control of Northern resources from Ottawa to the government of the Northwest Territories. The Northern Accord would have transferred such issues as subsurface management, issuing of rights and permits and other regulatory powers to the Territories as well as tax and royalty revenues. However, Northwest Territories towns and hamlets, with predominantly aboriginal populations, anticipated the settlement of land claims and self-government. They had concerns that the Accord would concentrate more power in the capital city of Yellowknife. Their representatives in the legislative assembly hence did not support the Accord. Cournoyea was selected government leader by the members of the Legislative Assembly in 1991; until 1995 she continued to work toward a transfer of responsibility for oil and gas and minerals. In a time of reductions to federal funding to the Northwest Territories, she also devoted herself to streamlining government operations and handing over more responsibilities to community leaders. In order to provide employment opportunities to Northerners, she worked

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at linking income support payment to job training; she required capital projects to maximize employment and contracts with northerners; and she supported a strategy for community well being. These actions were designed simultaneously to cut costs and reduce government involvement in community affairs. Cournoyea’s title of government leader was formally changed to premier in 1995, the same year that Yukon and the Northwest Territories were accepted at Canada’s First Ministers Conferences. As premier she was a signatory on behalf of the Government of the Northwest Territories to the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement in which Canada agreed to the creation of a new territory, Nunavut, and which, in effect, would redefine the existing Territories. Cournoyea was elected chairperson/chief executive officer of the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation in 1996. The Corporation administers the benefits received by the Inuvialuit under the 1984 IFA. In January 2000, at the Berger Hearings, 25 years after the aboriginal people of the Northwest Territories had objected to a Mackenzie Valley pipeline because of concerns with regard to erosion of traditional ways of living, Cournoyea joined with all Northwest Territories aboriginal leaders to support the building of the project. This time the anticipated pipeline would include aboriginal ownership. Cournoyea has consistently acknowledged that northern development is inevitable and has worked to ensure that northerners receive the benefit of this development, but is adamant that it occur in an environmentally sound, socially responsible and culturally sensitive way. She supports traditional and sustainable practices of hunting, fishing, and trapping, and encourages sewing and traditional artistic endeavors. She has been an advocate of a traditional food diet.

Biography Nellie J. Cournoyea was born in Aklavik in the Canadian Northwest Territories in 1940 to a Norwegian-born trapper and an Inuvialuit woman. She was the second of Nels and Maggie Hvatum’s 11 children and traveled by dogsled with her family as a child while they hunted caribou, muskrat, seal, and other wildlife along the Arctic coastline. At 17, after completing Grade 10 through correspondence courses that she completed at the Federal Aklavik Day School, she met and married a Canadian Forces officer in Inuvik. Shortly after returning to the Mackenzie Delta in the early 1960s, they divorced. She worked for the Canada Broadcasting Corporation in Inuvik, first as a radio announcer and later as regional manager while raising two children. Cournoyea received honorary degrees from University of Toronto, Lakehead, and Lethbridge

CRANTZ, DAVID and in 1994 she won an Aboriginal Achievement award. DORIS MCCANN See also Committee for Original Peoples’ Entitlement (COPE); Inuvialuit Final Agreement; Northwest Territories Further Reading Bergman, Brian, “Guarding her territory.” MacLean’s, 8/10/92, 105(32) (1992) Dickason, Olive, Canada’s First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1992 Dickerson, Mark, Whose North?, Vancouver: UBC Press, 1992 Nemeth, Mary, “A great country,” MacLean’s, 10/16/95, 108(42) (1995) Purich, D., The Inuit and Their Land: The Story of Nunavut, Toronto: James Lorimer, 1982 Traynor, Fiona & Cooper, Langford, “The lost accord.” Far North Oil and Gas Review (1999)

CRANTZ, DAVID The German David Crantz was a Moravian teacher, missionary, secretary, historian, and author of several renowned books, among them Historie von Grönland (The History of Greenland), based on his 14-month stay in Greenland. Crantz began to study theology at the University in Halle in 1738. While still a student he joined the Moravians and attended a seminary in Herrnhaag in Oberhessen in 1740. A year later Crantz was among the inner circle around Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700–1760) and accompanied the count on his Geneva travels. The same year Crantz began to work as a teacher of children in the Moravian’s main community in Herrnhut in Saxony and as a clerk for the Brethren’s newsletter in Lindheim. In 1747, Count Zinzendorf appointed Crantz his personal secretary, a post he held until 1755. As Zindendorf’s constant assistant, Crantz attended the governmental commission in Großhennersdorf close to Herrnhut and accompanied the count to London in 1748, where the Moravian church received Royal recognition. In 1756, Crantz was back in Herrnhut from where he accompanied the count on several occasions including travel to Switzerland in 1757. The next year Crantz worked as a German teacher in Neuwied. In 1759, Crantz was commissioned by Count Zinzendorf to write a history of the Brethren’s missionary work in Greenland. After the Danish colony of St Thomas in the West Indies, West Greenland was the second Moravian mission area. In 1733, the first three Moravian missionaries were send to the Nuukfjord originally to assist the Royal Danish Norwegian Mission

founded by the Lutheran priest Hans Egede. But the same year the Moravians established their own mission station Neu-Herrnhut (Noorliit or Ny Herrnhut), which became a constantly growing congregation. When Crantz visited Neu-Herrnhut in the years of 1761–1762 to research his book, the Moravians had already established a second mission station Lichtenfels (Akunnat) south of Neu-Herrnhut in 1758. Crantz, who intended to produce a scientific and objective report, used his Greenland stay not only to interview the missionaries but also the local Inuit and the Danish merchants trading in Greenland. His history was not yet published, but when Crantz attended the synod in the German Marienborn in 1764, he was asked to write an overall history of the old and new Unitas Fratrum (United Brethren, or the Moravian Church). In 1765, his well-known Historie von Grönland (The History of Greenland) was published in Barby and Leipzig. The two-volume book is the first booklength report of a Moravian mission area. The second volume was printed in 1770 and a further volume was planned but never realized. This first German edition is richly illustrated with eight engravings comprising two maps and seven depictions with ethnographic information. At least two of the copperplates were engraved by Andreas Hoffer in Nürnberg. The book was republished numerous times in German and translated into several European languages. A French edition was released that same year and two years later, in 1767, the first Dutch and English editions were printed. The History was also translated into Swedish, and Hungarian, but no Danish version was produced. Besides Crantz’s own observations during his 14month stay in Greenland, his report is mainly based on the Brethren’s recordings, including their diaries and annual figures for baptism and deaths. The History contains not only a detailed overview of the Brethren’s missionary work in West Greenland and the revivals among the Inuit seen from a Moravian perspective, but also reliable ethnographic descriptions and insights in the 18th-century lifestyle of the local Inuit in West Greenland. Like Hans Egede’s Nye Perlustration, it covers all aspects of Greenland’s history, geography, fauna, flora, climate, and indigenous population including their customs, hunting methods, material culture, and religious beliefs. Crantz’s Historie, like Hans Egede’s Perlustration, reached not only a big reader’s circle during the 18th century but for many generations served as a main source on West Greenlandic Inuit. In addition to his writing obligations, Crantz continued to serve as minister in several Moravian communities. From 1766 on he preached in Rixdorf, today Neukölln, close to Berlin; in 1769 he returned to Herrnhut; and in 1771 he was appointed as minister in

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CREE Gnadenfrei in Oberschlesien, where he deeply engaged himself in the diaconical work. While working in Rixdorf as well as in Gnadenfrei, he wrote an as-yet unpublished history of both Moravian communities. In 1771, his basic record Alte und Neue BrüderHistorie (The Ancient and Modern History of the Brethren) was published and became another standard work on Moravian history. Several reprints and translations were made, among them a Danish edition in 1772 and an English one in 1780.

Biography David Crantz was born in Naugard in Hinterpommern, Germany, in 1723. Coming from a poor man’s family he experienced a harsh childhood. Early in his life he was given away to be raised in a priest’s home, which influenced the young man’s pietistical worldview. He studied theology at the University in Halle. In 1765 at the age of 42, Crantz married Agnes Lange in Herrnhut, who became the mother of his three sons. Crantz died during the Moravian preacher’s conference in Gnadenberg in Niederschlesien in 1777, where he was also buried. VERENA TRAEGER See also Ny Herrnhut Further Reading Crantz, David, Historie von Grönland, 2 volumess, Barby and Leipzig: Ebers and Weidmanns Erben, 1765 Cranz, David, The History of Greenland: Containing a Description of the Country, and its Inhabitants; and Particularly, a Relation of the Mission Carried on for Above These Thirty Years by the Unitas Fratrum, at New Herrnhuth and Lichtenfels, in That Country, 2 volumes, London: The Brethren’s Society, 1767 Crantz, David, Alte und Neue Brüder-Historie oder kurz gefaßte Geschichte der evangelischen Brüder-Unität, Barby and Leipzig: Ebers and Weidmanns Erben, 1771 Crantz, David, The Ancient and Modern History of the Brethren: or a Succinct Narrative of the Protestant Church of the United Brethren, or Unitas Fratrum, In the Remoter Ages, and Particularly in the Present Century, translated by Benjamin La Trobe, London: Strahan, 1980 Finze-Michaelsen, H., “Die Sache des Heilands D.C. (1723–1777): Sein Leben und seine Schriften.” Unitas Fratrum, 41 (1997):75–108

CREE Cree are the largest First Nations people in Canada, with small numbers also in the United States. Eastern Cree people, including the Innu (Montagnais and Naskapi) and Attikamek live in Labrador and Québec. Plains Cree live in the western provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan and in the state of Montana.

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Between these distant relatives of the Cree Nation in the provinces of Manitoba and Ontario are the Woods Cree, East and West Swampy Cree, and Moose Cree. Each of these groups is divided into smaller regional First Nations and local bands. There are about 200,000 Cree people altogether in Canada, over 210,000 Métis (registered as mixed European and Cree ancestry) (Statistics Canada, 2002) and another 200,000 Canadians with some Cree ancestry (Heritage Databank Consulting, 1994). In Canada, about 30% of Cree now live in urban centers (compiled estimate from Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 2002 #433.) Populations in many areas are growing rapidly. The Cree Nation of Eeyou Istchee (Québec) has 13,000 registered members, with a population doubling rate of 25 years (Grand Council of the Crees, 2002). Algonquian ancestors of the Cree were spread across the Canadian Shield of the North American Subarctic. Chipped stone tool artifacts show that Paleo-Indians lived on Cree lands 8500–9000 years ago. Until Europeans arrived on the continent, Cree people had lived in much the same way for 6000–7000 years. They traveled across the many rivers and lakes by canoe in summer and over the ice with snowshoes in winter. Large fires swept across the region on a regular basis, and the people and animals shifted their territories until the land recovered. When the first Europeans arrived, most Cree lived in what is now eastern Canada. Cree language is derived from an early form of Algonquian spoken about 1200 BC in southern Ontario. By 900 BC, Cree moved north, later expanding to both the east and west. There are ten dialects of the Cree language in two main groups, Eastern and Western Cree. Western Cree dialects are Plains Cree, Woods Cree, Western Swampy Cree, Eastern Swampy Cree, and Moose Cree. Eastern Cree includes East Cree; Naskapi, Montagnais, and Attikamek are sometimes considered dialects but have evolved into distinct languages. Cree dialects are not all mutually intelligible. Statistics Canada estimated that, in 1998, 87,555 Canadians had Cree as their mother tongue (Summer Institute of Linguistics, 2002). The Cree language is still used in many communities across north-central Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, and in northern Ontario and Québec, where Cree are in the majority. English or French are also spoken by most Cree, often as a first language. About 147,000 Algonquian speakers live in Canada, including both Cree and Ojibway peoples (Assembly of First Nations National Indian Brotherhood, 2001). A syllabary writing system was introduced to Cree in the 1830s. Syllabics use a set of basic characters for consonants, which are turned in different directions to

CREE indicate which vowel follows. Syllabics were generally used for religious materials, but are still found in some regional newspapers. Most Cree groups traced their kinship bilaterally, allowing for the maximum number of alliances and family ties in an often hostile environment. Marriage was sometimes polygynous, with two sisters marrying one man being the most common form. Anyone not considered related was an eligible marriage partner. This ruled out parallel cousins, but cross cousin marriage, either to a mother’s brother’s child or to a father’s sister’s child, was preferred. The quest for beaver and other furs influenced Cree history, society, and culture significantly, resulting in changes as profound as any Native American group experienced. As trappers pursued beaver, muskrat, lynx, marten, otter, and other fur-bearers across North America for the fur trade, Cree followed. They worked as fur trappers and traders and, most importantly, established themselves as middlemen in the trade. Orientation to the fur trade disrupted traditional hunting of migratory big game. Trading posts provided new tools, foods, and other goods. The fur traders’ credit system ensured that trappers would bring furs back to the same trader year after year, and Cree became dependent on the outside goods. Contact with European traders also brought diseases such as smallpox and tuberculosis. A series of epidemics hit the Attikamek in the mid-1600s, bringing that group of Cree close to extinction by the 1670s. Smallpox struck the Cree in 1784 and again in 1838. The positive side of the fur trade for Cree was that they became very powerful in the indigenous world. Before Europeans arrived on the scene, Cree were almost completely self-sufficient. They occasionally traded for items that were unavailable in the local area. Small quantities of corn came from the Hurons and high-quality stone for tool making was traded hand to hand from as far away as Wyoming. Chipewayans were close neighbors of Cree, and their relationship was a contentious one. Chipewayans believed that Cree shamans cast harmful spells on them, so they sent spells back, and in some cases raided and killed people in neighboring Cree groups. There was also some friendly exchange, evidenced by common folktales and Cree passing their belief in Manitou, the supreme spirit, to the Chipewayans. Alliances and territories changed with the advent of the fur trade in order to obtain the best position with Europeans. Cree were one of the first native groups to trade with the Hudson’s Bay Company, and by 1680 were ensconced as middlemen between post men and indigenous trappers. Because they obtained firearms early, Cree gained an advantage over neighboring tribes and were able to expand their territories to gain

more profits. Cree may have driven Chipewayans to the Barren grounds after getting guns, but this is uncertain. Cree did lead raids from Alberta against the Blackfoot confederacy in the 1700s, and engaged in wars with Blackfeet, Dakota, Iroquois, and other peoples to the south—usually over who would have the best access to European traders. They also traded guns and horses with Blackfeet. Both the Plains and Woodland Cree considered Assiniboine to be allies. Westward migration of Cree groups started as late as the 1720s or 1730s. By the early 1800s, Cree peoples occupied the largest territory of any Canadian native group, spread from Labrador to the Rocky Mountains. Besides taking advantage of the fur trade, wars between tribes also pushed some groups of Cree west. Aboriginal peoples that had once lived scattered across the land came together in big groups to visit trading posts. So many traders and trappers gathered near the posts (and hunted to survive) that the local people faced starvation if they stayed. Competition made both fur and game animals scarce by the early 1800s, making some Cree dependent on the trading posts for basic food. Cree had probably lived in Saskatchewan before contact, but Cree populations arriving in Alberta were likely there for the first time. Cree traditionally depended on wild game, primarily caribou and moose. Bison, elk, and deer were also hunted further west. Often they relied on smaller animals like snowshoe hare, beaver, porcupine, and occasionally on bear. Berries, whitefish, salmon, pike and pickerel, migrating ducks, and geese contributed significantly to the diet, depending on regional availability. Women dried or smoked their meat and fish. With the fur trade, Cree were introduced to flour, tea, tobacco, and alcohol (see Fur Trade). When food resources in the western woodlands became scarce due to pressures of the fur trade, Cree in Saskatchewan and Alberta turned south to the Great Plains. Between 1790 and 1820, Cree adopted the ways of other Plains Indians, hunting bison from horseback and living in teepees. Most Plains Indians, including Cree, were forced onto reserves by the late 1800s when settlers poured in and the buffalo were wiped out. Plains Cree taught themselves to grow wheat and other crops on the prairies of Saskatchewan and Alberta, and today operate huge farms with modern machinery. As most groups of Cree became dependent on trade goods, the Canadian role in native affairs grew. Welfare programs, health care, and education programs were started in the early 1900s, when most Cree still lived on the land. After World War II, government involvement in native affairs increased. Fur prices were depressed, and many Cree depended on government transfer payments for a large part of their

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CREE income. Many people left their communities to find work in larger towns and cities. Families were encouraged to send their children to residential schools in the south. Nursing stations and improved communication and transportation brought improvements in health care to bush communities. Currently, western food makes up varying parts of the diet in Cree communities. Subsistence lifestyles persist among some Cree but not others—growing populations cannot be supported on the current Cree land base. In the James Bay Settlement Region, hunters are subsidized to harvest traditional foods for their communities. Development interferes with subsistence harvest in many areas. Flooding of land for hydroelectric projects in northern Québec resulted in contamination of fish with mercury, requiring Cree there to balance the effects of toxins with cultural and nutritional qualities of this traditional food, and to regulate their intake of fish. Mining, logging, and hydrodevelopment has had huge impacts on the subsistence base of many Cree communities, often without reasonable compensation. A small number of jobs are available on reserves and in rural Cree communities. Typically, employment rates for Canadian aboriginals average only 32% for residents of reserves and 43% for those who have moved off reserves (Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 1995). In western communities, guiding and fighting forest fires provides most of the cash income. In the James Bay region, Cree are developing markets for arts and crafts: carving, painting and etching bark and leather, and beadwork. In their many centuries of making their living on the land, Cree traditionally believed that one must show respect for animals. Successful hunts, particularly of bears, were celebrated with feasting. Bones of bears, and beavers were treated specially, their skulls and other bones placed in trees where animals would not be able to disturb them. Shamans were often relied on for where to find game. Most Cree believed in a supreme spirit known as Manitou. (The idea of Manitou may have been introduced by missionaries when they were trying to explain their Christian God.) Cree saw him as a helping spirit, who gave those that honored him personal protection from evil and sorcery. Cree also believed in an evil cannibal monster called a Windigo, perhaps because cannibalism was a fearful memory from periods of starvation. In the 17th and 18th centuries, missionaries often arrived in Cree country on the heels of fur traders as the people were going through huge changes. Epidemics caused many to die from diseases for which they had no immunity. The sheer numbers of people who perished shook the beliefs of survivors. The missionaries told them that the old ways were

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evil and that they must accept the Christian God. Many Cree, grieving for their dead and doubting their own beliefs, converted to Christianity. French missionaries came with the earliest traders and were Roman Catholic. Protestants arrived soon after at English fur posts. In some areas, where people stayed on the land longer, Cree did not become Christians until the mid-1800s. Now most Cree are Christians, but there is some return to precontact rituals. Today’s Cree leaders see maintaining people’s connection to the land as the key to maintaining cultural identity and spiritual health. Many bands offer culture camps or other opportunities for students to go out on the land with elders to learn traditional skills and reverence for the land that has been their home for thousands of years. The fight for Cree survival has been heard widely. Particularly during their campaign to broker a fair settlement with the governments of Canada and Québec over hydrodevelopment, the Cree of Québec took their case all over the world. In 1972, they negotiated what is considered the earliest “modern” land claim in North America (the James Bay Northern Québec Agreement), and continue to harness international opinion and support through indigenous organizations, NGOs, and even the world court (see Grand Council of the Cree). DEBORAH B. ROBINSON See also Fur Trade; Grand Council of the Cree; Innu; James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement; Métis; Northern Athapaskan Languages

Further Reading Assembly of First Nations National Indian Brotherhood, Canada’s Aboriginal Languages 1996 The Daily, 2001. Available from http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/981214/ d981214.htm Berkes, Fikret, “Environmental Philosophy of the Chisasibi Cree People of James Bay” in Traditional Knowledge and Renewable Resource Management in Northern Regions, edited by Milton M.R. Freeman & Ludwig N. Carbyn, Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute, 1988 Goddard, John, Last Stand of the Lubicon Cree, Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1991 Grand Council of the Crees, Overview of the Crees [website], Grand Council of the Crees, 2002. Available from http://www.gcc.ca/ Helm, June editor In Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 6, Subarctic, edited by William C. Sturtevant, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981 Heritage Databank Consulting, Cree Tribal Homepages, Bands and Geneology Band Listings, Heritage Databank [website], J. Fromhold, 1994. Available from http://fn2.freenet. edmonton.ab.ca/~databank/hpc.html#CN Hornig, James F. (editor), Social and Environmental Impacts of the James Bay Hydroelectric Project, McGill-Queen’s Native and Northern Series, Montréal: McGill-Queen’s Press, 1999

CROZIER, FRANCIS Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 1991 Census Highlights on Registered Indians: Annotated Tables, Volume 36, Ottawa: Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, 1995 Milloy, John Sheridan, The Plains Cree: Trade, Diplomacy, and War, 1790 to 1870, Winnipeg, Manitoba: University of Manitoba Press, 1990 Richardson, Boyce, Strangers Devour the Land, Post Mills, Vermont: Chelsea Green, 1991 Salisbury, Richard F., A Homeland for the Cree: Regional Development in James Bay 1971–1981, Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1986 Statistics Canada, 1996 Census, Nation Tables—Aboriginal (20% Data) [website], Statistics Canada, January 21, 2002. Available from http://www.statcan.ca/english/census96/ jan13/nalis9.htm Summer Institute of Linguistics. Moose Cree: A Language of Canada, Summer Institute of Linguistics, 2002. Available from http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code= CRM Tanner, Adrian, Bringing Home Animals: Religious Ideology and Mode of Production of the Mistassini Cree Hunters, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1979

CROZIER, FRANCIS Despite being one of the most experienced Arctic and Antarctic navigators of the first half of the 19th century, Francis Crozier never received the recognition or honors that were bestowed on his colleagues Edward Parry and James Clark Ross. Crozier was a popular commander, respected navigator, and accomplished scientist, yet in five voyages to the Arctic and one four-year circumnavigation of the Antarctic he never rose above second-in-command. Crozier’s upbringing was comfortable. His father and one of his brothers were lawyers and two other brothers became priests. Crozier chose the Navy and joined HMS Hamadryad as a first-class volunteer on June 12, 1810. All his explorations as a naval officer took place during the Golden Age of Arctic Exploration (1818–1859). Most were undertaken to study geography, natural history, and magnetism. As a midshipman, Crozier rounded Cape Horn in HMS Briton in 1814 and was a member of the first British crew to visit Pitcairn Island since the Bounty mutiny. On May 8, 1821, midshipmen Crozier and James Ross sailed with Parry on his second expedition to determine if there was an outlet from Hudson Bay to the North West Passage. Parry proved Repulse Bay had no outlet to the west, mapped the eastern shore of the Melville Peninsula, and on July 16, 1822 discovered Fury and Hecla Strait but was unable to navigate it due to ice. Crozier was responsible for much of the wide-ranging scientific program and picked up some of the local language during the first extended contact between a European expedition and Inuit of the Canadian mainland.

On May 8, 1824, Parry made his third attempt at the North West Passage, accompanied by midshipman Crozier and Lieutenant James Ross. The expedition sailed down Prince Regent Inlet, but was delayed by heavy ice. After wintering at Port Bowen and exploring the eastern shore of the inlet, ice drove the Fury aground on Somerset Island and she was abandoned with a considerable cache of supplies at Fury Beach. The crews returned to London in the Hecla. Again Crozier was involved in the scientific work. The Navy now turned its attention to the North Pole. Parry, with lieutenants James Ross and Crozier, sailed on April 4, 1827. On June 21 with the Hecla secure in Hecla Cove, Parry set out across the ice for the pole. Crozier accompanied him partway to set up supply caches and then returned to supervise the scientific program, the results of which were published as an appendix in Parry’s Narrative of an Attempt to reach the North Pole in 1827. Between 1831 and 1835, Crozier was engaged in secret work patrolling off Portugal. In 1836, James Ross selected his friend as first lieutenant on a mission to rescue whalers beset in Davis Strait. Despite searching the ice early in the season, Ross and Crozier found no trace of the whaler William Torr or her crew. In 1839, James Ross was given command of HMS Erebus and an expedition to circumnavigate Antarctica. He gave Crozier command of HMS Terror and put him in charge of the important magnetic studies. A pattern of simultaneous magnetic readings around the world, to some extent, determined Ross’s route. The ships sailed from Chatham on September 19 and, after stopping for Crozier to take magnetic readings on the way, arrived separately at Hobart Town in Van Diemen’s Land in early August 1840. The governor of Van Diemen’s Land, Sir John Franklin, had an observatory built for Crozier and entertained Ross and his crews. Crozier fell in love with Franklin’s niece, Sophia Cracroft, proposed marriage, but was rebuffed. On November 12, Ross and Crozier left Hobart Town and, on January 11, 1841, first sighted the Antarctic continent. That summer they mapped the coast and the Ross ice sheet; named Cape Crozier, the only breeding ground of the Emperor penguin; Mount Sabine; and the volcanoes Mts Erebus and Terror, the former being observed in eruption. On April 6, they returned to overwinter in Hobart Town. On July 7, Ross sailed for Australia, where Crozier took readings and established magnetic observatories. From August to October, Crozier continued this work in New Zealand, before heading south once more on November 3. Plagued by storms and trapped in the pack ice for much of the season, the ships did not sight Antarctica before they had to retreat to winter quarters

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CURLEY, TAGAK at the Falkland Islands on April 6, 1842. Word was awaiting the ships of Crozier’s promotion to the rank of post-captain. Crozier took an extensive set of magnetic readings over the winter. On September 8, both ships left the Falkland Islands, and between September 20 and November 1 Crozier took readings on Hermite Island at Cape Horn. After a brief return to the Falklands, Ross headed south on December 17. Conditions during the third season were even worse than previous and Crozier was fully occupied handling his ship. On January 6, Ross and Crozier formally took possession of Cockburn Island. On March 5, Ross ordered a return to England, and on April 4 they anchored in Simon’s Bay at the Cape of Good Hope. After stops to take readings at St Helena, Ascension, and Rio de Janeiro, Erebus and Terror anchored off Folkstone on September 4, 1843. During 1844, Franklin returned from Van Diemen’s Land and Crozier again unsuccessfully pursued his suit with Sophia Cracroft. As a consolation, he went on a tour of Italy, but was called back with the offer to be Franklin’s second-in-command on the upcoming traverse of the North West Passage. Oddly, Crozier was not offered the magnetic work on this expedition, which went to the inexperienced James Fitzjames. Franklin’s third expedition, with Crozier as captain of the Terror, sailed from Greenhithe on May 19, 1845. Crozier took over his first independent command on the death of Franklin on June 11, 1847, and was still alive when he signed the Victory Point note on April 25, 1848. Some poorly recorded Inuit stories suggest that an officer, who may have been Crozier, was seen as late in the early 1850s as far east as the Melville Peninsula, but nothing certain is known of his fate.

John Franklin on his attempted voyage through the North West Passage. No one returned from this expedition, and all that is known is that Crozier died somewhere in the central Canadian Arctic sometime after April 25, 1848. JOHN WILSON See also Franklin, Sir John Further Reading Beattie, Owen & John, Geiger, Frozen in Time: Unlocking the Secrets of the Franklin Expedition, Vancouver: Greystone, 1992 Committee of the Crozier Memorial, A Memoir of the Late Captain F.R.M. Crozier RN, FRS, FRAS, of HMS Terror, Dublin: William Kirkwood, 1859 Cyriax, Richard J., Sir John Franklin’s Last Arctic Expedition: The Franklin Expedition, A Chapter in the History of the Royal Navy, London: Methuen, 1939, facsimile edition reprinted Plaistow and Sutton Coldfield: Arctic Press, 1997 Fluhman, May, Second in Command: A Biography of Captain Francis Crozier RN, FRS, FRAS, Yellowknife: Department of Information, Government of the Northwest Territories, 1976 Parry, W.E., Narrative of an Attempt to Reach the North Pole, London: John Murray, 1827 Ross, M.J., Polar Pioneers: John Ross and James Clark Ross, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994 Wilson, John, John Franklin: Traveller on Undiscovered Seas, Lantzville and Montreal: XYZ Publishing, 2001 Woodman, David C., Unravelling the Franklin Mystery: Inuit Testimony, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991 ———, Strangers Among Us, Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1995

CURLEY, TAGAK Biography Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier was born in Banbridge, Ireland on September 17, 1796. As a younger member of a large, well-off lawyer’s family, Crozier’s upbringing was comfortable. He joined the Navy at age 13, and his first long voyage was to the Pacific aboard HMS Briton between December 31, 1813 and July 7, 1815. His first three Arctic voyages were under Edward Parry (April 29, 1821 to November 14, 1823; May 8, 1824 to September 12, 1825; March 25 to October 17, 1827), as a consequence of which Crozier rose to the rank of lieutenant. In 1836, Crozier sailed under James Ross to rescue trapped whalers in Davis Strait and on September 19, 1839 he sailed as Ross’s second-in-command to the Antarctic. Between then and September 4, 1843, he explored and carried out scientific work. On May 19, 1845, Crozier sailed as second-in-command to Sir

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As a community activist, politician, and advocate for northern issues, Tagak Curley has been a prominent political and cultural figure during the 20th century in the Canadian Arctic. His efforts at the local and territorial level were instrumental in bringing Arctic and Inuit issues to the fore and in giving the Inuit a recognized political voice in the north. Curley achieved enormous success and respect for his work to improve the lives of the Inuit of Canada. Since the beginning of the 20th century the Inuit of Canada have witnessed enormous changes in their way of life. Like many Inuit during the 1960s, Curley was motivated by the devastating social malaise and frustration that these changes brought to the Inuit. Born in Coral Harbour, Canada in 1944, his personal familiarity with the problems facing the Inuit prompted him to seek autonomy for his people through politics. Early in his career, from 1966 to 1970, Curley worked as a community development officer with the

CURLEY, TAGAK Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. During that time, federal government bodies administered the North, primarily from southern Canada where knowledge of Inuit culture and concerns was limited and often misunderstood. By the late 1960s, Curley and other leaders with similar goals realized that only direct political involvement would incite real and lasting change in the lives of Inuit. Curley began to organize at the community level and rapidly gained leadership experience. At the local level he served as the Repulse Bay settlement manager in 1970–1971. During this time he also worked as editor of the Keewatin Echo, the first English-Inuktitut newspaper in Canada. Although the Inuit shared some of the concerns and problems of native groups in other parts of the country, Curley believed that there were issues specific to the Inuit and that a distinctly Inuit organization was needed to reflect the cultural, historic, linguistic, and geographic position of Inuit within Canada. One of Curley’s concerns was that Inuit people were split into five regions across northern Canada—the Mackenzie Delta, Keewatin, Baffin Island, Labrador, and Arctic Québec. The vast geographic separation among these five Inuit groups had prevented them from attempting to unite under a common organization that could address Inuit concerns. Much of the impetus for change gained momentum in the 1960s when Inuit students living in remote areas across the Arctic attended high schools established in Churchill, Manitoba, and Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. Such gatherings provided an opportunity for young Inuit men and women from different regions of the Arctic to meet and discuss problems a majority of Inuit faced. A shared commitment to the politics of change emerged from these discussions. In 1969, Curley was asked to represent the Inuit as a member of the newly created Indian and Eskimo Association (IEA). The group’s objectives included assisting nascent aboriginal organizations across Canada in becoming involved in with the recognition of aboriginal rights. Working for the IEA encouraged Curley to launch his own long-standing dream of having the Inuit represented by their own organization. In 1971, he became one of the founding members and first president of the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (ITC), today called the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK). ITK emerged as the first national Inuit political organization in Canada, and today represents 41,000 Inuit across Canada. One of Curley’s missions as the founding president of ITC was the government’s recognition of the name Inuit, rather than Eskimo, a Cree word. Curley’s efforts helped create a territory in which a modern system of Canadian government could also follow traditional Inuit beliefs; he sought to build a

government that would honor, protect, and promote Inuit culture, language, and traditions for future generations. Following the successful establishment of the ITC, Curley worked at the territorial government level where he was a member of the Northwest Territories legislative assembly from 1979 to 1987. While a member, he held several cabinet posts including minister of economic development, minister of mines and resources secretariat, minister of public utilities from 1984 to 1987, and minister of government services in 1986–1987. He ran as a federal liberal candidate in the 1979 election. Curley later held positions with the Inuit Cultural Institute and the Nunasi Corporation, an Inuit land claim development organization he helped organize. In the years following the passage of the Nunavut Act and the creation of the new territory, Curley acted as business manager for Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (NTI), the organization that implemented the Nunavut land claim. In this capacity, Curley successfully negotiated a commitment from the federal government that would see Inuit development corporations build and manage Nunavut’s future infrastructure. Since 1997 Curley has served as president of the Nunavut Construction Corporation (NCC), an Inuit organization responsible for construction projects throughout the territory. As head of the NCC during a time of consequential change, Curley has overseen the finance, construction, and management of the newly commissioned infrastructure necessary to support the fledgling government of Nunavut. The ensuing construction boom resulted in the creation of hundreds of new dwellings, providing valuable new skills to apprentices throughout the territory. Curley’s commitment to hiring Inuit employees has ensured that the NCC maintains a predominately Inuit workforce.

Biography Tagak Curley was born in Coral Harbour, Canada in 1944. His father raised him to know the traditions and lifestyle of the Inuit, while at the same time stressing an education in English and nonaboriginal life. From 1966 to 1970, Curley worked as a community development officer with the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development which allowed him to help organize the Inuit and develop their leadership. He served as the Repulse Bay settlement manager from 1970 to 1971 and also acted as editor of the Keewatin Echo, the first English-Inuktitut newspaper in Canada. In 1971, was a cofounder and first president of the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (ITC), today called the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK). From 1979 to 1987 Curley served as member of the Northwest Territories legislative assembly, where he held numerous cabinet posts.

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CZAPLICKA, MARIE ANTOINETTE Since 1997 Curley has served as president of the Nunavut Construction Corporation (NCC), an Inuit organization responsible for construction projects throughout the Nunavut territory. In addition to the respect of his fellow people, Curley has garnered numerous accolades for his work, including a National Aboriginal Achievement Award in 1998 for his contributions in the field of business and commerce and an appointment to the Order of Canada in 2003 for his decades of work to grant the Inuit their own organization. KATIE BREEN See also Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami Further Reading http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ks/3106_e.html (Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 2000) www.naaf.ca/rec98.html#Curley (National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation) Windspeaker profiles of outstanding Aboriginal people. www. ammsa.com/achieve/AA98-T.Curley.html Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), http://www.tapirisat.ca/

CZAPLICKA, MARIE ANTOINETTE Though all but forgotten today, Polish-born anthropologist Marie Antoinette Czaplicka rightly holds a distinguished place in the history of Arctic scholarship. Her pioneering contributions to the field came at a time— in the early 20th century—when the fledgling “science of man” was almost wholly a male preserve, and northern exploration was exclusively so. She was remarkably productive during what was a very brief career; she published three books and numerous papers in a single decade before her death at the age of 38 in 1921. Moreover, her work was distinguished by her specialization in Siberia, the very name deeply ingrained in the consciousness of every Pole living under czarist rule as a place of banishment and harsh labor. “Unlike that of many of my countrymen,” Czaplicka explained in My Siberian Year (1916), a memoir of fieldwork in the Enisei (Yenisey) River region, “my year’s exile was a voluntary one ... and I was urged on through the difficulties of the journey not by the Cossack’s knout, but by the friendly encouragement of an English University” (p. 4). Not so for many of the Russian and Polish ethnographers whose work she drew on in her own writings. For the likes of Waldemar Jochelson (Vladimir Il’ich Iokhel’son), BronisBaw PiBsudski, and Lev Shternberg, studying native life was a calling embraced while in exile for revolutionary activities. Czaplicka’s first, and arguably her most important, contribution to Siberian scholarship was completed before she ever set foot in that vast country. In

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Aboriginal Siberia: A Study in Social Anthropology (1914), she introduced readers in the English-speaking world to a wealth of ethnographic information on the populations of the Russian empire’s far north, most of it gleaned from a sizeable Slavic literature dating back to the 18th century. The book offered more than a synoptic treatment of what were then little-known peoples who she classified as either Paleo-Siberians or NeoSiberians on the basis of cultural-historical affinities, not the purported racial criteria more common to the day’s ethnological practice. Reflecting the scholarly preoccupation with “primitive religion” of her Oxford tutor, R.R. Marett, the work also examined in detail the various forms of shamanism and important psychosocial and environmental factors underlying traditional beliefs and practices, including those about the gender identity of shamans. Her closing chapter considered possible connections between these factors and the pathologies normally known by the term “Arctic hysteria.” Moving quickly from the library to the field, Czaplicka organized and led an expedition to north central Siberia beginning in June 1914. Oxford University and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology jointly sponsored the trip, while the American Henry Usher Hall arranged the museum’s participation after the failure of overtures to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Hall, an aspiring anthropologist whom Czaplicka met at the University of London, accompanied his friend into the field as research associate. Artist Dora Curtis and ornithologist Maud Havilland completed the party, spending the summer months with their companions at Golchikha, near the mouth of the Yenisey, before returning to England. The anthropologists remained until the following summer, passing the formidable Siberian winter on the tundra stretching eastward from Turuchansk, then heading upriver as far as Minusinsk before embarking for home. In all, they spent 13 months in the field. Czaplicka chose to visit the lower reaches of the Yenisey in order to flesh out the scanty ethnological knowledge of the area’s different resident nomadic groups. Modest progress was made in the early stages, and the expedition’s base on the river’s far northern course brought them into contact with northwestern Siberians of Dolgan and Nenets (Samoyed and Yurak) origin. Of greater importance, however, was her determination to find “the most primitive and comparatively the purest type” of Siberia’s most widespread people—the Evenki or northern Tungus (Czaplicka, 1917: 290). She and her team found them among the reindeer herders and hunters with whom they stayed east of the Yenisey, particularly those of the Limpiisk tundra, a precinct, then little affected by Russian

CZAPLICKA, MARIE ANTOINETTE influence. Accompanied by Michikha, a Tungus woman, Czaplicka and Hall traveled extensively across the frozen landscape—upward of 3000 km altogether—visiting families in their widely dispersed winter quarters. Apart from enduring the long season’s many rigors, they gathered anthropometric and linguistic data, collected sundry ethnographic details, including notes on shamanism, and obtained artifacts for their sponsoring institutions. Czaplicka’s aptitude for language enabled her to conduct a good deal of this research unaided by Michikha’s interpreting. (She had also acquired rudiments of Samoyed and Yurak the previous summer.) Back in Turuchansk to await the opening of navigation on the Yenisey, the anthropologists did some work with Enesei Ostiak (Ket), the lone group among all those they encountered who are classified as Paleo-Siberians. Finally at Minusinsk, in the steppe country south of Krasnoyarsk, they paid a brief visit to two Turkic-speaking groups, the Kachin and Sagay. Traditionally horse nomads, some of their number had since taken up a settled, agrarian life. World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution drew heavily on Czaplicka’s intellectual and emotional capital in the years following the expedition. The fate of her native Poland, no less her hopes for an independent and democratic Siberia, figured prominently in her writing and lecturing. She also contributed directly to the war effort, preparing intelligence reports bearing on the Russian empire, and publishing her third book, The Turks of Central Asia (1918). This text was a thinly veiled, anti-German polemic purporting to examine the “Pan-Turanian” (that is, Pan-Turkic) self-determination movement in the light of ethnological evidence. With seemingly limitless energy, moreover, she managed to write a steady stream of conventional papers on the Evenki and other Siberians—aboriginals and colonials alike—in addition to her expedition memoir, My Siberian Year. A planned volume on Evenk society and culture was never completed, however. According to a 1928 document attributed to Hall, an employee of the University of Pennsylvania Museum since his return from Siberia, Czaplicka had finished writing two of three planned sections: one containing the text of two transcribed Tungusian tales with English translations and annotations, and ten other texts in translation only; the other a vocabulary and grammatical sketch of the Limpiisk dialect. The

unfinished portion was to contain a general description of Tungus life and customs. The whereabouts of this manuscript are presently unknown.

Biography Marie Antonina Czaplicka was born Marya Antonina Czaplicka in Warsaw, then a Russian dependency, on October 25, 1884. Her parents, Felix L. Czaplicki and Sophie Zawisza, had at least two other daughters. Her career as an anthropologist began when a 1910 award from the Mianowski Institute in Warsaw, Poland, enabled her to continue her education in England. Studying with C.G. Seligman at London and then with Oxford’s R.R. Marett, she became one of the first recipients of the new Oxford diploma in anthropology. Library research for her groundbreaking Aboriginal Siberia (1914) was quickly followed by a year’s fieldwork among Evenki and other nomadic herders in Siberia’s central Arctic. Afterward she lectured at various universities, including Oxford and Bristol, and published numerous papers and two additional books. Czaplicka never married. She died at Bristol, presumably by her own hand, on May 27, 1921. BARNETT RICHLING See also Dolgan; Evenki; Iokhel’son, Vladimir Il’ich; Nenets; Pilsudski, Bronislaw Piotr; Shternberg, Lev Yakovlevich; Tungus Further Reading Collins, David, “Introduction.” In The Collected Works of M.A. Czaplicka, Volume 1, Collected Articles and Letters, edited by David Collins, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1999 Collins, David & James, Urry,“A flame too intense for mortal body to support.” Anthropology Today, 13 (December 1997): 18–20 Czaplicka, M.A., Aboriginal Siberia: A Study in Social Anthropology, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1914 ———, My Siberian Year, London: Mills and Boon, 1916 ———, “On the track of the Tungus,” Scottish Geographical Magazine, 33 (1971) Czaplicka, M.A., The Collected Works of M.A. Czaplicka, Volume 1, Collected Articles and Letters, edited by David Collins, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1999 ———, “The Siberian expedition.” The Museum Journal, 7 (March 1916): 27–45 ———, “A Siberian wilderness: native life on the lower Yenisei.” The Geographical Review, 5 (January 1918): 1–21

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D DAAVI SUVVÁ FESTIVAL

One of the highlights of the Davvi Suvvá festival was the traditional Saami song or yoik. The yoik is most closely associated with the northern Saami, expresses those cultural elements, and is the most widely recognized genre of Saami music. The meaning of a yoik or song extends beyond its musical qualities or characteristics because it serves as a broad expression of Saami culture, philosophy, and beliefs. Musicians craft lyrics and music in order to engender a range of emotional responses. Yet, the singer’s message in a yoik remains indirect and this results in the listener having to decipher the message. Yoik is a direct connection to the Saami group and these messages can be viewed as an oral history of the past, present, and future. Even though the festival is officially known as the Davvi Suvvá festival, many unofficial names for the gathering have transpired. For instance, some have referred to the Davvi Suvvá festival in terms of a spiritual-orientated gathering, such as the “Shaman Summer Festival” or the “Saami Shaman Summer Festival.” Others have referred to the festival’s northern aspects, calling it a “northern Music and Cultural Festival.” Still others have viewed the festival within the context of the indigenous groups, preferring descriptions such as the “Saami Cultural Festival,” “International Original Populations Festival,” and the “Indigenous Peoples Festival.” All of these unofficial names illustrate the diverse views of those who attended the festival. Although the primary focus was on the world indigenous people and the celebration of their culture, the secondary focus of the Davvi Suvvá festival was the Saami people, their culture, and history. The importance of the Saami in the gathering was manifest in the festival’s name, which comprised two terms with separate meanings. The term Davvi means

In the midsummer of 1993, a unique cultural and music festival took place in Sápmi (Karesuando, Sweden) known as the Davvi Suvvá festival. The festival was held in conjunction with the United Nations International Year for the World’s Indigenous People. A cultural gathering as well as an affirmation of the progress that has been made toward Saami sovereignty and other indigenous people advancements from over the world, the Davvi Suvvá festival affirmed and supported indigenous peoples’ past triumphs and continued struggles. The Davvi Suvvá festival celebrated culture and heritage through various artistic performances to include dance, theater, art, and music, incorporating traditional, experimental, and modern expressions. The festival also offered the audience an extensive program of seminars and other activities, all within the context of the world indigenous cultures and with the aim of acknowledging the preservation and perseverance of indigenous people throughout the world. Music comprised the primary focus of the festival, and performances were from a broad range of genres including ethnic music and world music. The diverse musicians performed songs that narrated the social and cultural history of world indigenous people over the past decades, functioning as a salute to the changing status and increasing rights of the indigenous groups. Musicians from around the world gathered to participate. The musicians and the music they performed were directly or indirectly focused on the progress in the status and rights of the indigenous peoples. Musical acts included Inuit drummers and dancers as well as other indigenous musicians representing traditional and modern forms. Musical performers included world-renowned Inuk singer Susan Aglukark and Saami yoik singer Mari Boine.

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DALL’S SHEEP “northern,” which is also a reference to the “northern Saami” (e.g., Davvi Saami). The Davvi Saami, formerly called the Lapps, are the largest Saami group with a population of 30,000 and live in Sápmi or the northern regions of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. Suvvá means “sighing.” An English translation equivalent of Davvi Suvvá would be “The North is Sighing.” Artist Ken Hiratsuka, from Tokyo, Japan, was commissioned by the Kemi Museum of Art in Kemi, Finland, to carve six site-specific stones that were placed in various locations in Finland and Sweden to commemorate the festival. One of the sculpted stones, titled Daavi Suuvá, is publicly displayed in Karesuando, Sweden. ANDREW HUND See also Saami

DALL’S SHEEP Dall’s sheep is one of the most sought after of northern mammals by hunters and naturalists alike. The striking white pelage and amber-colored horns, combined with the sheep’s natural grace and agility, are a match for the spectacular beauty of their mountain home. Dall’s sheep, Ovis dalli dalli, is the northernmost of three subspecies of the thinhorn sheep (Ovis dalli) of Alaska, Yukon, and northern British Columbia. These northern sheep are found in rugged mountainous areas across Alaska and Yukon and into the Northwest Territories. The two other subspecies are the darkercolored Stone sheep (Ovis dalli stonei) of south-central Yukon and north-central British Columbia, and the Kenai sheep (Ovis dalli kenaiensis) found only on the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska. In eastern Siberia and Kamchatka, the closely related snow sheep, Ovis nivicola, occupies a similar habitat. The total population of Dall’s sheep is about 86,000 (70,000 in Alaska, 9000 in Yukon, 7000 in Northwest Territories, and 200 in British Columbia). In Arctic North America, Dall’s sheep inhabit much of the Brooks Range of northern Alaska, with about 9000 sheep residing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. At the western edge of this range, in the Arctic regions of Yukon, a small population of about 200 sheep is found in the British Mountains near the Firth River in Ivvavik National Park. About 1400 Dall’s sheep live in the Richardson Mountains on the border of Yukon and the Northwest Territories, west of the Mackenzie River. The wide-flaring, light-colored horns grow throughout life. Horn growth may vary from year to year and is influenced by environmental factors such as precipitation. The age of adult males particularly

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can be estimated by counting the annual growth rings. The horn tips of older males often become worn down or “broomed.” The female’s horns are smaller and retain their sharp tips. Females are also lighter in weight than males (average females weigh about 50 kg, males about 80 kg) and smaller (the average shoulder height of females is 84 cm, males 93 cm). The creamy-white coat of Dall’s sheep is made up of an undercoat of fine wool covered by a protective coat of long, stiff, hollow guard hairs. In winter, this white coat may be up to 5 cm thick. Dall’s sheep were first identified as a separate species by American zoologist and explorer E.W. Nelson in 1884. He named this “new” sheep after William Healy Dall (1845–1927), a zoologist who undertook many surveying and exploring trips to Alaska in the late 1800s. In the North Alaska Iñupiat dialect, Dall’s sheep are imnaik and in the Kobuk River dialect, ipnaik. In the northern Yukon, the Vuntut Gwich’in name for Dall’s sheep is divii. Among the common English names given to this sheep are white sheep, Dall’s sheep, white mountain sheep, and in French, mouflon de Dall. Dall’s sheep have been used by people in North America for many thousands of years. Sheep blood has been detected in residues on tools from 6000 to 1000 years old. Traditionally, sheep horns were used to make bowls, spoons, and tool handles. Hides were made into thin cords for snowshoe netting. Before the arrival of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Vuntut Gwich’in from Old Crow, Yukon, traveling to the Arctic coast in Alaska and Yukon to trade muskrat skins, also traded Dall’s sheep meat and hides with the Iñupiat and Inuvialuit who lived along the coast. In historic times, whalers, explorers, trappers, and prospectors also used Dall’s sheep for food. During the International Boundary survey of 1911–1912, scattered bands of sheep were seen on the north slopes of the British Mountains, Yukon, to within 24 km of the Arctic coast. Large numbers of old sheep skulls and bones were found on the Arctic slopes, suggesting a decrease in population due to disease or hunting to support whalers wintering at Herschel Island. In order to find suitable feeding areas where their usual diet of grasses, sedges, and low shrubs is accessible, Dall’s sheep move seasonally between ranges. The restricted winter feeding areas are influenced by snow accumulation. During most of the year, female Dall’s sheep travel apart from the males, living with their young in small bands. Male sheep may use as many as six different ranges by season: prerutting, rutting, mid-winter, late winter-spring, salt-lick, and summer ranges. Ranges used by adult females are less complex: winter, spring, lambing, and summer.

DALL’S SHEEP

Dall’s sheep, Chugach State Park, Anchorage, Alaska. Copyright Chris Jones/National Geographic Image Collection

Adult male and female Dall’s sheep come together during the rut or breeding season in November and December. Rutting males fight for the possession of receptive females, using their horns in social encounters ranging from mild threats to elaborate and impressive head-clashing combat. The large dominant males do most of the mating: courting, defending, and copulating with several females. Lambs are born in early to mid-May following a gestation period of 171 days. Births are highly synchronized and take place in secluded sites on steep slopes or cliffs. Lambs are able to follow their mothers over rough ground when only a day old. Suckling ceases by about 4 months of age. Females usually bear a single lamb annually and are known to live up to a maximum of 20 years in the wild. Like other ungulates, Dall’s sheep are usually infected with several parasites and other disease-causing organisms. Although lungworms are common, dieoffs due to lungworm infestations have not been observed in this sheep. Wolves, coyotes, grizzly bears, and black bears all prey on adult and young sheep. Lambs may also be taken by lynx and golden eagles. Dall’s sheep live in steep, rugged terrain where they can avoid predators, but some sheep also die from avalanches and accidental falls. Besides accident, disease, and predation, Dall’s sheep can be killed by a combination of factors including deep snow, low temperatures, high population density, and low-quality food. Subsistence hunting (by Iñupiat, Gwich’in, and Inuvialuit hunters) and sport hunting are closely regulated. Sport hunting is restricted to older adult males and usually requires guides or outfitters. The harvest

of Dall’s sheep is restricted to a small portion of the population. The major habitat requirement for sheep in the northern part of their range seems to be the need for appropriate escape terrain. Salt-licks where natural calcium is available can be important seasonally. Loss of habitat due to human disturbance and development is not yet a problem for sheep in the north, but the impact of new northern pipeline proposals and increased tourism on Dall’s sheep are issues that need to be carefully considered. DAVID R. GRAY See also Brooks Range; Herschel Island; Iñupiat; Inuvialuit; Sheep; Sheep Farming Further Reading Banfield, A.W.F., The Mammals of Canada, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974 Blood, D., Thinhorn Sheep in British Columbia: Ecology, Conservation and Management, British Columbia: Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks, 2000 Bower, R.T. & D.M. Leslie Jr., Ovis dalli, Mammalian Species No. 393 (1992): 1–7 Bunnell, F.L., “Horn growth and population quality in Dall sheep.” Journal of Wildlife Management, 42 (1978): 764–775 Burles, D.W. & M. Hoefs, “Winter mortality of Dall Sheep, Ovis dalli dalli, in Kluane National Park, Yukon.” Canadian Field-Naturalist, 98 (1984): 479–484 Dalle-Molle, J. & J. Van Horn, “Observations of vehicle traffic interfering with migrations of Dall’s sheep, Ovis dalli dalli in Denali National Park, Alaska.” Canadian FieldNaturalist, 105 (1991): 409–411 Geist, V., Mountain Sheep and Man in the Northern Wilds, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975

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DALTON HIGHWAY Hoefs, M., “A longevity record for Dall sheep, Ovis dalli dalli, Yukon Territory.” Canadian Field-Naturalist, 105 (1991): 397–398 Hoefs, M., H. Hoefs & D. Burles, “Observations on Dall sheep, Ovis dalli dalli–grey wolf, Canis lupus pambasileus, interactions in the Kluane Lake Area, Yukon.” Canadian FieldNaturalist, 100 (1986): 78–84 Nolan, J.W. & J.P. Kelsall, Dall Sheep and Their Habitat in Relation to Pipeline Proposals in Northwestern Canada, Ottawa: Canadian Wildlife Service, Makenzie Valley Pipeline Investigations, 1977 Shackleton, D., Hoofed Mammals of British Columbia, Volume 3, The Mammals of British Columbia, Vancouver: UBC Press, 1999 Wilson, D.E., & S. Ruff, The Smithsonian Book of North American Mammals, Vancouver/Toronto: UBC Press, 1999

DALTON HIGHWAY The Dalton Highway provides the only road access to the US Arctic, across the only bridge over the Yukon River in Alaska. It connects the Elliott Highway north of Fairbanks with Deadhorse, the Prudhoe Bay service center, 414 miles to the north. The state of Alaska owns the land from the Elliott Highway to the Yukon River on the southern end and the extreme northern end on the Arctic Coastal Plain. The central portion of the corridor containing the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and the highway is managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The BLM corridor is adjacent to some of the prime northern designated wilderness and wildlife refuges in Alaska. These include the Kanuti National Wildlife Refuge, the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge, the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Two Native Corporations own and manage land adjacent to the corridor and these public lands: Doyon Ltd. and the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation. The “Haul Road” was constructed by the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company in 1974 to serve the industrial transportation needs of the Prudhoe Bay oil fields and the construction and maintenance of the TransAlaska Pipeline. The largest engineering and construction challenge, the Yukon River bridge, was not completed until 1976. An earlier attempt to construct a road north for heavy trucks had been a failure. The “Hickle Highway”—named after then governor Walter J. Hickle—was built as a winter haul road in 1968 and was reconstructed during the winter of 1969–1970. With the spring thaw, the disturbed permafrost melted and extensive erosion took place. In contrast, the new highway was constructed with permafrost in mind. It is 28 feet wide, with 3–6 ft of gravel surfacing. Some sections are built on plastic foam to help prevent permafrost thaw. The road requires extensive maintenance and rebuilding during the summer months. During pipeline construction, it served the construction

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camps at Happy Valley, Old Man, Prospect, and Deadhorse. Ocean barges provide the only other surface transport to Prudhoe Bay, and they are often held hostage by unfavorable ice conditions. The Dalton has continued to be the primary supply route for the continuing needs of the northern oil fields. Depending upon special projects, the traffic has averaged approximately 85 trucks a day. The road is kept open year round and is now maintained by the state of Alaska. The Haul Road was renamed in 1981 by the Alaska legislature for an engineer, James W. Dalton, who spent his career pioneering oil exploration work in northern Alaska. The road was first opened to the public in 1994, following a spirited political and legal battle. The spectacular scenery has drawn a relatively small, but growing tourist traffic. There are only three service and fuel facilities along the entire road: at the Yukon Bridge, in Coldfoot, and at the terminus in Deadhorse. The road was constructed for commercial purposes, not with tourists in mind. The steepest grade is 12%, and there are relatively few pullouts. Most car rental companies will not allow their vehicles to be driven on the Dalton, and private travelers are advised to carry at least two spare tires, emergency equipment, and sufficient fuel. The highway traverses four distinct ecological zones: the boreal forest up to Coldfoot, the Arctic mountains of the Brooks Range, the North Slope, and the Arctic Coastal Plain. It crosses the continental divide at Atigun Pass, the highest point on the highway at 4800 feet. Wildlife can frequently be seen from the road, especially beyond the treeline. Large mammals include Dall’s sheep, caribou, moose, bear, wolf, and muskoxen. There are also waterfowl, including swans, geese, and ducks. Of special interest are several varieties of falcons and the snowy owls of the Arctic Plain. The University of Alaska maintains a scientific research station at Toolik Lake at mile 284. Public awareness of the wilderness value of the Brooks Range was created through the writings of Bob Marshall. It was key to the creation of the Gates of the Arctic National Park as part of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) in 1980. The park and other protected land strictly limits development outside the pipeline corridor and preserves the wilderness nature of the landscape beyond the immediate vicinity of the Dalton Highway. Hunting is limited to bow hunting within 5 miles of the pipeline, and the general use of all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) is restricted. Sport fishing is allowed on the numerous streams and rivers that cross the highway, and there are numerous places to put in or take out kayaks, canoes, and rafts. There is an abundance of sport fishing available along the highway. North of Atigun Pass, there is lake

DANCEA (DANISH COOPERATION FOR ENVIRONMENT IN THE ARCTIC) trout in some of the deeper lakes and Arctic char in the Sagavanirktok, Kuparuk, and Ivishak rivers. To the south, rivers also contain grayling, Dolly Varden, whitefish, burbot, pike, chum, coho and king salmon, and sheefish. The most popular for float fishing is the Jim River. The Dalton Highway crosses a portion of the historic Koyukuk mining district. The mining community of Wiseman, continuously occupied since the Gold Rush, retains its picturesque frontier appearance. There is still active gold mining, especially in the vicinity of Coldfoot. Further Reading Coates, Peter A., The Trans-Alaska Pipeline Controversy: Technology, Conservation, and the Frontier, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: Lehigh University Press, 1991 Diel, William R. & Arthur Banet Jr. (editors), Riches from the Earth: A Geologic Tour Along the Dalton Highway, Alaska, Anchorage: Bureau of Land Management and the Alaska Natural History Association, 1993 Jensen, Michael, Umbrella Guide to Alaska’s Wilderness Highway: Traveling the Dalton Road, Seattle: Epicenter Press, 1994 Lampright, Richard L., Gold Placer Deposits in Northeast Alaska (Dalton Highway): An Inventory of the Gold Placer Mines, Prospects, and Deposits Located Within the Beaver, Bettles, Chandalar, Tanana and Weisman Quadrangles, Anchorage: Iron Fire Publications, 1997 Marshall, Robert, Alaska Wilderness: Exploring the Central Brooks Range (2nd edition), edited by George Marshall, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970

MARVIN FALK See also Trans-Alaska Pipeline

DANCEA (DANISH COOPERATION FOR ENVIRONMENT IN THE ARCTIC) In 1993, Denmark followed up on the UN Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro that same year by establishing a financial facility for Danish environmental assistance. It was decided that the total budget should gradually increase until—by 2005—it reaches the target of 0.5% of the Danish GDP. Denmark provides environmental assistance to a broad range of countries and project types throughout the world, including the Arctic. DANCEA manages the environmental funds to the Arctic. DANCEA is divided into four programs, each managing its part of the total DANCEA budget. Each program has its independent objective. One program is responsible for the Danish implementation of the Arctic Council’s Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP) in Greenland and the Faroe Islands. AMAP is the cornerstone in the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy agreed by

the Nordic countries, USA, Canada, and Russia in Rovaniemi, Finland, in 1991. The purpose of AMAP is to monitor the levels of anthropogenic pollution in the Arctic and to advise governments on pollution-control measures. The second program is the Indigenous Peoples’ Program, the purpose of which is to involve the indigenous peoples of the Arctic—especially in the Russian part of the Arctic—in the protection of the Arctic environment. Among other purposes, DANCEA funds are used to run the Indigenous Peoples’ Secretariat in Copenhagen and to support the indigenous peoples’ organizations so that they may be able to participate in the Arctic Council. Support is also given to NGOs with connections to the Arctic. The last two programs go under one heading: the Arctic Environmental Program. These programs jointly support projects that contribute to sustainable development in the Danish part of the Arctic. Among other things, the programs support activities that contribute to the solution of local environmental problems, increase environmental awareness, and contribute to the accumulation of knowledge requisite to environmental efforts in Greenland in particular. The Danish Environmental Protection Agency administers DANCEA. The Danish Minister for Environment and Energy has set up the Advisory Committee for the Arctic to support the Danish Environmental Protection Agency in its work in connection with the Arctic Environmental Program. The committee comprises representatives of professional organizations, environment and nature conservation agencies, research institutions and research councils, as well as the Ministry of Environment and Energy. In addition, there is the Coordination Group for AMAP with representatives of the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Prime Minister’s Department, the Greenland and Faroe authorities, various research institutions, and the Ministry of Environment and Energy. The Coordination Group assists the Danish Environmental Protection Agency with the AMAP program. The Arctic Environmental Secretariat at the Danish Polar Centre is secretariat for DANCEA. DANCEA has launched many environmental projects in the Arctic. One very significant achievement has been mapping the spread of pollutants and persistent toxic substances from the western world, which find their way to the Arctic by air and sea. It has been ascertained that these substances, via the food chain, accumulate in great concentration in the human populations in Greenland. The male population in East Greenland, for instance, carries very high concentrations of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) in the bloodstream, a toxin presumed to be highly carcinogenic. HENRIK M. ELLING

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DAURKIN, NIKOLAY See also Arctic Council Further Reading Elling, Henrik M., Publikationer udgivet i forbindelse med Dancea-finansierede projekter 1994–2001, 53 pp [53 pages list of scientific papers based on DANCEA funded projects 1994–2001, 53 pp], Copenhagen, Arctic Environmental Secretariat, 2001 Pedersen, Hans, The Danish-Greenlandic Environmental Cooperation—Twelve Stories About Environmental Projects in Greenland, Denmark: The Ministry of Environment and Energy DANCEA—Danish Cooperation for Environment in the Arctic, 2001

DAURKIN, NIKOLAY In 1762, the Chukchi polar explorer Nikolay Daurkin was sent to Anadyr ostrog (fort) as a common soldier and as a translator of the Chukchi language. In the summer of 1763, he was among 240 Russian soldiers on 13 ships who marched to the Chukchi’s land. During this march Daurkin escaped to his Chukchi relatives. In August 1764, he returned to the Russians of his own free will, bringing some of his relatives. However, he was arrested and deported to Yakutsk, and endured cruel punishment and was not permitted to leave the town. Before being sent to Yakutsk, Daurkin made a detailed map of the Chukotka Peninsula and wrote about his travel there. That map contained all the existing information about Chukotka and that coast of North America, and for the first time the Diomede Islands and the Alaskan coast were mapped with sufficient accuracy. In June 1765, Daurkin sent a letter from Tobolsk to the new Siberian governor D. Chicherin. As a result, Daurkin was called to Irkutsk, where he was received by Irkutsk governor K. Frauendorf. Daurkin stated his plan for an expedition to the Bering Strait and to North America. But the expedition failed because of Frauendorf’s death. In 1767, Daurkin was fully pardoned and, received the title of a Siberian nobleman for his services. In 1769–1771, he took an active part in the marches of land surveyors I. Leontiyev, I. Lysov, and I. Pushkarev to the Medvezhi Islands and then to the north, northeast, and east in search of the so-called Bolshoy American land. In 1775, Daurkin made a new map of the Chukotka Peninsula and related territories. In comparison with his 1765 map, this map defined more precisely the coastal outlines of Chukotka and North America. In 1774–1786, Daurkin served in the northeast Russian settlements: in Gizhiginsk fortress and in Okhotskyi port as a translator. In 1787, Daurkin became interpreter for the North East geographical and astronomy expedition under the leadership of Captain Joseph (Iosiph Iosiphovich) Billings. This expedition was organized by the

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Russian government to describe the northeast coast of Asia and newly discovered islands of the Pacific Ocean. Led by Billings, Daurkin took part in unsuccessful attempts to round the Chukotka Peninsula from the mouth of the Kolyma River. After returning from the expedition to Nizhnekolymsk, Daurkin went to Okhotsk, where from 1788–1789 he took part in building ships and preparing them for sailing. In the autumn of 1789, on Billings’s order, Nikolay Daurkin and sotnik (Cossack commander) Ivan Kobelev traveled to Chukotka to prepare for the expedition to the land of the still refractory Chukchi. On October 2, 1789, they left Gizhiginsk. On December 19, they went to the Koryaks settlements to meet with the Chukchi. On March 10, 1790, Daurkin and Kobelev crossed the peninsula together with the Chukchi. Waiting for Billings’s ship, in June 1791 Daurkin and Kobelev together with the Chukchi were on the islands of Bering Strait and in North America. Nikolay Daurkin left a letter about this travel on walrus ivory. The letter is still in Moscow, in the state historic museum. On August 6, 1791, Daurkin met with Billings’s ship Slava Rossii. On August 13, Daurkin joined Billings’s team, including naturalist and doctor K. Merk, his assistant Main, navigator Batakov, physician Leyman, artist L. Voronin, and three sailors, to travel to Chukotka accompanied by a Chukchi leader Imlerat. On October 4, the team was divided: Captain Billings went further, accompanied by sotnik Kobelev and Chukchi leader Pagrancha; the other, led by Daurkin, journeyed with the Chukchi of Imlerat. On October 19, both teams rejoined. On February 11, 1792, they were in Annyi, and then in Nizhnekolymsk. On April 26, 1792, they came to Yakutsk. After Billings’s expedition, Nikolay Daurkin lived for some time in Yakutsk. It is known that he was sick for a long time. In 1795, in Okhotsk, Daurkin asked to be relieved of the post of translator, but to keep his official salary. On July 5, 1795, his request was fulfilled.

Biography Nikolay Ivanovich Daurkin was born supposedly in 1734, receiving the name Tangitan. His father Omshat was Koryak and his mother was Chukchi, a relative of the main Chukchi toyon (leader) Tention. In 1744, during one of the aggressive marches of the voivode (warrior leader) Dmitryi Pavlutskyi in Chukotka, Tangitan and his parents were taken prisoner. His father managed to escape, but his mother was executed. The ten-yearold Tangitan was placed in service for D. Pavlutskyi first in Anadyr ostrog. Later he was sent to his family in Yakutsk, where the boy was christened under the name of Nikolay. Because of his godfather Ivan BorisovDaurkin’s nickname, he received the surname

DAVIS, JOHN Daurkin. In Yakutsk, Daurkin studied the Russian and Yakut languages, church rites, and also shoemaking. Later he studied arithmetic, physics, and astronomy. The date and place of his death are unknown, and there is no information about his family. SARDANA BOYAKOVA See also Billings, Joseph; Kobelev, Ivan Further Reading [Daurkin N.I.] Information about Chukotsky Nose, Mecyatseslov historic and geographic for 1780, St Petersburg Alexeyev, A.I., Uchenyi Chukcha Nikolay Daurkin [Chukchi Scientist Nikolai Daurkin], Magadan: Publishing House, 1961 Alexeyev, A.I., Russian Columbs, Magadan: Publishing House, 1966, pp. 87–100

DAVIS, JOHN The English merchant seaman and explorer John Davis was given command of three expeditions to search for the elusive North West Passage partly as a result of his friendship with Adrian and Humphrey Gilbert and their half-brother Sir Walter Raleigh. He was also helped by the patronage of Dr. John Dee, and the sponsorship of William Sanderson and other London and West Country merchants. They secured permission from the Russia Company to seek out a new, northern route, and obtained the approval of Sir Francis Walsingham and the Privy Council. Davis sailed from Dartmouth on June 7, 1585 aboard the Sunneshine, accompanied by the Mooneshine commanded by William Bruton, with a complement of 42 men. Bruton and ships’ officers Richard Pope and William Eston sailed again with Davis, as did John Janes, Sanderson’s nephew and supercargo, who wrote accounts of Davis’s first and third Arctic voyages. Making landfall on the Greenland coast on July 20, the two ships rounded Kap Farvel (Davis’s Cape Farewell) and sailed up the west coast to Godthåbsfjord, which Davis christened Gilbert’s Sound. There, on July 30, friendly relations and trade were established with the Inuit, who were charmed by the antics of Davis’s crew, four of whom were musicians. Sailing northwestward on August 1, across the strait that now bears his name, Davis reached the coast of Baffin Island at Totnes Road (66°22′ N) five days later, and named Mount Raleigh and Capes Dyer and Walsingham. Despite ample signs of human habitation, they encountered only polar bears and some dogs that they initially mistook for wolves. Rounding a headland he named Cape of God’s Mercy, Davis explored the length of Cumberland Sound for 60 leagues before turning homeward on August 24. They reached Dartmouth on September 30.

The furs that Davis obtained from the Inuit, as well as his report, inspired his London backers to finance a second voyage the following year. A third ship, Mermayde, was added by the merchants of Exeter and West Country, along with a 10-ton pinnace, the North Starre. After leaving Dartmouth on May 7, 1586, on June 7 Davis dispatched Richard Pope in command of the Sunneshine along with North Starre to explore Denmark Strait, between Iceland and the east coast of Greenland. Davis reached Cape Farewell by June 15 and landed at Gilbert Sound, where friendly relations with the Inuit were renewed and a small pinnace was built to aid reconnaissance. Davis made extensive notes on the Inuit’s appearance, customs, and language. Their propensity for theft and rough horseplay led to a dispute over a stolen anchor, whereupon Davis hurriedly set sail across the strait. On July 17, Davis encountered a massive ice flow at 63°8′ N, which obstructed his passage for a fortnight and compromised the health of his crew. Retreating eastward to a safe anchorage at Sukkertoppen on the coast of Greenland (65°22′ N) on August 2, the Mermayde was repaired, loaded with provisions, and dispatched home. Davis weighed anchor in Mooneshine on August 15, and crossed the strait to Cape Mercy, at the mouth of Cumberland Sound, whose tidal flow gave promise that it might be the North West Passage. Foul weather meant that the rest of August was spent coasting south, past the entrances to Frobisher Bay and Hudson Strait, until they landed on the Labrador coast on August 28. Reconnaissance ashore revealed a wooded land amply stocked with game. Under way again by September 1, Davis paused only to catch codfish for the ship’s larder, and to make an unsuccessful attempt to broach the Strait of Belle Isle. After a final landfall on the north coast of Newfoundland, where Micmac Indians killed two crewmen and wounded two others, Davis set sail for England, survived a northeasterly gale, and arrived home on October 14. Davis failed to rendezvous with the Sunneshine and North Starre at Gilbert Sound, so Pope sailed for home on August 31. Although the North Starre was lost in a gale, Sunneshine reached the Thames with a cargo of sealskins on October 6. Sanderson, still confident that the North West Passage existed, found London backers for a third voyage, on the condition that two of Davis’s ships catch fish to recover costs. Setting sail on May 19, 1587, the Sunneshine, Elizabeth, and Ellen reached Gilbert Sound on June 16. Dispatching the two larger vessels to the fishery on June 21, Davis went north in the Ellen, a 20-ton, clinker-built pinnace so leaky that it required constant pumping. Davis sailed through clear seas until he attained his furthest north, between 72°12′ and 72°49′, on June 30. Davis named an

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DAVIS STRAIT 850-foot cliff Sanderson’s Hope, in honor of his chief sponsor. However, despite intimations from Inuit of a large sea to the north, contrary winds and the middlestrait icepack forced him to sail southwest, coasting along Baffin Island until he sighted Mt Raleigh on July 19. After a second excursion up Cumberland Sound, Davis doubted whether it concealed a westward passage. He dubbed Frobisher Bay “Lord Lumley’s Inlet.” However, further south the “mighty overfall” of tides at the mouth of Hudson Bay restored his belief in a North West Passage, but set a mistaken direction for its future pursuit. South of Cape Chidley, Davis explored Labrador’s north coast during August, left Davis Inlet (55°50′ N), and reached home on September 15, 1587. Although his three Arctic voyages failed in their ultimate goal, and war with Spain precluded another attempt, Davis charted much of the coast of Greenland, Baffin Island, and Labrador. Davis observed and recorded their climate and tides, much of their flora and fauna (drawing attention to their abundant resources of fish, seals, and whales), and produced the first detailed account of the Inuit. His charts and logs are now lost, but their influence is evident in the work of mathematician and cartographer Edward Wright and globemaker Emery Molyneux. Davis set the highest standards of scientific navigation, keen observation, competent leadership, and raw courage, which inspired many, such as Henry Hudson and William Baffin, who followed in his wake.

Biography Davis was born c.1550 in Devonshire, at Sandridge, in the parish of Stoke Gabriel, near Dartmouth. However, little is known of his early life other than that he received a sound education and went to sea at an early age. Following his three Arctic voyages, his four years of naval service included command of the Desire from August 26, 1591 to June 11, 1593 on Thomas Cavendish’s ill-fated attempt at a second circumnavigation. Davis was to have searched for the North West Passage on his own after Cavendish’s ships passed through Magellan’s Strait, but adverse winds blocked the strait and scattered the ships. Davis brought Desire home, albeit with great loss of life, and en route discovered the Falkland Islands. He served as master of Raleigh’s ship on the Cadiz expedition, 1596–1997, and served on three voyages to the East Indies. Davis married Faith Fulford on September 29, 1582, with whom he had a daughter and four sons, three of whom—Arthur, Gilbert, and Philip—survived him. He was murdered by Japanese pirates at Bintang, Malaya, on December 27, 1605. MERRILL DISTAD

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Further Reading Dee, John, The Diaries of John Dee, edited by Edward Fenton, Oxfordshire: Day Books, 1998 Markham, Sir Clements R., A Life of John Davis, the Navigator, 1550–1605: Discoverer of Davis Straits, London: George Philip, 1889 (2nd edition), London: George Philip, 1891 Quinn, David Beers (editor), The Voyages and Colonising Enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, 2 volumes, London: Hakluyt Society, 1940 Rundall, Thomas (editor), Narratives of Voyages Towards the North-West in Search of a Passage to Cathay and India, 1496 to 1631: With Selections From the Early Records of the Honourable the East India Company and From MSS in the British Museum, London: Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1849, reprinted New York: Burt Franklin, 1964 and 1970 Sauer, Carl Ortwin, Sixteenth Century North America: The Land and the People as Seen by the Europeans, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971 “The First Voyage of Master John Davis, Undertaken in June 1585 for the Discoverie of the Northwest Passage, Written by John Janes, Marchant, Servant to the Worshipfull M. William-Sanderson” (document 666); “The Second Voyage Attempted by Master John Davies With Others for the Discoverie of the Northwest Passage, in Anno 1586” (document 667a); “The Third Voyage Northwestward, Made by John Davis, Gentleman, as Chiefe Captaine and Pilot Generall, for the Discoverie of a Passage to the Isles of Molucca, or the Coast of China, in the Yeere 1587. Written by John Janes, Servant to the Aforesayd M. William Sanderson” (document 668); and “A Report of M. John Davis Concerning His Three Voyages Made for the Discouery of the Northwest Passage, Taken Out of a Treatise of His intituled The Worlds Hydrographical Description” (document 465) in volume 4, edited by David B. Quinn, New American World: A Documentary History of North America to 1612, 5 volumes, New York: Arno Press, 1979 Thomson, George Malcolm, The North-West Passage, London: Secker and Warburg, 1975 Waters, David W., The Art of Navigation in England in Elizabethan and Early Stuart Times, London: Hollis and Carter, 1958 Woolley, Benjamin, The Queen’s Conjurer: The Science and Magic of Dr John Dee, Advisor to Queen Elizabeth I, New York: Henry Holt, 2001

DAVIS STRAIT Davis Strait is a bay of the northern Atlantic Ocean lying between southeastern Baffin Island (Canada) and southwestern Greenland. The strait separates Baffin Bay in the north from Labrador Sea in the south. It is approximately 400 miles (650 km) in length from north to south and 300–400 miles in width. There is a striking variation in the temperature of Davis Strait waters; the relatively warm West Greenland Current carries water northward, while the Labrador Current transports cold water and masses of ice southward along Baffin Island’s eastern shore. The main shipping routes of Davis Strait are in the warmer waters near the Greenland coast and the principal Greenland ports, including Paamiut, Nuuk, and

DAWSON Sisimiut, are in this area. The eastern shore of Baffin Island is sparsely settled and has few permanent settlements because of the difficult coastal terrain and the rough seas. Davis Strait is named after John Davis (earlier spelling Davys), an early English navigator, born near Dartmouth, England, in about 1550. He made three voyages in search of a North West Passage from Europe to the Indies in 1585, 1586, and 1587. During the last of these voyages, he explored the strait that bears his name along the west coast of Greenland as far as 73° N. Davis was the first person to draw attention to the sealing and whaling possibilities in Davis Strait and to show that the Newfoundland cod fisheries extended far northward along the Labrador Coast. In 1588, Davis commanded a ship in the battle against the Spanish Armada, and in 1591 he sailed with the English navigator Thomas Cavendish on an expedition to the South Seas, during which Davis explored the Falkland Islands. He sailed on several more long voyages, but was killed by Japanese pirates near the present site of Singapore. Davis was also the inventor of a navigational instrument that became known as the Davis quadrant. He was the author of several works on navigation, including Traverse Book from his final voyage, which subsequently became the standard model for ships’ logbooks. He was also the author of The Seaman’s Secrets, published in 1594 and republished several times subsequently. This work is a valuable treatise on navigation and includes a tide table and a method of finding the declination of the sun. RALPH M. MYERSON See also Baffin Island; Davis, John; Labrador Sea; Nuuk; Sisimiut

DAWSON Dawson in Yukon Territory, Canada, is located along the Yukon River at the mouth of the Klondike River at 64° N and 139° W. Elevation is about 320 m. With a continental Subarctic climate, Dawson’s mean annual temperature is –5°C, ranging from –31°C in January to 16°C in July. The extreme range has been –58°C to 35°C. The average annual precipitation is 30.6 cm, with nearly half of the precipitation falling during the summer months of June, July, and August. Snow falls from late September to early May and averages 137 cm annually. The Yukon River is normally frozen from late October until early May. Formerly known as Dawson City, Dawson is named after Canadian geologist George M. Dawson, who explored the area in 1887. The community of Dawson began with the Gold Rush of 1898. Rich gold deposits

were discovered on nearby Bonanza Creek in August 1896, causing a massive gold rush and the formation of Dawson. This region came to be known as “The Klondike.” News of the Klondike gold reached southern Canada and the United States in the summer of 1897 and thousands of people, mostly Americans, left to seek their fortune at Dawson. Historians estimate that an astonishing one million people planned to leave home and seek their fortunes in the Klondike. One hundred thousand people made the trek, and about 30,000 of those arrived in Dawson in 1898, briefly making it the largest city in Canada west of Winnipeg. The boomtown consisted of hundreds of houses and commercial buildings hastily constructed with lumber and canvas. Most of the travelers to Dawson made their way by ship to Skagway, Alaska, and then on foot over White Pass or Chilkoot Pass to Lake Bennett and then down the Yukon River in small boats. New gold fields were discovered at Nome, Alaska, in 1899 and many miners left Dawson in 1899 for Nome, 8000 in August alone. Gold production fell after 1900, and the population continued to decline. Dawson was incorporated as a city in 1902 and functioned as the administrative center of the Yukon Territory until 1953 when the capital moved to Whitehorse. The population numbered 2011 in 1999 (Government of the Yukon Territory Statistics). About 25% of the population today is aboriginal, mainly Han (Tr’on Dek Hwech’in First Nation). An all-weather road, completed in 1955, connects Dawson with Whitehorse 530 km to the south and a summer-only road connects westward to Alaska. Tourism dominates the employment sector in Dawson, where approximately 60,000 people visit each year. The tourist season is concentrated in the summer months of June through August. Dawson has been declared a National Historic Site due to the importance of the 1898 gold rush in the development and history of western Canada. Most of the tourists arrive by highway to see historical sites related to the 1898 gold rush, including theaters, homes, and renovated mining operations. Tourists can also pan for gold at commercial facilities. Historical sites related to three authors, Jack London, Robert Service, and Pierre Berton, also attract literary tourists. Gold and other minerals are still mined in the region. THOMAS W. SCHMIDLIN See also Yukon River Further Reading Berton, Pierre, Klondike: The Last Great Gold Rush, 1896–1899, Toronto: Anchor Canada, 2001. Service, Robert, Spell of the Yukon, New York: Dodd Mead, 1990 reprint edition

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DE LONG, GEORGE WASHINGTON www.dawsoncity.org www.gov.yk.ca/yukonglance/history.htm www.yukonsite.com/stats.htm

DE LONG, GEORGE WASHINGTON Lieutenant George Washington De Long developed his idea for a North Pole expedition while on an expedition searching for a lost Arctic expedition. Ironically, De Long’s North Pole sailing trip required a number of rescue missions of its own and was one of the more tragic of its era. In January 1873, Lt. De Long volunteered to be a ship’s officer aboard the USS Juniata that was to search for Polaris of the US North Polar Expedition (1871–1873) under (then deceased) Charles Francis Hall. Juniata did not find Polaris survivors. However, in August, during a perilous search aboard the steam launch Little Juniata lasting several weeks, De Long demonstrated courage, composure, and resolve. He had volunteered to lead the round-trip cruise in the small boat from Upernavik, Greenland, to 75º52′ N, just beyond Cape York. It was during his Polaris search that he conceived a plan to reach the North Pole by ship. Adopting erroneous scientific views of the time, De Long hoped to sail up the coast of unexplored “Wrangel Land” (Wrangel Island was thought to be part of an Arctic continent). He expected relatively open water to the North Pole created by the warm Japanese Ocean current, the Kuro Siwa. The US North Polar Expedition (“Jeannette Arctic Expedition”) was financially backed by New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett. The US Navy supported with crew, outfitting, and instructions. Jeannette was formerly Sir Allen Young’s Arctic expedition yacht Pandora (1875, 1876). Besides De Long, there would be Lts. John W. Danenhower, Charles W. Chipp, chief engineer George W. Melville, ice pilot William Dunbar, surgeon James M. Ambler, a meteorologist, naturalist Raymond Lee Newcomb, and 24 men. Some had been with De Long on the Polaris search. The expedition departed from San Francisco on July 8, 1879. A stop was made on August 12 at St Michael for dogs and some other supplies. Sightings by whalers while they were off Alaska were probably the last time Jeannette was seen. As they proceeded through the Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean, they passed points where Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld’s North East Passage expedition (1878–1880) had wintered. Jeannette entered the pack ice on September 4 near Herald Island (now called Gerald Island, discovered by Captain Henry Kellett of Herald during a Franklin search expedition, 1848–1850). They could not land and two days later became locked in the ice at

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71º35′ N 175º40′ E. The ship would drift, powerless, for nearly two years. Despite their situation, De Long was calm and confident, credited with keeping his crew healthy and cheerful. Drifting generally northwest, they sighted Wrangel Island on October 28. It was revealed to be an island rather than part of a larger landmass. They began drifting backward from their position of 73º49′ N 177º40′ E on May 24, 1880. Six months later, they were nearly back where they had been in April. In 1881, they again resumed a northwesterly movement. By February 14, Jeannette was 75° N at about 171° E. Shortly thereafter their depth soundings allowed them to make another discovery. They were over the margin of a deep ocean. It was much farther south toward the Bering Strait than the Arctic Ocean had previously been thought to extend. On May 16, 1881, they discovered Jeannette Island. Eight days later they sighted Henrietta Island (both now designated in the De Long Islands). On June 2, a sledging party left Jeannette to explore Henrietta Island. Ten days later the entire crew would leave Jeannette for good, as it was crushed and sank. It would be about 100 days before they reached their hoped-for rescue on the Russian north Siberian coast in the Lena Delta. De Long divided the party equally into two cutters and a whaleboat and headed for the New Siberian Islands. De Long and Dr. Ambler headed one cutter. The other was led by Chipp and Dunbar. Melville and Danenhower superintended the whaleboat. After being forced northwest for a while, all three parties began trekking south over the ice with their boats. Despite an arduous, circuitous path, they finally reached Bennett Island on July 29 at the northerly tip of the De Long Islands. Following a ten-day rest, they boarded their boats for what would be another month before reaching their destination. Remarkably, only minor physical problems bothered the expedition members until they reached what should have been their rescue. Nearing the edge of the Lena Delta, the three boats separated in a storm, never to reunite. One cutter was lost with all aboard. De Long’s cutter with 14 men made a landing on September 17, 1881. Two days later, the whaleboat party with Melville landed on the easterly side of the delta. Melville’s whaleboat party immediately found inhabitants who took them to the regional capital at Bulun (Yakutia). In the meantime, De Long’s group began to die from starvation, exposure, and exhaustion. The leader sent two of its members ahead in the hope of reaching help. They had difficulty being understood when found, but were also finally guided on to Bulun, too late alas to save the rest of their party. Melville met them, and immediately launched a search

DE LONG ISLANDS for the other survivors between November 3 and 27. None of the bodies was found. They had all perished by about October 30, 1881. In the meantime, the United States had begun a search. Alliance under George H. Wadleigh and Rodgers with Robert M. Berry left on June 16, 1881. Earlier, the US Revenue Cutter Thomas Corwin with Calvin Leighton Hooper had a search for Jeannette included in its orders. Newspaperman Bennett dispatched a small overland search party with John P. Jackson. There was an international response, including Leigh Smith in Eira and the Dutch in Willem Barents. Melville found and buried the deceased members of De Long’s party, when returning in the spring of 1882 for a final search with a small group of survivors. Twenty had died on a quest that was founded on inaccurate scientific assumptions. It had led to the charting of Lena Delta, some island discoveries, oceanographic findings, and the correct identity of Wrangel Island. Three years later, debris from Jeannette was found washed up half a world away on a Greenland shore. This prompted Nansen’s Fram drift expedition (1893–1896) that would confirm an important new understanding about Arctic Ocean currents.

Biography George Washington De Long was born on August 22, 1844 in New York City, and died on October 30, 1881 at Lena Delta, Siberia, Russia. He graduated from the US Naval Academy, Annapolis, in 1865, after having been admitted by sheer persistence following the attempts of his family and bureaucracy to thwart his admission in 1861. A series of normal ship and shore assignments were marked by his dedication, perseverance, and leadership. Having already met and impressed Henry Grinnell when preparing for his duties aboard Juniata on the 1873 Polaris search, he was recommended by Grinnell to James Gordon Bennett for financial support when the matter of a North Pole expedition was raised. His wife Emma was tireless after her husband’s death in promoting his memory and the valiant story of the Jeannette expedition. HAL VOGEL See also De Long Islands; New Siberian Islands Further Reading De Long, Emma (editor), The Voyage of the Jeannette. The Ship and Ice Journals of George W. De Long, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1884 Ellsberg, Commander Edward, Hell on Ice, New York: Dodd Mead, 1938 Guttridge, Leonard F., Icebound: The Jeannette Expedition’s Quest for the North Pole, Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1986

Hoehling, A.A., The Jeannette Expedition, London and New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1967 Melville, George W., In The Lena Delta: A Narrative of the Search for Lieut.-Commander De Long and his Companions, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1884 Newcomb, Raymond Lee, Our Lost Explorers: The Narrative of the Jeannette Arctic Expedition, Hartford: American Publishing Co., 1882

DE LONG ISLANDS The De Long Islands (Bennett, Jeannette, and Henrietta, Zhokhova, and Vil’kitskii) lie in the East Siberian Sea between Alaska and the Sakha Republic, and may be considered part of the archipelago of the New Siberian Islands (Novosibiriskiye Ostrova). The archipelago is under Russian jurisdiction. On July 8, 1879, the USS Jeannette with Navy Lieutenant George Washington De Long and a crew of 34 left San Francisco for the North Pole by way of the Bering Sea. This controversial route had been based largely on the theories of the German scientist August Petermann, who, without definitive evidence, postulated that a warming Japanese current, the Kuro Siwo (Black Current), circulating northward through the Bering Strait, produced an “Open Polar Sea” that provided easy access to the North Pole. No one had previously pursued a strictly northern or northwesterly course beyond the Bering Strait. Additionally, some theorists felt that a land bridge might extend to the North Pole from the area of Wrangel “Land” off the northeast Siberian coast. Answers to these postulations were rapidly forthcoming. By September, the Jeannette was entrapped in the Arctic ice pack and being carried relentlessly to the northwest paralleling the coast of Siberia. The insularity of Wrangel Island was confirmed and no evidence of a land bridge extending northward was found. By May 1881, the Jeannette was located about 650 miles (1050 km) north of the Siberian coast, northeast of the New Siberian Islands On May 16 and 20, 1881, two small uninhabited islands were discovered. With great difficulty, a landing party was sent to the first, named Henrietta in honor of the mother of James Gordon Bennett, the flamboyant publisher who had been a financial supporter of the expedition. A landing party raised the US flag and declared the island US territory “in the name of the Great Jehovah and the President of the United States.” Henrietta and the second island named Jeannette were volcanic, rocky, and barren, with bold ice-capped headlands rising to over 2000 ft. On June 11, 1881, the crew was forced to abandon the Jeannette and witness its final crushing by the ice pack and eventual sinking. There had, however, been ample time to unload provisions and escape in three small boats. As they made their way toward the

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DECLARATION ON THE PROTECTION OF THE ARCTIC ENVIRONMENT (1991) Siberian coast, a third island was discovered, which De Long named Bennett. The entire company landed and spent several days exploring, gathering specimens, and catching birds to supplement their rations. Henrietta (Ostrov Genriyetta), Jeannette (Ostrov Zhanetta), and Bennett (Ostrov Bennett) Islands have maintained their identity as the De Long Islands (Ostrova De-Longa). However, some cartographers have considered them to be a component of the larger and better known New Siberian Islands, located to their southwest. Two additional islands, discovered by Russian explorers in 1913 and 1914, Ostrov Vil’kitskogo (formerly Ostrov General Vil’kitskogo) and Ostrov Zhokhova (formerly Ostrov Novopashennogo), have usually been included as components of the De Long Islands. For many years, formal jurisdiction of the De Long Islands was a debatable issue. Russia considered them Russian possessions under the 1867 maritime boundary treaty made after the purchase of Alaska by the United States (Alaska Treaty (Convention for the Cession of the Russian Possessions in North America to the United States)). In 1991, the 102nd United States Congress agreed to the terms reaffirming a common depiction of the boundary between Alaska and Siberia and, in essence, granted possession of the De Long Islands to Russia. RALPH M. MYERSON See also De Long, George Washington; East Siberian Sea; New Siberian Islands

DECLARATION ON THE PROTECTION OF THE ARCTIC ENVIRONMENT (1991) The Declaration on the Protection of the Arctic Environment of 1991 is a statement by the eight countries with an outreach above the Arctic Circle of their concern about threats to the Arctic environment and the impact of pollution on fragile Arctic ecosystems. These eight signatory countries are Canada, Denmark (Greenland), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States. Through the Declaration, the signatory countries emphasize their “responsibility to protect and preserve the Arctic environment and recognize the special relationship of the indigenous peoples and local populations to the Arctic and their unique contribution to the protection of the Arctic environment.” The Declaration is the first instrument, sponsored by all the Arctic states, that covers comprehensive issues related to the protection of the Arctic environment. The agreement contains a political commitment to continue to meet and to implement an ongoing environmental protection regime in the Arctic.

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The Arctic is a fragile ecosystem and comparatively simple in structure. The low temperatures obstruct the natural breakdown of pollutants so that a low level of pollution, by other ecosystem standards, causes harm. Adverse effects on one part of these ecosystems will have far-reaching consequences than in ecosystems with a greater abundance of species. Thus the need to create and implement protective controls is paramount. The problem of environmental pollution in the Arctic came into focus in the 1980s with concerns over the pollution of the northern parts of Finland by the Russian mining industry on the Kola Peninsula. In Rovaniemi, Finland, in September 1989, the eight Arctic states met for the first time to discuss a Finnish proposal on cooperation to protect the environment and agreed to work toward a ministerial level meeting. In the past, the east-west conflict was a major stumbling block to the development of regional cooperation in the Arctic. Soviet-United States tensions and conflicts began diminishing after Mikhail Gorbachev, in his speech in Murmansk in October 1987, proposed strengthening cooperation among the Arctic states. He indicated a number of specific issues for cooperation, among which were the establishment of a joint Arctic scientific council and measures to protect the Arctic environment. The creation of the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) in 1990 also contributed to enhance regional cooperation. The IASC is a nongovernmental scientific organization charged with encouraging international consultation and cooperation for scientific research.

The Declaration and the Strategy The ministerial conference that followed the September 1989 meeting in Rovaniemi represented a breakthrough in the development of international cooperation for the protection of the Arctic and led to the adoption of the Declaration in 1991. The Declaration adopted a joint action plan of the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS). The objectives of the strategy were designed as follows: to cooperate in scientific research and to include indigenous peoples and their organizations to study the effects of pollution, in particular, oil acidification, persistent organic contaminants, radioactivity, and heavy metals; to assess the potential environmental impacts of development activities; and to consider and implement further measures to control pollutants and reduce their adverse effects on the Arctic environment. In adopting the Declaration on the Protection of the Arctic environment, the governments of the eight circumpolar countries formally recognized the

DEMOGRAPHY AND POPULATION importance of including representatives of indigenous peoples of the north as active participants in the process. The signatory states also committed to implement the following measures of the strategy: Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP) would monitor the levels and assess the effects of anthropogenic pollutants in the Arctic environment; Protection of the Marine Environment in the Arctic (PAME) was directed to take preventive and other measures directly or through competent international organizations regarding marine pollution in the Arctic irrespective of origin; Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response in the Arctic (EPPR) would provide a framework for future cooperation in responding to the threat of environmental emergencies; and Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) would facilitate the exchange of information and coordination of research on species and habitats of flora and fauna.The Declaration on the Protection of the Arctic Environment was adopted in June 1992 by Canada, Denmark/Greenland, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States. Certain pollutants that exist in the Arctic originate to a large extent from outside the territory of the Arctic states. Persistent organic contaminants also pose a serious threat to the Arctic environment, although there are no major sources of these contaminants in the Arctic. Contaminants reach the Arctic environment via long-range transport by rivers, the atmosphere, and ocean currents from industrialized countries in Asia, Europe, and North America. With the source of the pollution originating outside the jurisdiction of the signatory states, the challenge is to require non-Arctic states to adopt stricter emission standards than are internationally accepted at present. The Arctic Council, founded in 1996, is an intergovernmental forum administering a broad program including all dimensions of sustainable development. The Arctic Council has subsumed the activities and working groups of the AEPS. Active participation of international indigenous organizations makes it possible for the Council to benefit from traditional knowledge in addition to conventional scientific research. Since its inception, the Arctic Council has encountered national policies that seem in conflict when applied to the Arctic region. For instance, the United States, in a mid-1994 interagency review of Arctic policy, listed environmental protection as the top priority. Yet the US government simultaneously downgraded national security and defense considerations, but freedom of navigation remained the strategic military interest of the US Navy in Arctic waters, particularly for submarine operations. Some national institutions were reluctant to provide the necessary raw data for research on grounds of national security.

Another challenge has been that for most states, Arctic issues tend to be peripheral to domestic politics and economy. The result has been an inability or unwillingness to be overly concerned with the problems of the Arctic and its environment, matters that also create funding challenges. As yet, there is no agreement on funding at the international level. SHANNON BENTLEY See also Arctic Council; Contaminants; International Arctic Science Committee (IASC); Murmansk Speech (1987) Further Reading Haarde, G., “International cooperation and action for the Arctic environment and development: an overview of parliamentarian efforts.” In Arctic Development and Environmental Challenges, edited by D. Vidas, Copenhagen: Scandinavian Seminar College, 1997 Ostreng, W. (editor), National Security and International Cooperation in the Arctic—The Case of the Northern Sea Route, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999 Stenlund, P., “Lessons in regional cooperation from the Arctic.” Ocean and Management, 45 (2002): 835–839 Tennberg, M., Arctic Environmental Cooperation, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000 US Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee, “Declaration on the Protection of the Arctic Environment and Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy.” Arctic Research of the United States, Volume 5, pp. 29–35 Vanderzwaag, D., “International law and Arctic marine conservation and protection: a slushy, shifting seascape.” Georgetown International Environmental Law Review, 9(2) (1997): 303–345 Vidas, D. (editor), Protecting the Polar Marine Environment: Law and Policy for Pollution Prevention, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000 Vukas, B., “United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the polar marine environment.” In Protecting the Polar Marine Environment, edited by D. Vidas, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press 34–56

DEMOGRAPHY AND POPULATION Those who reside outside of the region often assume that the Arctic is an empty land—that no one lives there. If a population component is recognized, then it tends to be written off as insignificant—a few, widely scattered native groups who wander in nomadic fashion through a harsh, cold environment. The fact that there might be cities of several thousand people lying north of the 60th parallel usually escapes the attention of most observers. So does the fact that the Circumpolar North has a wide variety of population profiles—the Russian North looking significantly different from both the Nordic North and the North American North. The demographic trends found within the Arctic similarly vary from one subregion to another. In considering the overall population

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DEMOGRAPHY AND POPULATION dimensions of the Circumpolar North, it is important to recognize that they are both variable and dynamic. Broadly speaking, there are approximately 13.1 million individuals residing in the area of the Circumpolar North. This figure represents considerably less than 1% of the total global population. The population is distributed across 21.5 million square kilometers of territory spanning three continents and eight national jurisdictions. While the North is not an “empty land” by any means, it does not possess a very high population density ratio by any calculation. It needs to be emphasized, however, that the population of the Circumpolar North is not uniformly distributed across this vast geographic area. A large majority of the total—some two-thirds—is found within the borders of one country, Russia. As a consequence, the population distribution varies significantly from one northern location to another. In the northern areas of Russia, the average distribution of population is approximately 95 persons per 100 square kilometers. This is a population density figure that is approximately 2.5 times larger than that found in Alaska, and roughly 50 times larger than that seen in the Canadian Arctic or in Greenland. On the other hand, the Nordic countries report population density figures for their northern regions that are, on average, four times as large as those recorded for the Russian North. Not only are there disparities in population distributions between the main subregions of the Arctic, but there are differences in the actual location of northern populations within these same areas. In North America and the Nordic countries, the vast majority of their northern population is to be found within the southern tier of the region in small to medium-sized resourcebased communities such as Prince George, Sudbury, Umeå, and Oulu. In Russia, however, there are some very large population centers such as Murmansk and Arkhangel’sk that lie north of the Arctic Circle or close to it. This northern urban feature is one of the distinctive characteristics of Russia’s population settlement pattern in its north. Nearly 80% of the country’s northern population can be found in such locations. Today, there are 11 northern cities in the world with populations larger than 250,000—ten of these are found in Russia. As such, it would be quite wrong to view the contemporary circumpolar world as being primarily composed of small, widely scattered villages. The population of the Circumpolar North also features some interregional differences with respect to both gender and age distribution. While all of these northern lands have been traditionally thought of as being the domain of the young—mostly male— workers, contemporary population data show that this long-accepted image may be quickly passing from the

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scene. In the case of the Nordic North, gender distribution totals have become fairly equalized over the past several decades. In some areas—such as Västerbotten County in northern Sweden—women slightly outnumber men. In the case of northern Russia, the gender distribution is nearly equal. Only in the North American North does the male population continue to appreciably exceed that of its female counterpart. However, population trend lines suggest that this may not be the case for much longer. There appear to be similar changes taking place with respect to the age structure of the population of the Circumpolar North. Where once it featured a significant bulge in its working-age cohorts, today this recognizable population profile is being dramatically altered across most of the subregions of the Arctic. Young workers—whether they are Russian, Canadian, or Swedish—are no longer flocking as readily to the North in search of jobs and an improvement in their economic conditions. In many cases, the young working population of the North is now looking southward for new employment opportunities and challenges. Simultaneously, the size of the youngest and oldest segments of the northern communities is on the rise. The increase in numbers of the very young can be attributed to both a decline in child deaths, due to improved health care access, and a marked increase in births—especially among aboriginal populations in North America. The growth in the number of elderly can also be attributed, in part, to improved health services in the region as well as the increasing trend for workers to retire within the North rather than in locations further south. The Circumpolar North also encompasses a wide variety of different ethnic communities distributed unevenly across its various subregions. The original aboriginal populations of the North have always been rather small in number. The four largest groups are represented by the Inuit, the Saami, the First Nation communities of North America, and the various native peoples of the Russian Far North. Today the Inuit number approximately 136,000 individuals, with the largest of their communities found in Alaska (45,000), Canada (41,000), and Greenland (48,000), and a much smaller community in the Russian Chukotka (2000). The Saami peoples reside in the northern reaches of Nordic countries and in adjacent areas of northwest Russia. Their numbers are very small: Norway (25,000); Sweden (17,000); Finland (7000); and Russia (2000) (Saami population figures are for 1997 and have been derived from the Nordic Statistical Yearbook, 1998). The First Nation peoples of the northern portions of Canada and the United States represent a much larger (135,000) and diverse group spread out across a wide territorial area. They include

DEMOGRAPHY AND POPULATION such groups as the Aleut, Dene, Athapaskan, and Cree peoples living from Alaska in the west to Québec and Labrador in the east (Inuit and First Nations figures are for 1998 and have been derived from Statistics Canada www.statcan.ca and US Census, www.census.gov.). The Northern Minorities of Russia include the largest number of aboriginal peoples within the Circumpolar North totaling about 178,000 individuals. They represent some 30 distinct ethnic groups residing from the Kola Peninsula in the west to the Bering Sea in the east. Some of the larger communities include Evenks, Nenets, Khants, Chukchi, and Evens. The settler populations from the south, however, have now become the dominant group within the Arctic region, accounting for the vast majority of the peoples who reside in the area. Again, however, the distribution of this settler population is not uniform across the North. In Alaska and northern Canada, this population group is found predominantly in the more southern and larger communities of the region. In most of the Nordic countries, this same pattern is repeated. In Greenland, the number of Danes living in the country has decreased since Home Rule was introduced in 1979. However in Russia, as noted above, there are large settler communities in the far northern urban centers of that country. The settler populations, for the most part, came to these northern lands in the 19th and 20th centuries as part of either planned government settlement programs or in response to individual efforts to secure their economic betterment. Most of the settlers have been traditionally employed in the natural resource economies of the area or have served at the military or security bases that were established in the region—especially during the Cold War era. The fortunes of these settler communities have risen and fallen according to the patterns of the natural resource markets and the degree of international tensions in the area. Today with a decline in both areas, the influx of new settlers has largely stopped. The past decade has witnessed a significant degree of turbulence within the established population distributions of the Circumpolar North. The source, character, and degree of impact of these disruptions vary somewhat from region to region. As such there is no single “population problem” in the Arctic—there are several. Some like the depopulation of small rural communities are commonly shared across all sectors of the circumpolar region. Others like the rapid growth in numbers of indigenous children is limited, primarily, to one region—that of North America. Some of the current population issues encountered in each portion of the Circumpolar North are detailed below. Clearly, the most important “population problem” facing northern Russia over this past decade has been the significant out-migration that the region has faced.

It is estimated that over the past ten years, more than 10% of the residents of this area have left. This represents a significant population crisis for the region and a major break with the previous large flows of inmigration to the area that had been characteristic of most of the Soviet period. The worst of this population outflow took place during the early portion of the last decade—from 1992 to 1996—but the trend of population loss continues up to the present date. The one million residents who left the Russian North in the 1990s were largely composed of two groups. The first of these were young workers who left the region at the height of the “economic crisis” in pursuit of better economic opportunities elsewhere. Some of these individuals had been born in the Russian North. The vast majority, however, were workers who had been motivated to move North during the Soviet era with the promise of high-paying jobs and subsidized food and housing. This established system of wage and price subsidization came to a crashing halt in the early 1990s with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its artificially protected northern economy. Facing real or expected unemployment and deprivation, many young workers headed south, seeking greater security in the more central core of the country. The other group that contributed to the exodus from the Russian North comprised members of those ethnic groups whose nations had achieved their own independence since 1992. The north of Russia has always had a significant ethnic population composed of both Slavs and non-Slavic peoples. They came to the region as a result of both forced relocation policies pursued by the government of the day and through individual efforts at seeking economic betterment. Toward the end of the Soviet period, the Ukrainian, Belarussian, and Kazakh populations of the Russian North represented as much as 30% of some of the urban communities of the region. Starting in 1992, many of these peoples and other non-Russian groups took the opportunity to relocate to their newly independent homelands. It is estimated that some 300,000 have now left the Russian North. This significant out-migration, combined with a falling birth rate in the region, suggests that for the next several decades the Russian North will be experiencing a significant decline in its population base. This is an unprecedented phenomenon for the region and suggests that there will not be a rapid improvement in either the economic or social conditions of the area in the near term. The loss of young, educated workers is particularly worrisome. Any future economic expansion in the region will require the very type of active and skilled labor that has been leaving the Russian North in large numbers over the past few years.

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DEMOGRAPHY AND POPULATION The population concern in the North American North is not one of massive out-migration as has been the case in Russia. The populations of the northern regions of Canada and the United States are continuing to grow in the aggregate. What is new, however, is that the rate of growth in the region has slowed down from the earlier economic boom decades of the 1960s and 1970s. Today there is much less new, in-migration into the area. As a result of the hard times that have faced the natural resource sector in the 1990s, the number of new workers coming into the region has dramatically fallen. Reductions in public sector spending have also reduced new employment opportunities and have also served to curb new population flows to the area. A significant portion of the population increase that has taken place in the North American North over recent years has come from natural increase, immigration, and the slowing of the out-migration from the region—especially by the elderly. The northern birth rate has long been higher than more southern areas of Canada and the United States. Today it is growing significantly—especially among aboriginal populations. This development provides both a challenge and an opportunity for community leaders who desire to see their settlements grow and their economies expand. As is the case in northern Russia, the North American North is also confronting a significant migration from small villages to larger towns and cities in the region. This has come about, in part, as a result of the decline in job opportunities in the natural resource economies of most rural areas. It has also been precipitated by the desire—especially on the part of the young—to access the more extensive educational, training, and cultural opportunities that are available in the regional centers of the North American North. Such movement poses a variety of social and economic problems for those rural communities that are drained of these young workers. Their future longterm growth and vitality, in many cases, may be threatened. The issue of providing adequate support for the elderly in the North American North is also coming to the forefront as a population issue. Although not anywhere close to the dilemma confronting the Russian North, the northern residents of Canada and the United States need to consider how they are going to provide the necessary economic, health care, and social services required for the growing numbers of seniors who will populate their communities in the near future. New census data suggest that the population of the northern areas of North America is growing older (1998 data from Statistics Canada www.statcan.ca and US Census, www.census.gov). Fewer numbers of northern seniors are relocating at retirement age outside of the region for

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a variety of economic and social reasons. Interestingly, there seems to be a small increase in the number of seniors who are actually relocating to the North. Dealing with this new demographic change will require new innovative strategies on the part of governments and citizens of the region. With respect to the Nordic North, there has been a rather stable overall population profile for the region over the past decade. There has been no major outmigration as in the case of northern Russia, nor a significant rise in the natural rate of population increase as has been witnessed in the North American case. Instead, population numbers have remained relatively unchanged. Significant outflows of young workers that were once characteristic of the region in the 1960s and 1970s have been stemmed somewhat through improved higher educational opportunities in the region and the increased diversification of the area’s economy. Nonetheless, the media of the region regularly features stories outlining various schemes to boost the local population, including the settlement of refugees in declining communities. Questions also abound regarding the long-term trends for employment in the area. Declining natural resource and manufacturing sectors in the Nordic North suggest that some long-established jobs in the area may be threatened. Unemployment in the forestry, fishing, and mining industries has been quite high over the past decade. Cuts in public expenditures—including the downsizing of the military presence in the Nordic North—have raised a number of concerns regarding the ability of those who have been displaced to find new jobs in the secondary and tertiary economies. Can a northern regional economy be sustained largely upon public sector spending and a growing tourism and recreation industry? Like other areas of the Circumpolar North, the Nordic North faces the challenges of providing for an increasingly aged population. The adequate delivery of health care services remains an ongoing challenge. Of the three northern regions examined, the Nordic North has aged the most extensively. This is particularly true for its small rural communities. Many of the younger residents of these towns and villages have already departed for the more extensive work and educational opportunities found in the larger urban centers to the south. Ironically, this aging phenomenon has brought one particular employment benefit to the region—the creation of a significant number of new care-giving jobs. Thus as the character of the Circumpolar North changes, so does our need to adjust our perspectives on the people who inhabit it. Today the region is much more urbanized, feminized, aged, and multicultural than it was but a few decades ago. It is no longer

DEMPSTER HIGHWAY predominantly the domain of the young, male natural resource workers who seek to earn an economic stake and then depart for the south. Northern settlement is becoming a permanent condition, with a variety of social, cultural, and environmental concerns contesting with purely economic and employment demands. It is necessary that we gather the appropriate information on these population-related developments if we are to truly appreciate the character of this significant transformation. In gathering this information and insight, it is important that we do so on a truly comparative basis. As has been previously noted, there are several different norths within the circumpolar world. Due to various difficulties encountered in gathering appropriate data from such a broad and diverse region, few truly comparative studies of population dynamics in the circumpolar world have emerged. Until quite recently, there has been a tendency for most researchers to concentrate their efforts on only one of the sectors—usually their own portion of the circumpolar world. As a consequence, we tend to develop quite a bit of information about conditions and challenges confronting our own northern residents, but we continue to remain uninformed about the peoples from other northern communities. Unfortunately, there has been a tendency for some scholars to generalize from their sectorbased knowledge and to draw portraits of population settlement in the Circumpolar North that truly reflects only one segment of a broader phenomenon. The challenge for ongoing research focusing on the population of the Arctic is to move away from this narrow sectional thinking and to more fully embrace the diversity and complexity of the broad human experience in the North. DOUGLAS C. NORD See also Human Population Trends; Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations and Arctic Environmental Politics; Relocation Further Reading Bengston, T. & M. Johansson, “Economic and Social Factors Behind the Slow-Down of Migration in Northern Sweden.” In Shifts in the Systems at the Top of Europe, edited by Hekki Jussila, Lars Olof Persson & Ulf Wiberg, Stockholm: FORA, 1993, pp. 33–48 Bone, R.M., The Geography of the Canadian North, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1998 Coates, K. & W. Morrison, The Forgotten North: A History of Canada’s Provincial Norths, Toronto: Lorimer, 1992 Heleniak, T., “Outmigration and depopulation of the Russian North during the 1990s.” Post-Soviet Geography and Economics, 40 (February 1999): 155–205 Kauppala, P., The Russian North: The Rise, Evolution and Current Condition of State Settlement Policy, Helsinki: Finnish Institute for Russian and Eastern European Studies, 1998

Minority Rights Group (editors), Polar Peoples: SelfDetermination and Development, London: Minority Rights Publications, 1994 Nord, D.C. & G.R. Weller (editors), Higher Education Across the Circumpolar North: A Circle of Learning, Houndsmill: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002

DEMPSTER HIGHWAY In the late 1950s, potentially rich deposits of hydrocarbons in the Beaufort Delta and Eagle Plains areas of the Northwest Territories and Yukon, respectively, catalyzed the development of the Dempster Highway. This was the first highway into the Arctic region of Canada, and was part of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s Roads to Resources program (1957), aimed at providing a transportation network for new resource development and towns. The Dempster highway became the largest, most ambitious, and costly of such projects. Begun in 1959, the highway was not completed until 1979, at a total cost of $103 million. By 1961, 116 km (72 miles) of road had been constructed, but the work stopped because of poor oil exploration results. Construction did not resume for ten years until oil was discovered in the Beaufort Sea and an allweather road was required to service exploration there. The Dempster Highway opened to the public in 1979. Originally referred to as the Eagle Plain road, the highway was later named after Royal Canadian Mounted Police Corporal W.J.D. Dempster. The highway follows a trail traditionally used by the Gwich’in people (and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police patrols) between the Yukon and Peel River systems. The highway crosses rugged, striking landscapes, including the valley of the North Klondike River, the Ogilvie and Richardson Mountains, expanses of Arctic tundra, and the Mackenzie Delta. Dempster Highway crosses the Arctic Circle at 405 km (252 miles), and the Yukon/Northwest Territories border at 465 km (289 miles). There are two ferry crossings, at the Peel River and at the Mackenzie and Arctic Red Rivers. It is gravel-surfaced and subject to travel advisories and closures due to weather. The highway closes for two to three weeks in spring and late fall when river crossings break and freeze up. In winter, ice bridges replace the ferries. The first roads to be built in the territories were mostly local, and river barging carried most freight. In the winter of 1954–1955, a private winter tractor trail was built along this route for Conwest Exploration from near Dawson to Eagle Plain and the Peel Plateau areas. The federal government recognized the potential need for all-weather roads and potential demand from exploration companies, but allocated no funds to it. Extensive road planning did not start until 1953,

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DEMPSTER HIGHWAY after the creation of the Department of Northern Affairs and Natural Resources, with a mandate to plan long-term northern development. By 1955, building the Dempster Highway was part of long-term strategy, but remained a low priority. Several routes were tested, but planners chose the Flat Creek to Eagle Plain route based on distance, available road materials, alignment and grade, the need for bridges, the immediate needs of oil development in Eagle Plain, and Dawson’s economic stimulation. Construction began from Dawson to Eagle Plain, with the plan to finish over several years. External influences led to the starting and stopping of construction over two decades. Certain sections occasionally took priority because of planned uses for resource exploration; alternative routes were temporarily constructed (such as Carmacks to Cyprus Anvil Mine at Faro and the Mackenzie Highway (later stopped)). Other influences affecting construction included the change of prime ministers and shifting political priorities, poor oil and gas showings at Eagle Plain, and the awareness of rising costs. Public concerns regarding Dempster Highway reflected the importance of the area for hunting, fishing and trapping, and possible effects on caribou. These concerns for wildlife, in particular the caribou, included overhunting and deflection or blockage of migration, changes in distribution, increased stress, calving too far south of the ideal habitat, increased susceptibility to disease, predation, and starvation. The Porcupine caribou herd was estimated at 110,000 in the late 1970s; it comprised one of the largest herds in the world, ranging over the northern half of Yukon and parts of northeast Alaska. The Dempster Highway crosses their winter range and migration route. Other species of concern included Dall’s sheep, grizzly bears, significant populations of raptors such as golden and bald eagles, peregrine falcons and gyrfalcons, and fish. A number of caribou specialists recommended closing the road between October and May. Effective, legally enforceable, politically acceptable rules controlling caribou hunting were difficult to develop. The territorial governments were unable to regulate native hunting unless it involved an endangered species, but the Porcupine caribou were not endangered. A five-mile “no-hunting” corridor each side of the center of the highway did not apply to aboriginal hunters. By 1987, a variety of regulations had been installed with different rules for native and nonnative hunters, Yukon and Northwest Territories hunters, different stretches of highway, different seasons, and different species. The Porcupine Caribou Management Board (PCMB) undertook consultations about public concerns such as dangerous hunting practices,

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overharvesting, and the highway’s interference with herd movements. Presently, the herd is estimated at 130,000. The hunting regulations along the Dempster recommended by the PCMB and introduced by the Yukon government in 1999 include a 500-m no-caribou hunting “safety” corridor on both sides of the highway as well as a one-week closure to allow the herd leaders to pass undeterred, in accordance with traditional ecological knowledge about caribou herd movement. Public education and an aboriginal game guardian help to encourage implementation of the new rules. The highway’s projected impact on communities (principally and in varying degrees Aklavik, Fort McPherson, Inuvik, and Old Crow) included loss of leadership, increased hardships for the aged, increased access to alcohol and drugs, and increased dependency on store-bought food. Based on perceived impacts of other highway developments in the North, the public voiced concerns about induced demographic, environmental, economic, and social changes that would lead to a transformation of the native way of life, family life and values, as well as the sense of personal and community identity. Critics believed that the highway represented an importation of southern ideas, cultural values, and material consumption; these new ideas about housing, community infrastructure, and spending might negatively affect the native population. The opening of the Ft. Simpson highway access, for instance, correlated in critics’ minds to increased assault, neglect, violence, and crime. Steps were taken to reduce the impact of highway development and operation, such as limiting areas used for routes or operations, minimizing ground disturbance, disposing of debris and garbage by burning or burying, filling creek crossings with snow rather than soil or debris, storing fuel so as to prevent pollution of streams, enclosing fuel storage tanks with impermeable dykes, removing fuel barrels at the end of operations, prohibiting explosives within 100 ft of streams, avoiding unnecessary disturbance of wildlife, and limiting rifles to one per operation. Later permits increased requirements such as screening airstrips, camps, borrow pits, waste piles from public view; avoiding construction in streambeds during times of fish migration; specified drainage and land stabilization measures; and notifying the Land Use Inspector in case of spills. Economic impacts of the highway were expected to include a better, lower cost supply of goods and materials, increased tourist traffic, infrastructure, and stimulated development. The nonnative community generally favored the anticipated economic benefits of the highway. On the other hand, critics of the plan feared an influx of transients or job seekers from the

DENBIGH FLINT CULTURE South that would strain local jobs and services. Economic development might also widen the differences between natives and nonnatives. In hindsight, several mines were developed in the North that were possibly aided or accelerated by road access, including the Pine Point Mine, the Faro Mine, and the Tungsten Mine. However, in 1965, the Territorial Roads Policy stated that construction of northern highways like the Dempster highway could not be justified on economic grounds; hence, governments have since stopped relying on economic arguments for development. HEATHER MYERS See also Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Further Reading Berger, Thomas R., Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland: The Report of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services, c.1977 Bone, Robert, Geography of the Canadian North: Issues and Challenges, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1992 MacLeod, W.G., “The Dempster Hwy.” In Northern Transitions: Northern Resource and Land Use Policy Study, Volume I, edited by E.B. Peterson & J.B. Wright, Ottawa: Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, 1978

DENALI—See MOUNT MCKINLEY (DENALI)

DENBIGH FLINT CULTURE Interpretation of the Denbigh Flint Culture comes from archaeological sites widely scattered in northwest Alaska. The Denbigh Flint complex is the earliest manifestation of the Arctic Small Tool tradition (ASTt) in the western North American Arctic. The ASTt is most likely to have spread from Alaska across Canada and Greenland about 4000 years ago. Early ASTt variants differ across their wide range from Alaska to Greenland. In Alaska, the Denbigh Flint complex appears to be the precursor to several subsequent archaeological cultures, whose relationships are not yet clear: Choris, Norton, and Ipiutak phases and an overall Norton tradition. In the east, however, significant differences appear very early in the archaeological sequence of ASTt variants; archaeologists call these variants Independence I and PreDorset cultures. So much territory remains to be explored archaeologically, however, that relationships between eastern and western variants, the age of all the remains, and their interpretation may well change with further research. The Denbigh Flint Culture takes its name from Cape Denbigh, on Norton Sound, Alaska, where J. Louis Giddings first identified it at the type site, Iyatayet, between 1948 and 1952. At Iyatayet,

Giddings and his colleagues found an assemblage dominated by very finely made small stone tools. Giddings found the closest stylistic connections for these tools in the European Aurignacian assemblages. The tool kit includes numerous microblades, burins, and burin spalls, many of them reworked to serve as very fine engraving tools, microblade cores, flake knives, and larger knife blades; a relatively small number of triangular blades that may have served to tip harpoon heads; and numerous bifacially chipped sideblades and endblades, most pointed at both ends. Only a charred seal bone was recovered, all organic implements having decomposed. These lithics came from what appeared to be a temporary campsite; while there were fire-cracked pebbles and a tiny bit of charred seal bone, there was no evidence of any sustained occupation, such as an excavation for a dwelling or stone siding for a hearth, or flooring. The earliest date for Denbigh finds is at Kuzitrin Lake, on Alaska’s Seward Peninsula, and may be as early as 5500 years ago. At the deep, stratified site of Onion Portage on the Kobuk River, a proto-Denbigh layer clearly underlay the classic Denbigh remains, but is dated only to about 4000 years ago. On the basis of his excavations at Kuzitrin Lake, Harritt questions the interpretation of “proto-Denbigh” as an antecedent to classic Denbigh remains. As Giddings wrote in his 1964 monograph, “we learn almost as much (about the Denbigh Flint Culture) from the things lacking in their site as from those collected and observed” (1964: 239). The extensive Denbigh lithic remains and the pattern of their site locations show us temporary campsites for both caribou hunting and sealing. We know that skin clothing and bone implements were as essential as meat, but the original Denbigh complex lacked needles, awls, and all but the smallest stone scrapers. The ubiquitous microblades must have served all of the cutting and thinning purposes for which later Arctic groups developed specialized knives such as ulus. No drills were evident; burins must have been used to groove, gouge, and perforate softer materials. We suspect that Denbigh people must have been quite capable of hunting seals from ice and perhaps from boats, but there is very little evidence for breathing-hole sealing or boats. Likewise, despite the tundra distances traveled, there is next to no evidence for dog traction. Yet, these people, and their relatives, descendants, or peers in the ASTt, were the first to occupy all of the North American Arctic and northern shore of Greenland. After Giddings’s discoveries at Iyatayet, other Arctic archaeologists found Denbigh complex assemblages across northern Alaska and in Yukon, although not all artifact types from Iyatayet occur in the sites

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DENE farther east. Initially, Giddings believed that the people who made the Denbigh flint tools may have migrated across the North American Arctic, but later he wrote: “While it is possible that the Denbigh people themselves moved, their mastery of both the interior and the coast suggest instead that their flint forms, rather than they, drifted across the Arctic...” (1973: 276). Thus, the Denbigh Flint complex has come to be grouped with other variants under the more encompassing label of ASTt. The culture of the Denbigh Flint people was highly adapted to hunting on the coast and farther inland on the tundra, especially along streams. Fishing was also important. Most remains come from temporary campsites, some with an artifact distribution that indicates a small tent space. At four locations, however, more permanent dwellings have been located. All of these are well away from the coast and appear to be the remains of habitations used in winter. At the Onion Portage site, the classic Denbigh artifact assemblage was found in roundhouse remains that had central hearths lined with stone. These were excavated into the sod-covered ground, making them warmer in winter than surface structures or tents. Elsewhere, on the Bering Sea side of the Alaska Peninsula and at Howard Pass in the Brooks Range, house remains holding Denbigh artifacts are square, with a central hearth sometimes lined with stone slabs placed vertically. These house remains also have entryways that slope into the houses—excavated at least through the sod and up to 50 cm in depth, with tunnellike entrance passageways. We do not yet understand the origins of the Denbigh Flint Culture, nor the broader ASTt of which Denbigh is a part. Its earliest remains in northwest Alaska are those of a fully developed cultural complex. Clearly, these people were skilled at exploiting caribou on the tundra and, perhaps to a lesser extent, seal on the coast. While they did not use marine oil lamps, they were comfortable enough on the Arctic tundra with twig and driftwood fires in efficiently adapted winter homes. When they first became evident in the archaeological record, Denbigh people appeared to be moving into lands not occupied at the time of their arrival. Only on the Alaska Peninsula do their remains appear to replace those of the Northern Archaic tradition peoples, who may have then withdrawn from the coast for life in the interior forest. Archaeologists currently think that the formative stages of the Denbigh Flint complex and the ASTt as a whole must have taken place in northeast Asia. ELLEN BIELAWSKI See also Arctic Small Tool Tradition; Giddings, Louis; Iyatayet

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Further Reading Ackerman, Robert E., “Prehistory of the Asian Eskimo Zone.” In Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 5, Arctic, edited by David Damas, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution, 1984, pp. 106–118 Anderson, Douglas D., “Prehistory of North Alaska.” In Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 5, Arctic, edited by David Damas, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution, 1984, pp. 80–93 ———, “Onion Portage: the archaeology of a stratified site from the Kobuk River, northwest Alaska.” Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska, 22(1–2) (1988) ———, The Eskimos and Aleuts, London: Thames and Hudson, 1987 Dumond, D., “Prehistory of the Bering Sea Region.” In Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 5, Arctic, edited by David Damas, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution, 1984, pp. 94–105 ———, “Prehistory: Summary.” In Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 5, Arctic, edited by David Damas, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution, 1984, pp. 72–79 Giddings, J.L., The Archaeology of Cape Denbigh, Providence, Rhode Island, Brown University Press, 1964 ———, Ancient Men of the Arctic, New York: Knopf, 1973 Harriatt, Roger K., “Paleo-eskimo beginnings in North America: a new discovery at Kuzitrin Lake, Alaska.” In Etudes/Inuit/Studies (1998), 22(1) Schaaf, Jeanne, “Seward Peninsula Prehistoric Lifeways.” In Prehistoric Alaska, edited by Penny Rennick, Anchorage: Alaska Geographic Society 21(4) (1994): pp. 82–85 ———, “Seward peninsula prehistoric lifeways.” In Prehistoric Alaska, edited by Penny Rennick, Anchorage: Alaska Geographic Society 21(4) (1994): 82–85

DENE Dene is an Athapaskan language word meaning “people.” Dene Athapaskan language speakers are among the most geographically dispersed language groups of indigenous North Americans. Dene are found from the delta of the Mackenzie River in the northwestern part of the continent (such as the Gwich’in) through to the deserts of the American southwest (such as the Navaho). Cultural borrowing characterizes the Dene; while the Navaho exhibit strong cultural similarities to their Hopi neighbors, the Witsuwit’en bear remarkable similarities to Gitksan and other North-Pacific coastal peoples. Dene occupy a considerable portion of the Subarctic north, a region stretching from inland Alaska almost to the west coast of Hudson Bay. In this region, Dene have adopted cultural and subsistence patterns that resemble those of their Algonquian Subarctic neighbors. The Dene maintain that their robust and distinct culture is flexible enough to adapt to the wide variety of ecologies associated with the territories they have historically occupied. Therefore, any similarities to other aboriginal cultures can be interpreted as a strength rather than a weakness. For Dene, adaptivity evinces a healthy degree of cultural

DENE confidence, a trait that allows the culture to recognize and adopt ideas and practices wherever and whenever necessary. Dene from wide-ranging regions have found ongoing similarities, especially with regard to language, among themselves. Subarctic Dene, the northernmost group, subdivide into a number of distinct language dialects associated with similar but subtly different subsistence and cultural patterns. Hence, for example, the Tagish language spoken in the contemporary Yukon is not immediately intelligible to a Dogrib (Tlicho) speaker from the Yellowknife area, although the speakers would recognize each other as Dene and exhibit some cultural and linguistic familiarity. In general, the subsistence pattern is one of large, land mammal hunters who supplement their diet with fish, fowl, berries, and a considerable variety of smaller mammals. Moose, caribou, deer, elk, mountain sheep, and buffalo are staples. Depending upon the region, an emphasis on one or several of these mammals led to different landuse strategies. Dene used extended family hunting groups and migrated across a homeland territory making seasonal use of resources. For example, Chipweyan in the eastern portion of the region moved to the tundra for a late summer caribou hunt, where they followed the large herds in their seasonal migration. They returned to the forests south of the treeline for the winter. Mountain Dene might travel to mountain valleys for the winter to take advantage of the descent of mountain sheep into more accessible areas, followed by a move in the spring to fish camps in the foothills. In addition, large summer gatherings often took place at these fish camps and provided opportunities for social exchange, trade, and spiritual activities. Dene in the western part of the region developed clan systems and versions of the potlatch (gift-giving) ceremonies associated with coastal peoples. For example, in the contemporary Yukon, the clan distinction between wolf and crow continues to be vital. Further east, clan systems appear to be practiced, but seem to have less social importance. Celebrants incorporate a variety of drum dances that comprise prominent and meaningful aspects of social and spiritual practice. Dene play hand drums, with four to eight or more drummers making music and facing a community of dancers grouped in a large circle. These drums are also used in Dene guessing and gambling games, in which participants use sticks as bet counters; teams face each other with the aim of guessing which hand of their opponent holds a stone. The game proceeds at an increasingly frenetic pace accompanied by shouting, clapping, drumming, and highly stylized pointing, rituals that add a social dimension to the material elements of the betting. Powerful individuals, many of

whom became charismatic leaders and prophets within the Dene culture, are believed to possess “medicine power” over particular aspects of human life. Storytelling and narrative are critical features of Dene culture, providing educational and entertainment devices and allowing Dene to frame defining events in a culturally appropriate manner. Today traditional narratives (e.g., creation stories including versions of the widespread “earth-diver” story) coexist with historical as well as contemporary narratives of events, life, and leaders. Many Dene narratives link to features of the landscape and can be “read” through travel along trails or rivers. The landscape acts as a guide to uncovering the spiritual or material qualities of a particular territory. One specific genre treats conflicts among individuals who supposedly embody “medicine power.” Among Dene, exceptionally gifted storytellers astutely weave traditional storytelling forms into contemporary contexts. Dene from the northern regions were among the last to engage in the fur trade, which functioned as a primary device for establishing relations with European newcomers. Since Dene were inland, coastal and southern First Nations who prized the benefits of operating as middle traders acted forcefully to avoid allowing Dene direct contact with Europeans. For example, the heroic efforts of a Chipweyan woman who had been captured by the Cree, Thanadelthur, convinced European peoples and Cree guides to travel with her and negotiate peace between Cree and Chipweyan in the early 18th century. One of Thanadelthur’s compatriots, the Chipweyan leader Matonabbee, jealously guarded the Dene’s trading position by attacking Inuit as he guided British explorer Samuel Hearne to the Arctic coast. (Hearne earned the distinction of being the first white man to travel over land on foot to the northern Arctic coast of the American continent in 1771.) Editors who published Hearne’s account famously exaggerated many of the elements of the story. An account of an Inuit maiden clutching at Hearne’s knees as she dramatically expired has since been discredited as fiction. Similarly, based upon Hearne’s sparse 18th-century accounts, early anthropologists adopted the view that the lives of Chipewayan women were marked by slavelike conditions worse than those of any other aboriginal women on the continent. Distortion regarding Dene culture and customs developed due to a lack of primary research. In many cases, second- and third-hand sources, including other aboriginal peoples who wanted to discourage European traders from establishing direct contacts, contributed to an incomplete ethnography. A somewhat clearer ethnographic picture emerges from the accounts of Emile Petitot, the Oblate missionary who traveled the Mackenzie Valley region almost a century later.

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DENE In the far western portion of the Dene region, traders from Russia dominated the early fur trade period. Dene to the east of the Rocky Mountains established trade connections through Sir Alexander Mackenzie in the late 18th century, although Dene accounts insist it was they, not the Scottish explorer, who realized the routes. Dene in the mid-Yukon were among the last to develop direct trade links. The gold rush at the turn of the 19th century, however, resulted in a sudden influx of settlers and the Dene suffered enormously as a consequence. In both the Yukon and Alaska, lack of interest in resource development (unless it included gold), thought to be too valuable to allow indigenous people potential control of, meant that no treaties were negotiated during the turn of the century. Nonetheless, Dene negotiated a modern land claim in Alaska in the early 1970s and in the Yukon in the early 1990s. A more complex set of negotiations is still taking place over Dene land rights in the Northwest Territories, where in spite of the existence of a treaty, regional Dene organizations are negotiating comprehensive land claims. Treaty 11 (signed June 27, 1922) had been negotiated between aboriginals and the Canadian government as a result of oil discoveries at Norman Wells in the Northwest Territories. Treaty 11 was the last of the famous Canadian north and western treaties. The northern treaties emerged directly out of non-native concerns and priorities and gave only limited attention to Native needs. Treaty 8, signed in 1899, forged an agreement between the Natives in the upper Mackenzie Valley and the Canadian government. The oral record and written accounts of Treaty 11 differ dramatically from that of Treaty 8. While the text included clear language stating that Dene were “ceding and surrendering” their title to lands in the whole of the western Arctic, there were a number of irregularities. Dene and Métis elders recalled being told that the treaty would not affect their ability to continue their way of life and access to land resources. The new treaty, numbered Treaty 11, covered an area of approximately 620,000 square kilometers and was expected to affect almost 3400 people. The 1921 treaty provided for a reserve amounting to one square mile for each family of five “or in that proportion for larger or smaller families.” The government could sell reserve lands “for the benefit of the said Indians” and with their consent. The Native people (including Dene) were to retain their hunting, fishing, and trapping rights throughout the territory covered by the treaty, except over tracts that the government required for mining, lumbering, settlement, trading, or other purposes (Indian and Northern Affairs Canada). In the end, reserve lands were not set aside for the Dene in accordance with the treaty promises. Moreover, the marks

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Dene made to signify assent on the treaty (“X” marks) were likely by the same hand, creating a tremendous potential for fraud. At least one of the signatories, Chief Albert Wright of Tulit’a, was capable of writing (other documents before and after bear his signature), although his name too is signified by an “X.” Over 35 years later, in 1959, the Nelson Commission formed to determine why reserves had not been set up. The commission determined that Dene and Métis did not believe they had surrendered their land title. In the early 1970s, the Indian Brotherhood of the Northwest Territories launched a court challenge asking for a moratorium on land development including the proposed Mackenzie Valley Pipeline. In 1973, the Northwest Territories Superior Court, under Justice Morrow, after reviewing the testimony of many elders who could still offer direct accounts of treaty negotiations, agreed that Dene still had an aboriginal title to their traditional lands. Although the case was overturned on technicalities, the famous Calder decision of the Supreme Court of Canada (Calder v. Attorney General of British Columbia) forced the government to reexamine the treaty process in areas where title had not been surrendered, and this included the western Northwest Territories. Negotiations for a global western Northwest Territories comprehensive land claim (or modern treaty) began in the mid-1970s, but floundered over differences between the parties. In the late 1970s, the federal government’s insistence that there be one claim only per area of land led Dene and Métis to join their land claims. By the middle of the 1980s, a federal review of land claims led to changes in the policy, which finally allowed a Dene/Métis Agreement in Principle. However, controversy over the surrender of title clause prompted the Dene Nation to ask for renegotiation. One Dene group, the Gwich’in, disagreed with this tactic and broke from the Dene Nation, negotiating a separate regional agreement in 1991 based on the global Agreement in Principle. Among political events affecting Dene in the 20th century, the struggle over the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline proposal in the mid-1970s deserves special mention. Effectively, a small group of scattered Dene communities were able to capture world attention and block the efforts of a multinational consortium representing major world interests to construct a pipeline from the oil-rich Beaufort Sea and North Slope of Alaska to southern consumers. While doing so, Dene played a vital role in educating nonaboriginal peoples about the contemporary nature of aboriginal community life, subsistence economies, and cultural values. No doubt, this strongly influenced support for the broader movement toward aboriginal self-government across Canada. Dene in the Mackenzie Valley region

DENMARK STRAIT successfully, with the aid of other aboriginals, used their electoral influence on the Territory government. Contemporary Dene communities exhibit a vitality and complexity that defies easy characterization. Certainly as the traditional economy, based on local ecological resources, has been supplanted by sporadic wage work and a fitful, nonrenewable resource base, stressors have emerged. A wide range of social problems is frequently in evidence. Less transparent is the degree of Dene’s continued self-reliance and cultural pride that are marked in subtle ways. Strikingly, given the degree of communitarian values associated with hunting peoples like Dene, contemporary communities are also remarkable for the range of individual subjectivity and personality development that occurs. While Dene languages have been in decline in the last few decades, creating something of a cultural crisis as elders cannot directly transmit knowledge or values to the younger generations, more recently attention and programming to support linguistic renewal have sparked hopes for cultural revitalization among Dene. PETER KULCHYSKI See also Athapaskan; Dogrib; Gwich’in; Métis; Northern Athapaskan Languages; Northwest Territories; Tutchone Further Reading Abel, Kerry, Drum Songs, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993 Berger, Thomas R., Northern Frontier Northern Homeland, Toronto: Douglas and McIntyre, 1988 Blondin, George, When the World was New, Yellowknife: Outcrop, 1990 ———, Yamoria: The Lawmaker, Edmonton: NeWest Press, 1997 Cruikshank, Julie, Life Lived Like a Story, Vancouver: UBC Press, 1990 Fumoleau, Rene, As Long As This Land Shall Last, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1973 Helm, June (editor), Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 6, Subarctic, Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1981 Watkins, Mel (editor), Dene Nation, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977

DENMARK STRAIT Denmark Strait is in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean between Iceland and Greenland near 67o N and 27o W. It is about 600 km (370 miles) long and, at its narrowest, about 300 km (185 miles) wide. Continental shelves less than 200 m deep extend 100 km out from the coast of Iceland but less than 20 km from Greenland. The sill depth of the strait is approximately 600 m. Denmark Strait carries the primary outflow of water from the Arctic Ocean in the cold, southward-flowing

East Greenland Current. The warmer and weaker North Icelandic Irminger Current flows northward in the eastern Denmark Strait near Iceland. Surface winds are primarily from the northeast and are stronger in winter than in summer. The current speed in the East Greenland Current is estimated at 0.1–0.3 m s−1. Denmark Strait carries about one-half of the total outflow of the very dense Arctic Bottom Water into the Atlantic, where it is modified and is a source of the North Atlantic Deep Water (see Thermohaline Circulation). In a typical winter, the Greenland side of Denmark Strait is covered with sea ice, although in severe winters sea ice may extend to the Iceland coast. This ice flows southward and is composed of first-year ice formed in the Greenland Sea and multiyear ice from the central Arctic basin that is exported southward through Fram Strait and to Denmark Strait. Denmark Strait is normally free of sea ice by late summer but icebergs are abundant in the East Greenland Current all year. Thousands of icebergs from Greenland glaciers annually flow southward through Denmark Strait and into the Atlantic or Labrador Sea. The central Denmark Strait sea floor has 1–2 km of sediment of late Miocene to Quaternary age on top of the Greenland-Iceland basement ridge. The Greenland side of Denmark Strait is uninhabited between Ittoqqortoormiit (Scoresbysund) in the north and Sermiligaaq in the south (although there is a hunting outpost in Kangerlussuaq, occasionally inhabited by hunters from the Tasiilaq area), a distance of over 700 km, due to rugged terrain, tidewater glaciers, and extensive sea ice. There are no coastal roads along the strait in Greenland. The Iceland side of the Denmark Strait has a milder climate, fewer glaciers, and less sea ice; hence, numerous communities developed with connecting highways and economies based on fishing, fish processing, sheep farming, services, and government. Commercially viable stocks of cod, halibut, haddock, salmon, char, and shrimp are found in Denmark Strait and adjacent coastal waters. There are several species of seals and whales in the strait. In the Battle of Denmark Strait on May 24, 1941, the British battle cruiser HMS Hood, the largest warship in the world at the time, engaged with the German KM Bismark. The Hood went down with the loss of all but three of the 1416 on board. THOMAS W. SCHMIDLIN See also Arctic Ocean; Greenland Sea Further Reading Hansen, B. & S. Osterhus, “North Atlantic-Nordic Seas exchanges.” Progress in Oceanography, 45(2) (2000): 109–208

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DEPARTMENT OF NORTHERN AFFAIRS ACT (1953) Hurdle, Burton (editor), The Nordic Seas, New York: Springer, 1986 Rudels, Bert, Hans Friedrich & Detlef Quadfasel, “The Arctic Circumpolar Boundary Current.” Deep Sea Research II (Topical Studies in Oceanography), 46(6–7) (1999): 1023–1062 Shi, X.B., L.P. Roed & B. Hackett, “Variability of the Denmark Strait overflow: a numerical study.” In Journal of Geophysical Research—Oceans, 106(C10) (2001): 22277–22294 Tomczak, Matthias & J. Stuart Godfrey, Regional Oceanography: An Introduction, Oxford: Pergamon, 1994 www.history.navy.mil, web site of the US Navy. Provides information on the World War II Battle of Denmark Strait

DEPARTMENT OF NORTHERN AFFAIRS ACT (1953) Since 1867, responsibility for Canada’s Northern regions and indigenous peoples living there fell to several governmental departments guided by a variety of legislations. These included the Departments of the Interior, Mines, and Indian Affairs up until 1936; their responsibilities toward indigenous peoples were then consolidated under the Department of Mines and Resources until 1949. Responsibilities were then dispersed among the departments of Resources and Development, Citizenship and Immigration, and Mines and Technical Surveys. Subsequently, some responsibilities were housed within the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources, created in 1953 through the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources Act 1953–1954 by Prime Minister Louis St Laurent. Since 1966, responsibilities have been largely consolidated within the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND), with some responsibilities remaining with the Department of Energy, Mines, and Resources. The Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development Act was passed in 1966 in order to implement Canada’s responsibilities as outlined in the Constitution Act 1982, namely under sections 91(24) “Indians and lands reserved for Indians.” In addition, the creation of the department fulfilled many of Canada’s territorial governance responsibilities as found in the Constitution Act 1871, which is the source of Canada’s constitutional authority over territorial governments. The Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development Act establishes the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and the appointment of its minister as a member of the federal cabinet, who is accountable for the management and direction of the department. The Act also provides for the appointment of a deputy minister by the Governor in Council. Both of these offices are political appointments. The minister’s powers relating to Indians in particular and the North are wide ranging. Under the Act, the minister’s powers extend to all of those matters over which the

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Canadian Parliament has jurisdiction relating to both Indians and Inuit, and to the Yukon, Northwest, and Nunavut territories that are not specifically assigned to other departments or agencies of Canada. Métis people have been recognized as aboriginal people under the 1982 Constitution Act, and since that time some of their concerns have been addressed through the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, and through the Federal Interlocutor for Métis people, who is generally a cabinet minister other than the minister of Indian affairs. The recent Powley decision by the Supreme Court of Canada has increased the potential recognition of Métis people’s rights and associated benefits. In addition, the Act charges the department with responsibility for coordinating among all federal government departments and agencies operating in the North, including the territorial governments. The Act also grants the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development with the responsibility for promoting and recommending policies and taking action to ensure the political and economic development of the Northern territories. In addition, the department fosters scientific research and use of technology to inform its approaches to conditions relating to Northern development. The government implemented the Department of Northern Affairs Act with reference to additional key legislation such as the Indian Act of 1985, which the department also administers. Two main departmental program branches—Indian and Inuit Affairs, and the Northern Affairs Program—discharge the department’s responsibilities. STEPHANIE IRLBACHER FOX See also Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) Further Reading Allen, Robert S., “The British Indian Department and the Frontier in North America, 1755–1830.” Canadian Historic Sites: Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History/Lieux historiques canadiens: Cahiers d’archéologies et d’histoire, No. 14, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 1975 Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development Act (1966): http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/I-6/47297.html Department of Northern Affairs Act (1953) or Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development Act (1966) “Individuals Responsible for Aboriginal and Northern Affairs in Canada 1755 to 1999”: http://www.aincinac.gc.ca/pr/info/info38_e.html

DEVON ISLAND Devon Island (75° N, 86° W) is a large (c.55,000 km2 or 21,200 sq mi), irregularly shaped island forming part of the Parry Island Group within the Queen

DEVON ISLAND Elizabeth Island Archipelago, Nunavut, Canada. First observed among Europeans by William Baffin in 1616, the extent of the island was only fully mapped within the last 200 years. Earlier charts designate the southern coastline as North Devon, a part of “Parry Land.” Bounded to the south by Barrow Strait and Lancaster Sound, to the west by Wellington Channel, and to the north by Jones Sound, Devon Island has served historically as a hub around which many noteworthy events in Arctic exploration revolved. Cape Warrender, the southeast promontory, marks the eastern approach to the North West Passage. Devon Island is composed primarily of sedimentary rocks. The western two-thirds of the island are formed from Paleozoic marine sediments (Arctic Platform Geological Province) and the eastern part is formed from older Precambrian rocks (Churchill Province). A large continuous domed ice cap covers the eastern part of the island, reaching a maximum height of 1908 m. Smaller glaciated areas also occur on Colin Archer Peninsula in the northwest. Unconsolidated surface sediments are primarily colluvial fine material, sands, blocks, and rubble. This rocky landscape, coupled with low annual precipitation (c.200 mm) and general elevation (300–500 m), produces a barren landscape, with at most very sparse polar desert vegetation (<3% vegetation cover). In contrast to the barren interior, Truelove Lowland, an area of about 43 km2 along the northeast coast, was gradually uplifted from the coast as glacial land ice retreated, and today acts as an ecological oasis. This area, comprising a series of old raised beach ridges and terraces with salt and freshwater marshes, rock outcrops, lakes, and ponds, has been intensively studied by biologists from the early 1970s (International Biological Programme) to the present. Here a wide variety of vegetation types occur from sedge-moss communities to dwarf shrub heath. The Arctic Institute of North America maintains a permanent field station in the area. A particularly noteworthy feature of the Devon Island landscape is the Haughton meteor impact crater (c.22 km diameter), one of the largest such craters known on earth, dating back around 23 million years. Scientists have recognized that the cold, dry crater environment is closely analogous to the conditions they are likely to find on Mars, and are currently using the site to test both ideas and technologies with respect to the exploration of Mars and theories on the origins of living organisms. Devon Island today lacks permanent domestic settlements, but has in times past supported sparse indigenous communities. First settlement (Pre-Dorset culture) dates from 3000 to 4000 years BP and there is strong evidence for subsequent occupation by the

Dorset culture (c.2800–1000 years BP), the remnants of which were eventually replaced by the Thule culture around 1000 years ago. Patterns and densities of settlement differ between cultures and may relate to changing resource availability, possibly linked to changing climate and access to marine mammals. Devon Island features strongly in the annals of Arctic exploration. The first relics from the ill-fated Franklin Expedition were found by Captain Ommaney (HMS Assistance) at Cape Riley on Devon Island in 1850, together with a cairn on Beechey Island, a small island just off the southwest coast. Captain William Penny (HMS Lady Franklin) later found scattered additional material and subsequently, in August 1850, the First Grinnell Expedition found three graves of Franklin expedition members, subsequently excavated, on Beechey Island. This led to Beechey Island serving as a major rendezvous point for ships of Sir Edward Belcher’s 1852 Franklin search expedition. Later, the controversial Arctic explorer Dr. Frederick Cook spent the winter of 1908 in a cave on Devon Island when returning from his claimed attainment of the North Pole. IAN D. HODKINSON See also Queen Elizabeth Islands; Lancaster Sound; North West Passage, Exploration Of; Nunavut

Further Reading Belcher, Edward, The Last of the Arctic Voyages. Being a Narrative of the Expedition in H.M.S. Assistance Under the Command of Captain Sir Edward Belcher, C.B., in Search of Sir John Franklin, During the Years 1852–53–54, London: Lovell Reeve, 1855 Bliss, Larry C., Truelove Lowland, Devon Island, Canada: A High Arctic Ecosystem, Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1977 Bliss, Larry C. & N.V. Matveyeva, “Circumpolar arctic vegetation.” In Arctic Ecosystems in a Changing Climate, edited by C.F. Stuart, R.L. Jeffries, J.F. Reynolds, G. R. Shaver & J. Svoboda, London: Academic Press, 1991 Cook, Frederick A., Return From the Pole, New York: Pelligrini and Cudahy, 1951 Grieve, Richard A.F., “The Haughton impact structure: summary and synthesis of the results of the HISS Project.” Meteoritics, 23 (1988): 249–254 Helmer, James W., “The Palaeo-Eskimo prehistory of the North Devon Lowlands.” In Arctic, 44 (1991): 301–317 ———, “Prehistoric site location strategies in the North Devon Lowlands, High Arctic Canada.” In Journal of Field Archaeology, 19 (1992): 291–313 Kane, Elisha K., The US Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1854 Mayr, Ulrich, T. de Freitas, B. Beauchamp & G. Eisenbacher, “The geology of Devon Island North of 76°, Canadian Arctic Archipelago.” Bulletin of the Geological Survey of Canada, 526 (1998): 1–500 Osinski, Gordon, “Shocked into life.” New Scientist, 179 (2412–3) (2003): 40 [Haughton Crater]

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DEZHNEV, SEMYON The Cossack explorer Semyon Dezhnev was the first European to reach and sail through the Bering Strait between America and Eurasia. Having traveled by ship from the mouth of the Kolyma River on the East Siberia Sea eastward along Russia’s Arctic shores, Dezhnev sailed through Bering Strait into the North Pacific and around the coast of Siberia to the Anadyr River (Chukotka) in 1648. Dezhnev was born in the White Sea area and entered Russian government service from about 1630. It is known from historical documents that in 1630, people in the Pomor’ region were enrolled for Siberian service: 500 men for Tobolsk and 150 girls to marry servicemen and peasants at Yenisei fort. Dezhnev was perhaps taken in this enrollment. Velikii Ustyug on the White Sea coast was an important post on the trade route from Russia to Europe, and the starting point for Cossack explorers foraying eastward into Siberia. Semyon Dezhnev’s Siberian service began in the town of Tobolsk on the Irtysh River. There are no records of his time in Tobolsk. It can be assumed that together with other Cossacks he did garrison service in the town, guarding the fortress and state storehouses, visited remote settlements for collection of the Russian imperial fur tax (yasak) from indigenous residents, and participated in the suppression of rebellious inorodtsy (non-Russians or “aliens”). In the mid-1630s, Dezhnev moved to Yenisei. During his service in Tobolsk and Yenisei, Dezhnev became acquainted with famous explorers, who subsequently became his fellow campaigners in the exploration and development of northeastern Siberia, including Fedot Alexeev Popov, Mikhail Stadukhin, Vassili Bugor, Posnik Ivanov, and others. In 1638, Semyon Dezhnev’s service in Yakutia began. He was moved to a garrison at Lensky fort (which later became Yakutsk) as a member of Peter Beketov’s Cossack team. Semyon Dezhnev mainly served on remote rivers, such as the Yana, Indigirka, Kolyma, and Olenek. Semyon Dezhnev distinguished himself not only as a soldier and yasak collector but also as a diplomat, patching intertribal and interpatrimonial conflicts among new Russian citizens. In 1640, Dezhnev took part in settling the conflict between two kins on the Tatta and Amga rivers. Then during a difficult negotiation, he succeeded in achieving obedience and payment of yasak from the warlike Sakhey, head of the Khangalass people. In 1641, as a member of Mikhail Stadukhin’s team, Semyon Dezhnev set off overland for his longest service to Oymyakon, a tributary of the upper Indigirka River. There, in April 1642, during a skirmish with the warlike Tungus people from the Okhota River, many

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Cossacks including Dezhnev were wounded, and the group lost their horses. The Cossacks constructed a vessel, and after ice breakup they set off to look for new lands in the Lower Indigirka. There they found that there were already many Russian fur trappers and traders, and Stadukhin’s team, trying to find unexplored lands, decided to travel further to the east. They reached the Alazeya River on the coast, where due to Dezhnev’s negotiation they joined the group headed by Dmitry Zyryan. In the summer of 1643, they reached the mouth of the Kolyma River, as yet unknown to the Russians. Upstream the Cossacks constructed their first post—Kolymsky winter quarters— which became the frontier fort Nizhnekolymsk. These winter quarters were approximately midway between the river mouth and the upper reaches of the river, and thus they could send expeditions for yasak collection over the whole Kolyma area. After some unsuccessful battles, the Yukagir-Omok agreed to pay yasak. There was also trade with neighboring Yukagirs. In 1645, Stadukhin and Zyryan set off with yasak that they had collected back to Lensky. Only 13 Russians, headed by Semyon Dezhnev and Vtor Gavrilov, were left in Kolymsk. Hearing of this, hundreds of Yukagir troops besieged their winter quarters. Dezhnev was wounded in the head by an iron arrow. Soon Dmitry Zyryan returned to help, followed by traders from Lensky in search of “a new river.” According to the indigenous inhabitants, following “sunrise” (east) along the coast from the mouth of the Kolyma River they could reach the mouth of the “Pogycha River,” said to be abundant not only in furs but also in silver. The first attempts to find a way from Kolyma to the legendary river failed. In 1646, sea explorers could not pass further than the mouth of the Chaun (350–400 km east of Kolyma) because of ice. Fedot Alexeev Popov, a prikazchik (clerk) of the Ustyug merchant A. Usov, undertook organization of a new sea campaign. He requested another prikazchik in Kolymsky ostrog to send a government man to Pogycha for organization of yasak collection and management of new lands; thus, the expedition had an official character. Cossacks Semyon Dezhnev and Gerasim Ankudinov expressed their desire to participate in the expedition. Preference was given to Dezhnev as the more experienced man, and he became the official head of the expedition. In 1647, the expedition was unsuccessful in traveling east from the Kolyma: “the impassable ice” barred the way all summer. In June 1648, Semyon Dezhnev’s and Fedot Alexeev’s fleet again put out to sea from SredneKolymsk. About a hundred men on seven koches (Pomor-type single-masted small ships), including Gerasim Ankudinov’s ship, which was independent, went with them. The summer was warm and the sea

DEZHNEV, SEMYON was clear of ice, but severe storms constantly beset the navigators. The expedition lost one vessel after another. In the 17th century, Russian seamen did not have logbooks; therefore, many facts of Dezhnev’s campaign remain unclear. Today the majority of researchers agree that en route to the northeast borderlands of Asia four koches were lost: two of them were wrecked, and the people who got out of the sea were killed by “foreigners.” Historians do not know what happened to two of the ships. Perhaps, these ships were blown to the Alaskan coast: in the middle of the 18th century, it was rumored among the inhabitants of northeast Asia that there were people with beards “like the Russians” on the “Great Land.” In September 1648, only the three ships of Dezhnev, Alexeev, and Ankudinov reached the strait, which is today named after Vitus Bering. In overcoming the difficult currents in the strait, they lost Ankudinov’s koch near the Big Stone Nose (as Dezhnev later named the northeast ledge of Asia), and Alexeev’s and Dezhnev’s ships took on board the survivors. During a landing on the coast, there was a clash with the aboriginals in which Fedot Alexeev was wounded. During a storm in the Bering Sea, Dezhnev’s and Alexeev’s ships became separated. In October, Dezhnev’s ship was shipwrecked on a mountainous deserted coast to the south of the mouth of the Anadyr River. During Semyon Dezhnev’s voyage, the sea connection between the Arctic and Pacific Oceans was proven. However, his report lay unnoticed in the Russian archives until the 18th century, and Vitus Bering and the Russian court in Moscow were unaware of Dezhnev’s voyage. Bering’s voyages (1728, 1741) confirmed Dezhnev’s finding that Asia and North America were separate continents. Although the narrow passage is now known as Bering Strait, the easternmost point of Asia was named Cape Dezhnev (Mys Dezhneva) in honor of Dezhnev. Dezhnev and his 24 companions from the shipwreck went on skis for ten weeks up to the lower Anadyr. By spring 1649, only 12 men remained alive in Dezhnev’s group. These survivors established winter quarters and later the small Anadyrsky fort on the middle reaches of Anadyr River, near present-day Markovo. Dezhnev left Anadyr only in the winter of 1660. He had left Yakutsk about 20 years before, leaving behind his wife, a baptized Yakut woman Abakayada Cichya (her Russian name is not known), and his son Lyubim. Only in the spring of 1662 did he return to Yakutsk. His wife had died by then. Almost immediatley after arriving in Yakutsk, Dezhnev set off with Ivan Erastov’s group to Moscow to accompany a government load of furs and walrus ivory. Arriving in September 1664, he received his wages for the past 19 years, and was also

awarded an ataman rank (a Cossack elected leader or chief) for his Anadyr service. After returning from Moscow he married again—Kantemina (Pelageya) Arkhipova, a widow. From this marriage, Semyon Dezhnev’s second son Afanasiy was born. Dezhnev did not stay long in Yakutsk; he was sent to Chechuisky volok, and then to Olenek winter quarters where he went with his family. In the summer of 1670, he went again to Moscow, accompanying a load of sables for the imperial government. The group arrived in Moscow on December 25, 1671. Dezhnev fell ill, and died here in early 1673. In Yakutsk, they did not hear about Dezhnev’s death for a long time.

Biography The exact date of birth of Semyon (also known as Semen or Semyen) Ivanovich Dezhnev is not known. However, in many Soviet and Russian researchers’ opinion, he was born around 1605. There is also no consensus concerning his place of birth. It was considered for a long time that Dezhnev’s native land, as well as many other famous explorers (Vasili Poyarkov, Yerofei Khabarov, Vladimir Atlasov), was Velikii Ustyug (Great Ustyug) on the White Sea coast. However, no record of Dezhnev’s name has been found in the town’s register books. According to Belov (1973), Semyon Dezhnev’s native land was Pinega, the district situated to the north of Ustyug the Great. Nikitin (2001) also found traces of Dezhnev’s ancestors in Pinega, and asserts that Yakov Eremeev, nicknamed Dezhnya, a peasant of the Verkolsky volost of the Dvinsky uezd, was the founder of the family. Dezhnev’s surname is, however, rather widespread in the Russian north, and all we can conclude is that he was born somewhere in the Russian North, probably in the family of a peasant or Pomor. Dezhnev was married twice, first to Abakayada Cichya and later to Kantemina (Pelageya) Arkhipova, and had one son by each wife. His son Lyubim Dezhnev followed his father’s footsteps, becoming a Cossack. He died in 1689 during a tour to the Uda River. The second son Afanasiy Dezhnev was also a Cossack. Semyon Dezhnev died in early 1673. It is not known in which cemetery he was buried. ELVIRA MYARIKYANOVA Further Reading Belov, M.I., Arkticheskoe moreplavanie s drevneishikh vremen do serediny XIX veka. Istoriia otkrytiia i osvoeniia Severnogo morskogo puti, Volume I [Arctic navigation from the earliest times to the middle of the 19th century. Volume 1 of History of the discovery and exploitation of the Northern Sea Route], Moscow: Izdatel’stvo “Morskoi Transport”, 1956

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DIAMOND MINING ———, Semen Dezhnev, 1648–1948: K trekhsotletiyu otkrytiya proliva mezhdu Aziyey I Amerikoy, Moscow, 1948; as Podvig Semena Dezhneva, Moscow, 1973 Demin, L.M., Semyon Dezhnev, Moscow, 1990 Fisher, R.H., The Voyage of Semen Dezhnev in 1648: Bering′s Precursor, London: Hakluyt Society, 1981 Nikitin, N.I., “Semyon Dezhnev.” Voprosy istorii [Problems of history], 4 (2001): C.135–144

DIAMOND MINING For several thousand years, diamonds were extracted in only one country—India. Much later, diamonds were found in Indonesia, Brazil, Australia, Africa, North America, Russia, and China. In the 20th century, diamonds were found in the Arctic and Subarctic territories of the Russian Federation in the Ural Mountains, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Arkhangel’sk region, and in North America in the Canadian provinces of Ontario, Québec, Saskatchewan, and Northwest Territories. These are all in the oldest areas of Precambrian stable blocks, where mantle-derived kimberlite now outcrops.

Russia The Republic of Sakha has 81% of Russia’s diamond reserves, 99% of Russia’s diamond production, and approximately 20% of world output. Although the first officially registered diamond in Russia was found in the Urals in 1829, by a 14-year-old serf Pavel Popov when panning alluvial gold deposits in the Perm region, systematic exploration beginning in 1936 showed that there were no large deposits of diamonds in the Urals. A number of diamond-bearing fields were discovered in the basin of the lower and upper Koiva River and in the middle of Vizhai River. However, the largest Ural diamond weighed only 3 carats, and no kimberlite sources (the most common diamond host rock) were found. The first kimberlites were discovered in Yakutia in 1956, and later in the Arkhangel’sk region (northern Europe). There were small finds on the Yenisey mountain ridge in Siberia, and in Western Siberia. In the late 1940s, geologists focused on exploration in Yakutia as there were similarities with the Precambrian shield region of South Africa’s diamond-producing region. The first diamond in the Siberian platform was found in the spring of 1948 on the terrace deposits of the river Malaya Erema. In 1950, the Tunguska River diamond exploration expedition in Siberia was renamed the Amakinskaya expedition and moved to a permanent base in the Yakut village of Nurba. Mining works were started in the basin of the upper and middle Vilui River and the first diamond was found on August 7, 1949 near the village of Krestyakh in Suntarsky district.

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As a result of further exploration, the first kimberlite pipe in the Soviet Union named “Zarnitza” was discovered on August 21, 1954. Soon after, the pipe “Mir” (Peace) was discovered. Diamond saturation in the Mir pipe is considerably higher than in the most high-grade diamond-bearing deposits (except the lamproite pipe Argyle in Western Australia). The deposit has been exploited by the open pit method since 1958. The depth of the quarry has reached 525 m, with a diameter of 1200 m. In 1988–1999, the Mir quarry was in a stage of reconstruction. Deeper underground mining is planned to further develop the pipe. The Yakut kimberlite province occupies the northeastern Siberian platform. It stretches from the south to the north for approximately 1500 km from Malobotuobinsky district nearly to the Laptev Sea, and from the west to the east for 1000 km from Kharamaisky field in Krasnoyarsky region to the Lena River. Within its boundaries, over 800 kimberlite pipes have been discovered during the past 40 years, 13 of which have commercial importance. As they are distributed extremely unevenly, they are grouped into 20 or 22 kimberlite fields, which are usually considered in eight more or less isolated districts. On the whole, the Yakut diamond-bearing province is divided into two kimberlite regions (subprovinces): Viluyskaya and Anabaro-Olenekskaya. Extraction of diamonds is carried out from the pipes “Peace,” “Sitikanskaya,” “Udachnaya,” and ‘Ubileinaya.” Kimberlite pipelines “Botuobinskaya” and “Nurbinskaya,” with a commercial percentage of diamonds, were found in the “Srednemarkhinsky” kimberlite field in 1994. Exploitation will be carried out over 30 years with an enterprise capacity of 1.2 million tons. On January 4, 1957, the Yakutalmaz Association was formed with a permanent address in the village Mirniy. Yakutalmaz was engaged only in the extraction of diamonds, and sorting, sale, and shipping were determined by the committee of valuable metals and stones at the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation. In 1992, the joint-stock company Almazy Rossi-Sakha (Diamonds of Russia and Sakha, ALROSA) was created to coordinate mining activities, prospecting, processing, cutting, and sales. The company controls 95% of the diamond industry in the Sakha Republic, and is owned in part by federal and state authorities. In 1996, the overall sum of the company’s sales of diamonds made 1.6 thousand million US dollars. According to geologists’ evaluations, the stocks of ALROSA will last 50 years with the current level of output. Intensive exploration, for diamond deposits in the eastern European platform has been ongoing for several decades, following the discovery of the diamond deposits in Yakutia. In the late 1970s, the first

DIAMOND MINING diamond-bearing kimberlite pipeline was found in the Arkhangel’sk region, with diamond deposits of commercial importance. In 1980–1881, two further pipes named “Pomorskaya” and “Lomonosovskaya” were discovered, and six pipes are now known in total. At present, the area of Zimneberezhny diamondbearing district, situated 100–140 km to the northeast from Arkhangel’sk city, is divided into four fields: Zolotitzkoye, Verkhotinskoye, Melskoye, and Poltozerskoye; however, the Zolotitzkoye field is situated in the extreme west of the Zimneberezhny diamond-bearing district, where all the industrial diamond pipes are concentrated. At present, questions of the development of diamond deposits in the Arkhangelsky region are being discussed at different levels of state government. Also, when exploiting valuable minerals, many specialists are worried that ecological bans will be ignored. A complicating factor is the high percentage of clay material in diamond-bearing layers. Clay swells heavily when saturated with water, which could cause flooding of waste-pipes not only in the locality of the river “Zolotitza” but also in the coastal zone of the White Sea, where the spawning places of valuable fish are located. These and other problems are regularly raised in the media and discussed by the population. On the whole, the Arkhangelsky deposits are characterized by small amounts of diamonds (they make 15% of the rest of the explored stocks of deposits of Yakutia) and medium-grade stones. Nevertheless, diamonds from the Lomonosov deposit have commercial importance. A number of foreign firms have shown interest and have offered cooperation for exploiting the deposit. In 1999, a geological prospecting subsidiary of ALROSA was founded in Arkhangel’sk. Its task is to prospect new kimberlite pipes. There are extremely vast prospective areas in the territory of Russia for new native diamond deposits in the next 10–25 years. In the first half of the 21st century, Russia will remain among the leading countries to exploit diamonds from its unique native resources. Among old deposits, the pipeline “Udachnaya” will be exploited for two more decades, but a long life (more than 50 years) lies ahead for diamond mines of “Ubileinaya” and “Zarnitza,” which have been working at full capacity from the beginning of the 21st century. In the future, it is supposed that more than one kimberlite field, including a diamond-bearing one, could be discovered on the vast areas of Western Yakutia, Irkutsk region, and Krasnoyarsk Kray. Comparatively lately discovered and explored diamond-bearing kimberlite pipelines in the Arkhangel’sk region give an additional

potential for the future diamond stock of Russia. According to experts’ evaluation, the total value of extracted gem quality diamonds in Russia reaches 1.3 million US dollars a year, and 2.3 million dollars annually including industrial diamonds. The physical amount of output, according to foreign evaluations, reaches 8–9 million carats of gem quality diamonds a year. Over 80% of stones are extracted from the Udachnaya pipe. A small amount of high-grade jeweller diamonds was obtained by the state enterprise “Uralalmaz” in the Permsky region. Output has fallen: in the 1980s, the amount of output of all sorts of diamonds had reached 40 million carats, including jeweller diamonds—14 million carat. Today the complete cycle of works connected with the diamond industry is carried out in Russia— prospecting and exploring of deposits, exploring, sorting, evaluation, faceting, and selling of final products (i.e., jewellery and technical products.)

Canada The first finds of diamonds in Canada were registered in 1920, when a stone with 33 carats weight was found during the building of a railroad between Ottawa and Toronto near Peterborough. However, the quality of the stone turned out to be poor. It was not until the 1960s that serious diamond exploration began in Canada, and the first kimberlites were discovered, although the potential had long been suspected. At present, several districts of kimberlite development are known in Canada: eastern provinces (Ontario, Québec), Northwest Territories, and Saskatchewan. At the extreme northern point of Canada, kimberlites were found on Somerset Island, at over 70° N. Dressing of samples from the Betty, Ham, Alvil, and Diapros pipes with an overall amount of 414 tons yielded only a few small diamonds, and works on the island were stopped. The area of an ancient craton to the east from Mackenzie River was chosen as a prospective district in the Northwest Territories. The idea of prospecting diamonds in this district belongs to a geologist Chack Phipke, who was engaged in prospecting rare minerals. In recent years, several scores of kimberlite pipes were found within the Northwest Territories; twothirds of them are situated under lakes. Two or three pipes with a commercial percentage of diamonds reaching 4 carats were found among the new open pipes. Ekati Mine in the Northwest Territories, Canada’s first diamond mine, opened in 1998, and diamond polishing has been established as a business in Yellowknife.

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DIKOV, NIKOLAY Experts consider that Canada will become the leading diamond exploiting country at the beginning of the 21st century. Favorable geological conditions (the biggest craton in the world) and heavy investments in prospecting serve as premises for such a prediction. The area is not yet explored as thoroughly as Southern Africa and many other cratonic areas, but the infrastructures and political situation are the best in the world. Approximately 150 kimberlite layers (many of which are diamond-bearing) and six pipes (which, according to preliminary evaluations, contain diamonds at a commercial scale) were found within 5 years following the discovery of the first kimberlite pipe in the Great Slave Lake district, Northwest Territories. Most of these are of very high quality. There is interest in exploring diamonds in the Flin Flon district, Manitoba. Saskatchewan province is a vast region with numerous aeromagnetic anomalies and considerable congestions of indicator minerals, and has a vast potential for the discovery of economically significant diamond deposits. Kimberlites are also found in Ontario, Alberta, Québec, and on the western coast of Hudson Bay; nevertheless, the discovery of kimberlites in the Point Lake district in 1991 turned out to be the greatest event in Canadian mining history. However, diamonds are explored not only in Canada and Russia. Ashton Mining company announced the discovery of two kimberlite fields in Finland, including 17 diamond-bearing pipes. Finland’s Achean craton area is of a size similar to that of the Slave Craton in Canada, and could have similar potential. The Karelian Craton in northwestern Europe already hosts the Arkhangel’sk kimberlite pipes. S.V. ABRAMOVA Further Reading Bielawski, E., Rogue Diamonds. The Rush for Northern Riches on Dene Land, Vancouver: Douglas and Macintyre, 2003 Dukarev, V.P., Sur’evaya baza almazov AK “ALROSA” i perspektivu ee razvitia//Obrazovanie. Obshestvo. Tehnicheskiy progress (Sbornik dokladov i tezisov) [Raw stock of diamonds of Joint Stock Company “ALROSA” and prospects of its development // Education. Society. Technical progress (Books of reports and theses) ] Mirniy, 1999 Kharkiv, A.D., N.N. Zinchuk & A.I. Kruchkov, Korennue mestorozhdenia almazov mira [Native deposits of world diamonds], Moscow, 1998 LeCheminant, A.N., D.G. Richardson, R.N.W. DiLabio & K.A. Richardson (editors), Searching for Diamonds in Canada, Geological Survey of Canada, 1996 Pell, J.A., “Kimberlites in the Slave Craton, Northwest Territories, Canada.” Geoscience Canada, 24(2) (1997): 77–96 Tichotsky, J., Russia’s Diamond Colony: The Republic of Sakha, Amsterdam and Newark, New Jersey: Harwood Academic, 2000

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DIKOV, NIKOLAY Nikolay (Nikolai Nikolayevich) Dikov, a prominent Russian archaeologist of the 20th century, contributed substantially to the systematic study of Russian NorthEast prehistory. Dikov graduated from Leningrad State University with a degree in history and archaeology. Within the next three years, under the supervision of Alexei P. Okladnikov, he was involved with excavating burial grounds in Zabaykalye (Transbaikal Area). In 1953, he successfully presented his candidate dissertation on the Bronze Age in Transbaikal. In this work, based on the results of excavations and various archives of the 1920s to the 1950s, Dikov depicted the burial materials, made conclusions on economic activities of the Transbaikal population, and specified the burial grounds periodization. In 1958, in Ulan-Ude, he published the dissertation as Bronze Age in Transbaikal Area. In 1955, seeking an independent research topic, Dikov moved to the Far East, and then to Chukotka, where he worked as the director of the Anadyr Local Museum. In 1956–1959, he surveyed the continental and coastal areas of Chukotka, discovering hundreds of archaeological sites, including camps, settlements, burial grounds, sacrifice grounds, and other objects of ancient hunters for sea mammals and reindeer. He worked in the valley of Chukotka’s greatest rivers, such as Anadyr, Amguema, Main, Vankarem, as well as at such lakes as Krasnoye and Chirovoye. The research of the Ust’-Belaya Cemetery and other sites on the Anadyr River allowed Dikov to obtain abundant lithic materials and pottery and thus to distinguish the Neolithic Ust’-Belaya Culture. In 1956 and 1958, Dikov excavated the Uelen Cemetery, previously studied by Sergei I. Rudenko, Dorian A. Sergeyev, and Mikhail G. Levin. At the cemetery, found and researched Okvik, Old Bering Sea, and Birnirk burials. From 1958 through 1973, Dikov served as the scientific editor of the Chukotka Local Museum Proceedings, six issues of papers on archaeology, history, and ethnography of Chukotka’s peoples. In 1960, in Magadan, he assumed the chair of the Laboratory of History, Archaeology, and Ethnography in the first interdisciplinary research institute in the Russian North-East. He headed the laboratory for 35 years, until 1995. In the meantime, the area of Dikov’s work was greatly expanded. Besides Chukotka, he began studying ancient cultures of Kamchatka and Kolyma, as well as the problems of the origin of ancient cultures and ethnogenesis of Chukchi, Eskimos, Yukagirs, and Koryaks. In 1961, the first expedition to Kamchatka was arranged. Its route traveled along the Kamchatka

DIKOV, NIKOLAY River, where several Neolithic and Old Itel’men sites and settlements were found. Interested in the ancient coins found at Lake Ushki in the valley of the middle Kamchatka River, Dikov conducted excavations that resulted in the discovery of the Stone Age sites containing numerous cultural layers that represented various periods of Kamchatka and North-East prehistory. Cultural layers at the sites were buried under a number of tephra levels from numerous volcano eruptions in the River Kamchatka valley; they were separated from each other with sterile levels that allowed definition of their precise age and material complex composition from Paleolithic to historic Itel’men. In 1964, after several excavation seasons at the site at the depth of a few meters, the materials of the lower cultural level were exposed, and consequently referred to as the Early Upper Paleolithic Ushki Culture (Dyuktai Tradition) of 13,000 BP that contained stemmed points, unknown in the Siberian Paleolithic. Considering the North American materials of the same age and similar outlook, Dikov assumed that either stemmed point cultures had spread from Asia to America and became the basis of Paleo-Indian cultures or North American cultures had reached Kamchatka in Beringian time. These materials still remain the oldest dated findings in northeast Asia and the North American North. Since the stemmed points found in America are considered younger than those at Ushki, Dikov’s hypotheses were criticized by both American and Russian archaeologists, but no satisfactory alternative has yet been offered. In 1963, the research in Chukotka was resumed. As a result, a number of Paleo-Eskimo camps were discovered and studied. In 1965, large-scale excavations were conducted at the Chini Cemetery belonging to the Old Bering Stage of the Paleo-Eskimo Culture (I–V century AD). Dikov summarized the materials obtained in The Chini Cemetery (1974). The continued research in River Amguema area, on the Isle of Ayon, and at Lake Chirovoye (Ekiatap Burial Ground) allowed Dikov to distinguish the North Chukotka Neolithic Culture, which is older than the Ust’-Belaya Culture. In 1964, Dikov was involved with the search for paleolithic sites on the largest of the Komandorsky (Commander) Islands, the Isle of Bering. Finding no sites there led him to conclude that the deep straits between the isles prevented the ground hunters from migrations, and America peoples could not have gone via the Commander and Aleutian islands. He continued the search for its route in the area of Beringia. In 1967, Dikov started the research of the Pegtymel’ petroglyphs on the Pegtymel’ River, near the northern coast of Chukotka. They had been found by geologist Nikolai M. Samorukov two years earlier as the first and so far the only rock pictures known in

northeast Asia, east of the Lena River valley. They petroglyphs expressively presented the life of the ancient people of Chukotka, both sea mammal and reindeer hunters. Hunting scenes, images of animals, and rituals reflect the mode of life of the Chukotka people. Dikov published the results of this investigation in 1971 in the monograph Mysteries in the Rock of Ancient Chukotka: Petroglyphs of Pegtymel. In 1972, Dikov successfully presented his doctoral dissertation on the ancient cultures of Kamchatka and Chukotka, earning his second advanced degree. The dissertation was published in the two-volume monograph Ancient Cultures of Northeast Asia (1977, 1979). In 1972–1975, he conducted excavations of the Siberdik and Kongo sites in Kolyma, discovering a large number of pebble tools. On the basis of Charles Borden’s findings of reportedly 12,000-year-old pebble tools on the Fraser River and Alexei P. Okladnikov’s data on even older pebble tool findings in Amur, Dikov hypothesized that the Kolyma pebble cultures represented the later relic of the intermediate stage that had existed there in the past. Today, the age of the Fraser pebble tools is not considered as old as originally assumed, and the specificity of the Amur and Kolyma pebble tools has been doubted as well. Dikov correlated some materials from Kymynanonvyvaam, Chukotka, with the findings from the Diring Yuryakh Site on Lena and the Calico Site in America, of hypothetically greater antiquity. But the inexpressiveness of the supposedly ancient artifacts collected from the surface at the basic flint sources makes this assumption unlikely. In 1975, Dikov conducted research on Wrangel Island. At the southeastern coast of the island, in Krasin Bay, next to the old walrus rookery, he excavated the Paleo-Eskimo Chyortov Ovrag (Devil’s Log) Site dated by the end of the second millennium BC. Among stone points, knives, scrapers, and other tools found there, Dikov specifically marked the toggling ivory harpoon, the oldest of those found in the Arctic. During the 1960s and 1970s, Dikov continued to excavate the Ushki sites, discovering, among other things, a large settlement consisting of at least 40 dwellings that had functioned in various periods. Thirteen of these dwellings were semi-subterranean, with ring-shaped hearths and corridors. Some dwellings with hearths had been superimposed, with excavations revealing layers of dwellings from different cultural time periods for several generations. Inside and outside the dwellings, a few human burial grounds and one dog burial ground were found. The tools of this culture, which consist of wedge-shaped cores, microblades, and thin leaf-shaped points, allow archaeologists to assume that its people had bows and arrows.

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DIKOV, NIKOLAY In almost all Dikov’s expeditions to Chukotka, Kamchatka, and Kolyma undertaken between 1962 and 1980, his wife Tamara M. Dikova (1933–1981) took part and conducted her own archaeological research. In 1979–1986, Dikov studied the Chukchi Peninsula at the very end of the Asian Continent, resulting in the investigation of numerous Neolithic and historic sites as well as more than ten sites referred to Paleolithic and Early Holocene. The best known of these is the Early Holocene Puturak Site, with its developed microblade industry and no bifaces (tools retouched on both surfaces). Dikov traced the parallels of this site with the Galligher Flint Station and Anangula sites in Alaska. The research results of the 1980s were presented in Asia at the Joint with America: Stone Age on the Chukchi Peninsula (1993). These works dramatically changed some of Dikov’s views of Russian North-East and North America prehistory. Before 1993, he had referred the lower level, Level VII, of the Ushki sites with the Upper Paleolithic Ushki Culture to that of the Paleo-Indian peoples and correlated the stemmed points with similar ones at the Marms Rockshelter sites. He had referred Level VI (Late Upper Paleolithic Ushki Culture) to Protoeskimo-Aleuts. After the discovery of Puturak, Dikov revised his concept and from then on referred the materials of the Late Upper Paleolithic Ushki Culture to the second wave of migration from Asia to America and associated with the tradition of Athapaska’s ancestors, the Na Dene Indians. He referred Puturak to the migrations of the ancestors of Aleuts and Eskimos to Beringia. In general, Dikov’s field research, theories, and hypotheses, as well as his chronological and periodizational schemes and structures, represented a major contribution to the studies of ancient cultures of northeast Asia. They have been widely used by archaeologists all over the world, and have been used as the basis for further research of the ancient past of northeast Asia and America.

prominent scholars as A.P. Okladnikov, B.B. Piotrovsky, and M.E. Masson. He also studied the Hermitage archaeological collections from northeast Asia. When he entered the Leningrad University graduate school, he started to carry out research in Transbaikal. In 1953, he successfully presented his candidate dissertation at Leningrad State University, and for the next two years worked at the Department of Archaeology of the Institute of History, Philosophy, and Philology, USSR Academy of Science Siberian Branch in Novosibirsk. From 1956 onward, Dikov conducted research in the northeast of Asia in Chukotka, Kamchatka, and Kolyma. From 1962 till 1980, his wife, Tamara Mitrofanovna Dikova (1933–1981), participated in his expeditions. She also carried out independent investigations of ancient cultures of Kamchatka. They have a son. From 1958 till 1973, Dikov was the scientific editor of Notes of Chukotka Local Museum, comprising works on archaeology, history, and ethnography of peoples of Chukotka. From 1960 to 1995, he headed the Laboratory of History, Archaeology, and Ethnography at the first northeastern Interdisciplinary Research Institute in Magadan. Dikov participated in numerous international congresses and conferences. His works were published in many countries. Two of his monographs were published in the USA (1998, 1999). In 1979, he was elected the Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Science. He headed the local branch of the Society for Monuments Protection in Magadan. Dikov was the author of nine monographs and over 170 papers. He was an editor of dozens of monographs, including such generalizing works as Essays of Chukotka History From Ancient Times to Nowadays (1974), History of Chukotka (1989), and others. Under his supervision, six scholars prepared dissertations and acquired their advanced degrees. N.N. Dikov died of a stroke in 1996, at the age of 71. SERGEI SLOBODIN

Biography

See also Chukchi Autonomous Okrug (Chukotka); Old Bering Sea Culture; Second Kamchatka Expedition

Nikolay Nikolayevich Dikov was born in the town of Sumy, Ukraine, on March 17, 1925, to a priest’s family. In the early 1930s, his parents died during the famine, and he was raised by his aunt in Leningrad. During World War II, Dikov lived in besieged Leningrad, where he finished high school. In 1942, he was evacuated to Novosibisrk Oblast’, Siberia. After his military service, he entered the Department of History, Moscow State University, but later transferred to Leningrad University and majored in archaeology. As an undergraduate student, Dikov took part in archaeological expeditions led by such

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Further Reading Ackerman, R.E., “Prehistory of the Asian Eskimo Zone.” In Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 5, Arctic, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution, 1984, pp. 106–118 Dikov, Nikolai, “The Stone Age in Kamchatka and Chukotka in the light of the latest archaeological discoveries.” Arctic Anthropology, 3(1) (1965): 10–25 ———, Naskal’niye zagadki Drevney Chukotki: Petroglify Pegtymelya [Mysteries in the Rocks of Ancient Chukotka: Petroglyphs of Pegtymel’], Moscow: Nauka, 1971

DIKSON ——— (editor), Essays of Chukotka History from Ancient Times to Nowadays [Ocherki istorii Chukotki s drevneishih vremen do nashih dnei], Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1974 ———, Chini Cemetery (on the History of the Sea-Hunters of the Bering Strait) [Chiniiskii mogil’nik (k istorii morskih zveroboev Beringova proliva], Nauka: Novosibirsk, 1974 ———, Arkheologicheskiye pamyatniki Kamchatki, Chukotki i Verkhney Kolymy [Archeological Monuments in Kamchatka, Chukotka and the Upper Reaches of the Kolyma], Moscow: Nauka, 1977 ———, Drevniye kul’tury Severovostochnoy Azii [Ancient cultures of Northeastern Asia], Moskow: Nauka, 1979 ———, “The oldest sea mammal hunters of Wrangell Island.” Arctic Anthropology, 25(1) (1988): 80–93 ———, Aziya na styke s Amerikoy v drevnosti: Kamenny vek Chukotskogo poluostrova [Asia at the joint with America: Stone Age on the Chukchi Peninsula], St Petersburg: Nauka, 1993 ———, “The Paleolithic of Kamchatka and Chukotka and the Problem of the Peopling of America.” In Anthropology of the North Pacific Rim, edited by William W. Fitzhigh & Valerie Chaussonnet, Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994 ———, Asia at the Juncture with America in Antiquity (The Stone Age of the Chukchi Peninsula), translated by Richard L. Bland, Anchorage: NPS, 1997 ———, Mysteries in the Rocks of Ancient Chukotka (Petroglyphs of Pegtymel’), translated by Richard L. Bland, Anchorage: NPS, 1999 Goebel T.E. & S.B. Slobodin,“The Colonization of Western Beringia: Technology, Ecology, and Adaptations.” In Ace Age peoples of North America, edited by R. Bonnichson & K.L. Turnmire, Oregon: Oregon University, 1999, pp. 104–155 Kiryak, M.A., Arkheologiya Zapadnoy Chukotki v svyazi s yukagirskoy problemoy [Archaeology of West Chukotka in connection with the Yukagir Problem], Moscow: Nauka, 1993 (in Russian) Larichev, V., U. Khol’ushkin & I. Laricheva, “The Upper Paleolithic of Northern Asia: achievements, problems, and perspectives. III. Northeastern Siberia and the Russian Far East.” Journal of World Prehistory, 6(4) (1992): 441–476 Mochanov, Yu.A., Drevneyshiye etapy zaseleniya chelovekom Severo-Vostochnoy Azii [The Earliest Stages of Settlement by Man of Northeastern Asia], Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1977 (in Russian) Powers, R.W., “Paleolithic man in Northeast Asia.” Arctic Anthropology, 10(2) (1973): 1–106 ———, “The peoples of Eastern Beringia.” Prehistoric Mongoloid Dispersals (University of Tokyo, Japan), 7 (1990):53–74 Slobodin, S., “Northeast Asia in the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene.” In World Archaeology, Volume 30, No. 2, edited by P. Rowley-Conwy, London: Routledge, 1999, pp.251–266 ———, “Western Beringia at the End of the Ice Age.” Arctic Anthropology, 39(2) (2002): 31–47

DIKSON The settlement of Dikson, situated on the Kara Sea shore, is a port on the Northern Sea Route and the center of one of four administrative units of Taymyr (Dolgano-Nenets) Autonomous Okrug of the Russian

Federation. It was founded in September 1915 as a Russian radio and meteorological station and was named after an island where its first structures were built. Its population, which once reached 6000, is about 3000 today, most of whom are temporary workers from central Russia. Since 1916, Dikson has been a base for numerous sea and air expeditions to the Arctic. A rather powerful radio and meteorological center and a large geophysical observatory were built here in 1934. In 1941, Dikson became a frequent port for the Arctic fleet in the middle of the Northern Sea Route and is today capable of receiving and handling sea ships of any class. It was very important for the efficient functioning of the Northern Sea Route during World War II. The settlement of Dikson is located on the island of Dikson and on the shore of the Gulf of Yenisey. Originally, separate settlements were built on the island and mainland. Since 1957, it has been a single town and the center of the most northern administrative district of the Russian Federation. The island and mainland parts are separated by a 4-km-wide gulf. Communication between them is by launches in summer and by cross-country vehicles in winter. Helicopters are also often used. In the mainland part of the settlement, Dikson hydrographical company (Hydrobase) operates, which has its own specialized fleet and stock of cross-country vehicles. Most of the specialists are hydrographers and oceanographers. The radio-meteorological center is situated in the island part, where there is also a fishprocessing factory. In the 1950s, an airport for medium and small planes was built on the island. From this airport ice reconnaissance planes take off, and expeditions to drifting polar research stations are sent out. Regular air communication is maintained with Krasnoyarsk and Vorkuta. There is a regional museum in Dikson, and monuments to Nikifor A. Begichev, a Russian polar explorer, and to the sailors who perished in August 1942 on board the icebreaker Sibiryakov in the battle against the German heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer. Since the mid-1980s (beginning of the Soviet reforms), the settlement has been experiencing economic and social decline: the standard of living has dropped sharply and economic and social infrastructure is not being restored, resulting in a considerable outflow of the population. The future of Dikson is associated with revival of the Northern Sea Route and exploration of natural resources in the Russian Arctic. I. SERGEYEV See also Northern Sea Route; Taymyr (DolganNenets) Autonomous Okrug

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DIOMEDE ISLANDS Further Reading Belov, M.I., Istoria otkrytiya i osvoeniya Severnogo morskogo puti. Tom 4 [History of opening and mastering the Northern Sea Route, Volume 4], Leningrad: Gidrometeorologicheskoye izd-vo, 1969 Chagan, V.I., Ot Divnogorska do Diksona [From Divnogorsk to Dikson], Krasnoyarsk: Krasnoyarskoye knizhnoye izd-vo, 1976 Goroda Rossii: enciklopedia [Towns of Russia: encyclopedia], edited by G.M. Lappo, Moscow: Bolshaya rossiyskaya enciklopedia, 1994 Kolesov, A.N., Po Enisseyu. 3-e izd. (Through the Yenisey. 3rd edition), Krasnoyarsk: Krasnoyarskoye knizhnoye izd-vo, 1990

DIOMEDE ISLANDS The Diomede Islands (Big and Little Diomede Island) are situated in the 58-km (36 mile)-wide Bering Strait that separates the northern North American continent from the north Asian continent along the International Dateline. The islands were named by Vitus Bering on August 16, 1728, on his first exploration of Bering Strait. Little Diomede Island is east of the RussianAmerican border that also separates the two, at 65° 45′ N 168°56′ W, some 43 km west of Wales, Alaska. Little Diomede Island has belonged to the United States since 1867, when it was included in the Russian sale of the Alaska Territory to the United States. Big Diomede Island is approximately 4 km west of Little Diomede, and is the northeasternmost point of Russia. Research on the geology, geography, origins, and history of the islands has been sporadic and incomplete, a product of their geographically extreme locations and the Cold War history of the region’s two dominant political forces: the former Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States of America. Both islands lie in the narrows of the Bering Strait, with the Bering Sea to the south and the Arctic Ocean to the north. The islands probably constitute extensions or relic portions of territorial uplifts. Little Diomede has been proposed as an extension of the York Terrace uplift on the southern Seward Peninsula. The strait area between the islands has periodically been exposed as part of the Bering Land Bridge (Gualtieri and Brigham-Grette, 2001). The islands are considered Subarctic and periglacial. The region is subjected to high winds and blizzard conditions throughout winter and spring. Winter sea ice conditions provide an ice roadway from December to May between the islands. In the brief summer, July and August, dense fog and rain prevail. Temperatures average −15°F to 18°F in winter and 40–50°F in summer. In the early 1970s, geologists suggested that the Diomedes might have been glaciated by extensions of a late Pleistocene Chukotkan ice mass. However, recent

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research suggests that the islands were shaped by a combination of surface frost and water action and, based on geologic evidence collected on Little Diomede by Gualtieri in 1999, weathering in concert with the significant uplifting of the York Terrace. Recent research on Big Diomede Island has been limited due to its primary use as a Russian army outpost. Prior to the Cold War, the two Diomedes were home to at least three Iñupiaq Eskimo communities: two on Big Diomede and one on Little Diomede. While three or even four settlements on Big Diomede have sometimes been proposed, only two on Big Diomede and one on Little Diomede have been documented. The settlement of Kunga, on the north end of Big Diomede, was abandoned prior to the 20th century, possibly as a result of famine. However, the settlement of Imaqthliq, toward the southerly end of the western shore, was a viable, although dwindling, community until a remnant population was removed to the mainland village of Naukan in 1948 and further dispersed to larger towns in the Chukotka region when Naukan was closed in 1958. When the Iron Curtain fell and the borders finally closed between the USSR and the United States in 1948, there were no more than 20 Iñupiat still living on Big Diomede. Kunga was unoccupied within the memory of Little Diomede’s oldest residents (Oscar Ahkinga, 1999; Ruth Milligrock, 1998). Contact between the two indigenous communities was common until 1948 when the army outpost with approximately 20 regular officers was established at the abandoned Kunga site. The base was still in operation in 2001. Between 1900 and 1948, some Naukan residents married into the Imaqthliq community and, in the 1920s, when schooling began in the American village of Ingaliq, on Little Diomede, several Imaqthliq families, attracted by this new opportunity, immigrated to Little Diomede (Krupnik, 1994). The two islands once served distinct and closely related Iñupiaq Eskimo communities. According to residents of Ingaliq, interviewed in 1998–1999, the two surviving communities, their own and Imaqthliq, had familial, cultural, and economic ties. Each considered themselves to be bowhead whale hunters. Each relied on marine mammals, mainly walrus and seal, for survival. (This was still true of Ingaliq residents in 2002.) Islanders hunted these two marine mammal species intensively in spring and in fall for their meat, as a major fuel source, for skins (used in clothing, foot gear, and boat coverings), and for ivory (used both for artistic production and as a tool material). The islands are home to millions of nesting birds each summer (especially auklets and murres), and Imaqthliq and Ingaliq residents collected eggs and trapped or hunted auklets to supplement food supplies in summer. In late summer, residents collected leaf greens, berries, and

DISKO ISLAND roots. Some plant resources were taken mainly from Big Diomede, while others were collected only on the mainland. Almost all foodstuffs were stored in containers filled with seal oil. In Ingaliq, many of the same hunting and gathering activities continued in modified form in the late 1990s and early 2000s. From the beginning of the 21st century, Ingaliq residents have been using a mixed market-subsistence economy that combines limited interaction with remote global markets and intense subsistence hunting and gathering. Women, on whom food processing and food storing duties fall, still preserve most foods in seal oil, but they also employ home freezers. A local generator provides electricity to the community and a regional company offers local telephone service. There is no running water, but the community does support a community cooperative store, a community combined grade school and high school, a water plant and laundry, and a clinic. Ingaliq is an Alaskan second-class city and has a mayor and City Council, a tribal office (The Native Village of Diomede Indian Reorganization Act Council) to carry out the affairs of a recognized tribe under the United States Bureau of the Interior, and a land corporation (The Diomede Native Corporation). The community of Ingaliq on Little Diomede, whose population had fluctuated in the 1960s and 1970s to a low of 70 persons, gradually increased to 146 (confirmed population, 2001). CAROL ZANE JOLLES See also Bering Strait Further Reading Carlson, Gerald F., Two on the Rocks, New York: McKay, 1966 Curtis, Edward S., The North American Indian: Being a Series of Volumes Picturing and Describing the Indians of the United States and Alaska, Volume 20, edited by Frederick W. Hodge, Norwood, MA: Plimpton Press, 1907–1930 (reprinted: Johnson Reprint, New York, 1970) Eide, Arthur Hansin, Drums of Diomede: the Transformation of the Alaska Eskimo, Hollywood, California: House-Warven, 1952 Gualtieri, Lynn & Julie Brigham-Grette, “The age and origin of the Little Diomede Island upland surface.” Arctic, 54(1) (2001): 12–21 Heinrich, Albert C., “Personal names, social structure, and functional integration.” Montana State University, Anthropology and Sociology Paper 27, Missoula, 1963 Hopkins, David Moody (editor), The Bering Land Bridge, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1967 Krupnik, Igor, “Siberians in Alaska: the Siberian Eskimo contribution to Alaskan population recoveries, 1880–1940.” Etudes/Inuit/Studies, 18(1–2) (1994): 49–80 McCracken, Harold, God’s Frozen Children, Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc., 1930 Ray, Dorothy Jean, “The Bering Strait Eskimo.” In Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 5, Arctic, edited by David Damas, (William C. Sturtevant, general editor),

Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution, 1984, pp. 285–302 Sharma, G.D., “Geological Oceanography of the Bering Shelf.” In Marine Geology and Oceanography of the Arctic Seas, edited by Y. Herman, New York: Springer, 1974, pp. 141–156

DIOXINS—See CONTAMINANTS DISKO ISLAND Disko Island (Qeqertarsuaq, in Greenlandic meaning “big island”) (70° N, 54° W) is a large irregularly triangular island (about 100 km or 60 miles maximum length) lying off the central west coast of Greenland. The high flat-topped area of the island, rising to over 1500 m, is dominated by permanent glaciers, the largest of which, Sermersuaq (Storbraen, in Swedish meaning “great glacier”), occupies the central area, but with several glacial tongues or smaller glaciers radiating outward toward the lower unglaciated coastal regions. Nowadays there are only two permanent settlements on Disko Island: Qeqertarsuaq (formerly Godhavn, meaning “good harbor” in Danish), a town of just under 1200 inhabitants surrounding a sheltered natural harbor on the south of the island, and Kangerluk (Diskofjord in Danish), a small coastal settlement of about 70 persons lying 35 km north of Qeqertarsuaq. In earlier days, coal mining played a significant role in the economy of the island, but the last mining settlement, Qullissat on the north east coast, was finally abandoned as uneconomic in 1972. The earliest traces of Inuit settlement at Qeqertarsuaq (Independence Culture 1) date back over 4500 years. However, this culture was superseded by successive waves of immigration (Saqqaq and Dorset cultures), culminating in the present-day Thule culture from about AD 1000 onward. In later times, the safe harbor at Qeqertarsuaq provided a sheltered anchorage for European whaling vessels, and the present-day permanent settlement was founded as Godhavn in 1773 by Svend Sandgren as a whaling station. Commercial whaling catches, however, went rapidly into decline, with only six whales taken by Godhavn ships in 1776 and the decline continuing into the early 19th century. From 1908 to 1972, Qeqertarsuaq served as the major administrative center for North Greenland, one of the two major administrative divisions of the country. Subsistence hunting for minke whale and seals, fishing, and shrimp harvesting have remained the primary local activities, although Disko Island is now widely recognized as a major center of scientific interest and endeavor. Qeqertarsuaq is home to the Danish Arctic Station, founded by the botanist Morten Porsild in 1906, and now run by the University of Copenhagen, and to the observatory of the Danish Meterological Institute.

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DISTANT EARLY WARNING (DEW) LINE Disko Island has many unique features that attract the attention of scientists. The predominant rocks are the youngest in Greenland and these volcanic extrusions, together with the eroding effects of glacial movement, lend the island its characteristic elevated but rounded land forms. The young rocks date from the Tertiary period about 63 million years ago and comprise predominantly iron-rich basalts, which in some places take on the characteristic columnar form. These rocks are superimposed on strata of much older Precambrian rocks such as gneiss. Disko is botanically species-rich, supporting about half the 500 plant species known to occur in Greenland, and with a diversity exceeded only at a few sites in the very south. Homothermal springs, some of them radioactive, generate favorable microclimates for plants and animals through the winter, and this is reflected in a lush growth of vegetation such as wild angelica and dwarf willow scrub. The springs and wet flushes are also fertile hunting grounds for zoologists, with many undescribed species of unusual animals still being discovered. The history, geology, landforms, and ecology of Disko Island are well represented in the Qeqertarsuaq Museum, which also houses paintings of Disko life and landscapes by Jacob Danielsen, a celebrated Inuit artist born in Kangerluk. IAN D. HODKINSON See also Greenland; Qeqertarsuaq Further Reading Anonymous, Greenland, The Disko Bay, Copenhagen, Greenland Tourism a/s (undated) Berthelson, Christian, Inger Holbech Mortensen & Ebbe Mortensen. In Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) Atlas, (2nd edition), Atuakkiorfik: Greenland Home Rule Government, 1993 Caulfield, Richard A., “Aboriginal subsistence whaling in Greenland: the case of Qeqertarsuaq Municipality in West Greenland.” Arctic, 46 (1992): 144–155 Cornwallis, Graeme & Deanna Swaney, Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. (4th edition) London: Lonely Planet Guides, 2001 Fisker, Jørgen, Godhavn, Umanak: Nordiske Landes Bogforlag, 1984 Haagen, Birt, “The coal mine at Qullissat in Greenland.” Études/Inuit/Studies, 6 (1982): 75–97 University of Copenhagen, Dansk Arktisk Station, Disko, Greenland, Copenhagen, 1968 University of Copenhagen, Publications List from the Danish Arctic Station, 1910 –, Arctic Station, Copenhagen

DISTANT EARLY WARNING (DEW) LINE The Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line was built during the Cold War to protect North America from Soviet aircraft that might invade the continent via the North Pole. An early warning system, the DEW Line

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was initiated on February 15, 1954, when US President Dwight Eisenhower signed the bill approving its construction. The concept of the DEW Line was based upon two fundamental principles: (i) that Arctic radar systems would be the primary detection system via data collected and processed at the main operating stations and (ii) that the system would not be able to intercept or destroy invading aircraft. The DEW Line was organized into a western sector with headquarters at Cambridge Bay on the southeast coast of Victoria Island, and an eastern sector with headquarters at Hall Beach on Melville Peninsula. Engineers designed the DEW Line to detect aircraft at a maximum range of 300 km flying at a low altitude (15 m over water) using a dual-antenna system. The detection would occur with the identification of a Doppler frequency produced by the invading aircraft. The construction of the 58 operating sites took place between 1955 and 1957, and the system was fully operational by July 31, 1957. The construction included six main stations, 23 auxiliary stations, and 28 intermediate stations, forming a line along the north coast of Arctic Alaska and Canada with overlapping radar coverage. Mapping teams traveled over 1.6 million kilometers, reviewing over 80,000 aerial photos as part of the intricate siting and mapping process. During construction of the DEW Line, over 113,000 purchase orders were issued to 4700 supplier companies in the US and Canada at a total cost of approximately 350 million US dollars. Supplies and equipment were transported to the Arctic from various US locations for the construction. The material included 127,000 tons by aircraft, 256,000 tons by naval convoy, 16,000 tons by cat train, and 18,000 tons by barge. In addition, 284 million liters of petroleum products were shipped. Environmental concerns over widespread contamination of sites and coastal waters by hydrocarbons and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have recently been raised. Three construction companies employed a total of more than 20,000 people in the two and a half years of the DEW Line’s construction. The peak number of people actually employed in the Arctic at that time was about 7500. In support of the workforce, 20,000 tons of food was transported over a period of 32 months. The DEW Line was the largest commercial airlift operation ever reported, with 45,000 commercial flights delivering 109,000 tons over a period of 32 months. Moreover, 100,000 copies of 600 different manuals that were prepared to outline operation and maintenance of the Line were transported to the Pole. Between 1957 and 1959, the DEW Line was extended westward with six stations along the

DIVERS OR LOONS

Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line station, Point Barrow, Alaska. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

Aleutian Islands. The DEW East project led to the establishment of four DEW Line sites in Greenland in 1957: one on the west coast, one on the east coast, and two on the Greenland icecap. With the signing of the North American Air Defense Modernization agreement between Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and then-President Ronald Reagan on March 18, 1985, the DEW Line began its transition into the North Warning System. KENNETH R. JOHNSON Further Reading Jockel, Joseph T., No Boundaries Upstairs, Canada, the United States and the Origins of North American Air Defence, 1945–1958, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1987 Morenus, Richard, DEW Line: Distant Early Warning, the Miracle of America’s First Line of Defense, New York: Rand McNally, 1957 Reimer, K.J., D.A. Bright, W.T. Dushenko, S.L. Grundy & J.S. Poland, The Environmental Impact of the DEW Line on the Canadian Arctic, Ottawa, Canada: Director General Environment, Department of National Defense, 1993

DIVERS OR LOONS The five species of divers that now inhabit the Northern Hemisphere are among the most primitive of birds, with a fossil record stretching back 65 million years. Survival over such an enormous time scale implies ecological success. Their sleek thick necks, gracefully streamlined bodies, and dagger bills, common to all species, give away their almost totally aquatic nature. Divers are known to dive down to 70 m. Their decreased heart rate and the ability of many of their major organs to function at low oxygen levels

make these birds superb divers. These birds are outstanding fishing machines, their lobed feet set far back in the body as a perfect source of power for underwater pursuit. With feet so distant from their center of gravity, divers pay the price for aquatic grace with inelegance on land. They can only walk clumsily and shuffle awkwardly from their shoreline nest to the safety of their true environment (a trait thought to be the origin of their North American name loon, possibly a derivation from the Nordic word “lom” meaning clumsy or lame). There are three major species in the Arctic, although two other recognized species that nest more in the taiga forest, black-throated diver (Gavia arctica) and Pacific loon (G. pacifica), also extend into the Arctic regions.

Great Northern Diver and White-Billed Diver Gavia immer, the great northern diver (Europe), also known as common loon (North America), Tuullik (Greenlandic), Himbrimi (Icelandic), Islom (Norwegian), and Gavia adamsii, the white-billed diver (Europe), also known as yellow-billed loon (North America), are both large birds (3–6 kg in weight) and have heavy stout bills; that of the great northern is straight and black, and that of the whitebilled diver is cream colored and appears up-tilted. Both have glossy black hoods interrupted by windows of white stripes on the chin and nape. The back is black, heavily striped with striking black and white patterning. Inuit legend has it that the raven made such fun of these patterns on the back that the loons always face their aggressors when performing the “penguin dance” threat display, in order to hide the foolish patterning on their backs. In winter, both species lose

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Black-throated Arctic loon (Gavia arctica). Copyright Curtis Carley, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

their spectacular garb and become grayish-brown above, with dark crown and nape, and pale, almost white below. The great northern diver breeds mainly in North America between 40° N and 78° N, but extends to Greenland, Iceland, and Bear Island. Nesting is usually associated with very large deep freshwater lakes, in areas of coniferous forest but also into open tundra; the nests are invariably on islets, less commonly along shores. Great northern divers winter along coasts of the North Atlantic and northeastern Pacific, frequently associated with exposed, hard rock shores and sheltered bays. The white-billed diver replaces the smaller species in the Russian Arctic, breeding along Arctic Ocean coasts as far north as 78° N, generally well north of the treeline, and extends into Alaska and the western Canadian Arctic. This species winters in coastal waters of the northwest and northeastern Pacific and off Norway in the Old World. Both species tend to nest as soon as habitats are freed from the spring thaw, creating a modest nest from vegetation adjacent to the water’s edge. Little is known about the breeding biology of white-billed divers, but great northern sivers tend to lay two eggs, which after 3–4 weeks of incubation hatch dark brown chicks that fledge at 70–77 days. Birds are thought to reach sexual maturity at 2 years of age, but there are few records from ringing recoveries to support the idea that these birds probably live for 20 or more years. Both species are masters of the underwater pursuit of fish, most usually in 4–10 m of water where they can be submerged for up to a minute, often resurfacing far from the diving point. Because of their mournful song, great northern and white-billed divers were thought to act as

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a guide into the netherworld; hence, early Inuit cultures buried Loon skulls in graves. Animal dances among the western Inuit of North America featured many ceremonial bird masks, and the striking yellow dagger bill of Gavia adamsii figured prominently in the “Dance of the Loon.” The drum dance clothing of the Copper Inuit of Coronation Gulf, Northwest Territories also featured the head and bill in ceremonies that welcomed the arrival of travelers and friends or celebrated a successful hunt. More functionally, the large diver skins were used in the coats of Western Alaskan Inuit, and their use as storage bags by the Bering Strait Inuit continues today in Gjoa Haven, Nunavit, where, “loonie bags” are still used to hold and keep dry the precious dried moss, bog cotton, and flints required to start fires.

Red-Throated Diver Gavia stellata, the red-throated diver (Europe), is also known as red-throated loon (North America), Qarsaaq (Greenlandic), Lómur (Icelandic), and Smålom (Norwegian). It is the smallest, most sleek diver, conspicuous because the upward slant of the lower mandible gives the impression of a slender upturned bill. Outside the breeding season, the birds are dullish brown above speckled light, but the summer garb is finely marked on the upper parts of the back, the rear neck and nape striped black and white, with a pale gray head and dramatic red bib that extends almost to the waterline. Red-throated divers nest generally on fresh waters (even small water bodies) north of 50º N in Europe, Asia, and North America,

DOG SLEDGE IN INUIT CULTURE penetrating far into the Arctic in Svalbard and northern Greenland. The species is a solitary nester, rarely forming loose associations by virtue of food resources. The nest is a modest heap of vegetation very close to the waters’ edge. Although clutches of 1–3 have been reported, the clutch size is invariably 2. Incubation takes almost 4 weeks and the dark brown young take almost 5 weeks to fledge. Adults may feed on the nesting lake, but very frequently commute long distances to larger prey-rich waters or even shallow marine waters to feed and catch food for the young. The species reaches sexual maturity at 2 or 3 years of age, but individuals have been known to live for over 23 years in the wild. The species is highly migratory, moving well south of the breeding range after fledging of young, and may aggregate in particular molting areas before moving to ultimate wintering quarters. In winter, the species can be found along inshore marine waters, often along sheltered coasts around northern coasts of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, but also in the Great Lakes, Black, Caspian, and Mediterranean seas. As with the larger species, parts of the redthroated diver skin were prized as clothing by northern peoples, and the hood of a mummified woman who died in c.1475 near Uummannaq, West Greenland, comprised two skins of this species. TONY FOX See also Seabirds Further Reading Bent, A.C., Life Histories of North American Diving Birds, New York: Dover Publications, 1963 Cramp, S. & K.E.L. Simmons, The Birds of the Western Palearctic, Volume 1, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977 Del Hoyo, J., A. Elliot & J. Sartagal, Handbook of the Birds of the World, Volume 1, Ostrich to Ducks, Madrid: Lynx, 1992 Dennis, R., Loons, Stillwater, Minnesota: Stillwater, 1993 Godfrey, W.E., The Birds of Canada (revised edition), Ottawa: National Museums of Canada, 1986 Hart Hanse, J.P. and H.C. Gulløv, “The mummies from Qilakitsoq—eskimos in the 15th century.” Meddelelser om Grønland, Man and Society, 12(1989): 1–199 Klein, T., Loon Magic, Minoqua, Wisconsin: Northwood Press, 1989 McIntyre, J.W., The Common Loon: Spirit of Northern Lakes, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988

DOG SLEDGE IN INUIT CULTURE Dog sleds (or sledges) are important to Arctic peoples’ culture and lifestyle. Utilizing dogs to pull sleds is thought to have begun in Siberia around 7000 years ago. Up until recent times, travel by dog team was the main method of transportation during the winter. Dog sleds allowed people to move or travel to hunting

grounds. Although it is now common to have eight to ten dogs, previously people could maintain only two or three dogs and sleds were used to haul gear while people usually walked. For at least 4000 years the Inuit bred dogs or qimmiq for sleds. The Alaskan malamute, originally completely native to Alaska, is a large dog developed by the Inuit of Alaska to haul heavy loads at steady speeds over long distances. It is related to the Finnish spitz and the Samoyed. The slightly smaller Canadian Inuit dog, also known as American husky, or the Esquimaux dog is endemic to Canada while the Greenland dog is the same breed, that is, an Inuit dog originating from Greenland. The Alaskan husky is a crossbreed from the Siberian husky. There is a large amount of traditional knowledge related to the utilization of dog sleds, and almost every technical aspect is subject to variation, contributing to a large and often diverse body of traditional knowledge. There have been great changes to the equipment needed for dog sleds as the available materials changed. The sled, whips, lines, harnesses, and connectors were constructed from a variety of different materials. In areas north of the treeline, wood was a precious commodity for building sleds and was acquired mainly by collecting driftwood along the shores. Consequently, people fashioned sleds from other available materials. Frozen fish wrapped in skins were used to make runners with antler or bone to form the crosspieces. Sleds have also been constructed from whalebones and antlers. Sled runners were often shod with bone, ivory, or ice; more recent materials include steel or plastic. Sleds with soil or sod runners need a layer of ice, which is made by lightly spraying water from the mouth and then smoothing over the area with fur. The water freezes, forming a glasslike layer over the soil. Currently, wood is readily available and most sleds are constructed from wood with a variety of different runners. The optimum runner for a sled changes with environmental conditions and the type of snow. Flexibility is the key element in construction and sleds are lashed together without nails to allow for elasticity of movement when crossing rough terrain. The design of the sled varies according to local customs and uses. A consideration for sled design is the type of hitch used for the dogs, which in turn depends upon the region. The fan hitch uses each dog on an individual trace spread in a fan- or handlike formation. Each line is attached to the sled through a main line that attaches to the front-runners of the sled. The connectors between the main line and individual lines are carved from antler or ivory, and currently sometimes a metal ring. Region, local design, and purpose influence the type of sled used. For instance, a flat sled is used with the fan hitch in the Eastern and Central

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An Inuit hunter travels by dog sled (sledge) over the frozen sea ice, Northwest Greenland. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

Canadian Arctic when moving heavy loads. In Greenland and parts of the Canadian Arctic, a sled with extra posts in the rear is used, making it easier for standing and loading gear. The fan hitch has advantages when traveling across ice. Because each dog has its own line, they can take the slack needed to jump across obstacles on rough ice. In addition, the dogs instinctively sense when they are on thin ice and disperse their weight in response. The lead dog is on the longest line and helps to direct the other dogs and steer the sled according to commands. In other regions such as Alaska, the dogs pull the sled in a tandem hitch, where two dogs are placed side by side along a main line. In Siberia, the dogs are staggered, alternately behind one another rather than next to each other in pairs. A lead dog can also be used, positioned alone in the most forward position. The sled for a tandem hitch is typically narrower than that for a fan hitch, and has an area to stand at the rear of the sled as well as a basket area for gear and sitting. The tandem hitch is well suited to maneuver around trees and other obstacles in northern forests. In Alaska the tandem hitch is used even north of the treeline. In dog team racing, such as the Ididarod, the tandem hitch is used and light and fast sleds are constructed. The lines, traces, and harnesses are made from a variety of different materials. In the Canadian Arctic, most people make their lines from ujuk (bearded seal). The skins have to be carefully cut in order to make the long ropes. Bearded sealskin is tough and durable. Although people still use skin ropes, they now also substitute nylon ropes. The harnesses are often made

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from sealskin or whale skin, which is softer and more supple. Currently, many harnesses are sewn from reinforced canvas webbing or synthetic materials. Most dog team owners have preferences for the exact design of the harness. Whips are often considered to be one of the most important tools in training a dog team. They are about 25 ft long and are constructed from sealskin and whale skin. Much practice and skill is needed to use the whip correctly. To travel by dog sled, it is necessary to have control over the dogs. The lead dog is a crucial part of traveling by dog sled and there are very diverse ways in which people choose their lead dog. Some believe that a male dog is best as a leader, else there will be time lost due to pregnancy. Others prefer a female dog for the lead, especially if the team consists of a litter of her pups. It is believed that a team of siblings shows a larger degree of cooperation and that mother retains her natural dominance. Others believe that behavior is the relevant dimension, with different views on whether an aggressive or a calm dog is to be preferred as a leader. A good lead dog must be intelligent and take directions. The variety of techniques used in dog sleds, whether it is choosing a lead dog, constructing a sled, or making a harness, is consistent with an understanding of the diversity of traditional knowledge. Dog sleds are still used in the Arctic, but far-reaching changes, including living in permanent settlements, wage labor, and the use of snowmobiles, have significantly reduced their numbers. Indigenous and local hunters in the Canadian Arctic no longer depend on dog teams for hunting. By using a snowmobile, people

DOG SLEDGE IN NORTHERN EURASIA can go hunting and return to town quickly. As sanctioned by law, sport hunters for polar bears in Canada must be taken out by a local guide and dog team. Therefore, despite their reduced numbers, some dog teams are retained for guiding purposes. In Greenland, hunting is restricted to using dog sleds and therefore there are still a great number. Dog sleds are often used recreationally and dog team races are an important part of many Arctic festivities and games. KERRIE ANN SHANNON See also Dog Sledge in Northern Eurasia Further Reading Boas, Franz, The Central Eskimo, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964 (1888 original publication) Cellura, Dominique, Travelers of the Cold: Sled Dogs of the Far North, Anchorage: Alaska Northwest, 1990 Coppinger, Lorna, The World of Sled Dogs: From Siberia to Sport Racing, New York: Howell Book House, 1977 Degerbol, Magnus & Peter Freuchen, Zoology I, Mammals. Fifth Thule Expedition 1921–1924, Volume II (4–5), Copenhagen: Gyldenalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag, 1937 Gubser, Nicholas, The Nunamiut Eskimos: Hunters of Caribou, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965 Jensen, Bent “Folkways of Greenland dog keeping.” Folk, 3 (1961): 43–66 Montcombroux, Geneviève, The Canadian Inuit Dog, Whipoorwill Press, 1997 Tumivut 12 Special Issue: Qimmiit-Eskimo dogs, spring 2000

DOG SLEDGE IN NORTHERN EURASIA Possibly since Neolithic times, the use of dogs has played an important role in settling the Arctic. The oldest evidence for hunters with sledge dogs in the Eurasian Arctic was found on Zhokhov Island (New Siberian Islands). The dog, harness, and sledge remains were estimated to be 7800–8000 years old by radiocarbon dating. Researchers have dated dog bones in the ancient Yupik Eskimo settlements on the Asian shore of the Bering Strait at 2480–2630 years. Northeastern Asia (Kamchatka, Chukotka, and Yakutia) and northwestern North America are regarded as origins of the use of dogs for sledges, whence the dog sledge culture became circumpolar. However, in Scandinavia they had already traditionally used hunting dogs harnessed to a small sledge (pulka). Technically, the use of dog sledges in North America remained primitive, whereas the indigenous peoples and Russian Old Settlers of Siberia and the Russian Far East substantially refined the sledge technique, training of the dogs, and their management. According to Roald Amundsen and other polar researchers, the Russian Old Settlers of the Kolyma River and Chukchi were most superior to all others in terms of training and managing dogs. Particularly

noteworthy is the northeastern sledge (narta), referred to as the Kolyma or Chukchi sledge. Lightweight and assembled without a single nail, using only skin buffer links, the narta is elastic and strong, and best suited for riding in rugged terrain, among stones and ice hummocks. Anthropologists believe that this sledge originated as early as the Neolithic era for long-distance, light-load hunting, and to date has remained in two versions—cargo and racing. In Russia, dogs are harnessed to the sledge both in a fanlike pattern and in tandem. The tandem harness is the most ancient and remains the most efficient method. This method appears in different versions throughout the area east of the Yenisey River. Frequently the dogs are teamed in pairs following one another. Eight to ten pairs of loops are located along a central strap (potyag). The dogs attach to these loops by means of wooden or bone fasteners, with each dog in its individual harness (alyk). Hunters west of the Yenisey River used and continue to use the fan-patterned team in various versions; until recently, the Novaya Zemlya team has been the most successful. The fan team sledge is shorter than the tandem team sledge and is adjusted for fast, maneuverable riding on flat ground without much cargo. In a tandem team, the draught force of the dogs is harnessed more efficiently. In addition, this type of team is characterized by high performance in cross-country terrain, hummocks, deep snow, and in the forest, and by its adaptability to transportation of heavy cargo and long journeys. In the northern territories of Russia, two principal types of sledge dogs have evolved, which differ substantially in appearance, and according to numerous researchers originate from different ancestral forms. The first type of dog is the Samoyed, which is popular today throughout the world for its beauty and friendly disposition. This sledge dog, originally bred by European and Western-Siberian Nenets, is genetically similar to the Russian reindeer-herding Laika, which was also bred by the above-mentioned groups of Nenets. In present-day Russia, crossbreeding has led to the loss of the purebred stock of Samoyed. However, the breed has been preserved in Finland and England, where the dogs descended from stock exported from Russia early in the 20th century. The second type is represented by fairly large, robust, and wolflike dogs that are used by the populations of the Arctic tundras and the coastal regions of the Far East from Novaya Zemlya to Sakhalin Island. The Russian cynologist (or dog researcher) Edmund Shereshevsky called this type “the northeastern sledge dog” after the region of its origin. This type consists of several populations, or breeds, named after their respective people or geographical region. The hardy, strong, and hard-working Chukchi and Kolyma-Indigirka dogs

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DOGRIB (TLICHO) are regarded as the finest examples. According to data collected by V. Tugolukov on Kolyma-Indigirka teams of the mid-19th century, the Chukchi dogs attain an average long-distance speed of 10 km h−1 (6 mph), and up to 15–17 km h−1 (9–10 mph) on a route of 200–250 km (125–150 mi). A racing sledge could cover 250 km over 15 h and 750 km over 3 days. If the road had a dense snow cover, a team of 12–14 dogs could carry up to 1 ton of cargo; if off-road, that team could transport no more than 500 kg. Until the 1960s, dog teams provided an essential, and occasionally the only, form of winter transportation in the northern regions of Russia. Local residents and federal services, including frontier troops and expeditions, relied on dog sledges. In 1937, in Kamchatka alone 50,700 dogs (more than 4500 complete teams) worked. The use of dog sledges in Russia declined during the last 30 years of the 20th century. The bulk of the population of indigenous sledge dogs disappeared due to a number of factors, including the advent of snowmobiles, the decline of hunting of fur-bearing mammals and of subsistence fishing, and the crossbreeding of sledge dogs with imported dogs of other breeds. Not only crossbreeding but widespread famine and disease in the 1990s led to the death of large numbers of sledge dogs in Eurasia. Only the sledge dog population of Chukotka survived and even increased in the 1990s. In Chukotka, sea mammal hunting in winter relied upon the work of sledge dogs, and the products of marine hunting provided food for the entire Eastern Chukotka. Sledge dogs have historically played a significant role in the economic as well as the spiritual life of the peoples of the North. Often considered as guardians of the home and family, native populations used sledge dogs as cult and sacrifice animals, and in the performance of rituals that continue to emphasize the special relationship between dog and master. In fact, Asian Eskimos would not treat a dog that fell ill; they believed that the animal’s disease would “come to the master.” The languages of numerous indigenous peoples have numerous words associated with dog sledge, their breeding, and training. Today, indigenous peoples of the North have been striving to revive the traditions of the dog sledge and its multifaceted, social, and spiritual meanings. LYUDMILA BOGOSLOVSKAYA TRANSLATED BY PETR ALEINIKOV See also Dog Sledge in Inuit Culture Further Reading Bogoslovskaya, Lyudmila, “Боѕ ословская Лю∂мuла О ездовых собаках и не только о них // Ж. друг” [On sledge dogs and not only about them], Droug [Russian Dog Fancy Magazine], Moscow, No. 6, 1999

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Coppinger, Lorna, The World of Sled Dogs. From Siberia to Sport Racing (5th printing), New York: Howell Book House, 1987 Handford, Jenny Mai, “Dog sledging in the eighteenth century: North America and Siberia.” Polar Record, 34(190) (1998): 237–248 Shereshevsky, Edmund, Pavel Petryaev & Golubev Vladimir, ^ Шерешевскuu Э∂мун∂, Пемряев Павел, Голубев Вла∂uмuр [Dog Sledge], Moscow-Leningrad: Glavsevmorput’ Press, 1946 Smolyak, Anna, Смоляк Анна Народы Нижего Амура и Сахалина [The peoples of the lower reaches of the Amur River and Sakhalin], Moscow: Nauka, 2002 Tugolukov, Vladillen, Ту ѕ олуков Вла∂uллен Кто вы, юкагиры? Москва: Наука [Who are you Yukagirs?], Moscow: Nauka, 1979

DOGRIB (TLICHO) The Dogrib (Tlicho) people are one of the five major aboriginal groups of Northern Dene resident in Canada’s Northwest Territories. Traditional Dogrib territory lay between the north shore of Great Slave Lake and Great Bear Lake (62–65° N, 110–124° W) in Subarctic forest. On August 25, 2003, the Tlicho (formerly Dogrib First Nation) signed a land claims agreement with the Canadian federal government. The agreement ceded a 39,000 km2 area (including both of Canada’s diamond mines) between Great Bear Lake and Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories to Tlicho ownership. A historic vote held by members of the former Dogrib Treaty 11 (current band members and descendants of Treaty residents) ratified the “Tlicho Agreement,” a far-reaching self-government document that recognized the rights and lands of the Tlicho people and established an official Tlicho government. The Dogrib (Tlicho) are one of several First Nations party to Canada’s Treaty 11, which attempted to ensure Crown control of resource extraction and development all along the Mackenzie River valley. The Dogrib (Tlicho) speak one of several northern Athapaskan languages. These are spoken not only by the Dene of the Northwest Territories but also by those in Yukon, Canada, in Alaska, in northern British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Southern Athapaskan speakers (Dinee) include the Navajo and Apache peoples of the southwestern United States. The language family distribution gives rise to an as yet unsolved question about the origin of the Athapaskan speakers and the migration routes that led them to their historic and present distribution. The name Tlicho (formerly Dogrib) probably did not originate with the Tlicho themselves, although it is now the name they use for themselves when contrasting their group with other Dene. Dogrib or dogside may have come from the Cree First Nation to the south.

DOGRIB (TLICHO) During early historic times, variants of dogrib in the Cree language, in English, and in French referred to Dene living between Great Slave Lake and Great Bear Lake. The historical record is not clear, however, on when the term applied to the Tlicho so identified today; it sometimes included either the Denesonline (Chipewyan Dene) or the Deh Gáh Got’ine and Shihta Got’ine (Slavey). By about 1700, however, English historical accounts refer separately to the Tlicho (Dogrib) and the Denesonline (Chipewyans). Spruce, poplar, and birch stands are dense in the western Dogrib (Tlicho) range. To the east, Tlicho land is thin forest amid Precambrian granite rock outcroppings, with many lakes and rivers. Fish are a dietary mainstay, along with caribou and moose. Even before the fur trade, Tlicho and other Dene hunted, fished, and snared all available species, commonly muskrat, beaver, hare, marten, lynx, and wolverine. Gill nets were set throughout the open water season and again as soon as the ice was thick enough to hold people in early winter. Fish were of course essential to feed dog sledge teams, the primary means for winter transport. Tlicho also traveled on snowshoes, and in summer by birch-bark canoe. The arrival of EuroCanadian fur traders caused the Tlicho to alter their seasonal round to include trapping seasons, with delivery and sale of furs at the trading forts. However, Tlicho maintained their traditional hunting and trapping nomadic lifestyle well into the 1950s. Today few people trap, but most hunt, fish, and gather berries as well as hold wage employment. Indigenous foods remain essential in Tlicho communities. Tlicho territory is surrounded by other Dene: Denesonline and T’atsaot’ine (Chipewyan and Yellowknives) to the south and east; Deh Ga Got’ine and Shihta Got’ine to the west; and K’áshot’ine (Hareskin) and Dinjii Zhuh (Gwich’in or Kutchin) to the north. Along with other northern Dene in Canada, Tlicho settled in this area perhaps 30,000 or more years ago. The archaeological record shows development of technology, subsistence, and settlement patterns from about 8000 years ago, which are virtually the same as that of the Dene whom European explorers and traders first encountered. Archaeologists consider the prehistoric Taltheilei Shale tradition to be ancestral to the Denesonline, but have not identified prehistoric antecedents specific to the Tlicho. Today the Dogrib (Tlicho) who remain in their traditional territory live mostly in the small communities of Gameti (Rae Lakes, population 290), Wha ti (Lac la Martre, population 480), Wekwèti (Snare Lake, population 138), and Bèhchoko (Rae-Edzo, population 1850). Many urban Tlicho reside in Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories (total population 17,702: total native population 4128 and nonnative

population 13,574; figures from the Government of the Northwest Territories Bureau of Statistics). Those who attend postsecondary school primarily reside in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, or in Edmonton, Alberta, the nearest city to Tlicho territory. Contemporary Dene, having worked with elders for several years to record and teach Dene knowledge and culture, organize Dene knowledge into four areas: the spiritual world, the land, the people, and the self, all of which are intimately connected. The spiritual world includes living forces in the land and water as well as medicine power. All creatures and things embody spiritual qualities and characteristics as evinced in legends, water and ice, animals, northern lights, heavenly bodies, and the drum. The drum is a moose hide-covered circular frame with two strings stretched parallel across its surface. The drummer holds the drum by the strings on the hollow, or back, side of the frame with one hand, his beater in the other hand. The drum is said to represent the unity of the self, others, the spiritual world, and the land. Dene Elder George Blondin stated, “The old people tell me that the Creator gave our people medicine powers to help them survive the hardships of living. It was part of religion. All people did not have the same kind of powers. Some individuals had very strong medicine power; and to some a Drum Song was given. It’s known that three or four of these special people existed in every tribe. Our people had some songs just for fun and dancing, but the sacred Drum Songs were used for praying, for healing, for seeing into the future” (Blondin, 1990). Dene laws govern the way people are to behave in relation to the environment and to others. People depend on the land and its creatures in order to survive; thus, people must maintain an attitude of humility toward all things in nature. Dene laws—of which Dogrib (Tlicho) have formed a part—include both prescriptions and proscriptions for the proper treatment of animals to ensure that the animals will continue to submit to the people and therefore support their survival. Women and men each follow rules regarding different animals and the equipment required for hunting and processing. During menses, women are restricted from certain activities. A Dene individual may have specific rules related to a particular species. Sehóti (“my people”) is the Dogrib term for one’s relatives. The term can also mean one’s larger grouping, that is, the hunting band or group one traveled with or, presently, one’s settled community. Although neither clans nor other descent groups were part of Tlicho kinship, extended family groupings remain strong within Dene communities even today. Siblings, their spouses, parents, and children frequently travel

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DOGRIB (TLICHO) and camp together; the men of the group hunt together and meat is shared among the extended family. Tlicho identified seven regional bands within the First Nation throughout much of the 20th century. The regional bands represented one group with flexible membership. Most of its members spent a significant part of the year within a recognized territory for subsistence activity. Such bands were not necessarily together much or all of the time, but within bands sets of families formed short-term groupings according to the subsistence or fur trade needs of the season. Each band, and the family groups within it, was associated with a particular area within Tlicho territory, taking names such as Ta ga hoti (“Follow the Shore People”) and Wulede hoti (“Connie River People”). Prior to the exigencies of dealing with EuroCanadian treaty parties, neither the Tlicho nor other Northwest Territories Dene participated in any overarching tribal or band political organization. The role of a leader is to guide, not exert power over, others. The elders, women and men, guide and question the community. The underlying principle is that all people are one and the circle must not break, although reaching consensus requires much patience and struggle. In his essential history of Treaties 8 and 11, Rene Fumoleau wrote: “Traditionally the Mackenzie River Indians lived under the guidance of men who had earned respect by reason of their superiority in medicine (medicine power) wisdom or hunting. Official leadership was almost nonexistent. The power of decision was vested in the total membership of the group or band, and unanimous consent was required before action was taken: the chief was but a spokesman for his fellows” (Fumoleau, 1974). Fumoleau’s description rests on Samuel Hearne’s from as early as 1777, in which he wrote, “Europeans...being utterly unacquainted with the manners and customs of the Indians, have conceived so high an opinion of those leaders, and their authority, as to imagine that all who accompany them on those occasions are entirely devoted to their service and command all the year; but this is so far from being the case, that the authority of those great men, when absent from the Company’s Factory, never extends beyond their own family” (Hearne, 1911). Today, Dene Kede, the school curriculum developed by Dene elders, teaches students that traditional leaders were the best hunters and providers. Leaders became leaders by demonstrating their competence and knowledge as well as by listening to the people and understanding their needs. The recent history of the Tlicho, and their present standing among Northwest Territories Dene First Nations, stems from events that occurred about 200 years ago. During the late 18th century, Tlicho came

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into conflict with the T’atsaot’ine (Yellowknives), who pushed them out of areas that the Dogrib were accustomed to exploiting. Tlicho oral history vividly documents the aggression of Akaitcho, the T’atsaot’ine leader, throughout the early 19th century. The Dogrib (Tlicho) leader Edzo succeeded in making peace with Akaitcho around 1823. Despite Dene oral accounts of a peaceful resolution, European accounts of this peace credit European negotiators. Current maps show Boundary Creek, the point at which their lands divided, midway between modern Yellowknife and Bèhchoko (Rae-Edzo). However, the conflict continues today while the Tlicho and Akaitcho’s people negotiate the boundaries of their modern treaties with Canada. In 1921, at Fort Providence, the Dogrib (Tlicho) signed Treaty 11 with Canada. The arrangements apparently agreed to in Treaty 11, however, were either misunderstood or never completed, and thus the Tlicho are one of five Northwest Territories Dene groups who have either accepted a comprehensive land claim settlement (what the Canadian government calls a “modern treaty”) or are in the process of negotiating a comprehensive claim or the fulfillment of outstanding treaty promises. Throughout the 20th century, Tlicho faced sustained pressure from government and industry through natural resource development such as gold and uranium mining and hydroelectric projects. Recently, the Tlicho have become partners with resource developers and are receiving some direct financial benefit from modern uses of their land. ELLEN BIELAWSKI See also Athapaskan; Dene; Land Claims; Northern Athapaskan Languages Further Reading Blondin, George, When the World Was New, Yellowknife: Outcrop Publishers, 1990 Dene Kede Curriculum Development Team, Dene Kede, Education: A Dene Perspective, Yellowknife: Government of the Northwest Territories, 1993 Dene Nation, Denendeh: A Celebration, Yellowknife: The Dene Nation, 1984 Fumoleau, Rene, As Long As This Land Shall Last: A History of Treaty 8 and Treaty 11 1870–1939, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd., 1974 Hearne, Samuel, A Journey from Prince of Wales Fort on Hudson’s Bay to the Northern Ocean, Undertaken by Order of the Hudson’s Bay Company, for the Discovery of Copper Mines, and North West Passage, and c., in the years 1769, 1770, 1771 and 1772, reprinted Toronto, The Champlain Society, 1911 Helm, June, “Dogrib.” In Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 6, Subarctic, edited by June Helm, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution, 1981

DOLGAN

DOLGAN The Dolgans are a sparse population. They live in the south and east of the Taymyr (Dolgan-Nenets) Autonomous Okrug of Krasnoyarsk Kray, mainly in the Khatanga District but also in Dudinka District, with a small number in the Anabar District of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). On the Taymyr peninsula, they are the most numerous ethnic group (about 10% of the total population). In the 1989 (most recent) Soviet census, the total population of Dolgans within the Russian Federation was 6584, of whom 731 lived in the Sakha Republic. Novorybnoye is the largest Dolgan settlement. Dolgans are one of the most recent Siberian ethnic groups, and originated from the influence of many component groups that moved into the Taymyr region from the 17th century onward. They speak a specific dialect of the Yakut language (part of the Turkic language family), differentiated by the presence of Evenki words. The degree of difference of the Dolgan dialect from the Yakut dialect decreases westward from Yakutia. The native language is taught in schools. There is no Dolgan orthography; instead, the Cyrillic script is used. The formation of the Dolgans as an independent ethnic group occurred at the beginning of the 20th century. There are four subgroups of Dolgans from four tribal clans of Tungus origin: the Dolgan proper, Edzhen, Karanto, and Dongot. From the 19th to the beginning of the 20th centuries, these clans were joined by families of Yakut, Enets, Nenets, Russian Old Settlers of Taymyr, and so-called tundra peasants. The Dolgan clan called themselves Dulgaan, a name that spread to all Dolgans in the 19th century. Many Dolgans, however, called themselves by the name of the clan to which they belonged: Edzhen, Karuntuo, and Dongot. In the district of Noril’sk, some Dolgans called themselves “toakihilär” (in Yakut “people of the wood”). Sometimes Dolgans called themselves Tungus, but separated themselves from local Evenki of the Taymyr and Evenk okrugs. They did not consider themselves as Yakuts and differentiated themselves ethnographically from the latter.

Lifestyle and Subsistence Traditional subsistence activities of the Dolgan, as of the Evenki, were reindeer breeding and wild reindeer hunting and, in some districts, fishing. Seasonal movements were of two basic types. In the district of Noril’sk Lake and on the basin of River Popigay, some Dolgan did not enter the tundra, remaining in forested river valleys in the winter, and moving to less forested areas in summer. Most other groups of Dolgan lived in winter nomad camps on the forest-tundra border, from

the River Pyasina until River Popigay. Following winter on forest-tundra, in spring they moved north on to the tundra for summer. In winter, the Noril’sk and Popigay Dolgan families lived isolated from each other, often in single family camps. Other Dolgans moving through the northern part of the forest made a number of camps on the winter road from Noril’sk to Popigay and stayed in groups of 5–10 families. As reindeer required changes of pasture, winter camps were moved several times. With the arrival of spring, Dolgans formed nomadic groups consisting of several families, tied by economic interests. With such cooperation, the number of herdsman required to look after the domesticated reindeer was reduced. In spring and summer, in the mosquito season, Dolgans took turns to tend their reindeer the whole day. In autumn, each summer nomadic group split up again into families for the winter fur trapping and hunting season in the forest. Dolgan reindeer breeding derived from Tungus traditions, with techniques adopted from reindeer breeders of the Samodian group. Thus, Dolgans used reindeer with saddles and pack-loads in summer and harnessed reindeer to sledges in winter. Sledge types were basically similar to those used by Nenets and Nganasans, but they also used low sledges of Yakut type. The harnesses were distinguished from the Nenets type, the forward deer being controlled from the right bridle, whereas the Nenets, Enets, and Nganasans controlled the forward deer from the left bridle. The Dolgans use dogs for herding, as do the Nenets and Nganasans. The Dolgan way of riding horses is also of Tungus style. Dolgans hunted Arctic fox, wild reindeer, bear, geese, ducks, and partridge using bows traded from the Kets, and later guns. An important custom was the autumn collective hunt, when wild reindeer were herded into rivers where they would be killed by spears or guns. In autumn, at the time of mating of wild reindeer, deer were attracted with the help of specially trained domesticated reindeer as a decoy. In winter, they hunted wild reindeer with guns and bows, often following the deer on foot or by sledge for hours. Other forms of winter hunting with guns were connected masking: the hunters crept up to the herd under cover of a shield on the sledge. In winter, hunters dressed in white sokyi with an apron of white dog fur, which allowed them to approach the deer through snow without noise; in summer, their gray clothes blended with the color of rocky tundra. In summer and autumn, until the first snow, they hunted wild reindeer with the help of hunting dogs. Dolgans living in the forest-tundra used wide skis of the Tungus type. In spring when the tundra grasses appeared, the Dolgans hunted for migrating ducks, geese, and

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DOLGAN partridges. The geese and ducks were shot by gun, and partridges were hunted with nets and snares. Traditional autumn hunting for molting geese (who having shed their feathers cannot fly) was by herding them into nets. Ducks were hunted by stretching nets below the lake surface. Nowadays, geese, ducks, and partridges are hunted by individuals and their meat is dried to feed Dolgan families in the spring and autumn. Arctic foxes and wolves were trapped mainly for commercial needs, and the furs were sold to Russian traders. The Khatanga River basin and tundra lakes are rich in fish (particularly whitefish and nelma or white salmon). Fishnets from 6 up to 30 m long were made of horsehair brought from Yakutia. Water transport was by boats made from wood and bark. The major food of Dolgans was meat and fish. They boiled meat and fish, and ate fish both raw and frozen. Duck and geese, hunted in the spring, were cooked or dried for future use. They made soup from the meat of partridges, prepared with wheat and groats. They also ate some roots, which they dug out with a reindeer horn or a special wooden spade. Dolgan dwellings were very varied. In the village of the Khatanga valley, Dolgans lived in houses of Russian type; in tundra and forest-tundra, hunters and reindeer herders lived in chum tents of Evenki type, covered with rovduga (reindeer hide) in summer and reindeer fur in winter, or in a gloom, a pyramidical wooden construction for stationary winter use. With the coming of the Russians, balagans (the summer pyramidal dwelling on a pole) were replaced by sledge tents (baloks), a house built on the sledge. The skeleton of wooden poles is covered with many layers of fabric, from reindeer skin to canvas and plastic. Two glass windows, an iron furnace, and a table were inside, and the whole sledge was transported from one camp to another by five to seven reindeer. Sledge tents were adopted in the 19th century from traveling Russian merchants, who used them on the tundra.

Clothing More than ten kinds of national Dolgan clothes are known, which had specific names, distinguished by small details. Before the Russian revolution, clothes were hand-made, sewn from purchased fabrics. In winter and summer, Dolgans wore shirts made of cloth—sontap. In winter, they wore these beneath coats made from Arctic fox and hare fur. Instead of cloth shirts, men wore unfastened reindeer fur shirts reaching below the knee—dochi—with a muffler and a fur hood—sokui. In wet weather in summer, they wore hooded sokui made of cloth. In winter, women wore long fur coats made from sable or hare fur over

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the sontap. Men and women wore belts embroidered with glass beads, similar to the Evenki aprons worn by women and old men. Men and women’s caps were shaped like a cape. The top was made from fox fur in winter and from cloth in summer. The cloth was embroidered with glass beads or was decorated with thin strips of colored fabric. The winter boots of reindeer fur were of two types—below and above the knee—and were often embroidered with glass beads. Summer boots were sewed from reindeer hide. The sole of summer boots had a hole for draining water during walking.

Society and Social Structure With the arrival of the Russians to Taymyr in the mid to late 17th century, the Tungus clan ancestors of the Dolgans began to separate into tribes. The tribes were structured patrilinearly by the man’s line. There were, however, some vestiges of matriarchy. For example, in ancient times some families of Dolgans living together in one camp elected a woman chief, to whom every man submitted. Women maintained the sacred fire and fed it, and they controlled family relics and traditions. The patrilineal organization of Dolgan tribes collapsed in the 19th century. The development of trade and the penetration of more modern technology into the Dolgans’ basic business—hunting—led some people to accumulate fur as a trade good. The important factor of social differentiation in Dolgan society was the concentration of the majority of the reindeer herds, which were generally small, in the hands of a small group of rich families. Nevertheless, as the Dolgans spread they still retained significant features of their early society. Although hunting and fishing equipment were individual property, the products of hunting were considered to be collective property, especially in summer, when several families traveled together. A hunter, having killed a wild deer, had to give the skin and meat to families in his nomadic group, keeping only the head and neck for himself. Similarly, geese caught collectively were shared between the families according to the number of members. Domesticated reindeer were private property, as were Arctic fox trapped for fur. With Soviet collectivization in the 1930s, many Dolgans were forced to settle into semipermanent villages and farm reindeer collectively. Industrial pollution from the Noril’sk smelters has, however, devastated reindeer pastures, and threatened the traditional hunting and reindeer breeding way of life.

Religion and Folklore Although by the 20th century Dolgans were considered to have all converted to Orthodox Christianity, following

DOLGIKH, BORIS Christian rituals and practices, they retained many traditional beliefs (animism, deification of forces of nature). Stones of unusual forms, trees, and other natural objects were revered as sacred objects, considered to be spirit protectors of hunting and fishing. Dolgan deities and spirits were divided, as were those of the Yakuts, into three categories: itchi— unbodied invisible creatures, which bring life to all objects; aiuu or ajyy—benevolent spirits; and abaasu—spirits that bring different kinds of illnesses and unhappiness to people. Shamans struggled against evil and acted as mediators between people and the spirits. Dolgan shaman’s clothes and tambourine were of Evenki type. Dolgans buried their dead in the ground after the spring thaw. They killed a deer near the grave, leaving the clothes of the dead man on the ground or in a tree. Dolgan oral folklore consists of riddles, stories, fairy tales, sagas, and songs. Historical sagas by their plot, and also by the method of performance were close to the Yakut olonkho and namad. The plot consists of a struggle of heroes with evil. The song alternated with stories. Usually the song parts where the hero speaks are sung with a different timbre of voice. Dolgans did not have musical instruments, and only at the end of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th centuries did they begin to use the Yakut vargan or jew’s harp. All clothes for festivals and domestic use were embroidered with beads or decorated with thin strips of colored fur or fabric. Ornamental embroidery with reindeer hair on reindeer hide was also common, colored red with alder-tree bark and black with graphite. Thin transparent embroidery with a string of tendons was found on straps and on the harnesses of reindeer sledges. Ornamentation of clothes was a woman’s craft. Men’s art was associated with carving of mammoth ivory, which was used to make buttons for and decorate reindeer harnesses. Dolgans were considered to be very skillful blacksmiths, producing decorated copper and silver wares. Dolgan designs are geometric, consisting of crosswise, round circles, zigzag (chevron), and broken stripes. MAYA VASIL’EVA See also Evenki; Northern Altaic Languages; Taymyr (Dolgan-Nenets) Autonomous Okrug; Tungus; Yakuts Further Reading Dolgikh, B.O., “Proiskhozhdenie Dolgan” [Origin of the Dolgan]. In Sibirskii Etnograficheskii Sbornik V, Trudy Instituta Etnografii im. N.N. Mikhlukho-Maklaia, Novaia Seriia 84, Moscow: USSR Academy of Sciences Publishers, 1963, pp. 92–141

Narody Rossii, entsyklopediia [The peoples of Russia], edited by V.A. Tishkov, Moscow: Bol’shaia Rossiiskaia Entsyklopediia, 1994 Narody Sibiri, edited by M.G. Levin and L.P. Potapov, Moscow: Russian Academy of Sciences, 1956; as The Peoples of Siberia, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1964 Popov, A.A., “Olenevodstvo u Dolgan” [Reindeer herding of the Dolgan], Sovietskaia Etnografiia, 4–5 (1935) ——— O zhizni i ustno-narodnom tvorchestve Dolgan // Dolganskiy folklor [About the life and folklore of Dolgan // Dolgan folklore], Moscow and Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1937 Ziker, J., “Land Use and Economic Change Among the Dolgan and the Nganasan.” In People and the Land: Pathways to Reform in Post-Soviet Siberia, edited by E. Kasten, Berlin: Reimer Verlag, 2002 http://www.eki.ee/books/redbook/dolgans.shtml

DOLGIKH, BORIS Boris Osipovich Dolgikh, a 20th-century Soviet anthropologist, was a key figure in establishing Siberian studies at the Institute of Ethnography in Moscow. Since the early 18th century, St Petersburg (Leningrad, 1924–1991) had been the center of Russian anthropology in general and Siberian anthropology in particular. When Moscow resumed as capital of Russia again in 1918, the city began to establish more anthropological institutions. After World War II, the headquarters of the Institute of Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union moved to Moscow. Siberian ethnography at the Moscow institute started with an informal group of enthusiasts for the North, which had been in existence since 1944. The group received official standing in 1954, and, in 1956, became the Sector for the Study of Socialist Reconstruction among the Peoples of the North. Dolgikh served as the first chairperson of the new group from 1956 through 1965. Dolgikh’s extensive, scholarly contributions cover such diverse fields as ethnic history, folklore, social organization, and ritual. The geographic focus of his research activities included the Siberian North, in particular, the areas inhabited by the Ket, Nenets, Enets, and Nganasan. Dolgikh’s key text The Clan and Tribal Composition of the Peoples of Siberia in the Seventeenth Century (Dolgikh, 1960) derived from his doctoral work and thesis in 1947. The text combines ethnohistory and historical demography based on records of fur tribute (yasak) collected during the 17th century. In addition to a variety of other historical records, Dolgikh used the demographic results of the Polar Census of 1926–1927 to arrive at estimates of the ratio between the number of male adult yasak payers and the total population. His research resulted in population estimates for most Siberian peoples of the late 17th century as well as in a map indicating the spatial distribution of these groups. Subsequent

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DOLPHINS AND PORPOISES research has proven Dolgikh’s reconstructions to be astonishingly accurate for most parts of Siberia, except for regions that had not yet been under Russian political control at the time (e.g., Chukotka). Dolgikh’s work also resulted in clarifications regarding the relationship between administrative and genealogical clans, as well as in theoretical contributions to the study of social and political organization among the indigenous peoples of Siberia. Dolgikh additionally edited a number of defining Soviet works on Siberian ethnography during the 1960s. Volumes four and five of the Siberian Ethnographic Anthology appeared under his editorship, as well as books about contemporary economic and cultural conditions (Dolgikh, 1960) and about social organization in the Siberian North (Gurvich and Dolgikh, 1970). Dolgikh’s work served as a programmatic guideline for most Siberian studies at the Moscow Institute of Ethnography well into the 1980s. His emphasis on ethnogenesis and ethnic history, on issues of social organization, as well as on contemporary conditions in the North became the hallmark of the so-called Moscow School of Siberian Anthropology.

Biography Boris Osipovich Dolgikh was born on April 18, 1904 in Riga, Latvia, where he spent his childhood. Later his family moved to Samara, Russia, where he entered the local university in 1920. Samara University, however, closed less than a year after Dolgikh had been admitted. Reluctantly, he attended a local technical school and, in 1925 decided to go to Moscow. Although he failed the entrance exams to Moscow State University, he remained in the city and audited courses at the university. In 1926–1927, he took part in the Polar Census, which led him north along the Yenisey River all the way to the Taymyr Peninsula. After his return to Moscow, Dolgikh was able to enroll as a regular student, and published his first article in 1929. During the same year, however, Dolgikh was arrested and exiled to Siberia for four years. He spent his years of exile along the Lena River and, since he was not allowed to return to Moscow, settled in Irkutsk after the four years were over. There he worked at the local museum, published his first monograph on the Ket, and undertook another two-year field trip to the Taymyr Peninsula and to the land of the Evenk. Later he moved to Krasnoyarsk, where he conducted another expedition to the Far North. During World War II, Dolgikh came into contact with Sergei P. Tolstov, the future director of the Institute of Ethnography in Moscow. Tolstov subsequently enabled Dolgikh’s return to Moscow in 1944, where the latter entered the Ph.D. program at the Institute. After defending his

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dissertation in 1947, Dolgikh became a staff member in 1948 and remained a member of the Institute until his death on December 31, 1971. PETER P. SCHWEITZER Further Reading “Boris Osipovich Dolgikh.” Sovetskaia etnografiia, 2 (1972): 176–179 Dolgikh, Boris O., Rodovoi i plemennoi sostav narodov Sibiri v XVII veke [The Clan and Tribal Composition of the Peoples of Siberia in the Seventeenth Century], Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1960 ———, (editor), Sovremennoe khoziaistvo, kul’tura i byt malykh narodov Severa [Contemporary Economy, Culture, and Way of Life of the Small Peoples of the North], Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1960 ———, “Problems in the ethnography and physical anthropology of the Arctic.” Arctic Anthropology, 3(1) (1965): 1–9 ———, “The formation of the modern peoples of the Soviet North.” Arctic Anthropology, 9(1) (1972): 17–26 Dolgikh, Boris O. & M.G. Levin, “Transition from Kinship to Territorial Relationships in the History of the Peoples of Northern Siberia.” In Studies in Siberian Ethnogenesis, edited by H.N. Michael, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962 Gurvich, Il’ya S. & Boris O. Dolgikh (editors), Obshchestvennyi stroi u narodov Severnoi Sibiri (XVII-nachalo XX v) [The Social System among the Peoples of North Siberia], Moscow: Nauka, 1970 Vainshtein, S.I., “Boris Osipovich Dolgikh: dni i deianiia podvizhnicheskoi zhizni” [Boris Osipovich Dolgikh: Days and Acts of an Active Life], Etnograficheskoe obozrenie, 1 (1992): 119–129 ———, “Sud’ba Borisa Osipovicha Dolgikh - cheloveka, grazhdanina, uchenogo” [The Fate of Boris Osipovich Dolgikh: The Man, the Citizen, and the Scholar]. In Repressirovannye etnografy, edited by D.D. Tumarkin, Moscow: Vostochnaia literatura RAN, 1999

DOLPHINS AND PORPOISES Although the only true ice-associated cetaceans are the beluga (Delphinapterus leucas), the narwhal (Monodon monocerus), and the bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus), there are several small cetaceans that also live in Arctic waters. The killer whale (Orcinus orca) can often be found near the ice edges off Iceland, Greenland, Alaska, and the Russian Far East (Kamchatka, Sakhalin, and the Okhotsk Peninsula), frequently north of 70° N latitude. In the North Atlantic, long-finned pilot whales (Globicephala melas) are sometimes found as far north as Iceland and Finnmark. Killer whales and pilot whales are delphinids; other dolphins that frequent Arctic or Subarctic waters are the white-beaked dolphin (Lagenorhynchus albirostris) and the Atlantic white-sided dolphin (Lagenorhynchus acutus). The harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) and Dall’s porpoise (Phocoenoides dalli) are the only Arctic phocoenids.

DOLPHINS AND PORPOISES The white-beaked dolphin is the largest of the “lags” (the common name for members of the genus Lagenorhychus), reaching a length of 10 ft (3 m). The dorsal fin is large, dark, and strongly recurved. As its name implies, it has a black head and a short white beak. In Norwegian this characteristic translates to hvidnaese, in Swedish it is vitnosdelfin, and in German it is known as Weisschnauzendelphin. It has grayish patches on the flanks and the dorsal surface of the tail stock, but it is not as crisply marked as the other North Atlantic lag, the white-sided dolphin, sometimes seen in groups of 1000 or more, but more commonly in schools of around 30–50. Like the other lags, it is acrobatic and fond of jumping. It is a frequent bowrider, and seems to be attracted to small boats. It is sometimes known as “squidhound” in Newfoundland, but it also eats various fishes and benthic crustaceans. It is common in the northern and central North Sea, and in the Skagerrak between Jutland (Denmark) and Norway. The white-beaked dolphin has been described as common around the Faroe Islands, and they are also found in the waters of Greenland, Newfoundland, and Labrador, and occasionally as far south as Cape Cod. Although the ranges of the two North Atlantic lags often overlap, they can be differentiated by the white beak of L. albirostris, and the yellow flash and the pronounced keels of the white-beaked dolphin. The Atlantic white-sided dolphin (Lagenorhynchus acutus) has a prominent yellowish or orange patch on the tailstock that is often visible when the animal jumps. This species jumps so frequently that it is known as “jumper” by Newfoundland fishermen, and “springer” by Germans. In Icelandic it is leiftur, in Danish hvidskaeving, in Faroese hvítskjórutor springari, and in Russian belobokii del’fin. It has a robust body and a short, thick beak, and can reach a length of 9 ft and a weight of 510 lb (230 kg). This species is also characterized by greatly exaggerated “keels” on the dorsal and ventral aspects of the caudal peduncle. It is found only in the northern North Atlantic, but not as far north as the white-beaked dolphin. The white-sided dolphin often aggregates in large herds, sometimes numbering in the hundreds, but they are more commonly seen in smaller groups of 10–50 individuals. Their range is restricted to the temperate and Subarctic portions of the North Atlantic, and includes the waters of southern Greenland, Iceland, Spitsbergen, and Scandinavia. They appear seasonally off Newfoundland and the Gulf of St Lawrence, and may be year-round residents of the Gulf of Maine. The Faroese drive-hunt, usually directed toward pilot whales, also takes many white-sided dolphins, sometimes as many as 500 per year. Among the smallest of cetaceans, the harbor porpoise rarely reaches 5 ft (1.5 m) in length, and mature

animals do not weigh more than 140 lb. They have a short, barely distinguishable beak, and a low, triangular dorsal fin. They are dark gray above and lighter below, and may have gray streaking on the throat. Harbor porpoises do not follow ships, and are usually difficult to see because they surface so inconspicuously. They feed mostly on small schooling fishes. The name “porpoise” is derived from the Latin porcus pisces, which can be translated as “pig-fish,” and among the local Newfoundland names for this species are “puffing pig” and “herring hog.” In Dutch, this species is known as bruinvisch, in French it is marsouin commun, in Danish marsvin, in German schweinswal, and in Swedish tumlare. Phocoena (pronounced “fo-seen-a”) is the most common cetacean in European waters, and is also found in the inshore waters of the western North Atlantic and the North Pacific. It is sometimes encountered around river mouths, and goes upstream in various European rivers, including the Seine, the Thames, and the Danube. In the Lille Belt between the Baltic and North Seas, 17th- and 18th-century fishermen caught as many as 3000 porpoises in a single winter season, and there is still a drive fishery for this species in the waters of West Greenland. Otherwise, the two major predators of harbor porpoises are great white sharks and killer whales. Harbor porpoises are frequently entangled in fishermen’s nets, and they have been heavily impacted by organochlorine pesticides and heavy metals. One of the fastest of the small cetaceans, Dall’s porpoise dashes through the water approaching vessels underway, then zooms away, sending up a “rooster tail” of spray. Estimates of its maximum speed are as high as 55 km h-1 (34 mph), but this is only for short bursts. It is found only in the North Pacific, from California up through Alaska and Kamchatka, south to Japan, and in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Bering Sea north of the Aleutians. There are two predominant color phases, the Dalli phase and the Truei phase, which differ most obviously in the anterior extent of the white patch on the flanks and belly, but they are now all included as one species. (There are also all black, all gray, and all white phases, but these are very rare.) Males grow larger than females, and have been measured at 7 ft and 10 inches (2.39 m) in length, and weighing 440 lb (200 kg). Dall’s porpoise has the characteristic spade-shaped teeth of the true porpoises (Phocoenidae), but it also has “gum teeth,” which project over the actual teeth, and may help the porpoise to grasp the small fishes and squid that make up its diet. In Russian this species is known as belokrylaya, and in Japanese it is ishi-iruka. Thousands of ishi-iruka are killed every year in the Japanese offshore gillnet fisheries, and thousands more are killed deliberately for food. RICHARD ELLIS

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DORSET CULTURE See also Killer Whale; Pilot Whale Further Reading Ellis, R., Dolphins and Porpoises, New York: Knopf, 1982 Houck, W.J. & T.A. Jefferson, “Dall’s porpoise Phocoenoides dalli.” In Handbook of Marine Mammals, Volume 6, The Second Book of Dolphins and Porpoises, edited by S.H. Ridgway & R. Harrison, San Diego: Academic Press, 1999, pp. 443–472 Jefferson, T.A. “Dall’s Porpoise.” In Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals, edited by W.F. Perrin, B. Wursig & J.G.M. Thewissen, London and San Diego: Academic Press, 2002 Read, A.J., “Phocoena phocoena (Linnaeus, 1758).” In Handbook of Marine Mammals, Volume 6, The Second Book of Dolphins and Porpoises, edited by S.H. Ridgway & R. Harrison, San Diego: Academic Press, 1999, pp. 323–355 Reeves, R.R., C. Smeenk, R.L. Brownell & C.C. Kinze, “Atlantic white-sided dolphin Lagenorhynchus acutus (Gray, 1828).” In Handbook of Marine Mammals, Volume 6, The Second Book of Dolphins and Porpoises, edited by S.H. Ridgway & R. Harrison, San Diego: Academic Press, 1999, pp. 31–56 Reeves, R.R., C. Smeenk, C.C. Kinze, R.L. Brownell & J. Lien, “White-beaked dolphin Lagenorhynchus albirostris (Gray, 1846).” In Handbook of Marine Mammals, Volume 6, The Second Book of Dolphins and Porpoises, edited by S.H. Ridgway & R. Harrison, San Diego:Academic Press, 1999, pp. 1–30

DORSET CULTURE The Dorset Culture was first defined by Diamond Jenness in 1925 when he analyzed artifacts from Cape Dorset, southern Baffin Island. Since then, Dorset sites have been found in all parts of the eastern Arctic, from Victoria Island in the west to eastern Greenland, and from Peary Land in far northern Greenland to Newfoundland where the Dorset flourished in the most southern expanses occupied by Paleo-Eskimo peoples. Chronologically, Dorset spans from approximately 2800 BP to 700 BP. Throughout this extensive period, there is considerable geographical and temporal variation in the material culture and settlement intensity of the different regions. Dorset Culture is divided into Early (2800–2200 BP), Middle (2200–1500 BP), and Late Dorset (1,500–700 BP) with some variation between different regions.

Early Dorset Early Dorset is believed to have developed from PreDorset without immigration of new peoples; however, opposing views exist on this matter and the complex process does not need to be similar from one region to another (Hood, 1998). The emergence of Groswater in Labrador and Newfoundland around 2800 years BP, and the appearance of Independence II at the same time in northern Greenland are regional manifestations of a cultural change, which in other areas is termed

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Transitional Pre-Dorset to Dorset or simply Early Dorset (Schledermann, 1990; Helmer, 1991). Dwellings have been documented in the form of tent rings with stone set axial features as well as in the form of more permanently settled semi-subterranean dwellings, probably surrounded by low sod walls and with a roof of skin (Jensen, 1998). Characteristic artifacts include open socket and often self-bladed harpoon heads. Among the lithic (stone) artifacts, common types include bifacially chipped and side notched points, sideblades, and burinlike tools. Microblades usually occur in large quantities. Holes in bone artifacts such as harpoon heads and needles are gouged out, giving them an oblong shape as opposed to the circular holes seen in needles from Pre-Dorset. Sledge shoes of whalebone are known from Early Dorset sites, and the period marks an increase in the use of soap stone vessels.

Middle Dorset During Middle Dorset the settlement of the High Arctic Canadian Archipelago severely diminished, and probably no humans lived permanently in the High Arctic during this period (Maxwell, 1985). Middle Dorset culture is also absent from Greenland, which appears to have been depopulated for several centuries between 1800 BP and 1300 BP when Late Dorset peoples crossed the Smith Sound and settled in northern Greenland (Appelt and Gulløv, 1999). As the High Arctic was abandoned, dense Dorset settlements appeared in more southern regions around the Foxe Basin, Hudson Strait, Labrador, and on Newfoundland. Phillip’s Garden on Newfoundland is one of the largest known Dorset sites (Renouf, 1993). At least 50 house depressions can be seen along two grass-covered fossil beach ridges, but not all the houses were occupied at the same time. Phillip’s Garden is the result of recurring occupation between 2100 BP and 1200 BP. The houses were substantial structures measuring up to 7 m by 9 m and slightly excavated into the limestone shingle beach. In the rear and sometimes also along the sidewalls, platforms were built, and a cooking area appeared along the central axis. The middens in front of the dwellings, and sometimes the house interiors were since filled with bones, debris from tool manufacture, and discarded artifacts. Harp seal was the main game species for the people at Phillip’s Garden, where it is a particularly accessible resource during late winter and spring when they whelp on the pack ice just off the shore. Characteristic Middle Dorset artifacts include closed socket harpoon heads. Among the lithic artifacts, bifacially chipped and often tipfluted triangular endblades with straight or concave bases help to separate Middle Dorset inventories from

DRIFTING STATIONS earlier ones. Paleo-Eskimo peoples abandoned insular Newfoundland by the end of Middle Dorset, when the Dorset population appears to have abandoned the southernmost regions only to reoccupy the high Arctic Archipelago in the following centuries.

Late Dorset Spectacular “longhouse” features have been found at several Late Dorset sites on Victoria Island, the Arctic Islands south of Ellesmere Island, around Smith Sound, and along Hudson Strait (Damkjar, 2000). These communal structures, up to 40 m long and approximately 5 m wide, were built of stones and boulders or else with gravel and sod walls (Plumet, 1985). Sometimes the communal houselike structures feature slab-lined pits and hearths arranged along the walls and long axis of the interior. Near the “longhouse,” external hearth rows are also often found. The entrances are seen as openings at the end of the features. Scholars dispute whether the structures were used as dwellings or for ceremonial purposes, but for the first time in a Paleo-Eskimo context, they document the existence of large-scale aggregation camps. Many longhouse features are located close to highly predictable recurring resources associated with polynyas or, for example, caribou migration routes, where the gathering and feasting might have been combined with communal hunting. During the rest of the year, Late Dorset peoples lived dispersed in smaller groups of just one or a few families. Dwellings in such camps appear as 3–4 m by 5–6 m large, with slightly excavated rectangular floor areas with an axial pavement, where one to three cooking locations indicate that these dwellings were sometimes used by more than one family. Portable artifacts in the form of ivory or bone amulets were occasionally found on Early and Middle Dorset sites. In Late Dorset, such expressions increased in prominence, and naturalistic figures of polar bears, waterfowl, walrus, seals, or other Arctic animals were commonly found in Late Dorset settlements (McGhee, 1996). For long periods, the Dorset people lived in close proximity to Indian populations, but little evidence exists to substantiate any kind of regular contact between the two populations. Inuit oral tradition about the Tunit people and Norse artifacts on a number of Late Dorset sites, on the other hand, seems to document interaction between Late Dorset, Thule people, and early European settlers. Peoples of the Late Dorset culture may have developed, in part, myriad artistic expressions as ethnic markers in a situation in which several culturally distinct groups frequented the same Arctic regions. JENS FOG JENSEN

See also Collins, Henry B.; Jenness, Diamond Further Reading Appelt, Martin & Hans Christian Gulløv (editors), Late Dorset in High Arctic Greenland, Copenhagen: Danish Polar Center, 1999 Damkjar, Erik, “A Survey of Late Dorset Longhouses.” In Identities and Cultural Contacts in the Arctic, edited by Martin Appelt, Joel Berglund & Hans Christian Gulløv, Copenhagen: Danish Polar Center, 2000 Helmer, James W., “The Palaeo-Eskimo Prehistory of the North Devon Lowlands.” Arctic, 44(4) (1991) Hood, Bryan, “Theory on ice: the discourse of eastern Canadian Arctic Palaeoeskimo archaeology.” Acta Borealia, 15(2) (1998) Jenness, Diamond, “A new eskimo culture in Hudson Bay.” Geographical Review, XV(3) (July 1925) Jensen, Jens Fog, “Dorset dwellings in West Greenland.” Acta Borealia, 15(2) (1998) Maxwell, Moreau S., Prehistory of the Eastern Arctic, Orlando, Florida: Academic Press, 1985 McGhee, Robert, Ancient People of the Arctic, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1996 Plumet, Patric, “Le Site de la Pointe aux Bélougas (Qilalugarsiuvik) et les Maisons Longues Dorsétiennes.” Archaeologie de L’ungava No. 18, Montréal, 1985 Renouf, M.A.P., “Palaeoeskimo seal hunters at Port au Choix Northwestern Newfoundland.” Newfoundland Studies, 9(2) (1993) Schledermann, Peter, Crossroads to Greenland, Calgary: Arctic Institute of North America, 1990

DRIFTING STATIONS From the beginnings of exploration and shipping within Arctic sea ice, the main problems encountered were related to poor knowledge of the ice and ocean’s natural conditions. The use of Arctic sea routes, and exploration and development of the region’s natural resources were impossible without understanding the typical spatial and temporal (seasonal and annual) variations in the atmosphere, ice cover, and oceanic water column. Thus, it was necessary to organize systematic observations of weather, ice, and water over the entire Arctic territory. In 1882–1883, under the framework of the First International Polar Year, specialists from 12 countries carried out wide-ranging scientific observations in the Arctic (including hydrometeorological observations), and new observation stations were opened. In subsequent years, the network of hydrometeorological stations significantly expanded; however, all were situated on the coast or on islands. Central areas of the Arctic Ocean remained a “blind spot” on weather and ice charts. Extensive meteorological and oceanographic observations in the Arctic Basin were undertaken by Fridtjof Nansen on the voyage and drift of the Norwegian Polar Expedition ship Fram from 1893 to 1896. In

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DRIFTING STATIONS 1938–1940, the Russian icebreaker Georgy Sedov repeated Fram’s transarctic drift along a trajectory passing much further north. Systematic observations during the drift added much new information on ice and climate conditions in the central Arctic Basin. Nansen was one of the first polar investigators to have the idea of making observations on drifting ice in the Arctic Ocean. However, these ideas were only put into practice in 1937 by the Soviet Union’s Glavsevmorput (Chief Office for the Northern Sea Route). On May 21, 1937, an airplane piloted by Glavsevmorput’s Mikhael Vodop’yanov made the first landing near the North Pole on an ice-floe at 89°43 N, and the first scientific drifting station North Pole-1 was set up in three tents with a radio mast. During its 1200 mile southward drift that ended on February 19, 1938 with relief from an icebreaker off the Greenland coast, Ivan Papanin, Piotr Shirshov, Yevgeny Fedorov, and Ernst Krenkel carried out a wide range of meteorological, hydrological, hydrobiological, astronomical, and geophysical studies. A second Russian drifting station, North Pole-2, operated from 1950 to 1951. From April 15, 1954 to July 25, 1991, manned drifting stations NP-3 to NP-31 made continuous observations. In some years, measurements were made simultaneously at three stations drifting in different areas of the Arctic Basin. The history of US drifting stations began with the T3 station, set up on an ice island in March 1952 by Joseph O. Fletcher of the US Air Force Weather Service. T-3 (also known as Fletcher’s Ice Island) operated until May 1954. From then on it worked intermittently till 1973, and the Ice Island served as a platform for different studies and weather observations and a base for organizing other drifting stations. During the International Geophysical Year (IGY) (1957–1958), the T-3 station was called Ice Station Bravo. From April 1957 to November 1958, IGY observations were also carried out at Ice Station Alpha and from April 1959 to January 1960 at Ice Station Charlie. During a grounded phase of T-3, the US Navy planned a new drifting station, the Arctic Research Laboratory Ice Station I (ARLIS I), which operated from September 1960 to March 1961. ARLIS 1 was followed by ARLIS II, which drifted for much longer, from May 1961 to May 1965. In 1975–1976, under the framework of the Arctic Ice Dynamics Joint Experiment (AIDJEX), the United States, Canada, and Japan carried out observations at four camps set up on the drifting ice. To establish a station on drifting ice, a sufficiently large, thick pack ice-floe had to be selected, making it possible to construct a runway for aircraft. The NP-19, 22, 23, 24, and ARLIS II stations were set up on ice islands calved from ice shelves. The organization of drifting stations, maintaining their life support, and

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rotation or evacuation of personnel was typically supported by aviation. Sometimes personnel and cargo were delivered by icebreakers and icebreaking vessels (NP-10, 22, 24, 29–31, and ARLIS I). Ice drift occurs under the action of wind and sea currents. The character of ice drift in the Arctic Ocean is determined by the main pressure centers—the Arctic High and the Aleutian and Icelandic Lows. They generate two main drift systems: the Transpolar Drift and a circular anticyclonic drift (Beaufort Gyre) in the Canadian-American sector of the Arctic (the drift of the NP-2, 22, 31 and T-3 stations). T-3 made three circuits in the Beaufort Gyre before exiting the Arctic through Fram Strait via the Transpolar Drift. The drift trajectories constantly deviate due to changing winds. In the Arctic Basin, the true length of the drifting ice pathway is on average three times as great as the direct distance passed in a straight line. The average drift velocity of all NP stations over the observation period May 21, 1937 to July 25, 1991 (29,726 days) was 5.71 km a day. The total distance traveled by these stations equals 169,654 km (105,418 mi). Each of the NP drifting stations allowed a branch of the Soviet All-Union Arctic Institute to conduct comprehensive studies of the environment and the processes occurring in it from the seabed to heights of a hundred kilometers in the ionosphere. Standard observations were typically conducted in oceanography, meteorology, solar radiation, upper-air sounding, geomagnetism, and geophysics (ionospheric processes). In addition to standard observations, the observation programs frequently included different types of specialized observations. These were measurements of the ice cover strength, seismic-acoustic characteristics of ice and the water column, hydrooptic characteristics, and aerosol and trace gases in the atmosphere. Data from standard meteorological observations were transmitted via radiochannels to all interested users, and primarily used to issue hydrometeorological forecasts and provide operational information for voyages along the Northern Sea Route and aviation flights at high latitudes. In total, 88 teams of polar explorers worked at 31 NP stations on a rotation basis and 2009 people participated in the year-round cycles of studies. In addition, 8885 specialists carried out short-term studies of less than a year under special programs or occasionally visited the stations. The main achievement of the people who carried out regular observations under the severe conditions is that hundreds of researchers in different countries can now use these data for the modeling of Arctic meteorology and climate, and model oceanic pollutant transport at high latitudes. An enormous amount of data was generated in thousands of scientific articles, monographs, atlases, handbooks, and manuals. Until recently, the bulk of the Soviet

DRY TUNDRA publications were stored in national archives inaccessible to investigators from other countries. In 1995, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) was established under the framework of the US-Russian Joint Commission on Economic and Technological Cooperation. EWG decided to develop a set of three complementary climatic atlases—oceanography, sea ice, and meteorology—following the availability of previously restricted US and Russian data. In 1997–1998, the Oceanographic Atlas of the Arctic Ocean was released to the public on two CD-ROMs: one covering the winter period and the other the summer. In 2000, work on preparation of the Arctic Meteorology and Climate Atlas was completed. Manned drifting stations may now have been superseded by automated drifting buoys operated by the International Arctic Buoy Program (see Meteorological Stations), although the Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean (SHEBA) operated a scientific research station from an icebreaker frozen into Arctic Ocean pack ice from October 1997 to October 1998 (see Oceanography: Research Programmes). See also Ice Islands; Meteorological Stations; North Pole Air Expedition, 1937; Papanin, Ivan; Transpolar Drift VLADIMIR RADIONOV

Further Reading Arctic Meteorology and Climate Atlas, edited by F. Fetterer & V. Radionov, Arctic Climatology Project, Environmental Working Group, Boulder, Colorado: National Snow and Ice Data Center, CD-ROM, 2000 Barry, Roger G., “Land of the Midnight Sun.” In Polar Regions: The Illustrated Library of the Earth, edited by Jack D. Ives & David Sugden, Surry Hills, New South Wales: RD Press, 1995, pp. 28–39 Belt, Don, “An Arctic breakthrough.” National Geographic, February 1997, pp. 36–57 Crary, A.P., R.D. Cotell & T.F. Sexton, “Preliminary report on scientific work on “Fletcher’s Ice Island” T-3.” Arctic, 5 (1952) 211–223 Fletcher, Joseph O., “Origin and Early Utilization of AircraftSupported Drifting Stations.” In Arctic Drifting Stations, edited by J.E. Sater, Warrenton, Virginia: Arctic Institute of North America, 1966, pp. 1–13 Joint US-Russian Atlas of the Arctic Ocean, Oceanography Atlas for the Winter Period, edited by F. Tanis & L. Timokhov, Environmental Working Group, University of Colorado, Boulder, CD-ROM, 1998 Kahl, Jonatan D.W. et al., Radiosonde observations from the Former Soviet Union “North Pole” series of drifting stations, 1954–90.” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 80(10) (1999): 2019–2026 Nansen, F., The Norwegian North Polar Expedition, 1893–1896, Scientific Results. Edited by F. Nansen, New York: Greenwood Press, 1903 (reissued in 1997) Romanov, Il’ya P., Atlas of Ice and Snow of the Arctic Basin and Siberian Shelf Seas, New York: Backbone Publishing, 1996

Sater, J.E. (coordinator), Arctic Drifting Stations. A Report on Activities Supported by the Office of Naval Research, Washington, DC: Arctic Institute of North America, 1968 Thomas Jr., Lowell, “Scientists ride ice islands on Arctic odysseys.” National Geographic, 128(5) (1965): 670–691

DRY TUNDRA Dry tundra is the common term for a wide range of tundra habitats from rather flat areas with very stony soil, and low, usually sparse vascular plants to rocky habitats on exposed alpine summits and ridges, characterized by low mat and cushion plants and an abundance of bare rocks. Widely used synonyms of dry tundra are ridge tundra, fell-field from the Danish field-mark or rock desert, and blockfield or the German term Felsenmeer (sea of rocks). The common environmental features of dry tundra are exposure to strong wind and desiccation, usually convex landforms, and little or no snow cover during normal winter conditions in contrast to neighboring habitats. Dry tundra is a common habitat throughout much of the High Arctic, especially in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. It is also important in the Low Arctic mountains of Scandinavia, Greenland, the northern and polar Urals, Taymyr, and the amphi-Beringian area. Outside of the Arctic, dry tundra is widely distributed within the alpine belt of the boreal zone. It is notable that the term “tundra” originates from the Saami word tunturi, which refers to the treeless mountain landscapes of Lapland dominated by dry tundra and dwarfshrub heaths. Species of the genus Dryas dominate these environments throughout the Low Arctic and south of the High Arctic and are characteristic of dry tundra. Along with Dryas species, other prostrate mat shrubs like Loiseleuria decumbens, Arctostaphylos alpina, and Diapensia lapponica, some prostrate willows, and numerous cushion plants of genera such as Potentilla, Oxytropis, and Artemisia are common here. Dense pubescence (covering of downy, short hair) is characteristic for many plants, and helps retain water and heat emitted by the plant. Most dry tundra communities are discontinuous within diverse cryoturbation-driven lateral structures. The community structure also strongly correlates with snow accumulation. Continuous dry tundra vegetation of the Low Arctic is restricted to depressions and slope bottoms with about 20–25 cm snow accumulation. Prostrate mat shrubs dominate here with an admixture of low dwarf shrubs from genera Betula, Salix, Vaccinium, Empetrum, Ledum, and Cassiope; fruticose and foliose lichens are frequent. Prostrate mat shrubs with an admixture of cushions and crustaceous lichens and with about 20% of gravely bare ground are typical of habitats with less than 20 cm winter snow. In the most extremely exposed

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DUDINKA habitats with no or fragmentary winter snow, plants survive only in microdepressions and frost-boil cracks forming a netlike cover of Dryas, cushion plants, and crustaceous lichens amid mainly gravely bare ground. A similar reduction of plant cover in dry habitats is observed in the northward direction. Dry High Arctic environments are characterized by scattered Dryascushion herb-crustaceous lichen tundra, further north by extremely poor rocky or gravely desert with sparse cushions and crustaceous lichens, and by bare ground and rock in the polar desert. Due to the thin snow cover, dry tundra is an important winter pasture for domesticated and wild reindeer, muskox, and snow sheep. Dry tundra diversity both in community structure and species composition is especially high in the northeastern Asia. There are many xeric (adapted to an extremely dry habitat) species populating dry tundra, mostly of densely pubescent cushion growth form from genera such as Potentilla, Artemisia, Oxytropis, Draba, and Senecio. Most of these genera probably originated from continental northern Asia and Beringia, when the wide land bridge linked Asia with North America intermittently for nearly 30 million years in the Tertiary, and survived mainly as relicts within Asian and Beringian refugia with no full glaciations during the Pleistocene. Fossils of the genus Dryas are known from high latitudes since the late Neogene (about 5 million years ago). VOLODYA RAZZHIVIN See also Dwarf-Shrub Heaths; Fell-Fields; Mesic Tundra Further Reading Aleksandrova, V.D., The Arctic and Antarctic: Their Division into Geobotanical Areas, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980 Chapin III, F.S. & Ch. Körner (editors), “Arctic and alpine biodiversity: patterns, causes, and ecosystem consequences. Ecological Studies, 113, (1995): 320pp Chernov, Yu.I. & N.V. Matveyeva, “Arctic Ecosystems in Russia.” In Polar and Alpine Tundra. Ecosystems of the World 3, edited by F.E. Wielgolaski, Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1997, pp. 361–507 Daniëls, F.J.A., “Vegetation of the Angmagssalik District, Southeast Greenland, IV. Shrub, dwarf shrub and terricolous lichens.” Meddelelser om Grønland Bioscience, 10 (1982): 1–78 Elvebakk, A., “Tundra diversity and ecological characteristics of Svalbard.” In Polar and Alpine Tundra, edited by F.E. Wielgolaski, Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1997, pp. 347–359

DUDINKA The river port of Dudinka is the administrative center of the Taymyr (Dolgan-Nenets) Autonomous Okrug in northern central Siberia, and an important port on the

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Northern Sea Route. One of the most northerly towns in the world (69°21′ N), it has a population of 26,800 (in January 2000). The port is situated at the confluence of the Dudinka and Yenisey rivers, and accessibility to seagoing ships is maintained all year round by icebreakers. The town of Dudinka is located 320 km north of the Arctic Circle and 2021 km north of the city of Krasnoyarsk. Dudinka was founded in 1667 as a special post for yasak (fur tribute) collection from the indigenous peoples. According to one version, the name of the town came from a Nenet word “Tutin,” where “Tu” means “fire” and “Tin” means “barn.” First it meant “a storehouse of gunpowder and other ammunition.” Until the mid-1920s, Dudinka was a small settlement with a population of about 80 people. In 1927, there were 246 inhabitants. In 1930, Dudinka became the center of the Taymyr Autonomous Okrug, and in 1951 obtained the status of a city. Population increased up to 1996, when there were 33,700 people, but has since fallen. The development of Dudinka as a port is connected with the development of the Noril’sk ore deposit and construction of the Noril’sk mining and smelting enterprise in 1935. Construction of the sea and river port started in 1936. In 1937, the building of the railroad to Noril’sk (over 100 km) was initiated. These facilities were built mainly by political prisoners who represented the majority of the Dudinka population at that time. Dudinka is built on permafrost, and has an Arctic climate with long frosty winters and short cool summers. The average temperature of the coldest month (January) is –30°C (the minimum is –57°C). The temperature of the warmest month (June) is +8°C. For almost 280 days per year, air temperature drops below zero. Snowfalls and light frost can occur even in summer. The annual precipitation is 250–300 mm. Polar night occurs in December–January when daylight hours are very short. During the polar day in May-June, the sun does not set. Today, Dudinka, as the biggest port of northern Siberia, remains the main transshipment point of the Noril’sk industrial area. Almost all output from the Noril’sk mining plant is sent to European Russia via Dudinka. Most freight is taken via the Northern Sea Route. Sea communication with Murmansk and Arkhangel’sk exists all year round via the Northern Sea Route with the help of atomic icebreakers and by the Yenisey River with the help of river icebreakers. Navigation to Krasnoyarsk is carried out only in summer. Air communication is realized via Alykel airport, situated between Noril’sk and Dudinka. In 1969, a 260-km gas pipeline from MessoyahaDudinka-Noril’sk was constructed, which became the most northern gas pipe in the world. In 1981, production of petrol and diesel fuel began at the liquid natural gas (LNG) plant in Dudinka.

DWARF-SHRUB HEATHS A fish factory, the Taymyr geophysical, and Nizneenisey oil prospecting companies are based in Dudinka. Today, Dudinka is a modern city with multistory houses and neat wooden pavements. Dudinka is not only an administrative center but is also a cultural center of the Taymyr Okrug, where children of indigenous people come from distant settlements and trading posts to receive an education. The main indigenous peoples are Enets, Nganasans, and Nenets, but the city’s population is mostly Russian. There is a veterinary secondary school, the Museum of Regional Studies, Folklore Museum, and a National Drama Theater. GRIGORI TERTITSKI See also Noril’sk; Taymyr (Dolgan-Nenets) Autonomous Okrug

DWARF-SHRUB HEATHS Dwarf-shrub heaths are manifold complexes of plant communities distributed circumpolarly within the Low Arctic, penetrating into the High Arctic, and abundant worldwide in mountain alpine and subalpine regions. The term heathland, initially used for the wide open landscapes deforested by humans in England, now refers to ecosystems characterized by evergreen xeric (dry habitat) and mesic (intermediate moisture habitat) plants, dominated by representatives of certain plant families (Ericaceae, Empetraceae, and Diapensiaceae in the Arctic), and a preference for acid soils low in nutrients, although heathland may also occur in calcareous soils. In the Low Arctic, heath-dominated communities occur between snow-poor dry tundra and mesic shrub and tussock tundra of complex environmental gradient occupying well-drained soils of river terraces, slopes, and uplands where winter snow is at least 20–30 cm deep. Most heathland soils are usually podzolized, although the true podzols decrease northward due to the lower summer temperatures and the small extent of percolation, resulting in a weakly stratified soil profile. Characteristic evergreen heath plants are Ledum palustre subsp. decumbens (Labrador tea), Rhododendron lapponicum, Loiseleuria procumbens (alpine azalea), Phyllodoce caerulea (purple or mountain heather), Cassiope tetragona, Andromeda polifolia (bog rosemary), Vaccinium vitis-idaea subsp. minus (mountain cranberry), Diapensia lapponica, and Empetrum nigrum (crowberry), although deciduous-leaved dwarf shrubs and low shrubs are also abundant (bog bilberry or Vaccinium uliginosum subsp. microphyllum, black bearberry or Arctostaphylos alpina, A. rubra, birch Betula nana, and some willows). The cryptogamic floor of mosses, algae, and lichens is also well developed. The most common

lichens include Cetraria cucullata, C. nivalis, Cladina rangiferina, C. stellaris, C. mitis, Cladonia sylvatica, Dactylina arctica, Thamnolia vermicularis, etc. and the mosses Dicranum elongatum, Aulacomnium turgidum, A. palustre, Rhacomitrium lanuginosum, Hylocomium splendens, Tomenthypnum nitens, etc. Dwarf-shrub-lichen heaths are one of the major reindeer and snow sheep pastures, including in winter, due to the relatively thin snow cower. Reindeer grazing strongly influences the condition of fruticose lichen cover, although dwarf shrubs are also significant forage especially in late winter and early spring. Summertime grazing is especially disastrous for the fruticose lichens because of their high sensitivity to trampling when dry. In the ground layer, overgrazing leads to increase of the lichen Stereocaulon paschale and to decrease of poorly trample-resistant and slowly recovering Cladina species. Trampling has usually increased grasses (Calamagrostis lapponica, Festuca ovina, Arctagrostis latifolia, etc.) and sedges (e.g., Carex bigelowii), whereas dwarf-shrubs Betula nana, Empetrum nigrum, Vaccinium vitis-idaea subsp. minus, etc. may have decreased in the most efficiently grazed areas. Extreme overgrazing results in establishment of grassland instead of heathland. South of the tundra zone, dwarf-shrub heaths of nearly the same species composition are abundant in north alpine and subalpine environments combining with tall shrub and birch thickets, especially in Fennoscandia and the Kola Peninsula, and in the amphi-Beringian area. In well-drained snow-rich habitats where snow lies up to July, Cassiope tetragona dominates, with an admixture of prostrate willows (Salix reticulata, S. herbacea, S. polaris), and numerous lichens and mosses. The southernmost portion of the High Arctic is first and foremost characterized by a circumpolar occurrence of Cassiope tetragona dominated heaths (absent or very rare in the Arctic only between southern Svalbard and the polar Urals) with an admixture of ground-hugging willows (Salix arctica, S. pulchra, S. reptans) and Betula nana, and prostrate Dryas species. It is much more rare and less prominent in alkaline areas than on acidic substrates. VOLODYA RAZZHIVIN See also Cassiope Heaths; Empetrum Heaths; Lichen Further Reading Aleksandrova, V.D., The Arctic and Antarctic: Their Division into Geobotanical Areas, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980 Chapin III, F.S. & Ch. Körner (editors), Arctic and Alpine Biodiversity: Patterns, Causes, and Ecosystem Consequences, New York: Springer, 1995

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DYUKTAI CULTURE Daniëls, F.J.A., “Vegetation of the Angmagssalik District, Southeast Greenland, IV. Shrub, dwarf shrub and terricolous lichens.” Meddelelser om Grønland Bioscience, 10(1982): 1–78 Elvebakk, A., “Bioclimatic Delimitation and Subdivision of the Arctic.” In The Species Concept in the High North—A Panarctic Flora Initiative, edited by I. Nordal & V.Yu. Razzhivin, Oslo: Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, 1999, pp. 81–112 Haapasaari, M., “The oligotrophic heath vegetation of northern Fennoscandia and its zonation.” Acta Botanica Fennica, 135(1988): 1–219 Oksanen, L. & R. Virtanen, “Topographic, altitudinal and regional patterns in continental and suboceanic heath vegetation of northern Fennoscandia.” Acta Botanica Fennica, 153(1995): 1–80 Virtanen, R., L. Oksanen, & V. Razzhivin, “Topographic and regional patterns of tundra heath vegetation from northern Fennoscandia to the Taimyr Peninsula.” Acta Botanica Fennica, 167(1999): 29–83

DYUKTAI CULTURE The Dyuktai culture was distinguished over a large area of northeast Asia including Yakutia, Chukotka, Kolyma, and Kamchatka. Because the territory is vast and there are certain differences in the tool assemblages, it has been suggested that Dyuktai should be considered a tradition containing several related cultures, called Dyuktai in Yakutia and Ushki in Kamchatka. In Kolyma and Chukotka, there were complexes that had most probably developed under the influence of both cultures. These were also impacted by the Far Eastern (Ustinovka culture) and Amur (Selemja culture) Paleolithic cultures. The Dyuktai culture was defined by Yuri Mochanov in 1967, following the Dyuktai Cave discovery on the Aldan River, Yakutia. In the Pleistocene deposits, at a 2-m depth, lithic tools and Pleistocene animal bones were exposed, radiocarbon dated to 14,000–12,000 BP. Further research in Yakutia resulted in the discovery of other Dyuktai culture sites on the Aldan, Olenyok, and Indigirka rivers. The sites are located along the banks and at the estuary capes of smaller tributaries. The Dyuktai culture tool assemblage is represented by choppers, wedge-shaped cores, microblades, end scrapers on blades, oval bifaces, points, as well as angle, dihedral, and transversal burins on flakes and blades. The emergence of the Dyuktai culture defines the time when the microblade technique first appeared in northeast Asia. Judging by bones found in the same layers with tools, the Dyuktai people used to hunt mammoth, wooly rhino, bison, horse, reindeer, moose, and snow ram. Fishing tools have not been excavated, although a few fish bones were found in the Dyuktai cave Pleistocene cultural levels. The cultural materials at the sites were concentrated around small hearths with no special lining. The

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question of whether the bow and arrow existed in the Dyuktai culture has so far been open, because just a few stone points small enough to be used on arrows were found. Yu. Mochanov associates the Dyuktai culture emergence in Yakutia with the bifacial Paleolithic cultures coming from the southern Urals, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and northern China. From Dyuktai materials of some stratified sites, Yu. Mochanov dated the Dyuktai culture to 35,000–11,500 BP. This date was broadly discussed by scholars within the debates on the question of the microblade industry emergence in Siberia and aroused some serious objections. The dates exceeding 25,000 BP are deemed to be erroneous, so the microblade technique appeared in Siberia no earlier than 25,000 BP. A. Derevyanko supposes that the origin of the Dyuktai culture can be found on the Selemja River, tributary of the Amur, in the Selemja culture, by 25000–11000 BP. The Dyuktai tradition was spread over all of northeast Asia. In Kamchatka, it has been represented by the materials of the Late Ushki Upper Paleolithic culture in levels V and VI of the Ushki I–V sites. It determines the latest period in the Dyuktai tradition development, 10,800–8800 BP. Its general outlook differs significantly from that of the Dyuktai culture in Yakutia. The sites are located on the bank of a small lake in the valley of Kamchatka’s largest river in its medium flow. The exposed dwellings are represented by surface, teepee-type, 8–16 m2, and semi-subterranean with the corridor, 10–44 m2, with circular stone hearths in the center. Several inhabited horizons exposed on the site and numerous stone tools, burials, and caches found in the dwellings testify to its longterm use, perhaps even as a winter camp. Judging by tooth remains in the cultural level, its people hunted for reindeer, bison, and moose. Burned salmon and other fish bones found in the hearths as well as the sites location at the spawning lake confirm the existence of fishing. The tool assemblage of the Ushki culture consisted of small- and medium-sized bifacial projectile points; end scrapers; angle, transversal, and dihedral burins; semilunar and oval bifaces; end scrapers on blades and flakes; microblades and wedge-shaped cores; and grooved pumice shaft straighteners. Ornaments were represented by oval pendants. In the dwellings, a pair and a group (as many as five human bodies) children’s burial were found. The corpses in both graves were in a flexed position and covered with ochre. The bottom of the pair-burial grave was covered with lemming incisors; the group burial was covered with a large animal’s scapula. The rich burial inventory included arrow and spear points, leafshaped knives, grinding plates, grooved pumice shaft

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Dyuktai Tradition artifacts: 1,2—wedge-shaped microblade cores; 3—biface; 4—wedge-shaped microblade core tablet; 5—wedge-shaped microblade core preparation spall; 6—grooved shaft straightener; 7,8,9—bifacial points; 10—transverse burin; 11,14—pendants; 12,15—end scrapers; 13—retouched microblade; 16—wedge-shaped microblade core preform; 17—plan and section of a dwelling with a dog burial from Ushki Site (level VI). 1–5, 7–16—stone, 6—pumice.

straighteners, wedge-shaped cores, retouched microblades, pendants, and so on. The ground permanent teeth with fine holes for hanging are associated with a certain ritual. In one of the dwellings, a dog burial containing burial inventory and ochre spots was found. In Kolyma, the Dyuktai culture is represented by materials from the lower level of the Kheta site. The typical wedge-shaped cores, ski spolls, bifaces, transversal burins, leaf-shaped arrow points, oval bifaces, end scrapers on blades, and pendants make up the traditional tool assemblage of the Late Paleolithic complexes in Siberia, the Far East, and Yakutia. On the Indigirka River, the Dyuktai tradition materials are considered to be exposed at the Berelekh site. However, this is questionable because these few materials were found in a complicated stratigraphic situation.

Next to the site, there is a mammoth cemetery. The engraved mammoth tusk fragment with an 18.5 × 5.7 cm picture of a mammoth with enormously long legs and trunk was found 60 km away from the site. However, its location and stratigraphic position are obscure, but the patina on its surface and in the engraving is of the same origin, which testifies to the same time of its formation. The mammoth’s legs are interpreted by some scholars as the later portrayal of the mammoth melting out of the permafrost. At the same time, its erect tail suggests that the picture was engraved to present a live animal in a state of aggression. In Chukotka, several sites with Dyuktai tradition materials were found, including Ulkhum, Kurupka I, Lake Tytyl’, and Lake Elgygytgyn sites. These were mostly represented by surface materials with small tool assemblages. As none of the sites are radiocarbondated, wedge-shaped cores with microblades have been considered to be the basic Dyuktai tradition indicator. Materials from the Druchak-Vetrenny site, located on the Okhotsk-Kolyma Range and containing the classical transversal burins, are interpreted as a result of the influence of the strong Far East’s culture on the Dyuktai tradition of northeast Asia. The Dyuktai tradition is thought to have spread to Alaska via the Bering Strait in the Late Pleistocene; there it became the basis of the American Paleo-Arctic tradition, Denali complex (see American PaleoArctic Tradition). It is also supposed to have served as the base for the Paleo-Indian culture (ancestors to the modern Native American tribes), but there is little evidence of this because the Paleo-Indian culture never had such a well-developed microblade technique. In Yakutia, the Dyuktai tradition disappeared c.10,500 BP, when it was completely replaced by the Sumnagin culture. This change was marked with the Early Holocene disappearance of bifaces and the switch from wedge-shaped microcores to conic and prismatic ones. Both in Chukotka and Kamchatka, the Dyuktai tradition existed as long as the Early Holocene. SERGEI SLOBODIN See also Chukchi Autonomous Okrug (Chukotka); Indigirka River; Kamchatka Peninsula; Sakha Republic (Yakutia)

Further Reading Derev’anko, Anatoliy P. (editor), The Paleolithic of Siberia: New Discoveries and Interpretation, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998 Dikov, Nikolai N., “The Ushki Sites, Kamchatka Peninsula.” In American Beginnings: The Prehistory and Palaeoecology of

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DYUKTAI CULTURE Beringia, edited by Frederick Hadleigh West, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996 Goebel, Ted & Sergei Slobodin, “The Colonization of Western Beringia Technology, Ecology, and Adaptation.” In Ice Age Peoples of North America: Environments, Origins, and Adaptations of the First Americans, edited by Robson Bonnichsen & Karen L. Turnmire, Corvalis, Oregon: Oregon State University Press, 1999 Haynes, C. Vance, “Were Clovis Progenitors in Beringia?”, In Paleoecology of Beringia, edited by D.M. Hopkins & J.V. Matthews Jr., New York and London: Academic Press, 1982

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Mochanov, Yuri A., “Paleolithic Finds in Siberia: Resume of Studies.” In Beringia in the Cenozoic Era, edited by V.L. Kontrimavichus, Rotterdam: Balkema, 1986 Powers, Roger W., “Palaeolithic Man in Northeast Asia.” Arctic Anthropology, 10(2) (1973): 1–106 Slobodin, Sergei B., “Northeast Asia in the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene.” World Archaeology, 30(3) (1999): 484–502 West, Frederick H. (editor), American Beginnings, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996

E EAST SIBERIAN SEA

into the East Siberian Sea; however, the total runoff is less than that of the Kara or Laptev seas. Three major navigation straits of the Northern Sea Route provide access to the East Siberian Sea: Sannikov Strait and Dmitriy Laptev Strait through the New Siberian Islands in the west, and Long Strait separating Wrangel Island from the mainland (Chukotka) in the east. The climate of the East Siberian Sea is influenced by cold, Asian air masses as well as the cold Arctic basin. Mean winter temperatures range from −37°C to −15°C, while mean summer temperatures range from −12°C to 7°C. As a result of these extreme temperatures and the wide continental shelf, fast ice up to 2 m (6.5 ft) thick extends during winter 250–500 km (155–310 mi) from the mainland coast. The sea is completely ice-covered

The East Siberian Sea, 913,000 sq km (352,510 sq mi) in area, is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean located north of the Sahka Republic and Chukchi Autonomous Okrug along the northeast coast of Russia. The sea is bounded by the New Siberian Islands in the west and the International Dateline (180° E) and Wrangel Island to the east. The sea has a wide continental shelf and is open to the Arctic Ocean in the north. It has an average depth of 54 m and very shallow depths along the southern coast: 10–20 m in the western and central regions, and 30–40 m in the east. Seventy-two per cent of its area has depths 74 m or less, making it the shallowest of the Russian Arctic seas. Three key rivers, the Kolyma, Indigirka, and Alazeya (and several smaller rivers), flow

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EBIERBING, HANNAH [TOOKOOLITO] AND JOE from mid-October to late June. Usually 50% of the sea has a partial ice cover at the height of the melt season and multiyear ice from the central Arctic Ocean can be found in the northeast region, both significant factors for ships sailing the Northern Sea Route. The Siberian Coastal Current flows eastward along the length of the East Siberian Sea, although westward coastal drifts have been observed during the 1990s. A cyclonic gyre (anticlockwise flow) is located near Wrangel Island, water moving to the west and northwest in the sea’s northern extremities. The shores of the East Siberian Sea are thinly populated due to the harsh climate. The only major port is Pevek (~10,000 population), which has supported mining during a navigation season from June to September and is the operations center for the eastern half of the Northern Sea Route. Ambarchik is a small settlement near the mouth of the Kolyma River, but the more important riverport of Zelenyy Mys lies further to the south. The extreme climate has limited fauna in the region; fish are abundant in the rivers and lakes, but there are no viable fisheries in the open sea. Polar bears, walruses, and ringed seals can be found in the East Siberian Sea, but hardly any whales. There is evidence that Semen Dezhnev and others sailed down the Kolyma River and along the East Siberian and Chukchi seas in 1648 before voyaging through the Bering Strait. The Great Northern Expedition (1733–1743) also explored sea regions from the Kolyma River, but did not venture east. In 1878–1879, Nordenskiold aboard Vega completed the first west to east transit of the Northern Sea Route, sailing along the East Siberian Sea in August and September 1878 before overwintering east of Wrangel Island. During the Soviet era of Northern Sea Route expansion in the 1960s through the 1980s, the East Siberian Sea remained a difficult operating region except for the short summer. Regional warming and sea ice reductions during the 1990s give increasing access. LAWSON W. BRIGHAM See also Indigirka River; Kolyma River; New Siberian Islands; North East Passage; Northern Sea Route; Pevek; Wrangel Island Further Reading Brigham, Lawson W. (editor), The Soviet Maritime Arctic, London: Belhaven Press, 1991 Maslanik, James, Mark Serreze & Roger Barry, “Recent decreases in Arctic summer ice cover and linkages to atmospheric circulation anomalies.” Geophysical Research Letters, 23(13) (1996): 1677–1680 Ostreng, Willy (editor), The Natural and Societal Challenges of the Northern Sea Route: A Reference Work, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999 Vaughan, Richard, The Arctic: A History, Phoenix Mill, UK: Alan Sutton, 1994

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EBIERBING, HANNAH [TOOKOOLITO] AND JOE Hannah and Joe Ebierbing were the most well-known Inuit of the 19th century. Their travels included southern Baffin Island, Melville Peninsula, and the mainland northwest of Hudson Bay, as well as northwestern Greenland, England, and northeastern United States. Hannah was born c.1838 at Cape Searle, a famous landmark in Davis Strait off the east coast of Baffin Island in the Arctic Archipelago, a rendezvous point for whalers and the Inuit who wished to trade with them. Her Inuktitut name is generally recorded as Tookoolito, although variant spellings in numerous sources exist. She was the sister of Eenoolooapik, who traveled in 1839 to Aberdeen, Scotland, with the whaling master William Penny. Her husband Joe, whose Inuktitut name Ipiirvik was poorly Anglicized to Ebierbing and became the family surname, was born at Qimmiqsut off the south coast of Cumberland Sound, probably in 1836. Married according to Inuit custom, Hannah and Joe Ebierbing were taken to England in 1853 by John Bowlby, a wine merchant dabbling in an experimental cod fishing venture. During their stay in England, the Inuit couple were presented to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and “exhibited” to the public on numerous occasions in Hull and London. Hannah, only four feet eleven inches tall, was described as “active, sprightly, and full of fun. Her laugh is a joyous laugh” (Cull, 1856: 216). Joe, only two inches taller and still only a teenager, was described as “an intelligent, quiet man, self-willed [who] may be led but not driven,” and “a close observer of all that passes” (Cull, 1856: 218–219). It was not uncommon for native people— Inuit, Native American Indians, Africans, and others— to be “exhibited” as curiosities or fundraising attractions in European and American venues such as world fairs and cultural expositions. Hannah and Joe were willing participants in these events. After two years in England, converted to Christianity and with modest proficiency in English, the husband and wife returned to Cumberland Sound where Joe resumed the life of a hunter and worked sporadically for whalers. In the fall of 1860, Charles Francis Hall, an American printer-turned-explorer, met Hannah aboard a whaling ship, the George Henry, at the mouth of Frobisher Bay. From that point on, the Inuit couple was associated with Hall until the explorer’s death in 1871. At the time of their meeting, Hall was pursuing his obsession with discovering the fate of Sir John Franklin’s missing expedition. Instead, he learned that he had discovered the lost site of Martin Frobisher’s explorations of over two centuries earlier. When Hall returned to the United States, he took Hannah and Joe and their infant son with him. Echoing their earlier

EBIERBING, HANNAH [TOOKOOLITO] AND JOE experiences in England, the Inuit were publicly exhibited and appeared at Hall’s lectures on the Arctic, in which he sought to raise funds for his next expedition. The unfamiliar climate and their rigorous schedule took its toll on Hannah’s and the baby’s health; the boy died in the spring of 1863. When they were not touring, the Inuit couple stayed with a whaling captain, Sidney Budington, and his wife in Groton, Connecticut. The next year the couple accompanied Hall on his second expedition in search of John Franklin, this time to northwestern Hudson Bay and west to King William Island. Hall’s quest was again futile. Hannah gave birth to and quickly lost another child on this expedition, and adopted a third, a girl, Isigaittuq, from a family at Igloolik. The daughter became known through Hall’s writings as “Punna,” his rendition of Panik, the Inuktitut word for daughter. In America she was known as Sylvia Grinnell Ebierbing. Back in Groton in 1869, Joe Ebierbing purchased a two-story house for $300, where he and his family hoped to settle down. He worked as a carpenter; Hannah worked as a seamstress. But in 1871, Hall led them off again on another expedition as his guides, with Budington as captain of the Polaris and the North Pole as its destination. Hall died on this ill-fated expedition; he may have been murdered by the ship’s doctor (Loomis, 1971). In the fall of 1872, during a terrible storm with the ship anchored to an ice-floe, 19 people abandoned the sinking vessel for the ice off northwestern Greenland. That party included Hannah, Joe, and their daughter Panik; a Greenlander, Suersaq, with his family; assistant navigator George Tyson; and nine sailors. The ship did not sink, but the party could not return to it. They began to drift with the ice-floe. The expedition had disembarked a large quantity of equipment, so the party of survivors was well-supplied. Their journey on the floe lasted 190 days and took them 1200 miles south. With their ice-floe greatly reduced in size, they were picked up by a sealer north of Newfoundland on April 30. Hannah and Joe Ebierbing attended an inquiry in Washington into the disaster of the Polaris expedition before returning to Groton. But Joe shipped north almost immediately on a rescue mission in search of the Polaris. In Groton, he resumed his carpentry and also worked as a farmhand. Hannah again worked as a seamstress. Although no one had perished during the drift from Greenland on the ice-floe, Panik’s health was irrevocably compromised, and she died on March 18, 1875. Joe Ebierbing returned north in 1875 aboard the Pandora on a British expedition in search of the North West Passage. He returned to Groton that fall. The following year, on December 31, Hannah died and was-

buried in Starr Cemetery beside Panik and Tarralikitaq, the son who had died in 1863. Despondent, Joe resolved to return North. He accompanied Frederick Schwatka’s expedition in 1880 in search of records of Franklin and his crew. Rather than return to America with the expedition, Joe remained in Marble Island, where he had remarried. He died in the Arctic a few years later. The lives of Hannah and Joe Ebierbing spanned two cultures and two languages. The couple spent almost all of their adult lives in dedicated service to American whalers and explorers. Hall learned from them most of the information on which his reputation is based. The survivors of the Polaris expedition owed their lives to them. A modest plaque in Iqaluit commemorates their lives.

Biography Hannah (Tookoolito) was born c.1838 at Cape Searle off the coast of Baffin Island, Canada. Joe (Ebierbing or Ipiirvik) was born c.1836 in Qimmiqsut off the coast of Cumberland Sound. They were married according to Inuit custom before 1853 and visited England from 1853 to 1855. They joined Charles Francis Hall on his first Arctic expedition in Frobisher Bay (1860–1862) and accompanied him on two other Arctic expeditions, to northwestern Hudson Bay (1864–1865) and northern Greenland (1871–1873). Their two children died in infancy and a third, Panik (Punna, Sylvia Grinnell), died at the age of nine. Hannah (Tookoolito) died on December 31, 1876. Joe Ebierbing died in the Arctic after 1880. KENN HARPER See also Eenoolooapik; Hall, Charles F.; Penny, William Further Reading Barron, William, Old Whaling Days, Hull [England]: William Andrews and Co., Hull Press, 1895 Blake, E. Vale (editor), Arctic Experiences: Containing Capt. Gorge E. Tyson’s Wonderful Drift on the Ice-Floe, A History of the Polaris Expedition, the Cruise of the Tigress, and Rescue of the Polaris Survivors, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1874 Cull, Richard, “A description of three Esquimaux from Kinnooksook, Hogarth Sound, Cumberland Strait,” Ethnological Society of London Journal, 4 (1856): 215–225 Davis, C.H. (editor), Narrative of the North Polar Expedition. US Ship Polaris, Captain Charles Francis Hall Commanding, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1876 Hall, Charles Francis, Arctic Researches and Life Among the Esquimaux, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1866 Harper, Kenn, “History on a headstone,” Above and Beyond, 1(3) 1989: 53–62 Holland, Clive A., “William Penny, 1809–92: Arctic whaling master,” The Polar Record, 15(94) (1970): 25–43

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ECOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENT Klutschak, Heinrich & William Barr (editor and translator), Overland to Starvation Cove. With the Inuit in Search of Franklin 1878–1880, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987 Loomis, Chauncey C., Weird and Tragic Shores, The Story of Charles Francis Hall, Explorer, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1971 MacGahan, J.A., Under the Northern Lights: The Cruise of the Pandora, London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1876 Nourse, J.E. (editor), Narrative of the Second Arctic Expedition made by Charles F. Hall, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1879 Ross, W. Gillies, This Distant and Unsurveyed Country: A Woman’s Winter at Baffin Island, 1857–1858, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997 Schwatka, Lieutenant Frederick & Edouard A. Stackpole (editors), The Long Arctic Search. The Narrative of Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka, USA, 1878–1880, Seeking the Records of the Lost Franklin Expedition, Mystic, Connecticut: The Marine Historical Association, Inc., 1965

ECOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENT Ecology is the study of the diversity, abundance, and activities of life. Similarly, it is the study of life and its interactions with its physical and biotic environment. These interactions dictate where life forms (diversity) occur, how many (abundance) are present, and what they do (activities). It is generally agreed that the most important component of the environment that impinges on ecology is the availability of heat and light. The availability of light and solar heat is rather different in the Arctic compared with most of the globe.

Arctic Life: Light, Heat, Cold, and Moisture In the Arctic, sunlight is available continually for periods of several months and then absent in intervening long periods till the sun rises again above the horizon. Even though annually there is more or less as much solar energy received on a surface in the Arctic as anywhere else, the amount of heat absorbed is much less, since the high albedo (reflectivity) of snow and ice results in less of the solar energy being absorbed. With certain exceptions, such as thermal springs and burning coal cliffs, Arctic winters freeze the terrestrial landscape, most ponds freezing solid, and only deeper ponds and lakes remaining liquid beneath thick ice. Much of the ocean surface also freezes, but the cold water below is no colder than waters well south of the Arctic. The lack of light prevents algal photosynthesis in fresh and ocean waters in winter, and cold prevents it on land even when light becomes available after the long winter night ends. Darkness and cold are the two main physical features that dictate how and what life exists in the Arctic. Moisture is also important to terrestrial life, and

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edaphic factors (such as soil structure and chemistry) also influence the distribution and abundance of life on land. In aquatic and marine habitats, the equivalent factors are salinity and turbidity. Ponds and lakes along the coasts are influenced by salt-spray from the sea. The sea’s salinity and turbidity are influenced by runoff from the land, especially at the estuaries of large, silt-laden rivers. On land, during the active season as days lengthen, plants photosynthesize and the ground becomes warm enough for soil to thaw and most hibernating animals to reactivate, and growth and reproduction proceed quickly. Various classification schemes have been proposed for Arctic life zones (biomes). The terms reflect the combined effects of summer temperatures, moisture in the environment, and the kinds of soils present. The terms “polar desert” and “polar semidesert” describe much of the High Arctic (see Polar Desert; High Arctic). With greater moisture and heat, a zone of continuous vegetation is encountered, the true treeless “tundra,” which grades through “forest tundra” at the northern limit of the growth of trees, the “treeline” (see Tundra; Treeline; Taiga). Within each of these zones, which more or less form concentric lobed rings centered on the pole, one may nevertheless find areas of more benign climate and more vegetation or harsher climate and less vegetation, depending on elevation and aspect (the low angle of the sun means that even low hills can cause shading and local differences in microclimate). Although much of the Arctic has little precipitation, and most of that which falls does so as winter snow, moisture is plentiful in many Arctic sites since the frozen ground is impermeable and the lush meadows can be highly productive (see Wet Tundra). In the High Arctic of polar desert and semidesert, it is in and around these oases that muskoxen and caribou (reindeer) graze, that Arctic hares sport, lemmings thrive, and wolves, foxes, and other predators hunt. These are the areas of greatest invertebrate (including insect) productivity and important as food sources for returning migratory birds. Drier, hummocky plant communities, mostly dominated by mountain avens (Dryas spp.), are not so productive, but support a wide diversity of life (see Dry Tundra). Over much of the High Arctic landscape, the surface is sparsely vegetated, presumably because of paucity of water, harsh windblown conditions, and infertile soils. Summer heat is important. In High Arctic areas that experience prolonged cloud cover, such as the bleakest barren lands of the northwestern Queen Elizabeth Islands (the Sverdrup lowlands), clouds absorb much of the incoming solar radiation and the remainder is ineffective at heating the ground or thawing the active layer of permafrost to develop an ameliorated microclimate.

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Habitats, Landforms, Water, and Ice In areas that are more or less completely vegetated, the treeless tundra, the characteristic landforms are welldeveloped stone and soil polygons (see Patterned and Polygonal Ground). These vary in size, but are generally several meters across. “Low-centered” polygons are characterized by marshy centers and raised borders. Sedges dominate the centers and grasses, avens, and willows are common plants of the edges. These polygons are circumscribed by cracks at the surface. Beneath the cracks are ice wedges extending several meters into the ground. Thus, traversing areas of lowcentered polygons in summer takes one across a few meters of marshy ground, then onto the meter or so wide raised lip, a step across the crack onto the lip of the next polygon, and so on. There are areas of many square kilometers of low-centered polygons. Highcentered polygons develop through the same processes of thawing, percolation and pooling of water, and freezing as do low-centered polygons, but in betterdrained areas the centers support more diverse vegetation. Thus, traversing such areas requires stepping across the cracks, with ice wedges beneath, from polygon to polygon. Low- and high-centered polygonal patterned ground are found extensively in the polar desert of the treeless tundra, but other landforms are also created by the interaction of ice and vegetation (see Ground Ice). Palsa formation results from massive subterranean accumulations of ice that push the surface peaty soil and vegetation upward into domes that may form small arrays of large mounds, several meters high and tens of meters across. The cap of peat is well drained and fully vegetated. Peat mounds may also form from the decay of peat plateaus, or areas of peat accumulation that are slightly raised above the surrounding landscape. Such plateaus measure in hectares and consist of peat underlain by ice-rich soils. Pingos are also ice-generated features of some Arctic landscapes. They comprise a massive conical core of ice, which is overlain by soil and vegetation that is pushed up during formation. The largest form in poorly drained and flat areas where low-centered polygons and shallow lakes also comprise the landscape, but smaller ones may form at the bases of mountain slopes. The former are called closed-system pingos because the water they comprise does not flow into them. The latter are open-system pingos that receive ground water as it flows downslope, surfaces, and freezes beneath the soil. Thus, an ice cone develops, pushing the soil and its vegetation up. The region of the Tuktoyaktuk peninsula (Northwest Territories) has many closed-system pingos, which have grown by the accumulation of water by melting and freezing over

hundreds or more years. As the cone accretes, the surface soil and vegetation is lifted ever higher until a conical hill tens of meters in height is formed. The vegetation is characteristic of well-drained sites; the soils may be a meter or so deep and enough to support denning foxes. Pingos have a cycle of development and decay. Atop the well-drained pinnacle, a crater may form to give the pingo the configuration of a miniature volcano. Since the crater enlarges as the ice cone melts down, a pond may form so that in the final stage the pingo resembles a circular dyke, sometimes within a lake or more usually associated with the lowcentered polygons from which it originally formed. At the other end of the scale, measuring just meters across, are frost boils. These develop best in clay areas. The action of freezing and thawing sorts the soil particles so that miniature polygons of an outside array of stones surround the center of the clay. The clay may be saturated with water, or nearly so, so that the freezethaw cycle causes it to heave (boil) into a dome. The centers of frost boils tend to be bereft of plants. Indeed, vegetation such as the Arctic willow (Salix arctica) growing where frost boil formation is active must be highly resilient to the physical movement of the soil. Stone polygons form by the same kind of freeze-thawinduced particle sorting, but in more porous and welldrained soils the heaving is less severe Various striped formations may develop on sloping landscapes. Stone stripes result from the same sort of sorting as causes frost boils and stone polygons, but gravity causes downslope movement (see Gelifluction Processes). Depending on the nature of the soils and drainage, vegetational cover may be sparse to well developed. On mountain sides, stone striping may become extreme as the freezing and thawing of streams creates levies (raised banks). These may form from water flowing beneath the talus surface by upward heaving as well. As summer heat melts the snow, water percolates into the talus and refreezes. Presumably, this process can repeat several times until the water reaches an impervious level, whereupon it flows beneath the scree to emerge as unexpected late summer springs at the foot of the mountain. On gentle slopes, striped wetlands may form. The most spectacular of these run across rather than down slopes. Again, thawing and freezing of water interact with vegetation and soil. The movement of water and ice downhill carries detritus, which tends to form small, but quite long sinuous dams. Pools develop behind the dams so that freezing over autumn and winter, and floating ice in spring, pushes and develops the series of terraced dykes and ponds. These are called string bogs or strangmoor. Such ice pushing affects most bodies of water in the Arctic. Tundra ponds and lakes tend to have rather

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ECOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENT steep drops at the edge, and slightly raised lips at the shoreline. Freeze-up and then blowing ice pans after breakup both push at the shore well below the water’s surface. On large lakes and the sea, ice scour has a profound effect on the zonation of life. In the sea, intertidal and subtidal life would be scoured away by floating, winddriven ice. Icebergs reach far more deeply to scour the seabed, but are not ubiquitous. On large lakes, windblown floating ice scours the shallows.

Fresh Water It is difficult to segregate terrestrial from aquatic habitats, especially in the Arctic where the most biologically productive areas tend to be wet meadows. Freshwater bodies in the Arctic range from small pools to large and deep lakes, to small rills to major rivers. Arctic rivers and streams fall into three major categories: those that drain from lakes, those that flow from glaciers and ice caps, and those that flow from snowmelt. Some of the world’s longest and largest rivers flow from lakes, some of which are south of Arctic regions. The Mackenzie River is notable, with its origins in Great Slave Lake. Such rivers support a rich diversity of wildlife, including resident and migratory fish, muskrat, and other mammals, birds, and many invertebrates. As some of these rivers flow to the sea, they drain a series of lakes connected by stretches of fast flowing water. Others are more continuous as rivers with frequent or infrequent rapids. Rivers flowing down glacially carved valleys are often braided networks of fast flowing streams. Where the rivers slow, especially at estuaries, silt and sand are deposited in deltas. Streams flowing to lakes and the sea form similar features at smaller scales. Streams flowing in courses where soil has accumulated may become beaded as the water flows along the lines of polygon edges and polygon joints where pooling accentuates the beaded appearance. Arctic streams tend not to support much fish life because they often dry up in summer and freeze solid in winter, but they are home to many invertebrates. Much of the Arctic landscape is characterized by vast numbers of lakes and ponds. Over huge areas, such lakes and ponds are similar in that they mostly freeze to the bottom in winter and have steep banks on the windward shores because of the push from windblown floating ice in spring and summer, but gently sloping, vegetated banks with some aquatic vegetation on lee shores. Deeper lakes may have similar general appearances. The complex of life in the lakes depends very much on whether or not they are deep enough for fish to survive. Shallow lakes without fish are often seething with crustacea in the summer, and are a

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highly productive habitat for many birds. In deeper lakes, the fish are voracious predators on invertebrate life and on each other (see Trophic Levels). The huge Arctic lakes, such as Great Bear Lake (Northwest Territories), Nettiling Lake (Baffin Island), and Lake Hazen (Ellesmere Island) have unique characteristics that reflect their sizes, the bedrock, and their locations. Below a certain size, about 2500 m2 perhaps, ponds are too small to show obvious characteristics from aeolian effects. They freeze solid in winter and are underlain by permafrost. During the summer, they teem with invertebrate life. Often, along the edges of such ponds, and associated with the small pools around polygons, clouds of nonbiting midges (Chironomidae) emerge (see Freshwater Ecosystems).

The Sea The Arctic Ocean remains frozen for much of the year. The pack ice breaks up each summer, and much of it melts. Some remains floating, only to refreeze the next winter. Annual thawing and freezing creates multiyear pack ice that is thick, hard, and made up of almost fresh water. Sea ice that has frozen only once still tastes salty. As the pack ice cracks in winter by the action of tides, wind, and currents, it can become piled into pressure ridges and broken pack. The annual pack ice is generally about 2 m thick, but multiyear pack may become almost like small icebergs. During freezing, the sea’s surface, several centimeters thick, becomes a souplike liquid of mixed ice crystals and water, so-called frazil ice. As this consolidates and becomes thicker, the surface becomes sloppy grease ice. In moving water, the grease ice may form into ever-stiffening pans, called slob ice, mostly less than about 1 m across, which bump against each other and develop raised edges. Eventually, the ice consolidates into a hard and thick layer. Icebergs and ice islands are not products of the sea, but are chunks of ice calved from glaciers and landfast ice shelves. Most of the ice mass (over 90%) is below the surface of the sea. Ice is less dense than water, and freshwater ice much less dense than sea water, so these structures float until they become grounded or melt away. Most icebergs are calved from the coastal glaciers or ice sheets of Greenland, but others come from Baffin, Ellesmere, and Devon islands. There may be thousands drifting south into the North Atlantic during the summer. Ice islands are much rarer, but at any time up to 30 may be adrift in the Arctic Ocean. The T-3 ice island, calved from Ward Hunt Island off the north coast of Ellesmere Island, measured about 80 m thick and was used as a scientific base for over 20 years. The undulating Ward Hunt Ice Shelf seems to form as summer freshwater melt from

ECOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENT Disraeli Fjord flows beneath the supercooled (by nearfreezing sea water) ice shelf and refreezes. Thus, the dam to freshwater flow to the ocean deepens slowly from above each year, probably also rising by its buoyancy on the water below. Snow accumulation may add to the shelf from above, but much of that melts each summer. The frozen surface of the Arctic Ocean allows dispersal of living creatures from the size of spores to people around the pole. Polar bears, seals, and walruses hunt on the sea ice, and some seal species breed on the ice. The Arctic Ocean is rich in its diversity. Primary production through planktonic algae feeds higher life forms on the sea bottom (e.g., sponges, anemones, molluscs, various worms, fish, and so on), where walrus also feed, in the water column (jelly fish, sea butterflies, fish, seals, whales, and birds), on the sea’s ceiling at the undersurface of the ice (the sympagic or ice-associated community of protozoans, small crustaceans, and nematodes), and at the sea’s surface (polar bears, birds, and people). Although Arctic seashores are often quite barren because of the abrasive action of ice, in some places life is rich. The Hudson Bay lowlands and the estuaries of major rivers are vast tracts of intertidal and brackish water shallows that are home to huge populations of shorebirds and snow geese. Even in mid-winter, parts of the sea remain ice-free. Recurrent polynyas (areas of open current in the pack ice), such as the huge North Water at the head of Baffin Bay, are winter refugia to whales and the complex of life that supports them and is supported by them. Annual polynyas and open water leads in the Arctic pack are also important, but less predictably present sites where life congregates. Seals, walrus, polar bears, and people use such places. Holes through the ice and snowed-over leads are sites, called aglus by the Inuit, for seals to breathe and rest.

Recent Geological History and Biological Diversity Because much of the Arctic has only recently become deglaciated and there have been recent land connections (“bridges”) from Arctic Europe, through Siberia, to Alaska and the rest of North America, there is a common terrestrial, circumpolar, flora and fauna. The number of species that are special or restricted (i.e., endemic) to various geographical parts of the Arctic is small. Specializations or adaptations according to habitat are, however, well known. The distributions and abundances of terrestrial animals parallel the vegetational patterns described above. Thus, the diversity and abundances of insects, other terrestrial invertebrates, mammals, and birds increase from the High Arctic polar desert to the treeline.

Despite the recent history of Pleistocene ice ages (last glacial maximum about 18,000 years ago), there are regions of the Arctic that may never have been glaciated. These areas may have supported life during the short summers that may have prevailed. The mountains of northwestern North America, including northern Alaska, would have been a major barrier to moist Pacific air reaching the Arctic beyond. With scant precipitation, summer sunshine may have been enough to keep inland tracts of land ice-free and seasonally snow-free, allowing hardy plants and invertebrates to persist. Refugia have been suggested to have existed in various places, from northern Greenland to the southwest and into Alaska and the Yukon. Much of Siberia was not glaciated, but treeless Arctic conditions may have extended further to the south than they do today. There are interesting correlations between the extent of glaciation, progress of ice retreat, and postglacial processes that all relate to biogeographical patterns. Although, as noted above, many Arctic species are circumpolar in distribution, biological diversity across northern North America decreases from west to east, with apparent stepwise declines noted from the western to the eastern side of Hudson Bay, and perhaps across the Mackenzie Valley. Water and forest may be thought of, respectively, as the biogeographic barriers to the spread of plants and invertebrates. After deglaciation, the land of much of Arctic Canada has slowly risen by isostatic rebound following relief from the mass of ice. This phenomenon is increasing the land area of Canada annually as Hudson Bay becomes slowly more shallow and smaller, and many Arctic islands rise above sea level. Raised beaches, reflecting the seashore’s past positions, are a common sight along Canada’s Arctic coastline. Walking up a series of raised beaches, one can see increased soil development, more and more varied vegetation, and often enough remains of beach activities (sea mammal hunting) and houses of people past.

Zonation and Succession Zonation is typified by the more or less latitudinal arrangement of Arctic terrestrial communities around the pole, as described above. It is also exemplified by the altitudinal distribution of biomes on mountains: even lofty peaks at the equator have treeless tracts of vegetation at high enough altitudes. Altitudinal zonation on Arctic mountains is less pronounced than on mountains of temperate and tropical regions. Nevertheless, as one ascends there is a trend for the vegetation to become more sparse and reminiscent of polar desert. Extreme cold, high winds, and lack of moisture curtail life. Within glaciers and ice fields, mountains may protrude as nunataks. These can

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ECOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENT support depauperate ecosystems, but even in bare mineral soils between cracks in the rocks, bacteria, microarthropods, and the occasional plant survive. Zonation can also be found in bodies of fresh water and the sea. Although the scouring effects of ice make shallows inhospitable at sea and lake shores, and along river banks, vegetation and communities of animals thrive at depths below the ice. Light is the most limiting factor, and its penetration into the water column is influenced by the clarity (lack of suspended sediment and organic matter) of the water. Some Arctic lakes support vast beds of submerged mosses, whereas others are relatively clear of vegetation. Zonation associated with isostatic rebound is described above. Succession may be thought of as zonation in time. Primary succession is typified by life first inhabiting the mineral environment as lichens encrust bare rocks. Lichens and mosses slowly extract nutrients from the mineral surface, and when they die they enrich the area with the carbon and nitrogen of their own remains. Soil begins to accumulate and provides a substrate for later stages of succession. More complex and diverse plant life colonizes the enriched places, and along with them come various invertebrates (mites, insects, etc.). Depending on the physical, chemical, and biotic conditions, ecological communities develop to various extents. The final assemblage in succession is referred to as the climax community. It is these communities that typify the biomes of polar desert, tundra, and forest-tundra noted above. Not all succession starts with such harsh substrates as rocks. On land, isostatic rebound brings marine silt, which is saline, above sea level, but like terrestrial soil salt-tolerant plants, such as lime grass and sea purslane, may colonize it. As the land rises and is washed free of salt by rain and groundwater flow, succession follows. In the region of Churchill, Manitoba, one may begin walking in the sea below low tide, and trudge inland past the strand, onto tundra, through the krummholz (a zone of stunted windblown trees), and into the boreal forest in a matter of only an hour or two.

Populations Populations of large mammals in the Arctic tend to be small. Those that occur in large numbers, such as caribou, are migratory. Populations of small mammals tend to fluctuate, sometimes with some predictability (4–7-year cycles). Lemmings, and to a lesser extent voles, are notorious in that regard (see Microtines Lemmings, Voles). The Norwegian lemming’s masssuicidal plunges into the sea are the stuff of myth; nevertheless, many small mammals’ populations undergo cyclical population explosions and crashes. The reasons appear to be a combination of benign conditions

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for population growth, followed by overpopulation, social strife, starvation, environmental stress, for example, from harsh winters, and melting snow that kill most of the population. Populations of their predators, such as jaegers, owls, weasels, and fox, also fluctuate, lagging some time interval behind the population fluctuations of their prey. The populations of larger mammals, such as muskox and barren ground caribou, also seem to fluctuate, but in accordance with periodicities in weather patterns. In Greenland, shortterm fluctuations of the wind regime force strong interannual climate variations. Continental climatic periods are characterized by dry, cold westerly winds, but oceanic periods are associated with moist and warmer easterly winds with wetter snow that freezes and crusts over. The latter conditions make feeding difficult for grazing ungulates. At present, populations of snow geese are high in the Arctic. A combination of factors, mostly to do with agriculture in the south where they winter and feed, allow healthy, fat geese to migrate north and reproduce. In some places, such as parts of the Hudson Bay lowland, the populations are so high that shoreline plant life is being adversely affected. Populations of many marine mammals and of polar bear are now protected from commercial hunting by federal or state legislation. Whale, walrus, and bear populations are growing, as are populations of unprotected species of seal. Some animals always seem to be in superabundance in the Arctic. Mosquitoes are notorious, and blackflies in the Low Arctic. Even in the High Arctic where mosquitoes are rarely pestiferous and blackflies cannot live, nonbiting midges occur annually in huge clouds. Their aquatic and semiaquatic larvae are important food for migratory birds that fly north every year to reproduce.

Ecological Interactions There are many kinds of ecological interactions, some of which have been noted above. Trophic, or energy flow, interactions start with primary production. Primary production comes about through the capture of the sun’s energy by plant photosynthesis, which manufactures high-energy molecules such as sugars, starches, and oils from carbon dioxide and water. These same plants also capture chemicals other than carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, notably nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, and various mineral elements by uptake from the soil. Compounds containing these elements, and the chemical energy stored by the plants as carbohydrates, are consumed by herbivores, saprophages (organisms feeding on already dead material), or carnivores. Thus, material and energy

ECOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENT move up the food chain, but are eventually released through decay and the activities of decomposers. The pathways for atoms entering the Earth’s biosphere can be short (in and out) to long and convoluted, and the reentry time may also be short or long. Symbiosis means “living together.” Symbiotic interactions can be thought of as beneficial to one or the other of the partners or, in the case of mutualism, to both partners. Trophic interactions include predation and herbivory, parasitism, and pathogenicity (ability to cause disease). In all these, the prey or host suffers while the predator, parasite, or pathogen benefits. Among vertebrates, the Arctic supports such wellknown predators as marine mammals, polar bears, wolves, foxes, weasels, owls, falcons, gulls and terns, shorebirds, perching birds, and most fish. Predators among the arthropods include spiders, many insects, some aquatic crustacea, and many marine invertebrata. Not all are exclusively predatory: foxes eat berries, perching birds consume seeds, and some small insects eat yet smaller invertebrates and spores. Herbivores eat plants or plant parts and may specialize by feeding in particular ways. The large herbivores (caribou and muskoxen) graze; herbivorous insects range from leaffeeders, to stem borers, gall-makers, seed eaters (semenivores), sap suckers (such as aphids), and anthophiles (deriving food from flowers: nectar and pollen). Fungivorous (mycophagous) insects may feed as grubs in the caps of mushrooms, on the belowground hyphae, or on shed spores. Parasites affect animals and plants alike. Plant parasites comprise gall-forming and sap-sucking insects, as well as various plant parasitic and pathogenic fungi. Vertebrates are host to numerous endoparasitic organisms (internal), from protozoa to worms and ectoparasitic (external) arthropods. Invertebrates also suffer from parasites. There is a wide diversity of parasitic wasps (Ichneumonidae, Chalcidoidea, etc.) and a few parasitic flies (Tachinidae) that attack insect hosts. These parasites, often referred to as parasitoids, lay eggs that emerge and kill their hosts, eating them from within. Mermithid nematodes are also parasitoids and attack various Arctic insects, and bumblebees carry ectoparasitic mites. In the High Arctic, one species of bumblebee (Bombus hyperboreus) is a social parasite of the other (B. polaris) whose nests and workers it usurps. Mutualisms are much less studied. The close relationship between insects and flowers, whereby the plants are pollinated and so can set seed and the insects are provided food (nectar or pollen, or both) and sometimes shelter (see Plant-Animal Interactions), is one of the best understood. The few berry-producing plants have seeds dispersed by various vertebrates, especially birds. Thus, the plants

benefit from dispersal and the animals from food. Beneath the ground, the mutualistic interaction between nitrogen-fixing bacteria (Rhizobium spp.) and leguminous plants (e.g., Astragalus and Oxytropis) is known to have some importance in soil fertility. Mycorrhizal interactions (i.e., between fungal hyphae and plant roots) are less common in the Arctic than in southern environments. This mutualism provides carbohydrate and organic nutrition for the fungus that, in turn, provides mineral nutrients for the plant. The most conspicuous of the mutualistic interactions in the Arctic is that of the lichens. Arctic lichens are abundant and diverse. All the different kinds (see Lichen) consist of a blue-green bacterium partnered with a fungus. The former is photosynthetic and the latter gathers mineral nutrients for mutual benefit.

Power of the Sun The sun is the major source of energy that powers the Earth. Although the sun’s rays are relatively weak in the Arctic as they pass through the atmosphere at a more oblique angle than to the south, once the Arctic summer has started, there are 24 h of daylight per day. The sun’s rays are absorbed by plants (from algae in the sea to the shrubs and krummholz of the treeline) and captured in carbohydrate molecules (sugars) in plants through the process of photosynthesis. The rates of photosynthesis in Arctic plants are lower than in plants of temperate and tropical regions, but continue unabated by nighttime throughout the summer. The captured energy, carbon dioxide, nitrogen (atmospheric and edaphic), and mineral nutrients power the trophic pyramid through herbivores to the top carnivores. In general, the amount of material produced each year in the wet meadows of Arctic systems is generally between 100 and 200 g m−2 of dry vegetative matter (net primary productivity) (carbon-based molecules, notably cellulose). The material may accumulate as standing dead matter (standing crop) to over ten times that amount, and some is incorporated into the soil. Dry tundra is less productive, and barren lands are almost nonproductive except in small amounts through bacterial activity. The sun’s energy is also captured directly by animals. In particular, butterflies, moths, and flies bask in the sun. They take up special stances to orient themselves so as to become warmed, and may follow the sun around hummocks. Butterflies are particularly noticeable as they spread or hold their wings to intercept solar rays. Flies may bask on insolated surfaces, or even take up positions within diaheliotropic flowers (which orient themselves perpendicular to the rays of the sun). Some caterpillars, by virtue of their hairiness (i.e., wooly bears, Gynaephora spp.), become warmed

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ECOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENT by the sun as they walk around plant hummocks. They pupate so as to maximize insolation and minimize wind resistance. The larvae of aquatic insects, such as mosquitoes (Aedes spp.), circumnavigate pools to remain in the warmest water or in the sunniest part. Even plants take up basking behaviors and speed their developments. Some have diaheliotropic flowers whose bowlshaped parabolic petals turn to the sun for all or part of the day (e.g., Dryas spp., Papaver radicatum). Other plants become heated as microgreenhouses (e.g., louseworts, Pedicularis spp., or campions Melandrium spp.), and others, like wooly bears, are hairy (e.g., willows, Salix spp.). The hollow stems of some plants warm by the greenhouse effect (e.g., Senecio congestus, Pedicularis spp.), and larval insects may live therein, sheltered and extra warm on sunny days. Such forms of thermoregulation may increase the animal’s or plant’s overall heat budget by up to 30% in a part of the world where heat is at a premium. Behavioral and structural adaptations are part of a suite of characteristics for heat absorption. Many Arctic insects are known to be darker and hairier than their more southerly counterparts. Similarly, many Arctic plants have darker leaves, and are often pubescent. Cushion growth forms and leaves hugging the ground also allow for heat absorption from the sun and are reradiated from the ground. Continuous daylight is not without drawbacks. Although the amount of ultraviolet (UV) radiation in Arctic daylight is less, per minute, than to the south, on a per day basis it is just as much or more. Dark pigmentation in invertebrates and plants may have a protective role as has been shown in some aquatic Crustacea: nonpigmented ones succumb rapidly to solar UV unless in tannin pigmented water. The highly UV-absorbing fur of polar bears may be related to vitamin D synthesis.

Outlasting Winter Winter ecology is little studied in the Arctic. Certainly, the environment is harsh, cold, and dark, hardly conducive to activity. There are three strategies to outlast the Arctic winter: leave (migration), freeze (most plants and terrestrial invertebrates) or hibernate, or stay active (most vertebrates, deep aquatic, and marine invertebrates) (see Adaptation). Most so-called Arctic birds are fair-weather visitors: they leave as autumn and winter approach. Some birds, such as ptarmigan, are resident in the Arctic all winter. They seek shelter under the snow from time to time and in stormy weather, but otherwise forage for food all winter. During the summer, they accumulate body fat, which assists with overwintering survival. Small mammals may build winter nests of grass or find other protection and

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remain relatively inactive over winter. They, like the truly hibernating Arctic ground squirrel, accumulate body fat from summer feeding as reserves of winter energy. Polar bears, especially the pregnant females, also fatten up from autumnal feeding on seals, and then find winter dens where the young are born and suckled in their first months of life, before the mother emerges from the den. Muskoxen, caribou, wolves, and marine mammals are active all winter. They may restrict the places in which they forage (e.g., whales to polynya; seals to within range of their aglus) or they may range widely in search of grazing lands. In winter, muskoxen and caribou may cross wide stretches of sea ice to move from island to island, presumably in search of food. In the ocean, the same array of overwintering and foraging strategies probably applies to fish and invertebrates. Terrestrial insects and plants freeze solid for the winter. As autumn approaches, these organisms prepare by dehydrating and synthesizing antifreezes and biochemicals that reduce the cellular damage caused by freezing. Even the frogs that overwinter frozen (e.g., in the Arctic, the wood frog Rana sylvatica; see Amphibians) go through similar physiological preparations. Body antifreezes are also found in fish that live in water at subzero temperatures in the Antarctic. Insects may overwinter at various stages of development. Mosquitoes overwinter as eggs, various butterflies and moths as caterpillars, and bumblebees as adult, mated queens. Generally, they seek some sort of shelter prior to entering the overwintering state. The shelter selected by woolly bear caterpillars is a place that is sheltered from high wind, but where snow will not become deep. Thus, when the early summer sun melts the snow, it soon warms the caterpillar. Most plants spend the winter with leaves intact, some (such as purple saxifrage and various willows) even with flower buds ready but frozen to pop in the first days of the active season. A few plants (e.g., Arctic poppy, various louseworts) lose their leaves, yet the stemlike top of the root remains, ready to sprout, just at ground level. There are few Arctic plants that are annuals and so overwinter strictly as seeds. It is probable that the seeds of most species can survive winter. Biennials and monocarpic perennials (i.e., are perennial, but flower only once and die) probably overwinter as seeds, but, like some other plants, may overwinter as tiny seedlings.

Environmental Issues With incursions of industry into the Arctic, a number of environmental concerns have come to the fore. Oil and gas exploration, for example, raise concerns about the integrity of tundra. Heavy vehicles traversing off-road scour the vegetation, leaving tracks of

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT bare ground. Without the insulating cover, the active layer melts deeper into the permafrost than in adjacent places where vegetation is intact. The tracked ground subsides through the process of thermokarst, with trenches forming as the years pass. In some places, petroleum exploration methods actually bulldozed the entire active layer from the tundra so that seismic recordings could be made from the solid top of the permafrost. Such tracks can be seen in many places, extending for long distances across otherwise pristine tundra. The most severely damaged areas tend to be wet, low-centered polygonal ground. Drier areas suffer the onslaught with less apparent damage, even though tracks may remain visible for decades and probably centuries (see Environmental Problems). The extraction of nonrenewable resources from Arctic sites has created localized and widespread problems. Concern for migratory caribou has been central to conservation issues and oil and gas exploration in Alaska and the Western Canadian Arctic. Seismic exploration surveys, the building of winter haul roads, the installation of exploratory drilling rigs, and the opening of oil and gas fields cannot but have adverse effects on Arctic wildlife, probably in that order of relative importance. In some instances, environmental damage has been exaggerated, as for the unsightly effects of exploratory oil rigs on tundra vegetation and the permafrost. In other situations, occurrences and predictions of environmental catastrophes must not be ignored (e.g., a burst oil pipeline near a major river). Even though mining has been carried out in the Arctic for decades, it has been highly localized until recently. Now, huge diamond mines have been established in Arctic Canada, and the effects of the ground rock dust that flies for many kilometers on vegetation and wildlife have as yet unknown impacts. It is not that ancient indigenous human influences cannot be found in the Arctic. Areas around dwellings and small villages, long abandoned, are visible as green patches. There, the people fertilized the ground with animal remains, and so on. Deeper, richer soils accumulated, with plants characteristic of enriched sites (including animal dens, sites where corpses of large animals decayed, and where birds roost) being common. Those are the same plants that can be found, for the same reasons, around modern settlements in the north. The environmental issues of Arctic urbanization, indigenous or industrial, include rubbish disposal, sewage treatment and disposal, and water quality. With the volume of waste from modern settlements come problems with wildlife. Notorious are the annual encounters with polar bears, especially famous in Churchill, Manitoba. Moreover, other animals, such as foxes, wolves, and ravens, have become familiar sights around human habitation.

The human population, and industrial activity, is sparse throughout the Arctic. Pollution, though, is ubiquitous. Because the Arctic is a region of the world typified by descending air that originates far to the south, airborne exogenous pollutants accumulate. Some of the first concerns were for radionucleotides (e.g., strontium-90) generated from testing atomic weaponry. As with strontium-90 and other radioactive fallout, other pollutants such as persistent organics (e.g., dioxins, DDT, polychlorinated biphenyls), heavy metals, petroleum hydrocarbons, and acidifying pollutants (e.g., sulfur dioxide causing acid rain) have polluted the entire Arctic and all the life it contains. These pollutants bioaccumulate as they move through the trophic food chain (see Bioconcentration) and have become concentrated enough that they pose a threat to wildlife and to human health (AMAP, 1998). PETER G. KEVAN See also Adaptation; Carbon Cycling; Contaminants; Environmental History of the Arctic; Environmental Problems; Freshwater Ecosystems; Large Marine Ecosystems; Marine Biology; PlantAnimal Interactions; Plant Reproduction and Pollination; Primary Production; Trophic Levels; Vegetation Distribution Further Reading AMAP, AMAP Assessment Report: Arctic Pollution Issues, Oslo Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), 1988 Danks, H.V., Arctic Arthropods: A Review of Systematics and Ecology with Particular Reference to the North American Fauna, Ottawa: Entomological Society of Canada, 1981 Fuller, W.A. & P.G. Kevan (editors), Proceedings of the Conference on Productivity and Conservation in Northern Circumpolar Lands, Morges, Switzerland: International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, 1970 Pielou, E.C., A Naturalist’s Guide to the Arctic, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994 Remmert, H., Arctic Animal Ecology, Berlin: Springer, 1980 Sage, B., The Arctic and its Wildlife, New York: Facts on File, 1986 Svoboda, J. & B. Freedman (editors), Ecology of a Polar Oasis: Alexandra Fiord, Ellesmere Island, Canada, Toronto: Captus University Press, 1992

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Economic development tells the story of economic growth and of the development in living conditions over time based on production, that is, on exogenous factors inside and outside the Arctic territory, on endogenous factors, and on the power to make and implement decisions. In the following essay, common

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ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT features and characteristics of Arctic economic development will be outlined and followed by facts on each of the Arctic economies. As the eight Arctic states (Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States) only include one sovereign state, Iceland, sovereign since 1944, economic development in the Arctic has always been heavily influenced by decision making in more southern parts of the Arctic states and by world developments outside the Arctic in general. This is clearly demonstrated in center-periphery thinking, in the hinterland approaches, and in the initiatives taken for economic development. In short, much of the development over time can be seen as the peoples living in the Arctic try to regain influence on decision making on the Arctic territory and their own affairs or as a struggle for achieving human, economic, and societal rights. The strong southern influence, with different societal structures in relation to state-market structure and to type of civil society implying different economic regimes (market economy, command economy, and mixed economy), has meant that similarities in Arctic living conditions have developed into differences as a consequence of the management systems related to the different state regimes. The differences have further been stressed as a consequence of the speed of economic development since the end of World War II, combined with the increased geostrategic importance of the Arctic in world politics during the same period. Studying production is normally based on a production function approach presenting output as a result of input and specified as Y = f(K,L,J). The variables refer to Y = yield, K = capital, L = labor, J = land, minerals, and natural resources, and f specifies the technical relations. Arctic economies are characterized by a low density of population, that is, L is scarce in relation to J. Furthermore, the quality of J is often extremely high, while the quality of L is often relatively low due to size of critical mass and low level of education. Capital accumulation in the Arctic is often low as much capital is transferred out of the Arctic. This is a consequence of a large proportion of the labor force not living permanently in the Arctic and of investments being undertaken by corporations and investors outside the Arctic. The result is that production in the Arctic is mainly related to primary products. The impact is that exports are concentrated on few products while imports are diversified. The small flexibility in production creates a strong dependency in the Arctic on the demand of primary products outside the Arctic. This dependency is mirrored in the phases of Arctic economic development, which has been characterized mainly by cycles of boom and bust. When oil was needed for lamps in

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Europe and resources were scarce, there was an intensive whaling phase; when fur was needed, the hunting and trapping phase was intensive; when metals were scarce, mining was the main production in the Arctic; and when the oil crisis in 1973 threatened southern lifestyles, the search for oil and gas in the Arctic became intensive. With respect to fisheries, the dependency has been more on nature than on changes in southern demand for fish. It is a characteristic feature of Arctic economies that the different phases do not disappear, and a new phase does not penetrate the whole economy. Now where wilderness and pristine nature have become scarce, we witness an increase in tourism. In that way the economies can be said to become more diversified over time, but it is characteristic that the productions are isolated from each other and not linked together via value chains. It implies that value added in production is less than normally found. Also, the new tendencies evolving services from the Arctic in the form of laboratory and test services as research, testing of cars on icecaps, and utilizing hundreds of years of written information on people for medical research, etc. can easily become exports of services without the creation of extra value added from value chains in the Arctic. The demand for Arctic production is good for Arctic economic development, but the lack of flexibility makes the economic development vulnerable to economic business cycles. It is especially the case when the state has a weak role, that is, if the state only has small expenses in the territory. Therefore, military presence in the Arctic demand for military bases has often been a stabilizing economic factor in Arctic economies and a factor to improve infrastructure. With respect to living conditions, the technical development as well as economic growth have made life materially easier, but it has to be mentioned that the speed of change in living conditions has caused mental and psychological problems for some peoples. Alcoholism, other kinds of misuse problems, and a high rate of suicide have been connected to economic development. Here, it must be remembered that many indigenous people jumped from a traditional life into modernity in a period of 50–100 years. Most Arctic economies have an ongoing problem related to population versus peoples. It is more the rule than the exception that the indigenous peoples have become a minority in the Arctic. It is not the case in Greenland or in Iceland, Iceland only being populated the last 1000 years and with a well-known history. It creates problems for who has the rights to decision making. Is it the state, the local Arctic population, or the indigenous peoples, and how shall economic development take place when more people live in the same territory? In the Arctic we find the unitary state

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT model (Sweden, Finland, and to some degree Denmark), the statehood model (Alaska/USA and Russia), the indigenous peoples rights model (Norway, Canada, Denmark), and the sovereign state model (Iceland). The models give legitimacy for decision making to different agents and authorities.

Arctic Economies and Their Economic Development In General Measured in relation to the world economy, the most interesting economic fact is that the Arctic includes less than 1% of the world population but 10–15% of minerals and energy resources. Furthermore, comprehensive areas of the Arctic are relatively unknown and unresearched. Finally, the location of the Arctic makes it both of interest for new transportation routes if relevant technology can be developed and interesting in relation to space research and defense systems. Due to these facts, the Arctic is still a technical challenge and a territory with a geostrategic priority. In the future, this position will also be a reason for transfer of income and subsidies to the Arctic as well as for power play positions. The Arctic includes high-income territories (Iceland, Arctic Norway, Greenland), medium-income territories (Arctic Finland, Arctic Sweden, Alaska), and in the lower end Arctic Canada. The income in Arctic Russia is extremely low from a total Arctic perspective and nowadays also low from a Russian perspective. The income distribution is relatively equal in Iceland, Arctic Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Russia. It is unequal in Greenland, Canada, and Alaska.

Arctic Canada The Arctic territories of Canada (include Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and the northern parts of the provinces) function as hinterlands for the southern provinces. The main production consists of minerals and energy. The Newfoundland fisheries can also be considered a main production. While minerals and energy are subject to volatile price development, fisheries are volatile to cycles in quantities. The density of population is extremely low and there are no real large town concentrations. Many different peoples live in the Canadian North, and economic development and land claims policy have been interwoven. Military bases have contributed to economic stability. Transfer income and subsidies as well as labor from outside the Arctic are still extremely important elements of economic development. The average income level and average imputed gross domestic income have increased, but the level as well as growth rates are

lower in the Arctic areas than in the respective provinces. Mining and energy corporation activities in the Canadian North are of fundamental importance for Canadian economic development. Canada has placed emphasis on sustainable development and cleaning up after mining pollution (and today has laws and a juridical system to secure sustainable mining and energy production) as well as on a comprehensive number of land claims settlements and an increasing awareness of indigenous peoples’ rights. In both Canada and the rest of the Arctic world, much attention has been given to the creation and economic development of Nunavut, and it is likely that this model will be the learning case for economic development in the Canadian North in the coming years.

Greenland The Greenlandic economy is based half on the catches of prawns and halibut and half on income transfer from the Danish state. The average disposable income level has become close to the Danish level via high economic average growth rates since 1950, but the relative economic dependency to income transfer from the Danish state has not diminished. The economy needs diversification, but although it has been a main strategic goal in the last 10–15 years (targeting mining, secondary production, and tourism), it has not been realized. Among the main reasons for this are inappropriate management of transportation systems and lack of coherent economic planning. The Greenlanders (Inuit) are the majority living in Greenland; only 12% of the population come from Denmark and other countries. Greenlanders are among the indigenous peoples that have achieved the highest living standard in the world.

Arctic Finland Arctic Finland includes a small proportion of both the Finnish population and the Finnish economy. Including Arctic territory has been used by both Finland and Sweden to attain specific EU advantages in relation to Arctic agriculture and regional policy. Forestry is the dominating industry. Arctic tourism, especially in relation to the Santa Claus industry, has been an important element in economic development. The small indigenous population, the Saami, living by reindeer herding, have no specific economic rights.

Iceland Iceland is an economic development success story. A population of less than 300,000 persons has managed

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ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT to develop as one of the richest states of the world in a full employment economy during 50 years. The main reason is the extremely high educational level and common goals and visions. During the first half of the period, Iceland was totally dependent on fisheries, especially herring and, later, cod. Iceland has successfully developed thermal heating systems and has concentrated most of the population in Reykjavik, giving the base for development of a diversified economy favored by low energy costs. By having its own control over shipping (Eimship) and air transportation (Iceland Air), Iceland has been able to set transportation prices, to deliver and to receive goods and passengers from all over the world, and to develop tourism.

Arctic Norway Arctic Norway includes the north of Norway, mainly the county of Finnmarken. Economic development takes advantage of the closeness to the North Atlantic Ocean and the fact that the Gulf Stream secures icefree harbors. The harbor in Narvik ships Swedish iron around the world. The sea route from Bergen to Nordkap has functioned as an economic development corridor transporting both products and passengers both south-north and north-south. Svalbard, the Arctic territory under Norwegian sovereignty with its own Treaty since 1920, has a strong strategic position for the setup of Norwegian economic policy. Arctic Norway plays a main role in Norwegian economy due to fisheries, gas and oil, and utilization of hydroelectric power. Oil and gas have been still more fundamental for Norwegian economic development. Since Norway became a sovereign state, the Norwegian regional policy has been the main economic policy and a balanced economic growth including a nonconcentrating town policy essential for economic development. The small Saami population has specific economic rights and a Saami Parliament has been established. The Arctic part of the Norwegian state has become a still more integrated part of Norwegian economic development.

Arctic Russia Economic development in Arctic Russia is the story of the establishment of the largest Arctic city Murmansk in the Kola peninsula, on the exploitation of minerals, oil, and gas for state purposes, with little focus on pollution and the living conditions for the around 30 small indigenous peoples, and of big prestigious projects such as the Northern Sea Route. It is a story of the functioning of a command economy in 40 years and of the collapse of the system and a transition to market

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economy without having laws and institutions in place. Murmansk had and still has enormous strategic importance. It is the center of the Russian fleet, the knowledge center for Arctic exploitation, the center for the fisheries and for mineral exploitation, and it has more than 300,000 inhabitants. The situation in the rest of the Russian Arctic is more chaotic. The number of inhabitants has decreased, the average lifetime has fallen drastically, and economic development is poor.

Arctic Sweden Arctic Sweden comprises mainly Norrbotten county. Norrbotten includes the large iron ore resources at Kiruna that played a role in both World Wars I and II, that is, Arctic Sweden had a main strategic position in wartimes. Forestry is the other important industry. There are no specific economic rights for the Saami. The county is a heavy net receiver of transfer income and subsidies from the Swedish state. Although Arctic Sweden has had a core position in Swedish regional policy, for many years the economic development has not been able to attain the same level as the rest of Sweden.

Alaska Alaskan economic development is characterized by free economic initiatives and little state intervention. In 1958, Alaska attained statehood and became a state in the United States. It is the largest territory of the United States, but the population is among the smallest (500,000). Life and economic development are primarily based on natural resources. However, economic development in Alaska is now primarily based on gold, mining, and oil. Since the Klondike era at the end of the 1800s, Alaska has always had a turbulent and volatile economy with boom towns and mines extremely rich for a short period of time. The Alaskan economy has been event driven, and the events have been world known. Over time Alaska has gained strategic importance for the United States, from the establishment of military bases in Alaska. Since the discovery of oil in the North Slope and the construction of the Trans-Alaska pipeline, the strategic importance is a core element for Alaskan economic development. Development interests may face increasing resistance from environmentalists, however. The yield from oil exploitation is placed in a financial fund construction, which finances the public sector, and in general there is no Alaskan income tax. Alaska also has an important fishery, especially of salmon, as well as a comprehensive and increasing tourism. It is debatable whether Alaska has now

ECONOMIC INVENTORY OF THE (SOVIET) POLAR NORTH, 1926/27 recovered from the Exxon Valdez oil spill catastrophe in 1989. Economic development in Alaska has always had the most market-based economic development in the Arctic world. LISE LYCK See also Industrial Development; Sustainable Development Further Reading Lyck, Lise, Economic and Constitutional Space of the Small Nordic Jurisdictions, Stockholm: Nordrefo, 1996 Morrison, William R., True North: The Yukon and Northwest Territories, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998 Myers, H. & S. Forrest, “Making change: economic development in pond inlet 1987–1997.” Arctic, 53(2) (2000) Osherenko, Gail & Young Oran, The Age of the Arctic, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989 Pretes, Michael & Michael Robinson, “Beyond boom and bust: a strategy for sustainable development in the North.” Polar Record, 25(153) (1989): 115–120

ECONOMIC INVENTORY OF THE (SOVIET) POLAR NORTH, 1926/27 The economic inventory in the Soviet North was conducted in 1926/27 by the USSR Central Statistical Board (CSB) in compliance with the Council of People’s Commissars Order of March 23, 1926. Parts of 12 large administrative regions of that time’s Russia were covered by the inventory. If modern administrative division is used, the inventory area would approximately coincide with the following territories: Murmansk Region, Nenets, Yamal-Nenets, KhantyMansy, Taymyr and Evenki Autonomous Districts, Turukhan area of Krasnoyarsk Region, northern parts of Irkutsk Region, Sakha (Yakutia) Republic and Khabarovsk Region, Chukchi and Koryak Autonomous Districts, and Kamchatka and Sakhalin Regions. The inventory program was developed by a special committee of representatives from CSB and local statistics departments. Two forms were used: a household card to be filled in for any separate, settled or nomadic, family household, and a settlement form to be filled in for any human settlement or a group of families to live a nomadic life jointly. The household card included questions related to the following: 1. Persons (for every member of the family): male/female, age, nationality, marital condition, literacy, mother tongue, Russian-speaking skill, ability to work, main/additional business, and earnings.

2. Information on natural population movement for 1924–1925 and 1924–1926. 3. Domestic animals: reindeer (detailed data on sex, age, increase, loss due to different causes, buying, selling, slaughtering, and other information), dogs (sledge drawers, hunters, and rein deer herds), horses, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and poultry. 4. Implements: agricultural, hunting (rifles, traps, etc.), fishing, transportation (boats, farm wagons, etc.), and residential and farming buildings. 5. Land: usable acreage; if nomadic, halting places in winter, spring, summer, and autumn. 6. Outputs of reindeer breeding, hunting, fishing, sea animal shooting, or other business. Amounts and values of products obtained or sold during the last year (meat, skins, fish, berry, nut, mammoth bone, etc.). 7. Hired labor used in the family household. 8. Purchase of different consumer goods and hunting equipment. 9. Taking credits for the last year and the current debt. The settlement form required descriptive answers: physiographical and meteorological information; land use; routes of nomadic population; information on agriculture, cattle husbandry, reindeer breeding, fishing, hunting; communications and carrier’s trade; other details of population, trading, cooperation, crediting, prices of the imported and home-made commodities and hunting equipment; taxes; authorities; culture; education; way of life and manners of local people; nutrition; hygiene; and welfare of the population. More than 300 registrars were involved in the inventory, and most of them were well accustomed to living in tundra and taiga. About 50 men had higher education, including ethnographers, ichthyologists, field zoologists, and other specialists. Many were fluent in the native languages. For the purpose of inventory, the North territory was subdivided into smaller areas. The routes for registrars’ expeditions across the areas were planned in consideration of annual nomadic cycles of the native population, places of winter and summer fairs, national celebrations, aggregation of men in fishing sites or markets, and so on. Many routes were some 1000 km long, taking 16 months to complete. Most of the registrars departed by river or seagoing steamers in MayJune 1926 and returned in winter, summer, and autumn 1927 or even later. The registrars traveled on sledges drawn by reindeers or dogs or on deerback, by fishing ships and small birch-bark boats, by skiing, or on foot. They

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ECONOMIC POLICY moved from one “chum” (reindeer tent) to another and from one population site to the next. Neither post, radio, nor telegraph was available in many regions; hence, communication was very rare or not possible with most expeditions during the entire registration process. Despite such difficulties, the inventory was successful almost everywhere in the Russian North. In total, 164,861 men were surveyed. The inventory comprised about 80% of native and 7% of Russian northerners. It was unsuccessful only in Bolshezemelskaya Tundra where only 286 (26%) of 1100 households were surveyed, and in Omolon area of Kolyma district. The procedure of processing inventory data included estimation of territorial and group totals. In creating territorial totals, data from the household cards were summed up for a certain populated area or for a nomadic population group. The household sums were separately presented with respect to any nationality. Also, sums were obtained for all administrative units—raions, volosts, governments, okrugs and oblasts—and for the whole Russian North. For each territory, calculation was made of data on settled and nomadic households, subdividing the data according to nationality within nomadic household groups. As to the group totals, the data were summed up by household groups, taking into account the following criteria: (i) the territory (the group totals were obtained for eight okrugs); (ii) way of life (nomadic or settled); (iii) nationality (two groups, Russian and native households, were discerned); (iv) main business (reindeer breeding, fishing, sea animal shooting, hunting, agriculture, and other occupations); (v) use of hired labor in household (either using or nonusing households); and (vi) amount of gross income (six groups). In total, 33,600 households were surveyed and included in the territorial totals, of which 30,400 households were processed for the group totals. The group totals were not calculated for transient population and for the households where full information had not been gathered. The inventory provided unique information to characterize both the northerners themselves and their economic activities. In terms of its content, the size of territories, and the number of indigenous peoples surveyed, the inventory is superior to any earlier or later inventories with respect to the completeness and details of the obtained data. It is regrettable that the inventory results have not been adequately addressed in the literature. (The references below include main publications that consider the inventory results.) Since the time of the inventory, the administrative-territorial division of Russia has changed considerably, which

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hampers the use of the inventory results in modern investigations. KONSTANTIN B. KLOKOV Further Reading (1) Publications containing results of the inventory Pokhozyaistvennaya perepis pripolyarnogo Severa SSSR 1926–27 goda [Household Inventory of the USSR Polar North in 1926–27. Territorial and Group Results of the Inventory], Moscow: Statizdat of the USSR, 1929, 256pp Itogi perepisi severnyh okrain Dalnevostochnogo kraya (1926–27 gg.) [The 1926–27 Inventory Results for Northern Localities of the Far East Country], Blagoveschensk, 1929, 296pp Materialy Pripolyarnoi perepisi 1926–27 gg. v Sibirskom krae [Materials of the 1926–27 Polar Inventory in the Siberian Country], Volume 1, Krasnoyarsk, 1928, 33 pp, Volume 2, Novosibirsk, 1929, 200pp; Volume 3, Novosibirsk, 1929, 240pp Pripolyarnaya perepis 1926–27 goda Arkhangelskoi gubernii [The 1926–27 Polar Inventory of Arkhangelsk Government], Statistical File of 1927 for Arkhangelsk Government, Arkhangelsk, 1929, pp. 324–347

(2) Basic publications based on the inventory results Krasilnikov, M., “Osnovnye cherty pripolyarnogo hozyaistva” [Basic features of polar households]. Statistical Review, (7) (1928): 70–75 Terletski, P.E., “Osnovnye cherty hozyaistva Severa” [Basic features of Northern households], according to the 1926–27 Household Inventory of Polar North. The Soviet North, (12) (1930): 42–86 ———, “Pushnoi i okhotnichyi promysel na Krainem Severe” [The fur trade and hunting in the Farther North], according to the 1926–27 Polar Inventory. The Soviet North, (7–8) (1931): 5–41 ———, Naselenie Krainego Severa [Population of the Farther North], according to the 1926–27 Inventory, Leningrad: Peoples of the North Institution, 1932, 64pp

ECONOMIC POLICY Economic policy in relation to the Arctic includes both a territorial and a constitutional dimension. With regard to land, it encompasses Alaska; the Yukon and Northwest Territories, Northern Québec, Labrador; Greenland; Iceland; and the northern counties of Norway, Sweden, and Finland plus Russia and Siberia. Seen in relation to the constitutional dimension and sovereignty, it includes the eight Arctic states: Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States. Only for Iceland do the territorial and the constitutional dimensions coincide. To understand economic policy, it is necessary to understand that Arctic mineral and energy resources are rich and include about 12% of the world resources, while the population is sparse and includes indigenous peoples. The Arctic states include some of the big

ECONOMIC POLICY players in international power play. These facts constitute the arena for Arctic economic policy and gives Arctic policy a geostrategic dimension and importance. The present eight Arctic states have, over time, had a different position and different interests in economic policy concerning Arctic matters. Denmark and Norway were one kingdom until 1814 (The Kiel Peace Treaty) including Iceland, which was brought into the kingdom together with Norway at the end of the 1300s and part of the Danish Realm till it became a republic in 1944. Greenland was a Danish colony till 1953, and a Danish jurisdiction with Home Rule from 1979. The main Danish economic policy of 1814 was a Mare Nostrum policy, including the North Atlantic Ocean, Sweden and Finland were one state till about 100 years ago with no specific economic policy toward the Arctic. For Canada, Russia, and the United States, the Arctic regions were mostly unknown hinterlands. The Greenlandic colonial status was due to the disappearance of the Vikings presumably sometime between 1350–1400. As the Danish Royal expeditions (organized in order to protect the Danish Kingdom “Mare Nostrum” from the increasing interests of the Netherlands and UK) came to Greenland more than 200 years later and found no Nordic people surviving and no Christianity, only one status was possible—that of a colony. In 1721, the priest Hans Egede was sent to Greenland to christen the inhabitants. Greenland is the only territory in the Arctic that has had a formal colonial status. The economic idea in a colony is that it shall create an economic surplus for the state. As seen from the old colonial accounts, this was the case till about 1850. From then until 1925, official policy was that the account should be in balance. In the 20th century, the account result was more volatile, a surplus when the cryolite corporation Øresund Ltd. operated successfully, but the rest of the time a deficit. Since the end of colonial status in 1953, the net income transfer from the Danish state to Greenland has been very large. The Danish Greenland policy was to modernize Greenland to the same level as in Denmark. It was considered a task for experts, and upon modernization, Greenland should function without income transfer from the Danish state. Finland, Sweden, and Norway are considered to be unitary states in their constitutions although all the states have an indigenous people, the Saami, living inside their northern borders. When the Nordic welfare state was developed after World War II, it took place in a state-market mix called the mixed economy. It implied the beginning of comprehensive income transfer to the Arctic and northern areas and to people living there.

In Iceland the task was to show that voting for becoming a sovereign state in 1944 was the right decision (97% of the votes were in favor of Iceland becoming a state), and the way to show it was to create economic growth and a welfare state. Except for Iceland, the various economic policies ran into unexpected troubles. It was possible to create economic development in the North, but not without current comprehensive income transfers from the state. In the United States and Canada, the main problem was conflicting interests. Indigenous peoples and local populations felt they had too little influence on development. These problems were addressed successfully in some cases, in land claims policy. In the USSR, it became still more evident that the economic command system avoided market failures but not state failures in planning. An enormous bureaucracy developed and political party power interests had considerable influence. The goals set in the five-year plans were not fulfilled. The impact was as follows. In the Nordic countries, the welfare state and full employment economy developed satisfactorily and economic growth was high. It was a golden time for the Social Democrats in the Nordic countries. In Greenland, an increasing opposition to the Danish development policy developed. The new large towns constructed to provide a labor force for the new fishery plants ran into unexpected problems: Greenlanders could not adjust to living in high-rise blocks, and the fish (cod) almost disappeared in the 1960s, presumably due to lower sea temperatures. Based on these experiences, a strong demand for self-determination developed, and in 1979 Greenland attained Home Rule. The policy in Canada and Alaska differed more and more. In Canada a huge state institution—DIAND (Department of Indian and Northern Development)—was established to deal with the development issues. Over the years, land claim policy has been increasingly combined with the transfer of economic and political rights to indigenous peoples, with the creation of Nunavut being the culmination of that policy. After ANCSA (Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act) 1971, Alaska has stuck strictly to market economy and to Republican Party policy. The main types of economic policy are fiscal, monetary, trade, and income policy. Fiscal policy, but in different forms, has been the main policy all over the Arctic since World War II. Fiscal policy was the main policy in the Nordic countries, Greenland, and Canada in a mixed economy setup. In the USSR, there was no room for private sector or market economy; all was decided by the state, a command economy. In Alaska, the fiscal policy was related mainly to the military

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ECONOMIC POLICY expenditures and the economic regime continued to be a classical market economy. In the USSR, trade policy was only an issue in relation to the outside world. Typically, when the goal in the five-year plan was not achieved, the USSR could export some oil and, for the money, buy grain instead. In the Nordic countries, in Canada, and in Alaska, it was free trade regimes that were applied. In Greenland, the monopoly on sea transportation from 1776 continued, and trade continued to take place via Denmark. Income policy was applied in the USSR and in Greenland. Both places had a system with fixed prices. In the USSR also, the wages were fixed. In Greenland, wages were dependent on birthplace (the so-called birthplace criterion); it meant that public employees born in Greenland received a lower wage, normally 15% lower. The intention was to regulate for productivity differences, but how it could be accepted is difficult to understand today. The Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC, established in 1977 by Eben Hopson) is an international organization representing 136,000 Inuit with the purpose of strengthening unity among the Inuit; promoting Inuit rights and interests internationally; seeking full and active partnership in the political, economic, and social development of circumpolar regions in order to promote greater self-sufficiency among Inuit and to ensure the growth of their culture; and developing and encouraging long-term policies that safeguard the Arctic environment. In 1992, the publication “Principles of Elements for a Comprehensive Arctic Policy” was published. It addresses issues of security, environment, economy, society, and culture for common policies. ICC is a nonprofit organization with an accepted position in the UN, and in this way has a direct and influential link with international policy.

Economic Policy in the Years Around 2000 Arctic economic policies are under change. There are two major trends. Firstly, people living in the Arctic have increasing influence on decision making. As a consequence, there are more players in Arctic policies, which creates a new structural frame for Arctic policy. Secondly, Arctic economies and societies are becoming more involved in international and global development. Especially globalism, characterized by simultaneity, pluralism, mobility and bypassing of rules, and institutions, has and will have an enormous impact on Arctic policies, as Arctic policy has been characterized by opposite factors up till now. State power as well as market power will still have a strong influence on Arctic economy, but there will be

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more room for partnership models, alliances, and ventures. The strongest Arctic economies of Alaska and Iceland are in a position to further increase their strength. Economic growth, employment, and foreign trade are increasing. The diversification is augmented. Price stability is under pressure, but without danger of exploding. Income inequality is growing in Alaska. In Iceland, education policy has always had a strong position, but this position is being further stressed. Alaska is enjoying the privileges of oil economies. In the north of Sweden and Finland, forestry and mining are facing stiff competition due to the opening of Russia with lower wages and less regulation and rules for production. It requires still more income transfer from the state to the northern societies. The societies have difficulties in diversification and adjustment. Norway, including the northern counties, still has regional development and regional policy as a priority. Economic growth is high, mainly based on the fact that Norway is the second largest oil exporter in the world. Fisheries are still the main income source in the North, but the economic policy is to diversify the economy. The north of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula of Russia have initiated regional cooperation, the Barents Sea Region. How successfully it will develop is difficult to predict as the Russian economy is volatile. This holds true for both the formal and informal economy. The Russian formal economy is measured by gross domestic product of the same size as the economy of the Netherlands and is extremely vulnerable to investment turbulence. Regionalization can create economic growth, but Murmansk still has a specific position in Russia based on the old economy being the military base for the Russian fleet. Furthermore, the territory also holds a strong position due to the rich occurrence of minerals. At the opposite end of the Russian Arctic, Chukotka has also tried to evolve regional links both to Alaska and to the South, but the low resource level makes it difficult. Arctic Russia is still heavily influenced by the transition from a command to a market economy. The price subsidy to transport has disappeared and so have the fixed prices. The new institutional setup has not yet been established and the set of laws that characterizes a modern market economy is not yet in place. The economic position as well as the economic policy are rather chaotic. Greenland obtained Home Rule in 1979. Until the mid-1980s, most efforts were aimed at in the transfer of the Danish state institutions to Greenland and to the Home Rule authorities. Then the political economic

EDUCATION strategy was presented: the economy should be diversified. The economy should not only be based on fisheries, but also mining, secondary production, and tourism should be developed as pillars of the Greenlandic economy. This strategy has not yet transformed the economy. More foreigners are interested in having licenses and in introductory mining activities. However, no mining in Greenland has taken place since the Blue Angel zinc and lead mine in Maarmorilik closed down in 1990. Secondary production has not changed much. The real barrier to development is the high transportation cost among the 18 Greenlandic municipalities. Tourism has until now added more cost than incomes to the Greenlandic economy. During the last few years, economic policy has changed toward more weight on education policy. LISE LYCK See also Economic Development Further Reading Agreement-in-Principle Between the Inuit of the Nunavut Settlement Area and Her Majesty in Right of Canada, Ottawa: Department of Indian and Northern Development, 1990 Dickerson, Mark, O., Whose North? Political Change, Political Development, and Self-Government in the Northwest Territories, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1992 Lyck, L., Erhvervsvilkår i Grønland, Copenhagen: Nordic Press, 2001 Lyck, L (editor), Greenland and Arctic Political Issues, Copenhagen: Nordic Press, 2001 Osherenko, G. & O. Young, The Age of the Arctic, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989

EDUCATION A society passes on its values, traditions, and accumulated knowledge to its young through its educational system. In the traditional lifestyle of Arctic indigenous peoples, education was not separated from daily living. The essence of education within Arctic cultures involved preparing the young to assume adult life roles and successful learning was demonstrated by performance. Traditional indigenous styles of education worked because their methods and purposes were clearly understood by all members of the community. These methods effectively prepared young people for the conventional roles and responsibilities they would inherit as adults. By imposing foreign systems on indigenous communities, outsiders (the first Westerners to come into any sustained contact with these communities, usually traders, and/or missionaries from the 18th to the early

20th centuries) fractured native ways, frequently prohibiting even the speaking of indigenous languages in the school buildings. Education served as a primary tool in assimilating indigenous peoples to the ways of the majority. Like much of written history, the imposed education systems reflected the perspectives and values of those in power. The first nonindigenous teachers in the Arctic were missionaries in the 18th and 19th centuries (earlier in the Scandinavian Arctic and in Greenland). The chief mission of the churches was the spread of Christianity, and literacy enabled new converts to read the sacred texts. Curriculum, a formal plan for instruction, did not exist in most missionary-sponsored educational programs. The missionaries taught from their individual perspectives and orientations and used methods learned from their school experiences in various European countries. Some sought to respect Native traditions and values. Many missionaries sincerely believed that they could best serve indigenous peoples by helping them adopt non-Native ways. In the 20th century, indigenous communities began reassuming control of education just as southern educators were questioning the goals and pedagogy of schooling in their own societies. The question of who owns the schools remains a central consideration within contemporary education. Prior to the far-reaching political and social changes of the 1950s and 1960s, the question was rarely asked by any sector of mainstream society. Schooling was the business of those who were trained to provide it. Parents and other members of the community could not tell teachers and administrators how to educate their children. After the 1960s, as former colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean became independent nations and the Civil Rights Movement forced change in the United States, increasing numbers of people believed that they not only had the right but also the responsibility to participate in the educational process, including the activities of local and community schools. Among these were the indigenous peoples of the Arctic.

Political Changes The creation, operation, and oversight of schools is an inherently political process. The business of schools is socialization of the young to society’s roles and rules, and the political process remains the least violent way to decide whose rules will be followed. The history of increased control of educational policy and institutions by indigenous peoples is inextricably linked with the growth of political power in other areas, including economic and governmental. In the United States, beginning in the 1960s federal funds were offered to aboriginal and other minority groups to create regional

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EDUCATION and national organizations to spur economic and social improvements in their communities. President Lyndon Johnson’s administration initiated the Office for Economic Opportunity (OEO) in the mid-1960s, which allowed for the creation of community action programs throughout rural Alaska. Under the auspices of the OEO, Native leaders came together regularly from across the state for the first time to discuss shared concerns. Out of this sharing emerged a common agenda for change. In 1966, the first statewide Alaska Native political organization, the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN), was founded. In 1961, representatives of the Canadian First Nations formed the Nation Indian Council—a forerunner to the National Indian Brotherhood and what is presently called the Assembly of First Nations (AFN)—to lobby for indigenous rights. In 1971, Inuit leaders from across Canada established Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (ITC) as the coordinating organization for six regional Inuit groups seeking land claims settlements. (The organization has since been renamed Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK).) One of the major developments stimulating indigenous political organization was the expanding exploration of the North by companies and governments seeking energy resources for their growing markets. On the North Slope of Alaska and in the Mackenzie Valley of the Northwest Territories, the search was for oil and gas reserves. In Arctic Québec, the Saami territory of Norway, and in the region around the Native village of Rampart on the Yukon River in Alaska, water and its potential to generate electricity was a sought-after commodity. The agendas of national governments and energy companies collided with the determination of indigenous peoples to participate in decisions affecting lands that they traditionally had occupied. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) was signed into law by President Richard Nixon on December 18, 1971. Under the Act, Alaska Natives became the recognized owners of more land — 40 million acres—than was then held in trust for all other Native Americans. Alaska Natives also received $962.5 million in financial compensation for lands they gave up. The cash settlement, to be paid over a period of 11 years from Congressional appropriations and mineral revenues from state and federal lands, represented almost four times the amount all other tribes had won from the Indian Claims Commission since its creation in the 1940s. In Québec, three Crown corporations—the James Bay Development Corporation, the James Bay Energy Corporation, and Hydro-Québec—had begun development of a major hydroelectric scheme in the

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province’s north. As in Alaska, no treaty had ever been signed by any government with the Cree and Inuit of Northern Québec. The James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement signed by the Inuit, Cree, the federal and provincial governments, and the Crown corporations involved in the development projects on November 11, 1975 was the first major land claims settlement in Canada. Unlike the 1971 Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), the comprehensive agreement with the indigenous peoples of Arctic Québec addressed education, health and social services, administration of justice, and other economic and social development issues in addition to land ownership and financial settlements. Political control of Arctic regions by indigenous peoples has also increased through the initiation of Home Rule government in Greenland in 1979, the opening of the Norwegian Saami Parliament in 1989, and the creation of the Inuit-majority territory of Nunavut in Canada’s Eastern Arctic in April 1999.

Indigenous Education in Arctic Canada After World War II and the movement of Inuit into settlements, northern administrators established community councils. Initially, the councils had little real power; they functioned more as intermediaries, carriers of complaints and questions, than as partners in the governing of communities. With the establishment of provincial schools in Arctic Québec, government administrators created parent committees, something that federal schools had not initiated. However, in reality, the parent committees made few decisions, and wielded little impact on the day-to-day operations of the schools and none on the instructional program or overall policy. School administrators invited Inuit to participate, but set limits on community involvement. In 1972, the National Indian Brotherhood produced a landmark policy study on Indian education in Canada titled Indian Control of Indian Education. The two fundamental principles of parental responsibility and local jurisdiction underlay the study. While the federal government stated its acceptance of the basic goals expressed in the study, no legal basis existed in the Indian Act or other legislation for the transfer of control of educational programs to Indian bands or communities. During the 1970s and 1980s, increasing numbers of Indian bands assumed responsibility for administering elementary and secondary schools. The Saskatchewan Indian Federated College, an Indiancontrolled university-level college with accreditation

EDUCATION linked to the University of Regina, was established in 1976. Under Section 17 of the 1975 James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement and subsequent enabling legislation, the Inuit and Cree assumed responsibility for elementary, secondary, and adult education in their communities. Operating and capital costs for the Inuit schools were to come from the Québec and the Canadian governments (75% and 25%, respectively). In the case of the Cree School Board, the Agreement mandated Canada to provide 75% and Québec 25% of the approved budgets. At a time when Québec was establishing provincial control over education and, for the first time, instituting strict controls over languages of instruction and content of the curriculum, the province was granting the Inuit and Cree extraordinary powers to design and administer education in their communities. In 1988, the Assembly of First Nations released Tradition and Education: towards a Vision of Our Future, a nationwide review of First Nations’ education. This study determined that while the Canadian government had endorsed the concept of Indian control of Indian education, it had “consistently defined ‘Indian control’ to mean merely First Nations’ participation in and administration of previously developed formal education programs.” The authors of Tradition and Education: Towards A Vision of Our Future identified the requirements for genuine control of education by an indigenous community: adequate financial and human resources; training of education authority members; community, and particularly parental, involvement at all phases of the transfer and delivery of education; the presentation of educational options to the community; the development of an education philosophy, long-term plans, and evaluation procedures at the beginning of the process to guide its implementation; policies and procedures consistent with the stated philosophy; hiring of qualified staff; sufficient administration and teacher preparation; language and culturally based curriculum development and programming; and access to, and utilization of, technology. While band-controlled schooling and the development of culturally relevant instruction has increased steadily since the early 1970s, the 1990 Fourth Report of the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs—You Took My Talk: Aboriginal Literacy and Empowerment concluded that a great deal more must change before indigenous people gain genuine control of education in their communities. While acknowledging the need for secondary programs on reserves as well as for more aboriginal teachers and culturally relevant materials, the report stated that witnesses cited aboriginal control of educational policy and institutions and expanded aboriginal

language instruction as the most pressing issues facing their communities.

Indigenous Education in the United States In the United States in the 1928 report issued by the Brookings Institution, The Problem of Indian Administration, Lewis Meriam urged the Indian Bureau to adopt the “modern point of view” and educate Indian children in their communities where they could be near their families. In the late 1960s, the activities and resulting report (Indian Education: A National Tragedy—A National Challenge) of a Special Senate Subcommittee on Indian Education headed by Robert Kennedy and later Edward Kennedy resulted in increased funding for Native American education, expanded bilingual programs, and establishment of tribally controlled community colleges, local native boards of education, and a National IndianAdvisory Board to review the state of native education. In 1966, the Navajo Rough Rock Demonstration School became the first Native-controlled school in the United States. The Indian Self-Determination and Education Act, passed by the Congress in 1975, expanded the number of locally controlled schools, allowing tribal councils to contract schools from the government and giving them increased control over the hiring of staff and the development of curricula. The 1990 Native American Languages Act promoted the expanded use of Native languages and authorized their utilization in instruction in schools funded by the US Secretary of the Interior. In 1991, the Indian Nations At Risk Task Force, charged by the US Secretary of Education with evaluating the state of education among Native Americans, endorsed the policies of community control and involvement, culturally relevant instructional programs and materials, use and development of Native languages, trained and qualified staffing, and stable but flexible settings as effective criteria for Native-controlled schooling. The out-of-court settlement in 1975 of a class action suit brought against the Alaska Department of Education by parents in rural communities mandated the State of Alaska to provide a secondary education program in any village that requested it. The Alaska State Department of Education established 26 new Rural Education Attendance Areas (REAAs) in 1976 with regional school boards elected to replace the State Operated School (SOS) system and its appointed board. Revenues from the now flowing Trans-Alaska oil pipeline fueled a massive construction program of new schools. In the Lower 48, the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs today contracts with tribes for them to operate a majority of schools on reservations.

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Education in Greenland Under Greenland’s 1979 Home Rule Act, the Greenlandic government assumed responsibility for education and culture, public health, housing, management of natural and renewable resources, transportation, public works, and environmental protection. Denmark retained responsibility for national defense and foreign relations. On January 1, 1980, the Home Rule government assumed control of primary school education, evening school classes, the Teacher Training College, the Social Pedagogue School, the Educational Association, the Church, the Greenland Broadcasting Corporation, and the Southern Greenland Publishing Company. On June 1 of the same year, Greenland’s Teacher Training College (Ilinniarfissuaq) graduated more Native-born Greenlanders than in any previous year since the founding of the college in 1841. The University of Greenland (Ilisimatusarfik) was established in 1984 and presently offers degree courses in Inuit studies, theology, social and cultural studies, and administration, with a focus on providing the Home Rule government with graduates trained for careers in civil service.

Indigenous Education in Scandinavia In Scandinavia, the Nordic Saami Institute was founded in 1974 as a research, educational, and service institution for the Saami populations of Norway, Finland, and Sweden. The following year the Saami Educational Council was established to advise the Norwegian Ministry of Education on questions relating to training and education for Saami. The Saami Educational Council presently initiates the development of framework curricula and subject syllabi, develops textbooks and teaching materials, examines and approves textbooks, and advises on counseling services, education, and in-service training for teachers and boarding school staffs in the Saami areas. In 1989, the Saami College (Saami Allaskuvla) in Kautokeino, previously a department in the regional college at Alta in northernmost Norway, became an independent college of education. Staff and students began creating an institution attuned to a “Saami environment” in language, culture, and content. Saami College offers a variety of postsecondary courses and programs including teacher training. All students and staff must be fluent in Saami as a majority of classes are conducted in that language, and no permanent appointment is made to the faculty without demonstrated language fluency. Under Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish law, Saami children have the right to primary and secondary education in Saami. Saami education is particu-

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larly vibrant in the kindergarten (preschool) sector. Teachers design the kindergarten program annually and collaboratively discuss it with parents. Under Norwegian law, kindergarten instructional programs cannot be made or implemented without parental consent.

Indigenous Education Elsewhere in the Arctic World The “Small Peoples” of the Russian North include 31 groups with a total population of over 200,000. While the 1992 Education Act decentralized education in the Russian Federation, education for the indigenous peoples of the North remains a federal responsibility. The Constitution of the Russian Federation guarantees rights to preserve, study, and develop indigenous languages, including the right to receive basic education in mother tongues; however, political, financial, and administrative realities have limited the development of those programs. The indigenous people of Japan, the Ainu, number about 50,000. Most live on the northern island of Hokkaido. In May 1997, the Japanese Diet passed the Promotion of Ainu Culture and Dissemination of Knowledge Law requiring prefectural governments nationwide to respect the Ainu as a distinct race and canceling all previous discriminatory laws. Intermarriage and governmental assimilation policies have discouraged the teaching and learning of the Ainu language and culture, but recent years have seen an increase in political organization and cultural preservation activities.

Common Concerns and Shared Goals Most of the residents of the eastern Arctic of Canada (Nunavut), Northern Québec (Nunavik), Greenland, the Saami districts of Scandinavia and the villages of Alaska, the Yukon, and the Northwest Territories are indigenous peoples. The peoples of the Arctic face opportunities and problems that transcend national boundaries. Changing lifestyles, cultural differences from dominant “southern” populations, and the challenge of preserving traditional ways while developing local economies and employment opportunities are factors that link the villages of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and the north of Scandinavia and Russia more closely to one another than to urban areas within their individual nation-states. These communities also share Arctic ecosystems—the total physical environment of which human settlements are one part. Acknowledging the bonds among them, indigenous peoples have created organizations to discuss common concerns with other indigenous peoples. These

EDUCATION organizations include the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), the Saami Council, and the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON). Education is a chief concern among these social and political organizations and factions. Worldwide, native peoples have historically been excluded from policy-making, administration, and teaching in the school systems in their communities. Teachers come from the outside and formal training is valued over knowledge of local languages and cultures. At present, a small percentage of young people in the Arctic advance to the university level. Despite social reforms and changes, acquiring a formal education and success in the village or the outside world are often tenuously linked. A lack of clarity about the purposes of schooling, a distrust of the formal system, parents’ own negative experiences in school, and their desire that children remain in the community have all led to a lack of confidence in formal education. Equally significant factors include lowered expectations for student performance held by some educators, high teacher turnover rates, and inferior instructional materials, libraries, and other resources. Struggles between Native and non-Native institutions and individuals, limited funds, and issues of power and control contribute substantially to the conflict. Across the North, individuals and institutions in the 21st century seek ways to increase decision-making and control of educational programs by local communities. As elementary and secondary education increasingly comes under local control, which includes recognition of the need for Native teachers and administrators to take the lead in reshaping northern education, respect for traditional ways and recognition of human and other resources within communities are increasing. The village school was, and still too often is, a southern-style formal institution that has excluded the knowledge and values of the community it serves and has done a poor job of preparing young people for future roles. An additional force in educational change—in the Arctic as elsewhere since the 1960s—remains the recognition of parental and community input and involvement as an essential element in effective schools. In a 1985 study of 162 of Alaska’s small rural high schools, University of Alaska researchers Judith S. Kleinfeld, G. Williamson McDiarmid, and David Hagstrom found school-community relations and relations among local professionals, community members, and central office administrators to be two of five major factors in differences between good schools and poor schools. According to their research, in effective schools, professional educators consult regularly with

community members, and a partnership is formed to set and achieve educational goals. Across the North, parents and community leaders are demanding significantly higher expectations for student performance, including rigorous coursework and regular assessment of skills development. Educational policy and instructional programs in the Arctic have traditionally been developed in the south for the north. Historically, these materials have gone into northern classrooms with little adaptation. Since the 1970s, with the advent of locally elected school boards and a growing recognition by all educators that effective schooling begins with the child’s developmental experience and radiates outward, programs and materials have been reshaped to reflect the culture and environment of Arctic communities. Over the years, many excellent pedagogical materials have been developed and subsequently lost. Exemplary materials are few, particularly in mathematics and science and for upper-level coursework in all subjects. The processes and commitment for the creation of culturally based programs and materials are in place in some school systems, but inadequate funds and staffing limit this development. Curriculum developers in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut have achieved exemplary results working collaboratively with community members to create entire programs and pedagogies using northern contexts rather than adapting southern designs. The acknowledgment of indigenous scientific worldviews, including systems of land and resource management, also influences Arctic elementary and secondary education. The Dene Cultural Institute (DCI) in the Northwest Territories has focused on traditional environmental knowledge as an area of major research since 1987. The Dene Cultural Institute has also worked with the Northwest Territories’ Department of Education and the Northern Heritage Society to integrate traditional knowledge into social studies and science curricula. In addition, the Alaska Rural Systemic Initiative (AKRSI), a project of the Alaska Federation of Natives and the University of Alaska Fairbanks, has also successfully realized important work. Initiated in the mid-1990s with funding from the National Science Foundation, AKRSI initiatives include the development of an indigenous science knowledge base that emphasizes a cultural atlas, a culturally aligned curriculum that stresses cultural standards, and Native ways of knowing and teaching that incorporate parent involvement. A primary concern is that graduates of Arctic schools are able to function both in and outside of their home communities. Schooling ought to produce adults who are confident in their cultural identity and proud of their people while possessing the necessary

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EDUCATION academic skills to have choices for future studies and careers. A related concern is that students are not receiving a firm grounding in either their mother tongue or a second language. Many educators recognize that students who have strong skills in their first language will more easily acquire English language skills as well as the content of upper-level courses taught in English. In the report Language Development Among Aboriginal Children in Northern Communities, prepared under contract with the Government of the Yukon for presentation and presented at the Circumpolar Education Conference at Umea, Sweden in June 1990, Jim Cummins of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education reviewed a number of programs supporting aboriginal language development among school children. Based on his research, Cummins concluded that strengthening children’s aboriginal language skills did not negatively impact the development of English or French academic skills. Indeed, programs elsewhere in the world demonstrated that development of academic skills in a majority language was helped by continued development of skills in a first language. Thus, in communities where the indigenous language has weakened, programs are being created to rebuild the language. Funding continues to be a problem. Severe budget cuts at the state or provincial, district or divisional board, and individual school level retard the development of new approaches to elementary and secondary education. Limited private foundation support in the Arctic compounds the decline in public sector funding. The perception that revenues and income from oil and other resources have generated sufficient funds for education and other needs restricts private sector support. One tremendous challenge facing communities, educators, and researchers in the Arctic remains the development of genuinely indigenous approaches to education, not just sprinkling cultural materials into approaches designed for southern systems. In order to combat this historical tendency, Native and other northern educators, most trained in southern systems, must reimagine and challenge the boundaries of the systems in which they were trained. Educational change by its nature causes conflict. Most of the change in schools (not just in the Arctic) is aimed at improving the quality of what presently exists. The key to educational reform lies in changing the underlying culture of the system. Every system, including educational institutions, develops its own way of operating, patterns of response that become traditional, established methods for dealing with conflict. If educational change is understood as cultural change, reformers and others will expect real change to take time.

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Educational change goes hand-in-hand with sustainable development, including the creation of jobs. In the 21st century, indigenous peoples are assuming the professional jobs previously held by southerners in Arctic communities. Although village economies are diversifying, particularly in the service and tourism sectors, employment opportunities are still limited. The control of education and economic development comprise part of the larger movement toward self-governance for indigenous peoples. The Greenlandic Home Rule government, the creation of the new Canadian territory of Nunavut, and the Norwegian Saami Parliament stand as leading examples of this dynamic. By establishing their own systems of governance, education, economic development, justice, and social services, indigenous peoples of the Arctic are taking back the rights and responsibilities lost over the last four centuries. ANN VICK-WESTGATE See also Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN); Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA); Greenland Home Rule Act; Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC); Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami; James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement; Nordic Saami Institute; Nunavut; Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON); Saami Parliaments; Self-Determination Further Reading Brookings Institution, The Problem of Indian Administration; Report of a Survey Made at the Request of Hubert Work, Secretary of the Interior, and Submitted to Him, February 21, 1928, with Lewis Meriam, et al., Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1928 Dene Kede. Education: A Dene Perspective, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories: Government of the Northwest Territories, 1993 Kleinfeld, Judith S., G. Williamson McDiarmid, & David Hagstrom, Alaska’s Small Rural High Schools—Are They Working?, Anchorage, Alaska: Institute of Social and Economic Research and Center for Cross-Cultural Studies, University of Alaska, 1985 Lauritzen, Philip, Highlights of an Arctic Revolution: The First 120 Months of Greenlandic Home Rule, Nuuk, Greenland: Atuakkiorfik, 1989 Silatunirmut/The Pathway to Wisdom/Le chemin de la sagesse, Final Report of the Nunavik Educational Task Force, Lachine, PQ: Nunavik Educational Task Force, 1992 The Sami People, Kautokeino, Norway: Saami instituhtta, 1990 Tradition and Education: Towards a Vision of Our Future, Volumes 1–4, Ottawa, Ontario: Assembly of First Nations, 1988 US Congress, Senate, Indian Education: A National Tragedy— A National Challenge, Washington, District of Columbia: US Government Printing Office, 1969 Vick-Westgate, Ann, Nunavik: Inuit-Controlled Education in Arctic Quebec, Calgary, Alberta: University of Calgary Press, 2002

EENOOLOOAPIK “You Took My Talk”: Aboriginal Literacy and Empowerment— Fourth Report of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs, Ottawa, Ontario: Queen’s Printer for Canada, 1990

EENOOLOOAPIK In the 1830s, Inuit in Cumberland Sound, Baffin Island, lived a traditional lifestyle as yet untouched by the incursions of Scottish and English whalers. During that decade, the whaling industry suffered a series of devastating disasters, and many whaling captains argued that new strategies were required to allow the business to thrive again. William Penny, a Scottish whaling master with considerable Arctic experience, felt that Cumberland Sound, explored by John Davis in 1585 and 1587 but not reentered since by European explorers, might prove to be the lucrative whaling ground that would revitalize the industry. The task was to find its entrance. In 1839, after fishing in Baffin Bay, Penny put in at Durban Island, off the east coast of Baffin Island, to question Inuit there about Tinujjiarvik, a large inlet on the coast to the south, which some Inuit had already reported to whalers. There he met a young Inuk, Eenoolooapik, with whom he was to collaborate. Eenoolooapik had been born at Qimmiqsut, an island off the southwestern coast of Cumberland Sound, about 1820. When he was a boy, stories reached his camp about the whalers who frequented the Davis Strait coast. Eenoolooapik’s father relocated his family to Durban Island in the hope that he would be able to acquire trade goods from the whalers. The voyage was long and dangerous, made by native umiak, a traditional traveling boat made from bearded sealskin stretched over a driftwood frame. The family followed the coast of Cumberland Sound to Cape Mercy, then north along the Davis Strait coast past Cape Dyer. On the voyage, Eenoolooapik observed the coastline carefully. Eenoolooapik drew a chart of Cumberland Sound for Penny. The whaler was so impressed with the young man’s knowledge that he invited him to accompany him to Aberdeen to spend the winter. He hoped, with Eenoolooapik’s assistance, to gain publicity and government support for an exploratory voyage to find the entrance to the sound. With the consent of his family, Eenoolooapik accompanied Penny aboard the Neptune in October 1839 and reached Aberdeen on November 8. The earliest surviving version of Eenoolooapik’s chart, untitled, bears the erroneous legend, “Sketch of the Inlet discovered by Captn. W. Penny in 1839.” (Penny did not enter Cumberland Sound that year.) It is an obvious amalgam of Eenoolooapik’s and Penny’s knowledge, and a tribute to the well-known map-making ability of Inuit. The

depiction of Cumberland Sound, with all place names in Inuktitut, was solely the product of Eenoolooapik, and shows less detail than the Davis Strait coast. North of Cape Enderby, the detail is more certain, the work of Penny using existing charts, and all but one of the place names are in English. The map shows in detail the route taken some years earlier by Eenoolooapik and his family from Qimmiqsut to Durban Harbor, opposite Durban Island. A subsequent version of the map, without Eenoolooapik’s family’s route, was subsequently published on February 12, 1840, as Admiralty Chart 1255, bearing the title “Cumberland Isle” and the legend “From the Observations of Captain Penny of the Greenland Ship Neptune of Aberdeen, and from the Information of Enoolooapeek [sic] an Intelligent Esquimaux.” This was the only Admiralty Chart ever published with attribution in part to an Inuk. Eenoolooapik’s arrival in Scotland created a sensation. Known as Eenoo, Bobbie, Robbie, or Robbie Durban, soon after his arrival he gave a demonstration of his kayaking prowess, in full Inuit dress, on the River Dee. His winter in Scotland was marred by ill health and he was often confined to bed with lung infections. Yet he mastered the English alphabet and some very simple reading and writing. In early 1840, Penny learned that the government had declined to offer any financial assistance for an exploratory voyage to search for Cumberland Sound. The Lords of the Treasury approved the meager sum of twenty pounds to provide Eenoolooapik with goods to take home. Supplementing this with donations from his friends, he chose “fowling-pieces with powder and shot, edge-tools of various kinds, culinary utensils, and clothing in abundance.” Eenoolooapik left Aberdeen on April 1, 1840 with Penny, who was in command of the Bon Accord. The ship proceeded first northward along the Greenland coast to Melville Bay for whales, before attempting to reach Cumberland Sound. Eenoolooapik met many Inuit on the Greenland coast and expressed surprise that they were able to converse with little difficulty. On July 27, off the coast of Baffin Island, they reached the mouth of a large inlet unfamiliar to Penny, who was convinced that this must be the long-sought Tinujjiarvik. Eenoolooapik confirmed that it was. But Penny concluded, on the basis of existing maps, that the inlet could not be Cumberland Sound. Thinking it was a new discovery, he named it Hogarth’s Sound. (The following year, other whalers renamed it Northumberland Inlet, but within a few years it was renamed Cumberland Inlet.) Ice prevented an immediate entry, but on August 2, in company with two other ships, the Bon Accord entered the inlet. It reached Qimmiqsut, where

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EGEDE, HANS Eenoolooapik had an emotional reunion with relatives. He remained with the ship, however, guiding Penny to the head of the sound, before returning to Qimmiqsut, where he quickly married and headed inland to hunt caribou. Ironically Penny took no whales in 1840. The voyage, an exploratory success, was a financial disaster. In 1844, Penny returned to Cumberland Sound, where Eenoolooapik, now father to a son, joined him aboard ship and assisted in the whale fishery; Penny took seven whales. The following year he took 19 whales and in 1846 four, each year working with Eenoolooapik’s assistance. Eenoolooapik’s trip to Scotland had afforded him considerable status among his fellow Inuit, and he traded with his people and amassed quantities of whalebone to trade with the whalers. In 1847, Penny did not reach Cumberland Sound until September, when he learned of Eenoolooapik’s death. Eenoolooapik was but one member of a family of accomplished travelers. A sister, Kurking, migrated to Igloolik, and another sister, Tookoolito or Hannah, visited England in 1853 and later served as interpreter and guide to Charles Francis Hall. After 1840, Cumberland Sound was the most lucrative whaling ground of the eastern Canadian Arctic.

Biography Eenoolooapik was born around 1820 at Qimmiqsut, Baffin Island. His mother was Nootaapik; his father’s name is unrecorded. His family relocated to Durban Island in his youth. He visited Scotland in 1839 and assisted the whaler William Penny in rediscovering Cumberland Sound in 1840. He married Amitak in 1840. A son, Angalook, was born before 1844. Eenoolooapik died of consumption in the summer of 1847 at Qimmiqsut. KENN HARPER See also Ebierbing, Hannah (Tookoolito) and Joe; Indigenous Knowledge; Penny, William Further Reading Harper, Kenn, “Inulluapik, Inuk explorer.” Above and Beyond, 2(4) (fall 1990): 25–43 Holland, Clive A., “William Penny, 1809–92: Arctic whaling master.” The Polar Record, 15(94) (1970): 25–43 M’Donald, Alexander, A Narrative of Some Passages in the History of Eenoolooapik, a Young Esquimaux, Who was Brought to Britain in 1839 in the Ship “Neptune” of Aberdeen, Edinburgh: Fraser and J. Hogg, 1841 Ross, W. Gillies, Arctic Whalers, Icy Seas Toronto: Irwin Publishing, 1985 Ross, W. Gillies. This Distant and Unsurveyed Country: A Woman’s Winter at Baffin Island, 1857–58, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997

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EGEDE, HANS Hans Egede (1686–1758), born in Harrestad, Norway, then under Danish sovereignty, has been universally acclaimed as the Apostle of Greenland because he reintroduced Christianity to Greenland after the early Norse settlers and their descendants had disappeared. Deeply influenced by Pietism and Moravian theology, Egede had taken Holy Orders and received his degree in Theology from the University of Copenhagen in 1705. Two years later, in 1707, he became a priest at Vågan on the Lofoten Islands in the north of Norway, a period of great spiritual and emotional turbulence for him, as well as of considerable dissatisfaction. However, his life was soon to change dramatically since King Frederik IV of Denmark, who reigned over Norway as well as Denmark, was keen to initiate missionary activities in his isolated overseas colony of Greenland. Having had an audience with the king to this end in 1718, Egede was appointed “royal missionary,” employed in the first instance to spread the Protestant Lutheran confession, although the king was also keen to reestablish commercial links with Greenland. In fact, at this time Frederik IV established a Greenlandic commercial company, the so-called Bergen Company, which exerted considerable financial control on European enterprises there. Egede’s missionary activities began in 1721 when he traveled out to Greenland, in the company of his family, on a ship aptly named The Hope. They continued until the mid-1730s, when he returned to Denmark, and focused predominantly upon the native Inuit population. Egede’s initial fears were more that the native population would be languishing “in the darkness of Catholicism” rather than that they would be pagans, since he had held the opinion before his arrival that any people he would encounter in Greenland would be descendants of the Norse settlers of more than 700 years before. These anxieties proved groundless, however, for no Norse peoples were to be found, just the native Greenlanders of Inuit background, unsullied by any non-Lutheran confession. In this missionary activity, Egede was assisted by his wife Gertrud Rask (1673–1735), a loyal and singleminded helper, and their sons Poul (1709–1789) (see Egede, Poul) and Niels (1710–1782), both of whom remained in Greenland for various periods after their father’s departure. Apart from the spiritual dimensions of Egede’s ministry to Greenland, there was also an extremely important economic side as well, for mercantile relations were now reestablished with Denmark and the wider world, after a hiatus of several hundred years. With the financial aid of the Bergen Company, in 1728, Egede founded the city of Gothåb (in Greenlandic, Nuuk), by the mouth of the Godthåb Fjord, an inlet of the Davis Strait, in the southwest of

EGEDE, INGMAR Greenland, today its capital and major port. Soldiers were brought in to help colonize the new settlements, as well as some convicts, although neither group proved to be very keen on colonization. Such attempts were ultimately abandoned in 1731, when Christian VI, who had ascended the throne of Denmark in 1730, rejected any further colonization and brought those few who had remained in Greenland home. Nonetheless, Egede persisted with his own private, if somewhat futile, attempts to continue the colonization. Egede also encouraged a migration of sorts in the other direction. Indeed, it was during the missionary’s period of sojourn on Greenland in 1724, that two Greenlandic hunters, Qiperoq and Poq, were sent back to Greenland for the king’s inspection. This resulted in a grand “Greenlandic calvacade,” which was provided with much pageantry on the waterways of Copenhagen so that a wider slice of the city’s population could marvel and enjoy the exotic sight of the Inuit shooting darts at ducks from their kayaks. Then, in 1729, in order to spread knowledge and thereby possibly augment mercantile interest in the long neglected colony, the company published Egede’s tract, The Old Greenland’s New Perlustration, which brought information on Greenland first to a Danish and later to a German public. In the work, numerous aspects of the social life and beliefs of the natives, as well as descriptions of the flora and fauna were included. Nonetheless, financial rewards were not immediately forthcoming and the colony was soon becoming in danger of foundering. As a result, in 1733, the Danish government involved itself and took over its administration. Three years later, in the wake of the death of his wife, Egede returned to Denmark in the company of his son Niels. However, he remained active with respect to Greenlandic interest in an administrative position. He also took a widow Mettea Trane (1691–1761) as his second wife. He expanded his work The Old Greenland’s New Perlustration (Det gamle Grønlands nye perlustration) (1741) to include 11 woodcut illustrations and a map, as well as covering a large range of topics from the Inuit language and history to Greenlandic astrology and shamanistic beliefs. Egede himself was a talented mapmaker and illustrator. Many of the scenes he made were based upon Inuit life, and he was especially gifted at depicting such aspects of local life as whaling from an umiak, as well as seal hunting from kayaks. Unfortunately, the arrival of other missionaries and seamen after Egede also inadvertently brought much misery to the long isolated island. Susceptible to the arrival of diseases previously unknown there, hundreds of Greenlanders succumbed to an epidemic of smallpox that decimated the Gothåb colony in 1733 and 1734. However, Christianity was taking root and Egede had published,

after his return to Denmark, a history of Greenland’s recent Christianization, The Circumstances and Conduct of the Greenlandic Missions, Including their Beginnings and Continuation (1738). He also went on to establish the Greenlandic Seminary to train missionaries for his beloved colony, and in 1740 was invested as bishop for Greenland, a position he held until 1747. His missionary days in Greenland, however, were over, and from 1751 until his death, he resided at Stubbekøbing, in Falster, on Denmark’s Baltic coast. Nonetheless, Christianity had become permanently established and Danish trading posts and missionary centers soon fanned out elsewhere in Greenland. All of these soon came under the aegis of the Royal Greenland Trading Company, in whose administration it remained until the 20th century.

Biography Hans Egede (1686–1758), the son of Poul Hansen Egede and Kirsten Jensdatter Hind, was born in Harrestad, Norway, then under Danish sovereignty. He has been universally acclaimed as the Apostle of Greenland because he reintroduced Christianity to Greenland after the early Norse settlers and their descendants had disappeared. Traveling out to Greenland in 1721 as a Royal Missionary, with his family, including his first wife Gertrud Rask and sons Poul and Niels, he devoted himself to spreading the Lutheran confession among the native Inuit (Eskimo) population. His famous work on his time in Greenland, The Old Greenland’s New Perlustration (Det gamle Grønlands nye Perlustration), was first published in 1729, but was later expanded in 1741. After the death of his wife, he married Mettea Trane, a widow. He had returned to Copenhagen, in Denmark, in 1736, but continued to occupy himself with Greenlandic matters, having been invested as bishop for Greenland in 1740, a position he held for seven years. Then in 1751, he moved to Stubbekøbing, in Falster, on Denmarks Baltic coast, where he died in 1758. NEIL KENT Further Reading Egede, Hans, A Description of Greenland, London: Allman, 1985 Kent, Neil, The Soul of the North: A Social, Architectural and Cultural History of the Nordic Countries, 1700–1940, London: Reaktion, 1999

EGEDE, INGMAR In 1975, Ingmar Egede was appointed Rector of the Greenland Teachers’ College, Ilinniarfissuaq, in Nuuk. Egede was the first Greenlander to hold this

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EGEDE, INGMAR appointment, a position he held until 1988. Egede was then appointed Advisor to the Greenland Minister of Culture and Education from 1988 to 1991. In 2001, Egede was appointed to the first Board of Governors of the University of the Arctic. In addition to his career in education, Egede was active across a wide range of other social, cultural, and human rights fields. He served on the Board of Directors of the Tuukkaq Theater (1988–1992), as chairperson of the Silamiut Theater (1988–1991), and founding chairperson and Board Member of Katuaq, the Greenland Cultural Center (1996–2000). Active with the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), Egede served as an Executive Council member (1989–1995) and as vice president (1992–1995). During his years with ICC, Egede represented Inuit concerns at many international meetings, including those of the United Nations Economic and Social Council, the eight-nation Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS), Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), International Whaling Commission (IWC), North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission (NAMMCO), IUCN (World Conservation Union), and meetings of the Circumpolar Ministers of Education as well as at numerous international conferences, in particular, to discuss indigenous rights, subsistence issues, and the sustainable use of natural resources. His message in the latter regard was that politicians who wish to appear environmentally enlightened at home and on the international stage have an obligation to be broadly informed about the issues they wish to promote. Egede urged politicians and decision-makers to remain skeptical of campaigns mounted by radical environmental and animal protection organizations whose actions and messages ignore or misrepresent indigenous and local peoples’ rights to subsistence. Egede’s contributions to these environmental and resource use debates were characteristically thoughtful, informed, and balanced. One example of this occurred at a 1995 international experts’ meeting discussing nutrition, environment, and health in the circumpolar regions. On that occasion, at a time when concern about persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in Arctic foods was more speculative than science-based, Egede cautioned scientists that their unwarranted exaggerations were in danger of creating a greater health impact on Arctic peoples than were the contaminants themselves. Egede was cofounder of Siumut, Greenland’s Social Democratic political party, through which he articulated his ideas for eventual Greenland Home Rule. Always a visionary and articulate advocate for the rights of Greenlanders and indigenous peoples around the world, in 1997 Egede brought together 17 leading international experts on indigenous affairs and human rights, after

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which he founded the International Training Center of Indigenous Peoples (ITCIP) in Nuuk. In 1998, ITCIP held the first of a series of training workshops attended by indigenous peoples from around the world; similar workshops followed in 2000, 2001, and 2002. Egede was preparing for the next training session in 2003, the year of his death on the United Nations International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, August 9.

Biography Ingmar Egede, Greenlandic psychologist, educator, and advocate for indigenous rights, was born in Qeqertarsuaq on September 21, 1930. His early years were spent in the communities of Upernavik Kujalleq, Oqaatsut, and Akunnaaq before he left Greenland for further education in Denmark. From 1955 to 1961, Egede served as school principal in Qaanaaq, and after further study in Denmark returned to Greenland to resume teaching in schools in Aasiaat and Maniitsoq from 1962–1968. Egede returned to Denmark to obtain his M.A. in Psychology (1971), after which he served as chief educational psychologist in Greenland. He followed with more than 30 years of advocacy for indigenous rights. He died on August 9, 2003. MILTON FREEMAN See also Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES); International Whaling Commission (IWC); Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC); North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission (NAMMCO); Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs); Siumut Further Reading Egede, Ingmar, Education in Greenland, Nuuk: Skoledirektøren for Grønland, 1977 ——— (editor), Inuit Whaling, Nuuk: Inuit Tusaataat 5, ICC, 1992 ———, “Chukotka: observations and questions.” Questions Siberiennes, 3 (1993): 95–114 ———, “The Hunter’s Perspective (Greenland).” In Responsible Wildlife Resource Management: Balancing Biological, Economic, Cultural & Moral Considerations, edited by N.D. Christoffersen and C. Lippai, Proceedings of a Conference held in the European Parliament, Brussels, November 29–30, 1993, Brussels: EBCD, 1994, pp. 179–182 ———, “A Third Option.” In Additional Essays on Whales and Man, edited by E. Hallenstvedt & G. Blichfeldt, Reine, Norway: High North Alliance, 1995, p. 38 ———, “Preface.” In Inuit, Whaling and Sustainability, edited by M.M.R. Freeman, L. Bogoslovskaya, R.A. Caulfield, I. Egede, I.I. Krupnik & M.G. Stevenson, Walnut Creek, California and London: AltaMira Press, 1998 www.worldcouncilofwhalers.com/ingmar

EIDER

EGEDE, POUL Poul Egede, a Danish-Norwegian missionary to Greenland, is sometimes known as the Apostle to North Greenland because of his missionary activities in that region among the native Inuit population. Poul Egede was the son of Hans Egede (see Egede, Hans), himself styled the Apostle to Greenland. He moved to Greenland with his parents and brother Niels (1710–1782) at the age of 13 in 1721. He assisted his father in missionary activity, since he quickly learned Greenlandic, as well as Greenlandic ways of hunting and handling kayaks. In 1728, he moved to Copenhagen (in Denmark). Despite a personal leaning toward a maritime career, he accepted his father’s guidance and took a degree in theology in 1734, as well as holy orders, the same year that his brother Niels became a merchant and bookkeeper in Godthåb (in Greenlandic, Nuuk) until he too returned to Denmark, in the company of his father, in 1736. That same year, Poul again traveled to Greenland where, from 1736 to 1740, he served as a missionary in Christianshåb (in Greenlandic, Qasigiannguit), which he helped to establish and where the native Inuit Greenlander Amarsaaq provided him with valuable assistance, not least in the translation of Danish Biblical texts into Greenlandic. Poul Egede returned to Denmark in 1740, in part because of his failing eyesight, and the following year became a priest in Vartov, a position he held until his death. High ecclesiastical and administrative positions awaited him. In 1758, he became dean for Greenland in 1761 titular professor of theology at Copenhagen University, and in 1774 director of the orphanage. Finally, in 1779, he was made titular bishop for Greenland. His brother Niels, meanwhile, after having published a continuation of Hans Egede’s Relations, had again gone back to Greenland, where he proceeded to found the settlement of Egedesminde (Aasiaat) in 1759, and then Holsteinborg (Sisimiut) in 1764, while actively engaging in whaling not far from Godthåb (Nuuk) in Disko Bay. Back in Denmark, though, Poul continued to devote himself to considerable philological studies related to Greenland. In 1750 he published a Greenlandic dictionary, followed by a Greenlandic grammar book in 1760. Six years later, in 1766, he published the first edition of the New Testament in Greenlandic, a testament to both his own personal erudition and spiritual devotion. Other writings included excerpts from his journal as well as expanded texts relating to his father’s literary production, especially his Relations. He also translated Thomas à Kempis into Greenlandic in 1787. His son Hans had meanwhile become a missionary in Greenland, where he served from 1770 to 1778.

Biography Poul Egede (1708–1789), the son of Lutheran missionary Hans Egede and his first wife Gertrud Rask, was born on September 9, 1708, in Vgen, in Norway, where his father was serving as a Lutheran priest. He published a Greenlandic dictionary in 1750, a Greenlandic grammar book in 1760 and, the first edition of the New Testament in Greenlandic in 1766—his crowning achievement. He went on to be invested as bishop for Greenland in 1779. Married three times— to Elisabeth Maria Frauen in 1742, to Marie Christine Thestrup in 1753, and to the latter’s sister Christine Amalie Thestrup in 1771—his son Hans also became a missionary in Greenland, where he served from 1770 to 1778. He died in 1789. NEIL KENT Further Reading Egede, Poul, Efterretninger om Grønland, uddragne af en journal holden fra 1721 til 1788 af Paul Egede, udgivet ved Mads Lidegaard, København: Hans Christopher Schrøder, 1988 Kent, Neil, The Soul of the North. A Social, Architectural and Cultural History of the Nordic Countries. 1700–1940, London: Reaktion, 1999

EIDER The genus Somateria includes three recognized species of eider ducks, all of which winter at sea where they feed mainly upon molluscs and crustaceans: common eider, king eider, and spectacled eider.

Common Eider: Miteq, Sioartooq, Aavooq (Greenlandic), Mitiq (Inuktitut), Ærfugl (Norwegian), Æðarfugl (Icelandic); Somateria mollissima Adult drake eiders are unmistakable, since this is the only duck that is essentially white above and black below, with a black crown and tail, pale pink breast, and pale lime green patches on the rear of the head. Immature and eclipse males show a confusing range of parti-colored plumages, but essentially the head is usually dark and the underparts black. The females are like large female mallards, but are easily distinguishable by the much heavier build, dark barred breast, and the distinctive bill shape and “roman nose” head profile. Six subspecies are recognized as follows (with estimated population sizes): Somateria m. mollissima breeds in northwest Europe and the Baltic east to Novaya Zemlya (1.7–2.4 million birds); Somateria m. faroeensis nests in the Faroe Islands (18,000–26,000); Somateria m. v-nigra inhabits northeastern Siberia

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EIDER

Spectacled eider (Somateria fischeri). Copyright Bates Littlehales/National Geographic Image Collection

to northwestern America (150,000); Somateria m. borealis inhabits the Arctic from Baffin Island eastward through Greenland into the Atlantic, Iceland extending as far as Franz Josef Land (up to 1.2 million birds outside of the Canadian Arctic, from which there is no estimate of numbers); Somateria m. sedentaria breeds in the Hudson Bay region (precise numbers unknown); and Somateria m. dresseri is restricted to northeastern Atlantic America (c.80,000 birds). Most of these populations are migratory, tending to winter along shallow seashores, usually well south of their summer quarters. Eider are rarely found in freshwater habitats (although small numbers regularly winter on lakes in Central Europe), and recently they have become common in winter in the Mediterranean. Generally, the eider is exclusively a marine species, breeding on islands usually along low-lying rocky (i.e., noncliff) or estuarine coasts in dunes and on islands, less frequently on inland tundra pools and along rivers. In winter, common eiders frequent shallow rocky and sandy seashores, most commonly (but not exclusively) in sheltered waters, as in north and northwest Europe, Iceland, off Greenland, around Hudson Bay coasts (often confined to areas of open water maintained by currents or wind), Labrador, northeastern North America, Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, and Kamchatka. Common eiders start breeding in April or May, but this can be considerably delayed in most northern regions. Nesting generally occurs in loose or dense colonies, the nests shallow lined with abundant down. The clutch is normally 4–6 eggs and incubation can take up to 28 days. The chicks are independent from hatching, dark brown above, whitish below, which may amalgamate into large “nursery” flocks, fledging

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after 70–75 days. Nesting success varies enormously between years, with some individual cohorts contributing large numbers of breeding females to the nesting population in subsequent years. Birds reach sexual maturity at 3 years, and may breed more or less annually; ringed individuals are known to have reached 23 years of age. Eiders feed mostly on bottom-dwelling molluscs, especially the blue mussel Mytilus edulis, but they also eat crustaceans, echinoderms, and other invertebrates obtained by diving, up ending, and head dipping in shallow waters. Eiders have been a very important food item to the Inuit peoples, especially because of the colonial nesting nature of the species and the habit of gathering to molt postbreeding. Bones from both this and the following species have been found among remains from human settlements 1900–1600 years BC in Kane Basin, Ellesmere Island. Common eider remained a highly important source of food at Avenersuaq in northwest Greenland in the early 1900s and in northern Alaska. In North America, eiders were hunted with a kind of bolas called a killamittaun, made of feathers bound with sinews and weighed with bone or walrus ivory. This was still used in the early 20th century on the Arctic coast of Alaska and probably throughout much of the North American Arctic. Eiders throughout the Arctic region were also killed with spears during the flightless wing molt period, postbreeding. It is thought that the Inuit did not use eider down before European traders made woven cloth available to them. However, once such a trade in the commodity was firmly established by the 18th century, both Greenland and Canadian maritime people joined in with the supply of this resource. In Iceland, on the very fringe of the Arctic region, such a collection by

EIDER locals of Viking descent had been established for centuries. Here, protection from predators and regular down collection made wild birds almost semidomesticated. The birds were probably initially farmed for food, but by the end of the Middle Ages eider down was being used for cushions and bedding and became a valuable export. Eider skins feature in clothing and rags, and in West Greenland the traditional inner coat was invariably of 15–20 eider skins, renewed annually. The warm side pieces of the coat worn by the mummified woman found near Uummannaaq, West Greenland, dating from 1475 were made of duck eider (or possibly king eider) (see Qilakitsoq Mummies). In Canada, the East Hudson Bay people sewed eider skins together for blankets and clothing, usually retaining the inner down feather (after softening of the skin). When used for bedding, the edges of blankets were adorned with the heads (especially the attractive nape feathering of the males), and the Royal Greenlandic Trading Company fostered a trade in these rugs (comprising over 100 skins each), which peaked in the 1920s, when up to 1300 per year were exported to Denmark (the practice was stopped in 1939).

King Eider: Sioraki (Adult Male), Qingalik, Aavooq (Greenlandic), Qingalila (Inuktitut), Æðarkóngur (Icelandic), Praktærfugl (Norwegian); Somateria spectablis The adult male king eider appears white in front, dark behind from a distance, with a peaked orange forehead, red bill, pale gray head, and black back. In flight, the species shows a white triangle on the fore and inner wing (contrasting black flight feathers and back). The female is more reddish brown than the common eider, and lacks the sloping forehead that runs into the bill profile on the more common species. King eiders breed along Arctic coastlines, but most often on tundra lakes and pools far from the sea in freshwater habitats, in contrast to the common eider. However, the rest of the year is spent at sea, often in deeper waters well offshore, sometimes far from land. Like the common eider, this species feeds on molluscs and crustaceans, but the king eider more often takes echinoderms. Breeders in the Russian and Canadian/Alaskan Arctic undertake a molt migration; those from the Canadian population move to West Greenland, where they also winter. Elsewhere, the species winters in northeast North America, Alaska, Aleutian Islands, and Kamchatka, but is very rare inland. Rarely if ever colonial, king eiders breed alone in open tundra areas from June onward. The nest is usually of grass, lined with down, often very open; the 4–5 eggs are incubated for 22–24 days. Downy young are darkish brown above, white below, and are fledged at around 70 days.

There are no good estimates of the population size for this species. However, it is thought that there are some 200,000–250,000 in the western and central North American Arctic and perhaps 300,000 in the western Russian Arctic. There are suggestions of a 50% decline in numbers between 1976 and 1994 of the population that nests in western Arctic Canada and that molts and winters in the Bering Sea. The Inuit heavily hunt this species off West Greenland, where it has also become less numerous in recent years.

Spectacled Eider: Quageq (Yupik), Quvaasuk (Iñupiat); Somateria fischeri The adult male spectacled eider has a black chest and white back, a green head with a long, sloping forehead, and distinctive white eye patches. Young birds and females are brown with pale brown eye patches. Spectacled eiders nest in wet tundra near ponds on the Arctic coasts of Alaska between Pt Barrow and the Lower Kuskokwim River, and in northeastern Siberia. Nesting pairs arrive together each spring, but the males leave after egg incubation begins. In late summer, the females and young join the males at sea. Tagging of birds with satellite telemetry devices has located the wintering grounds in polynya in the Bering Sea, where they appear to be entirely marine in habit. This species lays 4–5 eggs and incubation lasts for approximately 24 days with a further 53 days taken to fledge the young. Drakes are able to mate when they are two years old. Current world population estimates put this species at between 200,000 and 400,000 individuals. It feeds chiefly on molluscs, but in summer, like all the eiders, consumes insect and insect larvae, arachnids, and even grass seeds. Recent declines of 94–98% in its breeding population in Alaska (mostly likely as a result of exposure to lead shot) led to the species’ listing as a Threatened Species in the United States, but the overall global conservation status of the species remains unknown. TONY FOX See also King Eider Further Reading Bellrose, F.C., Ducks, Geese and Swans of North America, Harrisburg: Stackpole, 1976 Cramp, S. & K.E.L. Simmons, The Birds of the Western Palearctic, Volume 1, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977 Del Hoyo, J., A. Elliot & J. Sartagal, Handbook of the Birds of the World. Volume 1, Ostrich to Ducks, Madrid: Lynx, 1992 Godfrey, W.E., The Birds of Canada (revised edition), Ottawa: National Museums of Canada, 1986 Grand, J.B., P.L. Flint, M.R. Petersen & C.L. Moran, “Effect of lead poisoning on spectacled eider survival rates.” Journal of Wildlife Management, 62(3) (1998): 1103–1109

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EIRÍK THE RED Hart Hanse, J.P. & H.C. Gulløv, “The Mummies from Qilakitsoq—Eskimos in the 15th Century.” Meddelelser om Grønland, Man and Society, 12 (1989): 1–199 Madge, S. & H. Burn, Wildfowl: An Identification Guide to the Ducks, Geese and Swans of the World, London: Helm, 1987 Palmer, R.S., Handbook of North American Birds, Volume 3, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1976 Petersen, M.R., W.W. Larned & D.C. Douglas, “At-sea distribution of spectacled eiders: a 120-year-old mystery resolved.” Auk, 116 (1999): 1009–1020 Reed, A. (editor), Eider Ducks in Canada, Canadian Wildlife Service Report Series Number 47, Ottawa: Canadian Wildlife Service

EIRÍK THE RED Eirík Thorvaldsson, often referred to as “Eirík the Red,” is a historical character known primarily from the Saga of Eirík the Red and the Saga of the Greenlanders. Both sagas were written in Iceland and date from the early 13th century. They tell the story of the settlement of Greenland from Iceland and the attempted colonization of the land they named Vinland. It is likely that these texts were written independently of each other and that both derive from oral narratives. Eirík is also mentioned in the Icelandic historical texts Íslendingabók (The Book of the Icelanders) and Landnámabók (The Book of Settlements) as well as in several others of the Sagas of Icelanders. According to the Saga of Eirík the Red, Eirík and his father left Jaeren in southwest Norway because they had been involved in slayings. They traveled to Iceland and took land on the Hornstrandir coast in the northwest and settled at Drangar. There Eirík’s father died. Eirík subsequently married a woman named Thjodhild. She and Eirík moved south and built a farm called Eiríksstadir by Vatnshorn in Haukadalur in the western part. Later, Eirík’s slaves caused a landslide to fall on the neighboring farm of Valthjof at Valthjofsstadir. In the ensuing squabble, Eirík killed two men. Eirík was then exiled from Haukadal. Leaving his home, he claimed the islands of Brokey and Oxney in nearby Breidafjord. He lived mainly on Oxney where he established another farm, also called Eiríksstadir. A further disagreement with neighbors led to more killings and another sentence of outlawry. This time he was banished from Iceland (at the time, a common form of punishment for such misdemeanors). It is noteworthy that in the historical Íslendingabók (c.1125), the author states that Eirík the Red hailed from Breidafjord. Thus, some 100 years or so before the Vinland Sagas, the personage of Eirík is documented. It is possible therefore that according to Íslendingabók, Eirík was in fact born in Iceland. This is the opinion of the Icelandic scholar Ólafur Halldórsson (2002).

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Regardless of where he was born, there seems little doubt regarding the event for which Eirík is most famous—the colonization of Greenland. The Saga of Eirík the Red describes the circumstances of his settlement of Greenland in some detail. After his sentence of outlawry was passed, it is stated that he intended to seek the land that the Icelander Gunnbjörn, the son of Ulf Crow, had seen when he was recently driven off course to the west. According to the narrative, Eirík states that if he finds this land he will return to his friends. It is written that they parted company with great warmth. Eirík sailed from Snaefellsnes in the west of Iceland and approached land in Greenland under the glacier that was named Hvítserk (“White shift”). From there, he sailed seeking land suitable for settlement. He spent the first winter on Eiríksey (“Eirík’s island”), near the middle of the Eastern Settlement (which would become the more populous of the two Norse settlements in Greenland—in fact located in the southwest). The following spring he traveled to Eiríksfjord, where he settled. That summer, he traveled around the then-uninhabited Western Settlement (the more northerly of the Norse settlements). The fourth summer after he had left Iceland, he returned there. The summer after that, he left Iceland to settle in Greenland. It is said that he gave the country he had discovered the name “Greenland,” because he said people would be attracted to go there if it had a favorable name. As the fjord areas of Greenland are indeed green, this name was not a misnomer. According to the source Landnámabók, 25 ships set out in a colonization attempt for Greenland from Breidafjord and Borgafjord in the west of Iceland, but only 14 reached their destination. Some were driven back, and some were wrecked. According to Íslendingabók, Greenland was settled around AD 985. The Saga of the Greenlanders resumes the account with Eirík well established in Greenland. He ran a farm called Brattahlid (“Steep slope”) in the so-called Eastern Settlement. He was held in the highest esteem, according to the narrative description, and everyone apparently deferred to his authority. He had three sons with his wife Thjodhild: Leif, Thorvald, and Thorstein. He also had a daughter, Freydis, with one of his slaves. According to the Saga of Eirík the Red, Thjodhild converted to Christianity and built a church. The saga also states that after her conversion, Thjodhild refused to sleep with the heathen Eirík, much to his displeasure. The Saga of Eirík the Red and the Saga of the Greenlanders are known collectively as the Vinland Sagas. As the name suggests, much of the material in the two texts is concerned with the discovery and exploration of the area named Vinland by the Norse and located somewhere on the northeastern seaboard of the continent of North America. Both writings state

ELDERS that Eirík the Red did not travel to Vinland. In the Saga of Eirík the Red, it is said that he was persuaded to join his son Thorstein on a voyage, a journey Eirík repeatedly resisted and then finally agreed to. After their boat was blown off course, they finally returned to Eiríksfjord. In the Saga of the Greenlanders, it is stated that Leif, Eirík’s son, asked his father to head an expedition to Vinland. Apparently Eirík was reluctant, saying that he was getting on in years. However, Leif convinced him and they set out on horseback. When they were almost at the ship, the horse Eirík was riding stumbled, and threw him, injuring his foot. He then declared to Leif that he felt he was not intended to find any other land than Greenland, and that this was the end of their traveling together. Both texts agree that it was Leif Eiríksson who was the first European to set foot in the New World. Eirík the Red appears to have been a complex character. The killings he performed suggest impulsive and ill-judged behavior, but it is also clear from the sagas that he was an adventurous and resourceful man who had many friends, and who became a respected leader in Greenland. Archaeological evidence from Iceland and Greenland corroborates many of the details described in the historical sources. Excavations in the area of the eastern settlement in Greenland have led to the discovery of many sites, which correspond to those mentioned in the Vinland Sagas. In Iceland, the site of Eiríksstadir in Haukadalur has recently been excavated, and a reconstruction of this farm, supposedly the birthplace of Leif Eiríksson, has been built. ASTRID E.J. OGILVIE See also Eriksson, Leif; Norse and Icelandic Sagas; Vinland Further Reading Barlow, L.K., J.P. Sadler, A.E.J. Ogilvie, P.C. Buckland, T. Amorosi, J.H. Ingimundarson, P. Skidmore, A.J. Dugmore & T.H. McGovern, “Interdisciplinary investigations of the end of the Norse Western Settlement in Greenland.” The Holocene, 7(4) (1997): 489–499 Bergthórsson, P., The Wineland Millennium, Reykjavík: Mál og Menning, 1997 Buckland, P.C., T. Amorosi, L.K. Barlow, A.J. Dugmore, P. Mayewski, T.H. McGovern, A.E.J. Ogilvie, J.P. Sadler & P. Skidmore, “Bioarchaeological and climatological evidence for the fate of Norse farmers in medieval Greenland.” Antiquity, 70 (1996): 88–96 Halldórsson, Ó., Grænland í Midaldaritum, Reykjavík: Sögufélag, 1978 Hreinson, V. (general editor), The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, Volumes I—V, Reykjavík: Leifur Eiríksson Publishing, 1997 Magnússon, M. & H. Pálsson, The Vinland Sagas. The Norse Discovery of America. Grænlendinga Saga and Eirik’s Saga, translated with an introduction by Magnús Magnússon and Hermann Pálsson, London: Penguin Books, 1965

Ogilvie, A.E.J., L.K. Barlow & A.E. Jennings, “North Atlantic Climate c.A.D. 1000: Millennial Reflections on the Viking Discoveries of Iceland, Greenland and North America.” In Approaches to Vínland, edited by Andrew Wawn & Thorunn Sigurdardóttir, Reykjavik: Sigurdal Nordal Institute, 2002 pp. 173–188 Ólafsson, G. Eiríksstadir, “The Farm of Eiríkr the Red.” In Approaches to Vínland, edited by Andrew Wawn & Thorunn Sigurdardóttir, Reykjavik: Sigurdal Nordal Institute, 2002 pp. 147–153 Wallace, B.L., “L’Anse aux Meadows. Gateway to Vinland.” In G.F. Bigelow (presentor): The Norse of the North Atlantic. Acta Archaeologica, 61-1990, Munksgaard, Copenhagen, 1991, pp. 166–197

ELDERS Historically and culturally speaking, no abstract or generalized milestones existed as a way to decide who assumed the role of an elder in Arctic societies. A person was considered an elder when he behaved in a manner similar to and following the cultural conventions of other elders and when he achieved sufficient experiences (such as having grandchildren). In the last decades of the 20th century, this situation has changed. In Nunavut, any Inuit born in 1948 or earlier (50 years or older in 1998) and registered under the claim can enter the Nunavut Elders’ Benefit Plan implemented in 1994. According to this plan, any person who turns 55 years of age is considered an elder and can receive some compensation in the form of a regular monetary supplement. In Arctic traditional societies, elders (innatuqait in the Eastern Arctic Inuktitut dialect)—similar to shamans and leaders—played a central role in preserving peace and settling conflicts within the camps. Elders corrected transgressors through counseling efforts. Elders were believed to possess powerful minds and powerful words that carried tremendous weight within communities. In case of any disagreement among families or any struggle for leadership, elders convened in order to talk to the persons causing the problem. Elders enjoyed great authority and played a crucial role in the culture’s namesake system as well as in arranging marriages. Young members of a community are taught to respect elders (who are considered wise) and never talk back to or ask questions. Elders who possessed great knowledge about hunting areas and were able to share food would likely become great leaders (angajuqqat, isumatait). This tendency increased with the contact between Inuit and EuroAmerican peoples, especially during the period of intensive fur trading. In the Iglulik area in the 1930s, for example, the elders Ittuksaarjuaq and Ataguttaaluk were so powerful that American and European whites referred to them as the King and the Queen of Iglulik. Conversely, in a few areas within the Arctic, when

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ELDERS elders lost their capabilities (usually due to age or illness), they would commit suicide (Kjellström, 1974–1975). Danish explorer and ethnographer Knud Rasmussen’s reports of the hanging of Qalasiq in Igluligaarjuk (Chesterfield Inlet) illustrate this practice. Within present-day Inuit societies, even when community members acknowledge that the mind of an elder is strong and vital and hence worthy of respect, the elders’ position within Inuit societies had changed. When a person does something that hurts an elder, Inuit still believe that misfortune will befall that person, although elders are no longer serving as counselors or leaders. The effects, in part, of a standardized education system—in which children are taught in English and taught to ask questions—have led to the marginalization of elders, who often feel less respected and valued by the younger generations. Elders often perceive that youth no longer use correct kinship terms and regret that the children often do not accept elders’ knowledge and experience. Among community members dedicated to passing on Inuit perspectives and traditions however, elders remain a vital part of the community and are still solicited to share oral traditions, knowledge, and wisdom. Throughout the Arctic, local elders are hence involved in the educational system. In Alaska, elders function as essential resources for educators. Many Yup’ik elders are reevaluating the historical role of shamanism by participating in school programs, camps, and museum exhibitions devoted to education and culture (Fienup-Riordan, 1996; Meade and FienupRiordan, 1996). Researchers have documented the same pattern in Canada. The Inuit emphasize that anybody who wanted to learn had only to sit and listen to an elder speak. Canadian elders are not only credited with the power of foresight, but listening to an elder is believed to be the best guarantee for a long life. Revered primarily because they have lived extensively, elders are said to have gained knowledge in turn from their own elders (uqaujjuusiat), who are recognized for their skills, wisdom, and story-telling abilities. In present-day Greenland, elders are also asked to contribute as much as possible to preserve Inuit culture. Working with local schools and youth groups, elders teach land-based skills such as hunting and survival techniques. In many places, other topics that elders teach include skin preparation and sewing, tool making, traditional navigation, drum making, song composition, and Inuktitut (writing of the Inuit language). The Avataq Cultural Institute in Nunavik has organized the Inuit Elders Conference since 1981 with the aim of allowing elders to share their concerns, ideas, and beliefs regarding the preservation of Inuit culture, language, and heritage. Originally, the conferences were held annually, but since 1988 they have been held

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every two years. The Inuit Cultural Institute, Rankin Inlet, Northwest Territories, has developed a similar project. In Nunavut, even when some of the elders’ views are controversial, they are deeply involved in justice initiatives and committees, especially regarding the treatment of young offenders. Through the recent policy of Inuit qaujimajatuqangit (long-standing knowledge that is still meaningful and useful today), elders share their knowledge in order to preserve the Inuit perspective adapting it to modern conditions. In Igloolik, the oral tradition project sponsored by the Inullariit Elder’s Society was so successful that the society received the 1998 Northern Science Award from the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, Canada. In Iqaluit, the Pairijait Tigummivik Society funded a series of textbooks devoted to the Inuit elders’ perspectives on various topics, including traditional law, health, etc. In this case, elders never presented what Westerners might term “traditional knowledge” as an objective or fixed body of knowledge. Iqaluit elders’ instruction is subjective, rooted in practice and personal experience, and directed to the future. The elders intended to impart perspectives to the young generation that would better equip them to face ongoing and changing social challenges. The elders not only instructed the young about practices and customs that existed in the past; they connected their descriptions of these practices to their own views of modern society and current mores and values. The students’ subsequent inquiries clearly triggered the memory of the elders, who hence concluded that this type of engagement (questions and answers) has continued to provide fruitful and rewarding results in aiding elders to keep their memories, histories, and traditions alive. FRÉDÉRIC LAUGRAND See also Education; Naming; Shamanism Further Reading Avataq Cultural Institute, Nunavik Elders Conferences, 6 volumes, Kangirsuk (1981), Povungituk (1982), Kangirsujuaq (1983), Quaqtaq (1988), Tasiujaq (1996), Aupaluk (1998), Montreal: Avataq Cultural Institute Fienup-Riordan, Ann, The Living Tradition of Yup’ik Masks, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996 Interviewing Inuit Elders series, 5 volumes: Volume 1, Introduction (edited by J. Oosten & F. Laugrand, 1999); Volume 2, Perspectives on Traditional Law (edited by J. Oosten, F. Laugrand & W. Rasing, 1999); Volume 3, Childrearing Practices (edited by J. Briggs, 2000); Volume 4, Cosmology and Shamanism (edited by B. Saladin d’Anglure, 2001); Volume 5, Perspectives on Traditional Health (edited by M. Therrien & F. Laugrand, 2001), Iqaluit: Nortext Inuit Cultural Institute, Elder’s Conference Reports, Arviligjuaq (1983); Kangiqtiniq (1984); Sanirajak (1986), Eskimo Point, Northwest Territoires: Inuit Cultural Institute Kjellström, Rolf, “Senilicide and invalidicide among the Eskimos.” Folk, 16–17, (1974–1975): p. 117–124

ELLESMERE ISLAND Meade, Marie & Ann Fienup-Riordan, Agayuliyararput, Keeginaqut, Kangiit-llu: Our Way of Making Prayer, Yup’ik Masks and the Stories They Tell, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996

ELLEF RINGNES ISLAND Ellef Ringnes Island is part of the upper tier of the islands of Arctic Canada that comprise an area of approximately 200,000 km2 (77,000 sq mi) and include, among others, Amund Ringnes and Axel Heiberg islands. The area is part of Nunavut Territory, and Ellef Ringnes Island is situated midway between Axel Heiberg and Melville islands. Ellef Rignes Island is located between 77° and 79° N and 118° and 120° W. Its area measures 11,295 km2 (4361 sq mi). The island is elongated in shape with a number of bays and fjords. In geological time, the island only recently emerged from the sea and is still rising. Ellef Ringnes is the larger, western of the two Ringnes islands. Lowlands stretch to the north and south, while a plateau rises in its center. This 240-m plateau is formed by volcanic rock and is dissected by wide river valleys. In the north, the relief is about 60 m above sea level, ending in sand flats along the northern coast. South of the plateau, the topography is similar to the north, but higher at 120 m above sea level. Geographically low (under 1000 ft), Ellef Ringnes features a flat shoreline. Two remarkable salt domes as well as a few small rivers (but no lakes) are located on the island. The climate is Arctic. The island has no ice cover. To the west, Borden Island and Mackenzie King Island separate Ellef Ringnes Island by way of Prince Gustaf Adolf Sea; in the southwest, Maclean Strait separates the island from Lougheed Island; in the south, the Danish Strait separates it from King Christian Island. In the east, Hassel Sound separates the island from Amund Ringnes Island; in the northeast, Peary Channel separates Ellef Ringnes from Meighen Island. Fauna include Arctic hares, ice bears, and wolves. A number of birds, including ivory gulls, raven, rock ptarmigan, and the swift gyrfalcon, thrive on Ellef Ringnes. Abundant marine mammals include seals and walrus. Common fish species in the area include Greenland cod and char. Plant life, however, is scanty: only sedges, mosses, and tiny flowering plants exist on the island. The only human settlement is Isachsen High Arctic Weather Station in Cape Isachsen on Deer Bay, which was established in 1948. The station was set up by aircraft from Resolute landing on the sea ice. Cartographer Gunerius Ingvald Isachsen (1868– 1939) discovered Ellef Ringnes Island in 1900. Originally an officer in the Norwegian Army, Isachsen

was, from 1923 to his death, director of the Norwegian Naval Museum in Oslo. Isachsen sailed as a member of the Norwegian Sverdrup expedition on Otto Sverdrup’s polar vessel Fram in 1898–1902. During the expedition’s four years, Sverdrup and his team explored a great deal of land (over 160,000 km2 chartered and named), including Ellef Ringnes Island. In 1876, the island was named Ellef Ringnes after one of the founders of the Norwegian Ringnes Brewery. Ellef Ringnes (1842–1929), along with his brother Amund Ringnes (1842–1929) and the businessman Axel Heiberg, financed the Norwegian Sverdrup expedition. The North Magnetic Pole is currently located at about 82º N 112º W (2003), a location northwest of Ellef Ringnes Island. The Canadian Polar Continental Shelf Project (PCSP, founded in 1958) manifested an early interest in Ellef Ringnes Island. As a means of studying the Canadian Arctic Archipelago in depth, the PCSP began work to establish a navigation system in 1959, and the first full-scale field season commenced the following year based out of the Joint Arctic Weather Station at Isachsen, Ellef Ringnes Island. BERTIL HAGGMAN See also Amund Ringnes Island; Axel Heiberg Island; Nunavut Further Reading Foster, Michael & Carol Marino, The Polar Shelf: The Saga of Canada’s Arctic Scientists, Toronto: NC Press Ltd. 1986 Herrington, Clyde, Atlas of the Canadian Arctic Islands, Vancouver: Shultoncraft Publishing Ltd, 1969 Mowat Farley, Canada North Now, Toronto: McLelland and Stewart, 1976 Søvik, G. & L.R. Hole, Der isen aldri går—Et år i Otto Sverdrups rike, Bergen: Mangschou, 2001

ELLESMERE ISLAND Ellesmere Island is the most northerly island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Extending from approximately 76º to 83º N, it is also the most northerly landmass in the world, with the sole exception of the northern tip of neighboring Greenland. The island’s northern coasts are less than 800 km (450 miles) from the North Pole. The island’s extreme northernness has defined the parameters of much of its natural and human history in all periods, including the present. Ellesmere Island, part of Nunavut territory, is bounded by the Arctic Ocean to the north, Nares Strait and Greenland to the east, Devon Island to the south, and Axel Heiberg Island to the southwest. With a surface area of 213,000 km², Ellesmere Island is only slightly smaller than Great Britain. In broad outline,

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ELLESMERE ISLAND

Macdonald River delta, Ellesmere National Park, Nunavut, Canada. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

the island is a mountainous mass of rocky terrain, incised by fjords and channels extending far into the heart of the island. The island possesses both the highest and the longest alpine ranges in eastern North America (highest point, Barbeau Peak, 2616 m), and is also the site of the largest ice caps in Canada (Agassiz Ice Cap and Grant Land Ice Cap); its glaciers cover a total area of 83,000 km2 or 40% of its surface area, and comprise more than half the total ice cover of the Arctic Islands. Characterized by very cold winters and cool, brief summers, Ellesmere Island’s climate is characterized by extremes. Conditions are particularly severe in the interior regions, where temperatures of −56°C (−70°F) or lower have been recorded in the winter. Nevertheless, 24-h daylight during the summer raises daytime temperatures above freezing, causing water to flow from the ice caps and fostering plant growth in the valleys and lowlands. Annual precipitation is extremely low (60 mm in the north). The physiography of Ellesmere Island is the product of complex geological processes operating over millions of years. These processes have been varied, including folding, uplift, volcanic activity, and sedimentary deposits, resulting in a complex collection of landforms. Overall, the landmasses of the Arctic Archipelago have been shaped by two periods of uplift: (i) before the Pleistocene era and characterized by faulting, during which the overall character of the islands was established, and (ii) a later period of uplift probably related to isostatic rebound after the partial melting of the great ice caps following the last Ice Age. One notable exception to the generally mountainous terrain is the Hazen Plateau, a large table land in the northern part of the island. Its outstanding physical

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feature is Lake Hazen, a huge freshwater lake located in a trough along the southeastern flank of the Garfield Mountains. Approximately 80 km in length and between 5 and 13 km in width, it is the largest lake in the world north of the Arctic Circle. The lake is drained by the Ruggles River, which flows into the ocean to the southeast. Protected by the United States Mountains from the brunt of cold winds from the Arctic Ocean, this region is an “Arctic oasis” or an area of extensive vegetative growth during the short summers. Here, plant species such as Arctic willow (Salix arctica), water sedge (Carex aquatilis), and purple saxifrage (Saxifraga oppositifolia) support resident populations of muskoxen (Ovibos moschatus), Peary caribou (Rangifer tarandus pearyi), wolves, and other species of mammals. The earliest evidence of human occupation on Ellesmere Island is represented in archaeological sites of the Arctic Small Tool Tradition, from the Independence I culture, c.4400–4000 years before present (BP), to the late Dorset people to c.1000 BP. Members of the Thule culture, forerunners of the Inuit, arrived c.900 BP. Following the onset of the Little Ice Age c.AD 1400, they largely withdrew from the High Arctic, although brief forays into northern Ellesmere Island continued until c.AD 1700. In the 1850s, Qitlaq (Qillarsuaq), a shaman from Baffin Island, led a party of Inuit on a journey that skirted Ellesmere’s southeastern coasts and ended in northwestern Greenland. Prior to contact, Inuit from the Arctic Archipelago and Inughuit from Greenland called the island Umingmak Nuna, meaning “Muskox Land.” Allowing the possibility that Norse traders visited the area c.800 BP, the first European explorers to view the island were probably William Baffin and Robert

ELLIS, HENRY Bylot in 1616. During the Race for the Pole, c.1818–1940, Ellesmere Island was a focal point of a series of expeditions by British, American, and Norwegian explorers. In 1852, Commander E.A. Inglefield sailed to northern Baffin Bay and named the island after the Earl of Ellesmere, the vice president of the Royal Geographical Society. In 1875–1876, the British Arctic expedition under Captain George S. Nares wintered in northern Ellesmere Island, as did the US Army’s Lady Franklin Bay Expedition in 1881–1884, led by Adolphus Greely. Between 1898 and 1902, the American Robert Peary staged three North Polar expeditions that wintered on the island and crisscrossed its interior in search of game animals. Britain transferred Ellesmere Island, along with the other islands of the Queen Elizabeth Archipelago, to Canada in 1880. After 1900, expeditions led by A.P. Low (1903) and Captain Joseph Bernier (1906–1910) asserted Canadian sovereignty over the region. Between 1922 and 1940, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police established detachments at Craig Harbour (1922–1926; 1933–1940) and Bache Peninsula (1927–1932), from which it carried out extensive patrols by dog team over much of the High Arctic. Between 1951 and 1974, the Defence Research Board coordinated a major interdisciplinary program of High Arctic science from bases in northern Ellesmere Island. In the late 1940s, Canada and the United States established joint weather stations in the High Arctic, beginning with Eureka on Slidre Fjord in west-central Ellesmere Island in 1947, followed by Alert, on the island’s northeastern tip, at 82° 30′N, in 1950. Alert was subsequently developed into a military base during the Cold War, although its operations were significantly scaled back by 1998. In 1953, the government of Canada relocated several families of Inuit from the eastern coast of Hudson Bay and northern Baffin Island to Craig Harbour on the southeastern coast of Ellesmere Island. Moving again in 1956 to Grise Fjord (76°25′N), about 60 km to the west, this community has persisted for half a century as Canada’s most northerly permanent settlement; its population was 160 in 1999. Inuit have given this community the name Aujuittuq or Ausuittuq, meaning “the place that never thaws.” More than one-fifth of the island is protected. In 1988, in the most northerly part of the island, the government of Canada established Ellesmere Island National Park Reserve, the forerunner of Quttinirpaaq National Park of Canada, the country’s second largest national park. LYLE DICK See also Alert; Grise Fjord; Ice Shelves; Hazen Lake; National Parks and Protected Areas: Canada; Nunavut; Qillarsuaq; Race to the North Pole

Further Reading Dick, Lyle, Muskox Land: Ellesmere Island in the Age of Contact, Calgary, Alberta: University of Calgary Press, 2001 Dunbar, Moira & Keith R. Greenaway, Arctic Canada from the Air, Ottawa: Defence Research Board, 1956 Freeman, M.M.R., “Adaptive innovation among recent Eskimo immigrants in the eastern Canadian Arctic.” Polar Record, 14(93) (1969): 769–781 Hattersley-Smith, Geoffrey, North of Latitude Eighty: The Defence Research Board in Ellesmere Island, Ottawa: The Defence Research Board, 1974 Mary-Rousselière, Guy, Qitdlarssuaq: l’histoire d’une migration polaire, Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1980 Riewe, R.R., “The Utilization of Wildlife in the Jones Sound Region by the Grise Fjord Inuit.” In Truelove Lowland, Devon Island, Canada: A High Arctic Ecosystem, edited by L.C. Bliss, Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1977, pp. 623–644 Schledermann, Peter, Crossroads to Greenland; 3000 Years of Prehistory in the Eastern High Arctic, Calgary: The Arctic Institute of North America, 1990 Tester, Frank James & Peter Kulchyski, Tammarniit (Mistakes): Inuit Relocation in the Eastern Arctic, 1939–63, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1994 Trettin, H.P., Precarboniferous Geology of the Northern Part of the Arctic Islands: Hazen Fold Belt and Adjacent Parts of Central Ellesmere Fold Belt, Ellesmere Island, Ottawa: Geological Survey of Canada, 1994

ELLIS, HENRY Henry Ellis spent most of his life traveling and writing books. Most remarkable was his participation in the expedition to Hudson Bay in 1746–1747 and his report published the following year. This expedition to the Canadian Arctic was financed privately by selling shares in the venture. A committee of English merchants was responsible for all the planning and organizing. The two expedition ships, the Dobbs Galley and the California, were under the command of Captain William Moore and Captain Francis Smith, and in May 1746 the expedition was ready to depart. Ellis, who can also be found among the list of subscribers, joined the expedition at the very last minute. He was in Italy when the expedition was outfitted and he first came on board the Dobbs Galley when the ships anchored at Gravesend on May 10. In his own words, Ellis was hired within 18 h as “Agent for the Proprietors,” representing the merchants’ interests throughout the voyage. He had to “make exact Draughts of all the new-discovered Countries, the Bearings and Distance of Head-Lands,” to “mark the Soundings, Rocks, and Shoals upon the Coasts,” assist in “determining the several Circumstances attending Tides, such as their Time, Height, Force, Direction, etc.,” “to examine the saltiness of the Water,” “to observe the Variation of the

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ELLIS, HENRY Compass” and “the different Natures of the Soil,” and to collect “Metals, Minerals, and all kinds of Natural Curiosities” (Ellis, 1748). In order to be able to fulfill these many tasks, one can only assume that Ellis had had some training in cartography, drafting, and hydrography before he left England. The expedition’s main task was to find the North West Passage or at least to solve this geographical problem, but like so many other expeditions they had to return without having found the passage or its entrance. Since Martin Frobisher’s three expeditions in 1576, 1577, and 1578 to what later became Frobisher Bay, numerous expeditions searched for this shorter passage over Arctic waters to the treasures of Asia. In Ellis’s time, a new dispute arose between Arthur Dobbs and Captain Middleton as to whether or not there was access to the North West Passage along the west coast of Hudson Bay. In July 1746, the expedition entered Hudson Strait where the first “Esquimaux Indians” (Ellis, 1748) came on board to trade. In early August, they doubled Digges Island at the entrance of Hudson Bay, then passed Mansel Island and Southampton Island, to explore the western shore of Hudson Bay around Marble Island before they turned southward to winter in the Hayes River. Close to York Fort, they built their winter quarters. During the winter they had few contacts with Cree Indians, whom Ellis described in his book. At Hayes River they experienced a severe winter, losing several men due to scurvy. The next June they were ready to continue their discovery and went northward again. They made it to Cape Churchill and Centry Island before they started to examine the coastline around Whale Cove, Corbett Island, Rankin Inlet, Marble Island, Chesterfield Inlet, and Cape Fullerton until Wager Bay. Several times they went ashore and traded with local Inuit. On August 19, they decided to go back to England, where they arrived on October 14, 1747. In 1748, a year after their return, Ellis published his description of the land and its people at H. Whitridge in London. The same year the clerk of the California, Theodore Swaine Charles Drage, also published his own account of the voyage. Drage’s book only includes one engraving of an Inuk in his kayak, but Ellis’s original report was richly illustrated with two maps and nine copperplate engravings depicting the Arctic landscape, the animals, and Inuit involved in everyday activities such as fire drilling, sealing, and kayaking. Even though Drage’s book supplements Ellis’s observations, because several times they searched in two separate groups, it never received the same attention as Ellis’s report. Ellis’s book was reprinted several times and was translated into several languages. In 1748, the English edition was reprinted in Ghent, in 1750 a German edi-

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tion was published in Göttingen, and a French one was printed in Leiden. Therefore, Ellis’s report must have reached a large circle of readers in Europe, and one can state without exaggeration that in the 18th century, Ellis’s book, together with Hans Egede’s Perlustration and Cranz’s Historie, belonged to the standard literature about the Eastern Arctic and its inhabitants. Ellis’s book was essential for anyone interested in this field, and later generations of authors still use it as an important source. In his report, Ellis attempted exhaustive descriptions of the “Esquimaux Indians” (Ellis, 1748) they had encountered on several occasions. He especially admired the kayak, described their warm fur clothing, the different hunting equipment, their winter and summer dwellings, and also their physical features. Ellis’s illustrations and descriptions also clearly point out the differences between the Inuit they met at the entrance of Hudson Strait (Southern Baffinland Inuit) and the Inuit they met at the western shores of Hudson Bay including the inhabitants on Wager Bay (most likely different groups of Caribou Inuit and Iglulik Inuit). All in all, like many other early authors, Ellis drew a picturesque and not always completely accurate picture of the Inuit way of life in his report. As with many other European authors, Ellis was fascinated by the ability of the Inuit to survive in the harsh Arctic environments. By contrast, he was convinced of their uncivilized, inferior nature. Ellis also did not forget the mercantile interests that led to the expedition. He suggested a more efficient exploitation of the Inuit for England’s growing whaling and sealing industry by providing English weapons to the natives, whom he described as “a very harmless and inoffensive people” (Ellis, 1748) and by employing them in the enterprise.

Biography Born in Ireland on August 29, 1721, Henry Ellis was educated to the law at the Temple, London. Very little is known about his life. After his Hudson Bay expedition, he served as governor of the American colony of Georgia in 1758, but returned to England in November 1760, after which he traveled extensively in Europe. From 1761 to 1763, he was the appointed governor of Nova Scotia (Canada), but he never took up the post. Elllis died on January 21, 1806 in Naples. VERENA TRAEGER See also Crantz, David Further Reading Cashwin, Edward J., Governor Henry Ellis and the Transformation of British North America, Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1994

ELLSWORTH, LINCOLN Drage, Theodore S., An Account of a Voyage for the Discovery of the North-West Passage by Hudson’s Straits, 2 volumes, London: Joliffe, 1748 Ellis, Henry, A Voyage to Hudson’s Bay by the Dobbs Galley and California in the Years 1746 and 1747, for Discovering a North West Passage; with an Accurate Survey of the Coast, and a Short Natural History of the Country. Together with a Fair View of Facts and Arguments from Which the Future Finding of Such a Passage is Rendered Probable, London: H. Whitridge, 1748 (reprinted 1967, S.R. Publishers, East Ardsley, UK) Pepall, Rosalind, “Images of the Inuit in the eighteenth century.” Journal of Canadian Art History, (1980) 5(1): 5–17

ELLSWORTH, LINCOLN Lincoln Ellsworth’s lifelong ambition was to explore the polar regions. Even though a family friend described him as a “reticent, imaginative boy, not nearly so vigorous as many of his schoolmates, and physically not as well equipped as they to lead a rigorous life,” his sister Clare Ellsworth Prentice nonetheless declared that her brother “couldn’t stand civilization…Since he was a child he…wanted to be out under the sky finding something which nobody ever found before” (Ellsworth, 1932: xii). As a boy of ten, Ellsworth dreamed of voyaging to the moon in an airship, a remarkable prophecy in light of his flight over the lunar landscape of the North Pole on board the airship Norge in 1926. The son of a wealthy American coal mining baron, Ellsworth struggled for the first half of his life to gain financial support for his planned polar expeditions from his extremely reticent father. Failing that, Ellsworth’s early life was a succession of learning experiences he believed essential to his ultimate goal of exploring the polar regions. Trained as a surveyor and engineer in railroad building, Ellsworth worked in these fields in Northwest Canada from 1903 to 1908. After a winter studying surveying and astronomy at the Royal Geographical Society in London, Ellsworth spent three years as a field assistant studying North American animal distributions for the US Biological Survey. A military stint in France at the age of 37 led to his certification as a pilot. In 1924, Ellsworth led a Johns Hopkins University geological survey of the Andes. Ellsworth’s repeated attempts to explore the polar landscape were frustrated both by circumstance and the reluctance of his father to offer financial support. In 1925, he met the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who was then on a lecture tour of the United States, and after much anguish Ellsworth’s father agreed to provide $85,000 to support Amundsen’s proposed flight to the North Pole. In two Dornier-Wal flying boats named N24 and N25,

Ellsworth, along with Amundsen and four other Norwegians, left Kings Bay, Svalbard, on May 21, 1925, and flew north until they were forced down at 87°44′. During the 25 days they were trapped, the expedition sounded the Polar Sea and found it to be 3750 m (12,375 ft) deep. Ellsworth’s calm rescue of the two Norwegians in his aircraft after they had fallen into the icy water proved the value of his long apprenticeship. After clearing a runway along an open lead in the ice, the six men boarded the N25 on June 15 and were able to reach northern Svalbard, where they were rescued by a sealer. After his initiation into the Arctic in 1925, Ellsworth invested the next 15 years of his life in polar exploration. In 1926, Ellsworth again joined Amundsen and the Italian airshipman Umberto Nobile as they flew in the dirigible Norge from Kings Bay over the North Pole to Alaska. This dramatic aerial triumph was the first crossing of the North Polar Basin, a voyage of 5463 km (3393 miles). In 1931, Ellsworth supported Sir Hubert Wilkins and acted as Director of Scientific Research for Wilkins’s failed attempt to reach the North Pole in the submarine Nautilus. Later in that same summer, Hugo Eckener invited Ellsworth to serve as Arctic expert on the 136-h exploration of Franz Josef Land, Nicholas II Land, the Taymyr Peninsula, and Novaya Zemlya by the German airship Graf Zeppelin. From an altitude of 150 m, the airship surveyed Cape Flora, descended off Hooker Island to meet with the Russian icebreaker Malygin (with the exiled Umberto Nobile on board), flew east to survey the southwest coast of Nicholas II Land, and mapped Lake Taymyr. With these Arctic experiences behind him, Ellsworth turned his energies and resources to the exploration of Antarctica. In 1935, at the age of 55, Ellsworth became the first explorer to have flown over both poles when he and Canadian pilot Herbert Hollick-Kenyon crossed the entire continent of Antarctica in a Northrup Gamma named Polar Star. The area they explored is now known as Ellsworth Land and Marie Byrd Land. On his final visit to the Antarctic, Ellsworth discovered two uncharted mountain ranges dubbed the American Highland, on the Indian Ocean coast. These expeditions to the south led Ellsworth to claim 380,000 square miles of Antarctica for the United States.

Biography Lincoln Ellsworth was born in Chicago, Illinois, on May 12, 1880, to James W. and Eva Frances (Butler) Ellsworth. His boyhood was spent in Hudson, Ohio, where he attended a preparatory school called Western

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EMPETRUM HEATHS Reserve Academy. He studied engineering, surveying, and mining at Yale, Columbia, and McGill universities in preparation for a life in exploration. His books about his polar expeditions include Our Polar Flight (1925) and First Crossing of the Polar Sea (1927), both coauthored with Roald Amundsen. Later works included Search (1932), Exploring Today (1935), and Beyond Horizons (1938). He died in New York City on May 26, 1951, and is buried with his wife Mary Louise in the family plot in Hudson, Ohio. P.J. CAPELOTTI Further Reading Ellsworth, Lincoln, Air Pioneering in the Arctic, New York: National Americana Society, 1929 ——— The First Crossing of Antarctica, Washington: Offprint from the Smithsonian Report for 1937 (Publication 3463), 1938, pp. 307–321 ——— “My four antarctic expeditions.” National Geographic Magazine, LXXVI(1) (July 1939) Kershner, Howard Eldred (editor), The Ellsworth Family (in 2 volumes): Volume I, James William Ellsworth (His Life and Ancestry); Volume II, Lincoln Ellsworth (Explorer), New York: National Americana Society, 1930 and 1931 Olsen, Magnus L., Saga of the White Horizon, Lymington, Hampshire, UK: Nautical Publishing Company Limited, 1972

EMPETRUM HEATHS Empetrum heath is a circumpolar Arctic-alpine vegetation type dominated by species of the genus Empetrum (crowberry). Empetrum heaths are a wideranging vegetation type in the Sub- and Low Arctic. They occur in small to mid-sized patches on welldrained soils of plains and upland areas. The word Empetrum is from the Greek en petros, meaning “on rock,” referring to the common Arctic and alpine habitat. Plants of the genus Empetrum can be found growing on moist, acidic peat, gravel, or sand, often in dense mats. It is also occasionally abundant on sandy or gravely upper beaches and coastal dune fields. In these unstable habitats, where the substrate is continually being removed by the wind, Empetrum can form hummocks by accumulating sandy material. In alpine areas of northern Scandinavia, it is prevalently found on windy peaks with scarce and short-term snow cover. Empetrum is also common in bogs (see Peatland and Bogs) throughout the boreal forest and in other alpine areas of temperate biomes. Empetrum (crowberry, black crowberry, curlewberry, blackberry, Paungait (Inuktitut), Paarnaqutit (Greenlandic)) is classified in the division Magnoliophyta, class Magnoliopsida, order Ericales, family Empetraceae. There are two recognized subspecies of crowberry, both having a circumpolar dis-

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tribution: Empetrum nigrum subsp. hermaphroditum (Lange. ex Hagerup) D. Löve and E. nigrum subsp. nigrum. Many other synonyms are cited, but these usually refer to one of these subspecies. Empetrum nigrum subsp. hermaphroditum (hybrid or bisexual) can reach 15 cm in height and has long, creeping branches. The needlelike, 2–5 mm long leaves are up to 3 times as long as they are wide and deeply grooved on their underside. E. nigrum subsp. nigrum can be distinguished by its longer leaves, usually 3 to 5 times as long as wide. The inconspicuous, solitary flowers of both species vary from pink to purple and are seldom noticed. Flowering occurs in early spring, as soon as the snow melts. The juicy black berries of Empetrum persist on the branches all winter and are edible and relished by birds and mammals. They are also a favored food source for the Inuit. Although the taste is somewhat insipid, it tends to improve upon freezing. In former times, the berries of Empetrum were preserved in seal oil by some Inuit groups and stored for the winter months. Medicinal uses by native people include making a tea from the boiled plant to treat illnesses such as digestive problems and tuberculosis. Empetrum is known to have chemical substances in the leaves, which inhibit germination and growth of other competing plants. They also contain toxins that render the leaves of crowberry plants unpalatable for herbivores such as caribou. Crowberry has been broadly successful at naturally colonizing borrow pits in tundra regions of Northwest Canada and may be of use in managed reclamation projects. JÖRG TEWS See also Dwarf-Shrub Heaths Further Reading Burt, Page, Barrenland Beauties: Showy Plants of the Canadian Arctic, Yellowknife: Outcrop Ltd., 2000 Nilsson, M.-C., “Separation of allelopathy and resource competition by the boreal dwarf shrub Empetrum hermaphroditum Hagerup.” Oecologia, 98 (1994): 1–7

ENCYCLOPAEDIA ARCTICA In July 1946, noted Arctic explorer and author Vilhjalmur Stefansson proposed to the United States Navy’s Office of Naval Research that he prepare a comprehensive encyclopedia of the Arctic regions to be titled the Encyclopaedia Arctica. The formal proposal for the text, a brief three pages with a five-page appendix, suggested a regional approach with encyclopedic coverage of the entire Arctic with some emphasis on the Subarctic. Ten staff, including Stefansson, would write between four and six million

ENCYCLOPAEDIA ARCTICA words in three years on topics ranging from aviation to zoology, to include anthropology, biography, geology, botany, clothing, diet, navigation, and warfare. While the permanent staff would do much of the research and writing, Stefansson also proposed using scientists and scholars from throughout the world to prepare essays for inclusion in the encyclopedia. Stefansson planned to print 50 copies of the encyclopedia. At the outset of the project, it was not clear whether it would be possible to publish the results commercially; this issue would arise later. Stefansson envisioned the project as a three-year endeavor and requested funding of $61,000 for the first year and approximately $40,000 for each of the two succeeding years. In a 1948 report to the Office of Naval Research, Stefansson noted that many essays had been completed and over 900,000 words of the projected 5,000,000 words were completed. Most of the biographical essays were complete. A large portion of the geographical material was also completed. What remains unclear from this report is how Stefansson planned to obtain materials relating to the Soviet Arctic. This issue would arise in later reports and would create an inherent problem that would eventually halt the project. Stefansson requested an additional year of funding in 1949 at the $75,000 level. He received no response from the Office of Naval Research until November, when the office informed Stefansson that the project was to be closed within the year and that only $25,000 would be appropriated for this final effort. The Navy gave no reason for its decision, although historians have speculated about the Office of Naval Research’s reasoning. At that point in 1950, the encyclopedia project was over a year behind schedule and no firm evidence suggested that a fully funded additional year—for Stefansson was now projecting completion in 1953—would bring the project closer to a finish. The second, more probable possibility was simply that Stefansson and his mission were caught up in the miasma of postwar McCarthyism in the United States. Despite the fact that Stefansson had acted as a military advisor to the United States government, studied the defense of Alaska, and wrote reports and manuals for the armed forces, the government rejected his plans for the encyclopedia. The Office of Naval Research likely feared that the sponsorship of such an international project would raise suspicions within the anti-Soviet climate of the Cold War era. Stefansson had been known to liaise with Soviet scholars and the Soviet military. He had befriended American author and educator Owen Lattimore, who in 1950 was accused by Senator Joseph McCarthy of being the Soviet Union’s top espionage agent in the United States. However, a subsequent investigation cleared him of the charges. Such connections were enough in such a climate of

fear to encourage the Navy to disassociate itself from Stefansson and his project. What had begun as a tool for the Navy and other researchers to understand the importance of the Arctic geographically, historically, and politically, ended victim to Cold War ideology. Stefansson’s project, along with many others in the United States and abroad, was halted or hampered by postwar politics. Plans were immediately made to continue the work and to publish the Encyclopaedia Arctica commercially. Stefansson also approached the Ford Foundation for support. Then Johns Hopkins University Press announced that they would publish the first four volumes in 1951, with four volumes to follow in each succeeding year through 1955. This never happened. Other presses were also interested in the project and some authors wished to publish their contributions separately. Stefansson agreed to the latter, as long as credit was given to the encyclopedia project. One of the most complete statements on the project was drafted in 1953, outlining the history and present status of the project. It was clear at that time that little more was going to be done without financial support from outside sources. In an interview with Finn Bronner five years later, Stefansson noted that the manuscript had been bound, but had never been fully published. The nearly 5 million words of text remained in this state until 1974 when a microfilm of the entire encyclopedia was made available. In its final typescript form, the Encyclopaedia Arctica, consists of 17 volumes, over 20,000 pages, divided into the following general topics: Geology, Permafrost Engineering, Effects of Extreme Cold on Materials, Zoology, Plant Sciences, Meteorology and Oceanography, Anthropology and Archaeology, Transportation and Communications, the Soviet North, Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Svalbard, Biography, and Miscellaneous. When the project was abandoned in the early 1950s, the encyclopedia represented the most complete, up-to-date reference tool available on the Arctic regions. The manuscript with all attending correspondence, drafts of essays, and the administrative records have resided as of 1951 in the Stefansson Collection in the Rauner Special Collections Library at Dartmouth College (Hanover, New Hampshire) along with Stefansson’s own papers and library. PHILIP N. CRONENWETT See also Stefansson, Vilhjalmur Further Reading Cronenwett, Philip, “The Encyclopedia Arctica: A Gateway Opened, a Gateway Closed.” In Gateways: Archives and Libraries into the Next Millennium, Proceedings of the 18th

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ENERGY BALANCE Polar Libraries Colloquy, Winnipeg: Polar Libraries Colloquy, 2000 “Encyclopedia Arctica.” New Yorker (February 26, 1949), pp. 20–21 Shelesnyak, M.C., “Encyclopedia Arctica.” Monthly Research Report of the Office of Naval Research, June 1, 1949 Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, “Encyclopedia Arctica.” Arctic, 1(1) (spring 1948): 44–46 ———, Discovery, the Autobiography of Vilhjalmur Stefansson, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964 ——— editor), Encyclopedia Arctica, sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, Department of the Navy, 27 microfilm reels, Ann Arbor, Michigan: Xerox University Microfilms, 1974

ENERGY BALANCE The energy balance of any object, be it a small piece of ice floating on the ocean or an entire planet, refers to the net rate at which energy is absorbed or lost. If the object receives more energy than it loses, the balance is positive; the extra energy is generally stored as thermal energy, increasing the object’s temperature. The energy could also be used to evaporate water or to melt ice or snow, so that the extra energy is converted to latent heat (energy needed for melting or evaporation). The energy balance of several objects will be described first for the Earth as a whole, secondly for the Arctic regions, and finally for the surface of the ground or ocean in the Arctic. There are only two important elements in the energy balance of the Earth as a whole: the incoming solar shortwave radiation and the outgoing thermal longwave radiation. The amount of solar radiation that is absorbed depends on the energy received from the sun, and is also strongly affected by the reflectivity, or albedo, of the planet. The albedo is the fraction of the solar radiation which is reflected. Clouds, snow, and sea ice are all highly reflective and reduce the total solar energy absorbed. The thermal energy emitted by the planet is a strong function of the temperature of the emitting surfaces. Cold objects emit much less energy than warmer objects. The thermal radiation is also dependent on the nature of the surface (the emissivity); most objects in nature have a high emissivity (close to 1.0, meaning they emit as much as is possible). The energy balance of the planet as a whole is close to zero, since the mean temperature is not changing rapidly. The average temperature of the planet and the thermal energy lost have adjusted to just the value needed to balance the absorbed solar energy; the nature of the energy balance is not uniform over the planet. Because of the spherical shape of the Earth and the inclination of the Earth’s axis, more solar radiation, on average, is absorbed near the equator than at the poles. The tropics are consequently warmer and emit more

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thermal energy to space than the polar regions, but not enough more to balance the solar input. Additional energy passes out from the tropics toward the poles, not by radiation, but by movement of the atmosphere and oceans. This transfer of energy occurs in three ways. One, referred to as sensible heat, is achieved by warm air moving toward the poles and cool air moving toward the tropics. A second is similar, but occurs in the ocean and is accomplished by global-scale ocean currents. The third is in the form of water vapor, and is called latent heat. Tropical water absorbs energy in the process of evaporation, the moist air moves toward the poles, and energy is released again when the water condenses to form new clouds. These processes of energy transfer, from the tropics to the poles, are the primary causes of most of the Earth’s wind and weather. In the Arctic regions, the energy balance has a pronounced seasonal cycle, with strong solar radiation in the summer and almost none in the winter. The outgoing thermal radiation increases in the summer to about the same level as the absorbed solar flux, and in the winter drops by about 25% from its summer values. This gives a tremendous net radiative loss of heat during the winter, amounting to about 150 Wm−2 (think of the heat that would be produced by a 150 W light bulb on every square meter). This loss is balanced by the cooling of the air, land, and sea as well as by the transport of sensible and latent heat from lower latitudes to higher latitudes in the atmosphere and oceans. Of these, the transport of sensible heat by the atmosphere is the most important. At the local scale, the energy balance depends on the nature of the surface (vegetation, soil, snow, ice, or water) and where it is located. At the surface of the Earth, the terms of the energy balance are the downwelling solar flux, the reflected solar flux, the absorbed downwelling thermal flux (from the atmosphere and clouds above), the emitted thermal flux, the sensible heat passed from or to the atmosphere, the latent heat produced by evaporation or condensation of moisture on the surface, the latent heat of melting of ice or snow at the surface, and, finally, the heat conducted to or from the substrate below. The energy balance at the surface must be close to zero, since no energy can be stored in the thin layer right at the surface, and so the conducted heat will compensate for the other terms of the energy balance and also warm or cool the substrate. One factor that greatly influences the energy balance is the albedo. Snow- or ice-covered surfaces are much more reflective than bare soil, vegetation, or open water, and they reduce the absorbed solar energy during the months when the sun is up. Clouds are also very important in terms of their role in obscuring the sun and reducing the downwelling solar flux. Moisture in the air can play a very important role

ENETS in melting snow. When warm, moist air passes over snow, there is a rapid condensation of moisture on the cold snow surface and the release of large quantities of latent heat, which can melt the snow. The conductivity of the surface is important, because it determines how rapidly heat can be brought to the surface to compensate a net surface energy loss. Snow has low conductivity and reduces the rate of heat conduction, allowing the surface temperature to drop faster than for bare soil, water, or ice surfaces. The energy balance over the oceans differs from that over land; the oceans can produce or absorb a large amount of energy without substantially changing the water temperature, and because the latent heat term is often very large. The range of temperatures seen over oceans is generally much smaller than seen over land. In the Arctic Ocean, the summer temperature never rises much above the freezing point because the large absorbed solar flux is balanced, to a large extent, by the latent heat used for melting ice. In the winter, the surface temperature drops to −30°C to −40°C, which is cold, but not as cold as the −70°C sometimes seen over land in Greenland, Siberia, Alaska, or Canada. The large net loss of radiative thermal energy over the ice is balanced mostly by the latent heat released by freezing sea water, heat that is then conducted through the sea ice to the surface. This freezing and ice growth is largest where the ice is thin and where there is little snow. The albedo of the ice-covered oceans and snow-covered land plays an important role in climate change, because as ice extent and snow cover are reduced by warming, the much lower albedo of the open water or bare land allows for increased absorption of solar energy, leading to yet more warming. This cycle is called the ice-albedo feedback. Understanding the energy balance of a planet, region, or locale is fundamental for understanding its climate and how it might change. R.W. LINDSAY See also Albedo Further Reading Curry, J.A., J. Schramm & E.E. Ebert, “On the sea ice albedo climate feedback mechanism.” Journal of Climate, 8: (1995): 240–247 Peixoto, J.P. & A.H. Ort, Physics of Climate, New York: American Institute of Physics, 1992

ENETS The Enets (or in Russian, Entsy) are one of the northern indigenous peoples of Siberia of Samodian origin. They are considered as one of the most endangered among northern peoples of North Eurasia. The present

population, according to different sources, is between 121 and 210. At present, Enets inhabit the banks of the Yenisey River at the boundary between forest-tundra and southern tundra in the Taymyr (Dolgan-Nenets) Autonomous Okrug. The Enets language is a part of the North-Samodian group of the Ural-Yukagir family of languages. The self-designation of the Enets is Enneche (“man”). The term “Enets” became official in the 1930s. Before this, they were named the Yenisey, or Khantay Samoyeds (tundra Enets) and Karasino Samoyeds (forest Enets), according to the names of settlements where Enets paid their tribute (Khantayka and Karasino). Tundra and forest Enets had different dialects of their language. The majority of Enets today speak Nenets and Russian. According to its morphological, syntactic, and lexic peculiarities, the Enets language is closely related to the Nenets language. The tundra dialect has some parallels with Nganasan, and the forest dialect has some traces of influence from the Ket language. Enets have no written language.

History In the 5th century BC, the ancestors of the Enets lived in the middle reaches of the Ob’ River in western Siberia. This explains similar ethnonyms in the tribal names of Enets and southern groups of Samodian peoples, such as the Sel’kups, Karasintsy, and Karagasses. Forced out to the north, the Enets ancestors encountered local peoples—wild reindeer hunters. The image of such a hunter (“Morrede”) is richly represented in Enets folklore. The tribal structure of the northern Enets permits us to suppose that they are related to the aboriginal Pre-Samodian population of northern Yenisey. The Samodian ancestors of the Enets, who were more numerous than the aboriginal peoples, with a more developed culture, completely assimilated the aboriginals in a relatively short time. Russians met with Enets for the first time in the 17th century, although there are some records of Enets in ancient Russian manuscripts from the end of the 15th century. These records of the aboriginal people “Molgonzei” inhabiting the Taz River basin (West Siberia) afterwards gave name to the Russian settlement of Mangazeya founded on the Taz River in 1601, which during the whole of the 17th century was the main base for Russian expansion in North Siberia. In the 17th century, the Enets were part of the Siberian population who paid the yasak (fur) tribute to Mangazeya District. At that time, the tribute records mention northern and southern Enets who migrated between the Taz and Yenisey Rivers and Yenisey Bay. In more southern regions, Enets tribes are recorded as

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ENETS migrating in the upper and middle reaches of Taz River, between the Taz and Yenisey rivers and on the right bank of Yenisey, and in the basins of its tributaries Khantayka, Kureyka, and Nizhnyaya Tunguska lower reaches. The range of the Enets in former times was thus very wide. It included the Yenisey along both banks of the river, from Turukhansk settlement in the south to the middle part of Yenisey Bay in the north and also the Taz River basin. Beginning from the second part of the 17th century, under pressure of Nenets from the west, and Sel’kups, Kets, and Evenki from the south and east, the Enets began to lose their territories in the basins of Taz and Turukhan rivers and retreat to the northeast, to the right bank of the Yenisey. Destruction of the system of tribal land use during Russian rule resulted in disintegration of originally large tribes into separate groups of families. Some of the Enets were counted at that time as belonging to the Nenets and Sel’kup ethnic groups. Ousting of the Enets continued gradually up to the 20th century. By this time, the landscapes that the Enets inhabited were mostly forest tundra, partly sparse northern taiga, and shrub tundra. Enets who herded domestic reindeer could migrate for long distances. In summer, northern Enets lived in the Gol’chikha River basin on the coast of the Yenisey Bay and in the lower reaches of the Pura River. At the beginning of winter, they also began to move to the south to forest tundra, crossing the Yenisey after it froze over. In the Lower Yenisey area, Enets encountered Nenets during their continuous movement from the west searching for pastures for their numerous reindeer herds. In winter 1849–1850, the last armed conflict between Nenets and Enets took place on the right bank of Yenisey, in forest tundra near Turuchedo Lake. In this battle, Enets united against Nenets with other peoples who lived on the right Yenisey bank (Evenki and Dolgans). They succeeded in defeating the Nenets. As a result, the two sides agreed to have a final boundary for territory division along the Yenisey. From that time, the right, “stone side” became the Enets one, and the left, “plain side” the Nenets one. At the beginning of the 17th century, the total Enets population was about 3000, that is, much greater than the Nganasan population and approximately equal to the total population of all Nenets in Siberia. However, a number of epidemics, armed conflicts with other northern aboriginals over reindeer ranges and hunting territories, as well as assimilation of Enets by Nenets and Sel’kups and also by Dolgans at the end of the 19th century greatly diminished the Enets population. According to the Russian population census in

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1926–1927, the total Enets population was determined as 378. Unfortunately, during later censuses Enets were sometimes counted together with Nenets, without distinguishing them as a separate people. This also contributed to the disappearance of a people which continue to be assimilated by its neighbors. The rapid and steady decline of the Enets population, from 3000 in the 17th century to 121 now, could be explained by a number of causes. Gradual migration of the Enets to the north in ancient times passed mostly along large rivers, through rich lands populated by other peoples who were also, like the Enets, mostly hunters and fishermen, and competition among them was strong. When they first met Nenets, this competition was rather weak because Nenets were mostly reindeer herders. Nenets — also Samodians — brought a reindeer husbandry culture to the north from their area of origin (Altay-Sayan Mountains). Hunting and fishing were much less important to them, which is why they met lesser resistance from the hunters and fishers they met during migration. Their migration took place mostly along the watersheds of the Ob’ and Yenisey rivers. Having reached the tundra zone Nenets encountered tundra aboriginals — hunters and fishermen — and flooded the Siberian and European tundra with their reindeer herds. In contrast to the Nenets, the Enets did not have their own important reindeer husbandry, which is why their competition with aboriginals in the tundra was much more vigorous. In the Yenisey area, Enets met Kets and Sel’kups in the taiga and Dolgans in the tundra. All of these were hunters and fishermen and also bellicose peoples. For example, Ket bows were considered to be the best in the whole Yenisey area and in adjacent regions of Siberia, and were an object of trade. Permanent armed conflicts with their neighbors during long migrations as well as mass epidemics exhausted the Enets people and brought them to the present tragic state where their population is in rapid and steady decline. The Enets language is disappearing even more rapidly. At present, only half of the Enets consider it as their native tongue. The others speak only Nenets and Russian. About 20–30 people now speak only Enets. They are mostly old people from remote areas. According to one forecast, the Enets language will be totally lost in 20–30 years. At the same time the rest of Enets traditional culture, including traditional forms of land use, will also disappear.

Lifestyle and Subsistence The present land use of Enets still has some specific features of their traditional culture, but it quickly becomes a mixed one acquiring economic peculiarities of neighboring peoples, first of all the Russians and

ENETS Nenets. This influences all the branches of Enets economy: hunting, fishing, and reindeer herding. In the Yenisey valley, Enets began to plant kitchen gardens (mostly potatoes) and to breed cattle. However they continue to hunt and fish, and their diet is almost exclusively meat and fish, which they prefer raw. They are gradually getting accustomed to eating bread. Their traditional diet also includes berries (mostly cloudberries — Rubus chamaemorus) and wild onion and garlic (Allium ursinum), which are abundant in river valleys. In the Enets economy, as for their ancestors, wild reindeer is the main animal hunted. Enets employ the method of hunting reindeer at water crossings, but to a lesser extent than Nganasans and Dolgans. Hunting with a domestic decoy-reindeer is also developed. The ancient techniques of wild reindeer hunting have now changed radically, with the use of firearms and motor boats. The main fur animals hunted by Enets are Arctic fox (Alopex lagopus) and ermine (Mustela erminea) in the tundra, and also sable (Mustela zibellina), squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris), and moose (Alces alces) in the taiga. To hunt Arctic fox, Enets now use steel traps; ancient crushing wooden traps are no longer used. For hunting molting waterfowl, Enets widely use nets, sometimes bows and arrows, but usually guns. Bows and arrows retained their importance for hunting squirrels and waterfowl up to the middle of the last century. In the 1940s and 1950s, there were times when the number of squirrels was high but hunters had few cartridges; then forest Enets and Kets hunted successfully with bows and arrows. The lower reaches of Yenisey River and Yenisey Gulf are very rich in fish resources including many valuable species (sturgeon Acipenser baeri, sterlet A. ruthenus, and many species of whitefish: Stenodus leucychtis, Coregonus lavaretus, C. nasus, C. peled, C. autumnalis, C. muksun, C. sardinella a.o.). The main Enets method of fishing is with fixed (stationary) nets. They also use sweep-nets adopted from Russian fishermen. On small rivers, Enets partition off riverbeds in narrow places, placing special basketlike traps. Domestic reindeer are used mostly for transportation, as pack and sledge animals. Enets kill domestic reindeer very rarely. The tent (chum) of Enets resembles the Nganasan tent but differs from the Nenets one. In winter a chum is covered with reindeer skins, and in summer with canvas. At the center of the chum is an iron stove. Beginning from the 1930s, small wooden frame houses on sledges (balok) adopted from the Dolgans were used. These are covered by reindeer skins outside and by cotton inside. Enets living in settlements use wooden houses of a Russian type (izba).

Winter clothes and sleeping bags are made of reindeer skins and resemble the clothes of Nenets, Dolgans, and Nganasans. The most developed arts and crafts of the Enets are appliqués on cloth and fur and carving of mammoth bones, reindeer antlers, and wood.

Religion and Folklore Enets folklore is very rich and consists of mythological and historical legends, fairy tales, and cosmogenic legends. Topics are mostly about wars and animals. Heroic folklore reflects real events from the history of the Enets people, which was filled with the struggle for survival and armed conflicts with adjacent tribes— Nenets, Nganasans, Dolgans, Kets, Sel’kups, and Evenki. There are some legends of a hero-hunter who hunted wild reindeer with a domestic decoy-reindeer. Shamans are the main performers of mythological legends: they recite or sing them, sometimes with music. The main musical instruments are the tambourine and a unique primitive stringed instrument. The Enets were officially converted to Christianity in the 17th century, but in reality their religion was and is now shamanistic animism. Forest (southern) Enets are more “Christianized” than tundra ones. Enets have animistic beliefs about the creation of the world. According to them, the spirits of the “Upper World” created the world, waters, and land. Their leader is “Owner of Sky—Nga.” His mother was the owner of Land (“Dya’Minyu”). The “Lower World” is populated by wicked spirits and the Upper World by good spirits. The Owners of Fire, Water, Forest, Mountains, separate areas, had a special place in this pantheon. It could be said that it is now difficult to do something to protect and conserve the Enets people and culture. They will inevitably be assimilated by Nenets and Russians (incidentally, Enets women are highly estimated as good housewives). It is only possible to try to support Enets by special State measures promoting conservation and development of traditional land use forms typical for Enets. They have sufficient biological resources in their present range, and the rich hunting and fishing resources are used to a considerable degree. H.V. ROGACHEVA See also Nenets; Northern Uralic Languages; Sel’kup Further Reading Berg, L.S., “On the ancient distribution of Yenissey Samoyeds, or Entse.” Proceedings of the All-Union Geographical Society, 1945, No. 5 (in Russian) Dolgikh, B.O., “On the genera and tribes structure and distribution of Entsy.” Soviet Ethnography, 1946, No. 4

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ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF THE ARCTIC ———., “Entsy.” In Narody Sibiri, edited by M.G. Levin & L.P. Potapov, Moscow: Russian Academy of Sciences, 1956, pp. 661–664; as The Peoples of Siberia, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1964

ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF THE ARCTIC Modern Arctic ecosystems began to take shape about two to three million years ago, as Earth’s climate began to cool significantly. Most Arctic regions, including eastern and Central Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia, and western Russia, were buried repeatedly by glacial ice during the 17 or more glacial periods of the last two million years (the Quaternary Period). Presumably biological communities invaded the regions of the Arctic that became ice-free during the warmer interglacial periods, but we have little fossil evidence of these communities, because subsequent advances of glacial ice scoured these Arctic landscapes, obliterating the fossil evidence that accumulated during interglacial periods. The only Arctic regions not affected by glacial ice during the Quaternary were the lowlands of the Yukon Territory of Canada, Alaska, and eastern Siberia. These unglaciated regions, plus the continental shelves of the Bering and Chukchi seas between Siberia and Alaska, are known as Beringia. Since the fossil record of Beringia was not wiped out by glacial ice, paleontologists have been able to reconstruct the history of the Arctic flora and fauna of this vast region. Accordingly, most of this article focuses on this region, where Arctic biota found refuge during the ice ages.

Late Tertiary Environments Modern groups of flowering plants and mammals are thought to have evolved mainly during the Early Tertiary, from about 65 to 50 million years ago. This was a time of warm climate throughout most of the world, one of the warmest periods in the late Paleocene Epoch, about 57–55 million years ago. Evidence from marine fossils indicates that sea surface temperatures were as much as 10ºC (18ºF) warmer than they are today. Carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were as much as twice the level they are today. This high level of carbon dioxide created a greenhouse effect, trapping solar energy near the Earth’s surface and warming global temperatures. A study of fossils of late Paleocene age from the Arctic Ocean shows that the climate of that period was exceptionally mild at high latitudes, varying little throughout the year. Temperatures near the shores of the Arctic Ocean were as high as 11ºC (52ºF) at that time. Also, those sea water temperatures varied by

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only 6ºC (11ºF) through the year, so there was little difference between summer and winter temperatures. The modern forest trees and shrubs of Beringia are descendants of species that existed in the region as far back as the Paleocene or Eocene Epochs (65–33 million years ago). The grasses and other herbaceous plants of the modern tundra and forest floors of Beringia have a shorter fossil record than the trees and shrubs. These probably evolved in the Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene Epochs. For much of the last 65 million years, land connections existed between Alaska and Northeast Asia. These connections allowed a free exchange of plant and animal species between the two continents. The Bering Strait region was flooded by sea water about 4–3 million years ago, severing the land connections between the two continents until the beginning of the Pleistocene Epoch, about 1.7–2 million years ago. Beginning in the Miocene Epoch (24–5 million years ago), Arctic and Subarctic climates began to fluctuate dramatically. For instance, Miocene fossil beds from the Porcupine River region of northeastern Alaska contain the remains of a conifer forest with pine, redwood, and cypress. The pollen preserved in these deposits also includes such broad-leafed trees as oak, hickory, holly, and walnut, although these trees may have been growing farther south (i.e., their pollen may have been carried north by winds). This type of forest probably could not withstand severe winters, especially if it included some hardwood trees. It certainly required a much warmer climate than is found today in interior Alaska. Progressively warmer climate is indicated by the fossil remains left by the younger forest assemblages at this site. Forest beds dating younger than about 16 million years contain hardwood tree pollen, including beech, oak, hickory, chestnut, walnut, sweetgum, basswood, and elm. Based on fossil plant research, the peak of the Middle Miocene warming in northeastern Alaska saw average summer temperatures greater than 20ºC (68ºF) and average winter temperatures of about −2ºC (28ºF). Today the average July temperature at Old Crow, Yukon Territory (the closest meteorological station to the fossil site), is 14.2ºC (58ºF) and the average January temperature is −33.1ºC (−28ºF), so summers were somewhat warmer than today in the Middle Miocene, but winters were quite a bit warmer. Warm Middle Miocene temperatures are also suggested by many other fossil plant assemblages from sites through the high northern latitudes. There is some evidence that the Miocene warm period apparently came to an abrupt end, or at least that there was a major climatic reversal in this period. There is paleontological evidence for coastal glaciation in southern Alaska, beginning 15–16 million

ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF THE ARCTIC years ago. Global cooling during the Middle and Late Miocene is probably due in part to the uplifting of the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau. This mountainbuilding process brought about changes in atmospheric circulation patterns, as well as other environmental changes that may have had global impacts. Botanical evidence from the Arctic and Subarctic regions indicates a gradual cooling trend during the Late Miocene. Broadleaf trees were mostly replaced by conifers. Late Miocene forests of Alaska included species of pine, spruce, larch, fir, Douglas fir, hemlock, birch, alder, poplar, and willow. Spruce expanded its range in Alaska at the end of the Miocene. This is another piece of evidence indicating a climatic cooling at that time. The Pliocene Epoch (5.3–1.8 million years ago) was also a time of large-scale climate change. Based on fossil records, Arctic climates during the Pliocene ranged from warmer than present to much colder than present. This was not just a high-latitude phenomenon. The global trend during the Pliocene was also one of general cooling. During the warm Pliocene intervals, fossil evidence from Greenland, Canada, and Alaska indicates that average summer temperatures were as much as 10ºC warmer than today, and average winter temperatures were as much as 18ºC warmer than today. Pine forests grew in northwestern Alaska 5.7 million years ago, where Arctic tundra vegetation thrives today. Conifer forests grew in northernmost Greenland as late as 2.5 million years ago. Warm Pliocene climates are also correlated with times of higher sea level. Marine transgressions (periods when sea water floods the land and marine sediments are deposited on top of terrestrial sediments) occurred three times in the Arctic during the Pliocene. The Pliocene was not a uniformly warm period in Alaska or elsewhere in the northern high latitudes. Although some early Pliocene fossil beds point to extremely warm climates in the Arctic, after about 3 million years ago, climates had cooled somewhat, although they remained warmer than it is today. This reconstruction is based on the fossil evidence from the high Arctic islands of western Canada. Here, peat deposits of the Beaufort Formation reveal the development of coniferous woodland and tundra. Early Pliocene vegetation in Alaska included a greater abundance and diversity of herbaceous species than was seen in older fossil records. This has been taken to mean that climates were becoming cooler and drier, especially in the Arctic regions. The mountain-building process in southern and central Alaska started to exert strong regional climatic influences in the Late Tertiary. These tall mountains became barriers to the northward flow of warm, moist, Pacific air. New habitats for cold-adapted herbaceous vegetation developed on high mountain slopes. Arctic and alpine tundra veg-

etation communities were beginning to form, which would eventually become very important in Beringia. By 2.8 million years ago, geologic evidence indicates that permafrost was developing in the Alaskan interior, and that multiple glaciations occurred in Alaskan mountain ranges between that time and the early Pleistocene (about 1.7 million years ago). The climatic cooling that developed between about 2.5 and 2.3 million years ago resulted not only in the development of glaciers but also in the development of lowland tundra and forest-tundra (mixtures of forest trees and open ground with tundra plant species). The stage was set for Pleistocene and its glacial climates. As the Tertiary gave way to the Quaternary, forests gave way to tundra in various forms.

Quaternary Environments The Quaternary Period is distinguished by a series of lengthy ice ages, or glaciations, that affected the high latitudes and many mountain ranges of the world. Ice sheets that formed in the high latitudes of Canada, Scandinavia, and western Russia spread south, covering major parts of the North American and Eurasian continents. The process took thousands of years to complete, and the ice cover lasted tens of thousands of years before it melted back to the polar regions once again. In some Arctic regions, this ice cover was thousands of meters thick. The lowlands of Beringia, however, were not buried by glacial ice in the Pleistocene. This is quite remarkable, because nearly all other high-latitude lands were repeatedly buried by glacial ice during the Pleistocene. A band of tundra existed just south of the major ice sheets in North America and Eurasia, at least during the last glaciation, and probably also during previous glacial periods of the Pleistocene. The ice sheets themselves helped create the sort of chilled climatic conditions that favor tundra vegetation. Bitterly cold winds flowed off the ice sheets, creating cold regional climates. When the ice sheets reached their maximum extent during the last glaciation, their outer margins were in the midlatitudes (45–50º N), so during such times, Arctic tundra communities existed much farther south than at any other time. The evidence for cold climates in the midlatitudes during full glacial periods is not limited to ancient flora and fauna, however. The remains of periglacial (near-glacier) features have been found in many midlatitude locations in Europe and North America. These features developed in permafrost (permanently frozen ground) that formed for many thousands of years during glacial periods. Periglacial features include ice wedges, patterned ground, and pingos. Ice wedges develop in cracks that form in frozen soils. Frost

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ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF THE ARCTIC cracking occurs as soil moisture freezes when air temperatures drop. A very rapid drop in air temperature causes a temperature gradient to develop in the soil. Rapid freezing from the top of the soil downward causes cracks to open up at the surface. Once a crack exists, liquid water freezes as it enters the crack, and ice expansion widens and deepens the crack. As the crack expands around the ice, additional water freezes and expands, eventually forming an ice wedge. Large ice wedges (up to several meters in length) tend to form in silty or peaty soils. Frost cracks on level ground tend to form in polygons with diameters of several meters. The polygons make patterned ground, a characteristic feature of much of the Arctic today, and a relict feature of Pleistocene environments down to the midlatitudes. Pingos, or ice-cored hills, form when a body of ice is pushed up from the permafrost, because of poor drainage of saturated soils or from pressure that builds as water drains into a valley from adjacent hillsides. Remains of collapsed pingos can be found in Britain and elsewhere in northwest Europe.

The Concept of Beringia When Pleistocene glaciations occurred, many billions of tons of water became frozen into continental-sized ice sheets. Because a large proportion of the world’s water became ice, global sea level dropped significantly. During the last glaciation, global sea level dropped by about 120 m (almost 400 ft). The continental shelf regions of the Bering and Chukchi seas between Siberia and Alaska are about 30–110 m (100–360 ft) below modern sea level. When the continental ice sheets grew, the sea level dropped, and the shelf regions between Siberia and Alaska became dry land. The former land bridge region was not a narrow isthmus between the two continents. From north to south, the land bridge extended more than 1000 km (600 miles). The land bridge was narrow near its center, in the Bering Strait region, but it was quite broad at both the north and south ends. In fact, the land bridge was larger than the state of Texas. The Bering Land Bridge cut off circulation between the North Pacific and Arctic oceans. This, in turn, greatly diminished the landward flow of relatively warm, moist air masses from the North Pacific. This is the principal reason why Pleistocene ice sheets did not form in lowland Beringia: it was too dry. The development of ice sheets requires the accumulation of many years of winter snow, without melting in the intervening summers. If the climate is sufficiently cold to keep the snow from melting in summer, glacial ice can begin to form, but only if there is sufficient moisture to cause big snow depths. Without the moisture, cold, dry landscapes developed in Beringia. The drying effect of

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the land bridge kept glacial ice out of the Beringian lowlands. There were Pleistocene glaciers in Beringia, but only in the highlands. Because of this, Beringia formed a unique refuge for cold-adapted plants and animals.

Pleistocene Mammals of Beringia The dominant vegetation that covered the Beringian lowlands during the Pleistocene is called steppe-tundra by paleontologists. As the name implies, this vegetation was a mixture of plants that are found today in steppe (dry grassland) regions, such as the steppes of Central Asia, and tundra plants that grow today in Arctic regions. The nature of Pleistocene steppe-tundra is a controversial topic among paleontologists (see Polar Steppe). One thing that is certain about this ancient ecosystem is that it supported an astonishing variety of wildlife. During each glaciation of the Pleistocene, temperatures dropped, aridity increased, and conifer forests gave way to steppe-tundra. In spite of being in such high latitudes, the steppe-tundra was a highly productive ecosystem. Unlike the modern-day Arctic, where soils are often very wet and the active layer over permafrost is shallow, the soils of the Pleistocene steppetundra were drier, and thawed more deeply in the summer. Steppe-tundra soils yielded their nutrients more readily to plants. The steppe grasses of central Asia were well adapted to these conditions, and during glacial intervals of the Pleistocene they spread across Eurasia and Beringia, combining with tundra vegetation (plants adapted to more moist conditions in cold climates). The combination of steppe and tundra plant species formed a rich mosaic of vegetation, supporting an abundant, diverse mammal fauna. The only modern ecosystem that has as large a variety of grassland animals is the African Savannah. There are some interesting parallels between the Pleistocene steppe-tundra of Alaska and the modern African Savannah fauna. The Beringian woolly mammoth took the place of the African elephant; the woolly rhinoceros took the place of the modern rhinoceros, and the saiga antelope filled the role of various species of African antelope. Instead of zebras, the ancient steppetundra had Pleistocene horses. Instead of water buffalo and wildebeest, the steppe-tundra had large-horned bison and two species of Pleistocene muskox. The dominant grazers of the steppe-tundra were the woolly mammoths, Pleistocene horses, and large-horned bison. These now-extinct herbivores shared the land with grazers and browsers that are still living, such as moose, modern muskox, Dall’s sheep, and caribou. An ecosystem with so many large herbivores also supports a variety of predators, and Beringia had some

ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF THE ARCTIC impressive carnivores (see Pleistocene Megafauna). The Pleistocene lion was very much like modern lions, but it was larger than its modern relatives, as were most of the predators of the Pleistocene. The sabertoothed cat was also a powerful predator, armed with huge canine teeth for slicing into the neck of its prey. Probably the most impressive Beringian predator was the giant short-faced bear. This animal stood up to 2 m tall at the shoulder. When it stood up on its hind legs, it was as much as 3.4 m tall. Its long legs were adapted for chasing prey animals over long distances. It was not as heavily built as the modern brown or grizzly bears, but because of its enormous frame it weighed up to 700 kg. The largest modern polar bears weigh 660 kg. Grizzlies, even with their relatively short legs, can put on bursts of speed of up to 65 km h−1, but only for a few minutes at most. Giant short-faced bears undoubtedly ran faster than that, and were probably able to sustain their speed over greater distances.

Regional Extent of Steppe-Tundra Steppe-tundra environments were not restricted to Beringia during the Pleistocene glaciations. They spread to the southwest in Eurasia, forming a band south of the ice sheets that reached the middle of Europe and southern Britain and Ireland. Thus, the Pleistocene steppe-tundra was one of the largest ecosystems (in terms of geographic area) of the last few million years. There are indications that the Bering Strait region formed an ecological barrier between eastern and western steppe-tundra regions. The mesic (medium moisture) shrub tundra that dominated parts of the land bridge may have formed a barrier to steppe-tundra species. For instance, the woolly rhinoceros lived throughout the steppe-tundra regions of Eurasia, but never became established east of the Bering Land Bridge (that is, in Alaska and the Yukon Territory). This species lived in dry steppe-tundra habitats, dominated by grasses and other herbs. The dwarf shrubs and mosses that flourished on the Bering Land Bridge may have blocked its entry into the New World.

The Productivity Paradox How did apparently sparse vegetation support such a wide variety of large grazing mammals? This question is at the heart of the debate about the steppe-tundra. There are several possible explanations, as follows: (1) The steppe-tundra was a richer environment than was previously thought. Some researchers who study fossil pollen argue that the steppetundra vegetation was short, sparse, and gener-

ally insufficient to support large herds of grazing mammals. They believe that the fossil bones found in Alaska must represent accumulations of fossils over great lengths of time, and that large grazing populations were never large at any given time. However, vertebrate fossil studies indicate that a wide variety and abundance of animals were living on the land at any given time. Vertebrate paleontologists argue that the grassy vegetation of the steppe-tundra was rich in nutrients and sufficiently abundant to support large populations of grazers. (2) The large grazers helped create and maintain the steppe-tundra habitat. This theory argues that trampling and grazing by large animals in tundra causes a shift in dominance from mosses to grasses. Grasses reduce soil moisture more effectively than mosses, because of their higher rates of evapotranspiration (moisture lost from plants through evaporation to the air and through the giving off of water vapor as part of the plant’s respiration). When most of the large grazers became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene, the lowland tundra of Beringia shifted to a moss-dominated vegetation. (3) Beringian environments were more varied than was previously thought. In the 1970s and 1980s, many researchers thought that the steppe-tundra ecosystem dominated nearly all the lowland regions of Beringia. More recent studies have shown that most of southwestern Alaska and parts of the Bering Land Bridge were dominated by mesic shrub tundra, where grasses were far less dominant and birch and willow shrubs were more important. Many researchers have come to accept the idea that Beringia was not clothed uniformly in steppetundra vegetation. Rather, it supported a mixture of vegetation communities, as dictated by a variety of controlling environmental factors.

Extinction Event at the End of the Pleistocene The end of the last glaciation turned out to be the swan song for a substantial number of large mammals. All the proboscidians (mammoths and mastodons), the North American horses and camels, the Pleistocene large-horned bison, and giant sloths became extinct at the end of the last glaciation, along with many of the large predators. Why did this happen? The obvious answer might seem to be that these cold-adapted animals could not tolerate the warm climates of the Holocene (the current interglacial period that began 10,000 years ago). This might be convincing, if it were not for the fact that the same cold-adapted species

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ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS withstood the warm climates of several previous interglacial periods, at least one of which was probably substantially warmer than anything yet experienced in the Holocene. So climatic warming per se was not enough to cause the extinction of the megafaunal mammals (animals greater than 40 kg live weight are called megafauna). There must have been some unique environmental factors influencing the megafauna at the end of the last ice age. Some argue that human beings were the most important agents in dispatching the Pleistocene megafauna. Others argue that a combination of circumstances, including both environmental change and human hunting pressure, brought about the extinction of these animals. This question is still being debated by paleontologists.

Postglacial Development of Modern Arctic Ecosystems The margins of the ice sheets of the last glaciation began to retreat northward, beginning about 14,000–13,000 years ago. The process of glacial retreat was interrupted in the North Atlantic region by a climatic reversal that began about 12,000 years ago. This cooling event is called the Younger Dryas interval, and it lasted approximately 1000 years. During the Younger Dryas, the ice advanced again in Europe, as far south as southern Scandinavia. Following the Younger Dryas interval, the ice retreated rapidly. However, some Arctic regions remained covered by glacial ice until the middle of the Holocene Epoch (about 5000 years ago), or later. The glacial ice dome that sat over the Labrador-Ungava region of eastern Canada is an example of such late-lying ice. Some of the populations of tundra flora and fauna that had existed in regions south of the continental ice sheets were able to migrate north as the ice retreated, but in some regions, such as the American mid-west, the tundra biota became trapped between late-lying ice lobes to the north and coniferous forests that were rapidly advancing from the south as climate warmed. In these circumstances, the cold-loving flora and fauna had nowhere to go. Further north in Canada, populations of Arctic tundra flora and fauna spread eastward from their Beringian refuge as the ice retreated from the Northwest Territories. Hudson Bay formed a substantial barrier to such migrations, however, and the modern tundra flora and fauna of the Ungava peninsula have substantially fewer species than that of the Arctic regions west of Hudson Bay. The Bering Land Bridge was flooded by sea water as global sea levels rose at the end of the last glaciation. By about 12,000 years ago, the land connection between Siberia and Alaska was inundated. This event brought large-scale environmental changes to north-

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eastern Siberia and Alaska. The cold, dry, continental climates that had dominated these regions during the last glaciation gave way to more moist, maritime climates as the ocean waters flooded the ancient land bridge. The steppe-tundra and the Pleistocene megafauna it supported vanished at about the same time as the land bridge was flooded, although some of the large mammals survived for a few more centuries. Modern Arctic tundra became established at this time, with its mesic habitats, moss-dominated ground cover, and dwarf shrubs of willow and birch. SCOTT A. ELIAS See also Beringia; Environmental Problems; Fossils: Animal Species; Quaternary Paleoclimatology Further Reading Cwynar, Les & James Ritchie, “Arctic steppe-tundra: a Yukon perspective.” Science, 208 (1980): 1375–1377 Elias, Scott, Ice Age History of Alaskan National Parks, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995 Elias, Scott & Julie Brigham-Grette (editors), “Beringian paleoenvironments.” Quaternary Science Reviews, 20(1–3) (2001): 1–574 Guthrie, R. Dale, Frozen Fauna of the Mammoth Steppe. The Story of Blue Babe, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990 Hopkins, David, John Matthews, Charles Schweger & Steven Young, Paleoecology of Beringia, New York: Academic Press, 1982 Martin, Paul & Richard Klein (editors), Quaternary Extinctions, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989 White, James, Thomas Ager, D.P. Adam, Estella Leopold, G. Liu, H. Jetté & Charles Schweger, “An 18 million year record of vegetation and climate change in northwestern Canada and Alaska: tectonic and global climatic correlates.” Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 130 (1997): 293–306 Zimov, S., V. Chuprynin, A. Oreshko, F. Chapin, J. Reynolds & M. Chapin, “Steppe-tundra transition: a herbivore-driven biome shift at the end of the Pleistocene.” American Naturalist, 146 (1995): 765–794

ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS Phenomena that significantly interfere with the structure and function of ecosystems over a major portion of the lifetime of the longest-lived organisms can generally be classed as environmental problems. Widespread concern regarding the prospect of largescale resource development in the Arctic was first expressed over 30 years ago in the early to mid-1970s. Human activities and concomitant environmental problems are presently more extensive within the tundra biome than in the past. Large portions of the region are faced with widespread threats ranging from oil and gas development to wilderness recreation. Direct human effects on Arctic ecosystems may be even more

ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS imperative than climatic change in the next few decades. These effects include disturbance associated with, for example, resource exploitation and altered grazing regimes due to changing patterns of reindeer husbandry. Recent models acknowledge that land management policies (for instance, fire suppression, reindeer husbandry) have as much or more effect on northern vegetation and soils as expected changes in climate, but human land-use is still underrepresented in most models. Perhaps the greatest overall threat to Arctic ecosystems is climatic warming, generally predicted to be particularly pronounced in polar regions. Belowground stores of carbon in the Arctic are enormous and threaten to exacerbate climatic warming if methane and carbon dioxide are released through the warming of soils and permafrost. Assuming a doubling of atmospheric CO2, and no constraints on migration of species, it has been calculated that the Arctic tundra area would decrease by 20–32% due to northward expansion of the boreal forest. This would profoundly affect, for example, geographic ranges and habitat conditions for herbivorous ungulates such as caribou, muskoxen, and elk, and other grazing animals. Such changes would, in turn, manifest potentially serious consequences for indigenous and nonnative herders and hunters. Arctic vegetation and soils have often been considered particularly susceptible to disturbance, that is, “fragile,” but fragility is ill defined and perhaps, with use, has come to be an oversimplification. In fact, a limited number of species provide forage for a vast number of animals. The implications of these plant-animal links indicate that the elimination of one or more of dominant species could result in profound changes in the structure and function of Arctic ecosystems, especially those of the High Arctic. In this sense these systems are fragile. A major challenge for the scientific community is to predict how vegetation composition will respond to these various environmental changes and what the consequences for Arctic ecosystems will be. Even moderate warming is likely to cause a massive increase in thermokarst (subsidence of surface due to thawing), particularly in ice-rich permafrost regions such as northern Alaska and northwest Siberia. If this occurs, one can expect an increase in the numbers of small and large patches with exposed soils. Stimulation of plant reproduction by increased temperatures would likely be most significant in these disturbed areas, and transient responses of both plants and animals to environmental change would become more important. Even without a warming climate, the extent of disturbed surfaces—including thermokarst triggered by mechanical impacts—is likely to increase as development continues. It has been suggested that anthropogenic habitat

loss will prevent many species from colonizing new habitats when their former habitats become unsuitable in the course of climatic warming.

Direct Impacts In general, the direct mechanical disturbance of Arctic terrain, including vegetation, soil, and the underlying permafrost layer, often leads to erosion. Unchecked, severe erosion can progress to eventually degrade entire landscapes. Among the aforementioned three components, vegetation has special importance, not only as the basic link to the upper trophic levels of an ecosystem but also in terms of its controls over permafrost and ground-ice maintenance in tundra substrates. In addition, the regeneration of an ecosystem after disturbance is dependent upon revegetation, which is the essential first step of ecosystem recovery. Vegetation cover, therefore, is one of the best criteria to assess overall ecosystem status in the wake of previous environmental degradation. Anthropogenic impacts are complex in that various human activities can influence ecosystems simultaneously and cumulatively, and can have both immediate catastrophic and long-term effects. Sometimes, in practice, it is difficult to distinguish between direct and indirect impacts and scientists may use different methods for classifying disturbances. For example, Russian authors distinguish three main classes of disturbed areas: “ochagovyi” (local), “lineinyi” (linear), and “fonovyi” (spatial). The most striking example of the first type includes sites surrounding petroleum boreholes (drill sites). Transport corridors appearing in connection with road and pipeline construction constitute linear disturbances. Large territories affected by air pollution are examples of spatial disturbances. The Russian scientist Olga Sumina has characterized the main types of environmental problems in the Russian Arctic, from west to east. On the Kola Peninsula, the reaction of vegetation to chemical contamination is important due to the strong air pollution effects produced by smelter complexes there. In the Komi Republic, investigations of vegetation impacts associated with oil-field development, pipeline construction and use, and coal mining are most prominent. In northwest Siberia, much research has been undertaken in connection with exploration and exploitation of the richest oil-gas fields of northern Russia. On Taymyr Peninsula, the key topic of research is the effect of contamination from the Noril’sk industrial complex, which emits heavy metals and other toxic agents directly to the local and regional environments. In Yakutia, industrial development is primarily connected with opencast mining, which leads to the development of large quarries (see below) and tailing

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ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS dumps. A specific question for Yakutia is the study of vegetation dynamics at the bottom of its many artificially drained lakes. In Chukotka, industrial disturbances are connected with the development of mineral deposits and are represented by quarries, tailing dumps, roads, and the chemical influences of refining mills.

highways in the planning stages for the western Canadian Arctic and northern Québec. New roads and a railway are currently under construction in conjunction with petroleum development across the reindeer pastures of Yamal Peninsula in northwest Siberia, and a road is proposed for facilitating mining on Svalbard.

Off-Road Vehicle Use Transportation Corridors In the context of global change, one of the major concerns is researchers’ ability to predict the movements of populations and communities. It is accepted that the area of Arctic ecosystems will decrease under a warming climate, but it is not clear how plants and animals will migrate north, either individually or collectively. This concern has prompted a debate over the role of transportation corridors in plant movement and migration. Roads, railways, and rivers are widespread throughout the Arctic, connecting people and resources to the south more often than to the east or west. Such transportation corridors are dynamic areas in terms of concentrating settlements and human activities in otherwise remote lands, and many different types of surface disturbance regimes are associated with them. Among the proven disadvantages, perhaps the strongest empirical data are those supporting the role of corridors as avenues of successful nonnative flora introduction. Weedy or “ruderal” plants (species that are adapted to sites with recent disturbance), often of Mediterranean provenance, are rapidly dispersed by seeds, spores, and other propagules as new roads are built so that additional founder populations are readily established far from the source population. These data are abundant for ecosystems ranging north from boreal to Subarctic and even the Low Arctic. This was not the case in much of North America and Eurasia before World War II. Another major effect of northern roads and railways is the direct alteration of hydrology. A railway or road exerts its maximum influence on the movement of surface water when it is aligned at right angles to the direction of water movement. In areas with an intersecting network of roads, flooded areas are common and often extremely difficult to drain. For example, a 7.0 km road constructed through a portion of flat, coastal lowland at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, resulted in the flooding of 134 ha (18 ha km−1 of road). Subsequent effects of impeded drainage include changes in surface albedo (reflectivity), active layer and permafrost, soil temperature and decomposition, and an increase in aeolian sands and dust. These processes, moreover, are strongly interrelated and feedbacks among them are to be expected. In North America, the number of major northern roads increases each year, with several new

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One of the most widespread forms of disturbance throughout the circumpolar Arctic is that caused by tracked vehicles operating off-road. Such vehicles, essentially tanks, first appeared in the Arctic in the late 1940s and 1950s for the transportation of people and equipment in conjunction with military and scientific activities, as well as in and around civilian settlements. Off-road vehicles continue to be used regularly for moving heavy seismic survey equipment. Seasonality is critical and even a single pass by a heavy vehicle during sensitive periods can result in lasting damage. Summer use has been banned in North America since the 1970s, although even winter use can have significant effects when the snow cover is too thin. Summer use is officially restricted in northwestern Siberia, although the rules there are regularly ignored. In the High Arctic, overall biomass reductions resulting from vehicle ruts more than offset significant and persistent gains among rhizomatous graminoids. In contrast, overall increases in productivity have been reported within the Low Arctic. In the Low Arctic, where damages in mesic areas are slight to moderate and the moisture regime is not changed, most of the original vascular species persist, and species that respond positively to disturbance (e.g., rhizomatous graminoids, willows, and Equisetum arvense) increase. Research has demonstrated that, in general, the pace of natural regeneration of vegetation is considerably slower in the High Arctic relative to the Low Arctic.

Oil Spills and Contaminants From 1974 to 1977, when the trans-Alaska pipeline was first built and operated, more than 16,000 hydrocarbon spills, totaling more than 265,000 l, occurred along the pipeline route. During 1985–1986, 952 spills were reported on the North Slope, totaling 731,800 l. Most of these spills consisted of refined petroleum products and occurred on water or in gravel pads, although some occurred on terrestrial vegetation. Oil does not penetrate deeply into saturated soils, but spills on dry sites are absorbed by mosses and the underlying organic material and mineral soils. Sedges and willows are the first vascular plants to reappear following a terrestrial oil spill. Recovery from diesel

ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS spills is extremely slow, whereas spills of crankcase and crude oil are generally able to recover more quickly (in less than 30 years). Local and migrant populations of marine and littoral wildlife faced many problems as a result of the large amount of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez into Alaska’s Prince William Sound. While some effects still persist, many damages were relatively short-lived because the region is essentially free of ice year-round and thus water temperatures are much warmer than in the true Arctic. Were such a spill to occur in the Beaufort Sea, or another similarly northern area along the Arctic Ocean’s coast, the initial cleanup effort could be seriously hindered by the presence of sea ice. Furthermore, the breakdown of contaminants within the marine environment would be extremely slow. Therefore, the negative effects may persist indefinitely, disrupting potentially all segments of the affected ecosystem, from the lowest phytoplankton up to the top carnivore, the polar bear. Besides localized spills of hydrocarbons, many other more diffuse contaminants are transported to the Arctic via ocean currents, winds, and rivers. These include radionuclides, heavy metals, and persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Some of these, such as radionuclides, tend not to be taken up in the marine food web. Others, such as some heavy metals and most organic pollutants, concentrate in living things, especially in the fatty tissues that are common in Arctic animals, posing danger not only for the animals but also for humans who subsist on them.

Quarrying The construction of the trans-Alaska pipeline disturbed over 78,500 ha of land, 31,700 ha or 40% of which was for gravel borrow sites or quarries. These numbers are fairly typical results of disturbance accrued during the course of petroleum exploration and development in northwest Siberia. For example, quarrying for sand and construction of sand drilling pads at the Bovanenkovo Gas Field on Yamal Peninsula alone had, by 1990, led to the loss of 127,000 ha (1270 km2) of tundra. As the ground is completely denuded, this has led to a significant loss of summer reindeer pasture, and native Nenets reindeer herders have complained about this. All quarries—sand, gravel, and rubble—are slow and difficult to revegetate either naturally or with assistance and are therefore generally kept to a minimum by companies currently active in the North American Arctic. In the best-case scenario, a complete plant cover is possible over a period of 20–30 years, although costly subsidies of nutrients, organic matter, and water are typically required to achieve this. Furthermore, the majority of

plants that are either planted intentionally, or eventually colonize the site naturally, are not likely to be those that occurred there originally.

Trampling by Humans and Animals Pedestrian trampling has been known to favor select elements of affected vegetation types (in particular, grasses) for at least 200 years in Europe, although in comparison to vehicle disturbance, relatively small areas are affected. Pioneering field botanists, such as the late Nicholas Polunin, reported similar responses in the Arctic. During investigations of Inuit settlements on Baffin Island in the early 1930s, he observed that “the sealskin tents of the settlement are pitched on slight, bouldry slopes near the water, the most notable feature . . . being the virtual lack of higher vegetation on the much trampled areas between the tents, and the grassiness of the terrain in most areas around” (Polunin, 1948). Despite the small scale, these effects can persist indefinitely. In terms of species composition, campsites last used c.800 years ago differ little from contemporary settlements. Polunin also noted analogous impacts from ungulate grazers: “Away from the settlement, caribou may eat and trample the more luxuriant lichens in healthy areas during their winter feeding, which may result in such a degree of denudation that the plants take many years to recover” (Polunin, 1948). Similar effects have been well documented in other parts of the Arctic to the effect that both humans and animals (in particular, caribou (Rangifer spp.)) have had significant immediate and lasting effects on vegetation and soils. In some areas, such as Iceland, heavy grazing by sheep and horses has led to massive desertification over the centuries. More recently, large numbers of semidomestic reindeer in northern Fennoscandia and northwest Siberia have raised concerns about potential overgrazing.

Indirect and Cumulative Impacts In addition to direct disturbances of the ground surface, other, less visible, impacts can accumulate over time. These may occur independently of each other, or may be exacerbated through synergy among various proximal effects. These indirect or cumulative impacts are now well documented and, while they were formerly unforeseen, scientists can predict them in many cases. In vehicle tracks, for example, plant and soil nutrients can become significantly different than in undisturbed areas, with increases and decreases variable among species, growth forms, and soil types. Although the actual ruts may be small to begin with, the shift from scale-of-impact to scale-of-response can be several orders of magnitude, as in the case of drained

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ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS wetlands. Even shallow ruts from as little as a singlepass vehicle track are capable of effectively diverting runoff from spring snowmelt away from wet and mesic meadows that depend upon this source of moisture. Such desiccation of wet tundra has resulted in the local extinction of aquatic sedges, Sphagnum spp. (mosses), and other hydric bryophytes, as well as an increase in surface albedo. Similarly, as little as a single passage of a vehicle in summer is sufficient to significantly reduce the abundance of soil arthropods. In areas with substantial ground-ice, thermokarst activity can expand appreciably. In northern Alaska, some disturbances on silty sediments covered at least twice the original area of impact after 30 years. Gravel roads and sand quarries are subject to wind erosion and can spread sand and dust up to 1 km from the source. Road dust is alkaline and is capable of rapidly smothering bryophytes, lichens, and mushrooms at the surface as far as 35 m from the road. Dust significantly increases the pH of soils and surface waters, and alters the nutrient contents of abundant vascular plants and mosses in as few as four years. During the same time period, blowing sand can bury all mosses and lichens, and many vascular plants, up to a distance of 250 m from the source. The above points raise an important question that has yet to be properly addressed in areas undergoing large-scale industrial development in tundra regions: that is, when do the gradually increasing number of anthropogenic patches begin to affect landscape-level patterns and processes? Empirical data from Arctic North America and Russia suggest that this is already happening in some ecosystems and that the effects are long-lasting. Furthermore, certain “natural” disturbances (i.e., thermokarst erosion, ungulate grazing) may work to increase the amount of habitat suitable for fugitive species that were uncommon or absent prior to the spread of human impact.

Climate Change Warming affects marine, aquatic, and terrestrial ecosystems. There is strong evidence from a variety of sources that a warming trend unprecedented in historic, and perhaps even in prehistoric, times is already under way. For example, earlier melting and delayed freezing of sea ice on Canada’s Hudson Bay is affecting the health of the region’s historically large polar bear population. Bears now have a shorter time to build necessary fat reserves by hunting their main prey (ringed seals) via breathing holes in the ice. The warming and melting of permafrost has also been well documented in Alaska and Russia. Alpine glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere, and virtually throughout the world, are in rapid retreat. It is estimated that in

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another 30 years, the fabled snows of Mt Kilimanjaro in Africa will cease to exist. In terms of tundra vegetation, a warming Arctic climate may offer both opportunities for revegetation efforts, and risks from migrating exotics. With or without climatic change, we cannot expect the chorologies of ruderal plants, or even whole plant communities, to remain static. Expansion of corridors and increasing human relocation from southern regions will likely continue to provide a ready source of introduced species. Several of the disturbances discussed above may assure the availability of a variety of habitat conditions favorable to colonizing species. Evidence from current climatic conditions indicates that such disturbances may favor the establishment, maintenance, and spread of nascent satellite plant populations in the Arctic. Several factors, including the long photoperiod, short growing season, low temperature, and low soil nutrient and water content, help explain why European weeds are not likely to assume importance in the Arctic. However, the latter four factors would be directly or indirectly affected by a warming climate. Furthermore, the number of successful introductions to date in places as far north as Svalbard and southern Greenland suggests that photoperiod is not an effective barrier for many species. The example of southern ruderals, establishing first in villages and then spreading with disturbance, is not uncommon and illustrates the potential importance of remote founder populations. Once established beyond the treeline, populations of potentially invasive plants are literally a step or two ahead of more southerly and ostensibly northward migrating plants. A soil development lag may favor site capture by more ecologically plastic southern exotics over migrating elements of the endemic flora. The question of vegetation composition is not simply anesthetic concern as the survival of terrestrial herbivores, and the humans who depend on them, will ultimately depend on what forage is available. In addition to climate change, the thinning of the ozone layer in polar regions has increased the amount of ultraviolet radiation received at the earth’s surface. Experiments in the Subarctic and Antarctic have found plants to be affected by both UV-B and warming. In Antarctica, warming improved sexual reproduction in the only vascular species occurring there, whereas growth of the same two species was improved when UV-B was reduced. In Arctic tundra, growth and regeneration of several species is also known to be affected by enhanced UV-B and warming. BRUCE FORBES See also Climate Change; Contaminants; Exxon Valdez; Hydrocarbon Contamination; Local and Transboundary Pollution; Ozone Depletion

ENVIRONMENTALISM Further Reading AMAP, Arctic Pollution Issues: A State of The Arctic Environment Report, Oslo: Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, 1997 Bliss, Lawrence C., “Arctic Ecosystems: Patterns of Change in Response to Disturbance.” In The Earth in Transition: Patterns and Processes of Biotic Impoverishment, edited by George M. Woodwell, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990, 347–366 Callaghan, Terry V. & Sven Jonasson, “Arctic terrestrial ecosystems and environmental change,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, A352 (1995): 259–276 Crawford, Robert M.M. (editor), Disturbance and Recovery in Arctic Lands: An Ecological Perspective, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997 Durner, George M. & Trent L. McDonald, “Estimating the impacts of oils spills on polar bears.” Arctic Research of the United States, 14 (2000): 33–37 Forbes, Bruce C. & Gary Kofinas (editors), “The human role in reindeer and caribou grazing systems.” Polar Research, 19(1) (2000): 1–142 Forbes, Bruce C., James J. Ebersole & Beate Strandberg, Anthropogenic disturbance and patch dynamics in circumpolar arctic ecosystems,” Conservation Biology, 15 (2001): 954–969 Heal, O. William et al. (editors), Global Change in Europe’s Cold Regions, Ecosystems Research Report 27, Brussels: European Commission, 1998 Kankaanpää, Paula et al. (editors), Arctic Flora and Fauna: Status and Conservation, Helsinki: Edita, 2001 Komárková, Vera & Frans-Emil Wielgolaski, “Stress and Disturbance in Cold Region Ecosystems.” In Ecosystems of Disturbed Ground, edited by Lawrence R. Walker, Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 1999: pp. 39–122 Nelson, Frederick E., Oleg A. Anisimov & Nikolay I. Shiklomanov, “Subsidence risk from thawing permafrost,” Nature, 410 (2001): 889–890 Oechel, Walter C. et al. (editors), Global Change and Arctic Terrestrial Ecosystems, Berlin: Springer, 1997 Polunin, N., Botany of the Canadian Eastern Arctic, Part. III, Vegetation and Ecology. Bulletin No. 104, Ottawa: National Museum of Canada, 1948 Post, Roger A., Effects of Petroleum Operations in Alaskan Wetlands: A Critique, Technical Report 90-3, Juneau: Alaska Department of Fish and Game, 1990 Reynolds, James F. & John D. Tenhunen (editors), Landscape Function and Disturbance in Arctic Tundra, Berlin: Springer, 1996 Starfield, Anthony M. & F. Stuart Chapin III, “Model of transient Arctic and boreal vegetation in response to climate and landuse change.” Ecological Applications, 6 (1996): 842–864 Sumina, Olga Ivanovna (editor), Research on Anthropogenic Impacts in the Russian Arctic, Arctic Centre Reports 29, Rovaniemi: University of Lapland, 2000 Truett, Joe C. & Stephen R. Johnson, The Natural History of an Arctic Oil Field: Development and the Biota, San Diego: Academic Press, 2000

ENVIRONMENTALISM Environmentalism—concern about the state of the environment and the impacts of human activities—has been an influential theme in Arctic affairs, both affecting, and in turn influenced by, economic activities, the

status and organization of indigenous peoples, and relations between circumpolar nations. Broader ideological concerns, such as the diversity of views of the Arctic—as resource frontier, wilderness, or homeland—have also been significant. Arctic environmental concerns were evident soon after World War II, provoked by the impacts of projects such as the Alaska Highway, and military and industrial activity generally. Environmental concerns multiplied in the 1950s with respect to resource developments, roads and railways, forest cutting and fires, dams, and indigenous and nonindigenous hunting of wildlife such as caribou and polar bears. But in the immediate postwar era, these concerns were overwhelmed by the priority placed on industrialization and resource development, particularly in the Soviet Union, where transformation of Siberia was considered central to national development. Across the circumpolar region the ambition was not to protect the environment, but to transform it, unlocking the Arctic’s potential as a resource frontier, and converting, through technology, this perceived barren wilderness. However, by the early 1960s, new values in western society had begun to encourage new concerns regarding the Arctic environment. Radioactive fallout, absorbed by lichen, transferred to caribou or reindeer, and thence to indigenous peoples, was of particular concern in Sweden, Norway, Alaska, and Canada. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) drew attention to pesticides and other contaminants in the Arctic, and their potential impacts on peregrine falcons and other species. Resource developments also generated concerns: the Alaska pipeline, a proposed Mackenzie Valley pipeline in Canada, and dams in Canada and Scandinavia. Since then, military activities have raised concerns, including dumping of radioactive waste, and construction and subsequent abandonment of Distant Early Warning sites. Today, much concern focuses on the impact of distant industries and agriculture, as manifested through the transport of toxic contaminants, as well as climate change (expected to affect disproportionately polar regions), and depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer. Contaminants in northern ecosystems and wildlife are of special interest, because many indigenous peoples still rely on country food, leading to concerns regarding health risks. Such concerns exemplify the view of the Arctic as a critical element of global environmental systems. Scientists were among the most influential early proponents of Arctic environmentalism. Ecologists argued on both theoretical (that lower species diversity implies more fragile ecosystems) and empirical (e.g., the erosion caused when tundra is disturbed) grounds that the Arctic was uniquely fragile: a delicately balanced ecosystem requiring protection. Their perspective on

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ENVIRONMENTALISM the Arctic environment often epitomized how they commonly experienced the region: from above, as in an aircraft, remote from Arctic communities, both natural and human. However, with increasing scientific knowledge, the changing nature of Arctic politics, and the influence of indigenous peoples (see below), sweeping arguments about environmental fragility, as well as this airborne “view from above,” became less significant, displaced by environmental ideas and values tied to specific sites and issues. Today, scientists also emphasize the Arctic as critically important to, and influenced by, global environmental processes. Because of the important role played by scientists, Arctic environmentalism was, at least initially, a more elite phenomenon than was environmentalism generally in western society. Rather than emerging from the experiences and changing values of the public, it reflected the concerns of relatively few scientists, especially ecologists, who spread awareness of the Arctic environment to a public with little or no direct experience of the region. Particularly in the 1970s, environmentalism incorporated other concerns and values, including critiques of capitalism and industry, the colonial relationship between northern regions and the south, and, in Canada, economic nationalism and protection of Arctic sovereignty. For many environmentalists as well, the Arctic environment constituted a wilderness, larger and more pristine than similar regions further south, but basically analogous, and requiring zealous protection from the impacts of industrialization. Several organizations promote environmental values in Arctic affairs, including the International Arctic Science Committee, the US Arctic Network, the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, the Kontaktutvalget for Nordomradene (KNO), and the North Alaska Environmental Center. Organizations based outside the region also maintain an Arctic presence: the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Greenpeace, and the Sierra Club. Among the issues they address are the impact of resource development and industrialization, protection of natural areas, global pollution problems affecting the Arctic, and the impact of tourists. Beyond focusing attention on specific problems, environmentalists have also questioned dominant ideas regarding Arctic development, including the assumption that the impacts of technology can be predicted and managed. Instead, they have argued that development would be inevitably accompanied by catastrophes, such as massive oil spills, thereby implying the need for a precautionary approach. Environmental values have encouraged circumpolar cooperation in a variety of fora. Indeed, during the Cold War the environment was considered one of the few areas in which circumpolar cooperation was pos-

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sible. This was reflected, for example, in the first international conference on the polar bear in 1965, which led to a 1973 treaty laying the basis for cooperation in protecting this potentially endangered species. Since the 1970s, indigenous peoples have become significant actors in Arctic environmentalism. This has occurred for several reasons: their demographic and political importance within the circumpolar region, controversies involving the impacts of resource developments on their communities and their economic activities (e.g., hydroelectric projects and the Saami people in northern Norway, and proposed petroleum exploration and development in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge), as well as movements toward greater political self-determination, and a stronger role in circumpolar affairs. While Arctic indigenous peoples are diverse politically, economically, socially, and culturally, certain common features of their relation to their environment, and to environmentalism, can be noted. Their environmental concerns stem from the close relationship between their communities and their physical and biological environment; as a result, they have broadened environmentalism beyond its focus on preservation of a pristine wilderness. Instead, they advocate viewing the Arctic as a homeland. This has had several implications for environmentalism: greater attention to sustainable use of renewable resources such as caribou, seals, and whales, and to economic development generally; affirmation of the significance of indigenous knowledge as an alternative to conventional scientific knowledge; and attention to cultural dimensions of the natural environment, including the spiritual meaning attached to both animals and to specific features of the landscape. Politically, they have insisted on a larger role for communities and regions in managing resources, greater transparency in the decision-making process, and more consultation by industry and government before development decisions are made. These attitudes have been influential in a variety of settings, including land claims negotiations, which led to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) of 1971, and to a series of land claims regions in Canada. In circumpolar affairs, indigenous perspectives have been aired within the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy and the Arctic Council, each of which have recognized indigenous peoples’ distinctive relationship with, and knowledge of, the environment. Various indigenous organizations, including the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, the Saami Council, and the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, have assumed leadership in promoting these views. Arctic environmentalism is thus a diverse body of ideas, promulgated by many voices: indigenous peoples, scientists, and southern environmentalists. It

ENVIRONMENTALISM carries the potential for conflict, not only between it and advocates of industrialization, but between the proponents of environmentalism itself. One conflict has been between southern environmentalists and northern indigenous peoples: between the view of the Arctic as an unspoiled, empty, fragile wilderness, the heritage of the entire world, to be preserved untouched; and the view of this landscape as a homeland, occupied for hundreds of years, vulnerable to the impacts of industrialization (such as contaminants), but also serving as the material basis for the economic, social, and cultural well-being of Arctic communities. Southern environmentalists and indigenous people have also held different views of nonrenewable resource development: often choosing not to oppose it, indigenous people have instead asserted a role in its regulation, seeing it as the potential basis for a stable northern economy. They have also disagreed on the roles and status of science: while environmentalists advocate reliance on state-based wildlife management and conservation regimes, grounded in science, indigenous peoples have criticized science-based conservation, asserting instead the need to grant more authority to indigenous organizations and more credibility to indigenous knowledge. This disagreement has been sharpened by differences in views regarding the status of wildlife populations, including caribou and beluga whales. Parallel to this conflict between wilderness and homeland are divergent attitudes toward Arctic wildlife. Environmentalists’ concerns regarding hunting and trapping have shifted: in the 1950s, concern focused on the profligate commercial slaughter of seals; concern subsequently shifted to the indigenous hunt, and especially the need to conserve stocks and ensure humane methods of killing. By the 1970s, however, the focus had shifted again to an animal rights ethic that questioned the morality of any hunting. Some environmentalists also claimed that since indigenous peoples, such as the Inuit of northern Canada or Saami reindeer herders, use modern tools such as rifles, snow machines, and the like, their hunting practices can no longer be considered “traditional,” and therefore worthy of preservation. Consumer campaigns, particularly in Europe, as well as trade barriers such as the US Marine Mammal Protection Act, have endangered, sometimes unwittingly, the economic and cultural well-being of indigenous peoples. Overall, such conflicts reflect how environmentalism has tended to perpetuate a form of colonial relationship, imposing values and attitudes forged within the dominant western society onto the Arctic landscape and communities, including ecologists’ ideas about the fragility of ecosystems, ideas about wilderness as land empty and untouched, and approaches to wildlife con-

servation that privilege the role of the state over that of communities. However, such conflicts have declined in recent years, as environmental organizations and indigenous peoples have defined common interests, relating, for example, to the sustainable management of reindeer herds in Russia, and the protection of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and the Yukon. The planning and management of national parks—protecting natural ecosystems while allowing traditional indigenous practices to continue—have become another arena of cooperation. Since the 1970s, the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee has evolved from a voice for southern-based environmental concerns into an advocate for indigenous environmental values. Arctic environmentalism is similar in some ways to environmentalism elsewhere, as it represents, to some extent, the local expression of wider concerns. Thus, some Arctic environmental concerns parallel southern concerns: a preoccupation with the impacts of industrial or military activity (particularly contaminants), wilderness protection, and climate change. However, Arctic environmentalism also has distinctive elements, relating to the special circumstances of the Arctic, such as the continuing reliance of many indigenous communities on country food (hence the concern regarding contaminants and their potential health risks), the vulnerability of the Arctic to an enhanced greenhouse effect, and lower species diversity. More generally, the contradictory nature of the Arctic— remote from the industrialized world, but sensitive to its impacts—has added its own dynamic to environmentalism in the region. Beyond certain charismatic fauna such as seals, whales, and polar bears, and dramatic events such as the wreck of the Exxon Valdez, the Arctic has not captured the imagination of most environmentalists in western society. As a result, Arctic environmentalism has become, to a large extent, disengaged from broader currents of environmentalism. But the most distinctive feature of Arctic environmentalism has been its transformation by indigenous peoples, influencing decisions and management practices in a range of contexts: from resource management within land claims regions to circumpolar organizations. STEPHEN BOCKING See also Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy; Conservation; Political Issues in Resource Management; Wilderness Further Reading Coates, Peter A., The Trans-Alaska Pipeline Controversy: Technology, Conservation, and the Frontier, University of Alaska Press, 1993

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ERASMUS, GEORGES HENRY Martin, Vance G. & Nicholas Tyler (editors), Arctic Wilderness: The 5th World Wilderness Congress, Golden, Colorado: North American Press, 1995 Nuttall, Mark, Protecting the Arctic: Indigenous Peoples and Cultural Survival, Amsterdam: Harwood, 1998 Nuttall, Mark & Terry V. Callaghan (editors), The Arctic: Environment, People, Policy, Amsterdam: Harwood, 2000 Page, Robert, Northern Development: The Canadian Dilemma, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1986 Smith, Eric Alden & Joan McCarter (editors), Contested Arctic: Indigenous Peoples, Industrial States, and the Circumpolar Environment, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997 Wenzel, George, Animal Rights, Human Rights: Ecology, Economy and Ideology in the Canadian Arctic, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991 Young, Oran R. & Gail Osherenko (editors), Polar Politics: Creating International Environmental Regimes, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993

ERASMUS, GEORGES HENRY Georges Henry Erasmus has been a central figure in local, regional, national, and international Aboriginal politics since the early 1970s. He was appointed to the Order of Canada in 1987. Criticized by some for being too abrasive and by others for being too conciliatory, Erasmus has also been referred to as Canada’s “Eleventh Premier,” in recognition of the distinction and reach of his leadership, particularly in the area of Aboriginal self-government and constitutional reform. Throughout Erasmus’s career, his work has reflected a broad spectrum of concerns including the social, environmental, cultural, educational, and political. He is the Canadian delegate to the World Council of Indigenous Peoples and has served on the boards of the World Wildlife Fund of Canada, Operation Dismantle, Energy Probe Research Foundation, and other environmental and human rights organizations. In 1998, Erasmus received a National Aboriginal Achievement Award for Public Service. He is currently president and chair of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. Perhaps the major role of his distinguished career was his appointment in 1991 as co-chair of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, which issued its final report in 1996. Amidst continuing debate, the Commission’s findings are gradually (and variously) being implemented in Canadian policy. One of the effects of the Commission hearings and final report was the federal government’s issuance of a formal apology for the widespread abuse that Aboriginal people experienced in residential schools. The significance of the Commission’s works also includes development of a government strategy titled “Gathering Strength,” aimed at addressing economic and social concerns of Aboriginal peoples, and creation of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, whose board Erasmus chaired. Its mandate was designed to address the disastrous effects of misguided social

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programs on Aboriginal people, such as the removal of children from their families and communities to government- or religious-run residential schools, the physical and sexual abuse that many students endured in those schools, and the effects of other assimilationist programs on language, culture, and community. A number of pivotal agreements, court decisions, and land claim settlements between government and First Nations—and the agreements (one political, the other a land claim settlement) creating Nunavut Territory— have also followed. While not specifically attributable to the Commission, they were undoubtedly spurred and probably hastened by its work. Erasmus’s talent for leadership was recognized early on. While still in his twenties, he served on the Yellowknife Band Council, cofounded and directed the Tree of Peace Friendship Centre, and from 1971 to 1975 served as president of University Canada North. He headed the Indian Brotherhood of the Northwest Territories, which became the Dene Nation—for which he served as president from 1976 to 1983, the year he became founding president of the Denendeh Development Corporation. The crowning achievement of his seven-year term with the Dene Nation was his successful campaign against the proposed Mackenzie Valley Pipeline and the environmental hazards the Alaska Pipeline posed for the Canadian Western Arctic. Erasmus’s articulate and passionate presentations to the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry led to his election in 1985 as the first National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), a position he held for two three-year terms. Erasmus’s work on behalf of the AFN raised his national and international profile, which continued to increase as he played a key part in negotiations and public communication during the “Oka Crisis” involving local, Québec, and federal governments and Mohawk people. He laid much of the groundwork for developing policy on self-government for Canada’s First Nations, participating in several First Ministers’ conferences on constitutional reform. His position as national spokesperson has continued to be both respected and challenged. His ability to communicate Aboriginal concerns to a wide range of people has been seen as both asset and liability. Similarly, some critics have praised the scope of his vision in integrating Aboriginal concerns in a global political and environmental context, while others have criticized him for losing focus, or for citing too unquestioningly the successes of other countries. For example, at a three-day Self-Determination Symposium held in Toronto in 1990, Erasmus voiced an Amerindian vision of a new order characterized by “sharing, recognition, and affirmation”(Dickason, 1992: 416). He was sharply critical of Canada and uncritical of the United

ERIKSSON, LEIF States, which he praised unequivocally for being “comfortable with recognizing that tribal peoples…have the right to govern themselves in many areas… we have problems getting the government to even mouth the words ‘nation to nation.” (Dickason, 1992: 416, 519). To suggest that the United States has a more enlightened policy, without qualifying or explaining that assertion, requires ignoring much of America’s history. In 1998, Erasmus called for government action, warning that if the problems facing Aboriginal people were not addressed, the next generation would be more militant. In the introduction to his 1989 book Drumbeat: Anger and Renewal in Indian Country, he articulated both his anger and his determination to counter the colonial inheritance: “…for generations, Canadian governments have treated us as a disappearing race, and have administered us accordingly. ‘I want to get rid of the Indian problem,’ Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs Duncan Campbell Scott told the House of Commons in the early 1920s…’ Before a quarter of a century is gone, perhaps, the savages will be no more than a memory! wrote a Québec civil servant in 1897…We native people have been subject to such reasoning throughout our history. Yet, we have not disappeared; we have survived…” (Erasmus, 1989: 11). Twelve years later, a year after the final report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples was released, Erasmus addressed a conference at McGill University’s Institute for the Study of Canada. The report recommended creating an Aboriginal parliament and an independent land claims tribunal. Erasmus stated, “We see Canada in the 21st century as a single nation state within which about 60 Aboriginal nations would exercise jurisdiction and law-making authority over a wide range of instruments of governance, on a renegotiated and, in most cases, extended land base. Aboriginal people would be citizens of their nations and of Canada” (McGill Reporter, 1997: 2).

Biography Georges Henry Erasmus was born into a family of 12 children in Rae Edzo, a small Dene community in the Northwest Territories, on August 8, 1948. A high school graduate, he now holds honorary doctorates from at least seven universities, including Queen’s University, the University of Toronto, the University of Manitoba, York University, and the University of British Columbia. Erasmus’s career has focused on local, regional, national, and international politics. He is author along with Boyce Richardson of Drumbeat: Anger and Renewal in Indian Country (1989). He married Sandra Knight in 1984 and lives in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. VALERIE ALIA

Further Reading Assembly of First Nations, Self-Determination Symposium Summary Report, Ottawa: Assembly of First Nations, 1990 Dickason, Olive Patricia, Canada’s First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1992 Erasmus, George, Drumbeat: Anger and Renewal in Indian Country, edited by Boyce Richardson, Toronto: Assembly of First Nations and Summerhill Press, 1989 Ponting, J. Rick, First Nations in Canada: Perspectives on Opportunity, Empowerment, and Self-Determination, Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1997 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Final Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Volume 2, Restructuring the Relationship, Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1996 “Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples: will study bring sweeping change or prove costly exercise in futility?” McGill Reporter, 29(10) (February 13, 1997)

ERIKSSON, LEIF Leif Eriksson (Leifr Eiríksson), the son of Eiríkr rauið Þorvaldsson (Eirík Thorvaldsson or Eirík the Red), was a Norwegian explorer and subject of sagas about the Old Norse. Much of what historians know about Eriksson derives from sagas written in Iceland in the early 13th century. He is best known as an explorer of Vinland, an area of North America found and traveled by the Greenland Norse. Many scholars believe that the Old Norse were the first Europeans to have visited the continent of America. Eirík the Red had organized the Old Norse settlement in Greenland c.985–986, according to the first historian to write in Icelandic, Ari fróði (Ari the Learned, 1067–1148). Reportedly, the name of Greenland was intended to lure people to settle there. Ari is characteristically brief about the settlement and further adventures of the Greenlanders, but much later, perhaps as late as 1300, two sagas about the Old Norse settlement in Greenland and further travels in America were recorded: Saga of Eirík the Red and Saga of the Greenlanders (commonly known as the Vinland Sagas). The main facts about Eriksson as reported in these sagas suggest that he lived in Greenland as an adult, went to the court of the Norwegian king Ólafr Tryggvason (died 999 or 1000), accepted Christianity, and became a missionary in Greenland. There Eriksson managed to convert most of the Norse population to the new faith. He is also credited with having saved the lives of shipwrecked sailors, and hence earned another name, Leifr heppni (Leif the Lucky). Eriksson’s expeditions led to the founding of the land that the Old Norse named Vinland it góða, which has never been located with any certainty. However, Eriksson’s role in the Vinland journeys remains problematic, although scholars agree that he played some

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ERIKSSON, LEIF part in it. According to the Saga of Eirík the Red, Eriksson sailed from Norway until he discovered lands “where he expected to find none.” Later on, other Greenlanders sailed to these lands, which they then named Helluland (which might have been Baffin Island), Markland (which might have been Labrador), and Vinland (located in Newfoundland or even further south). However, according to the Greenlandic saga, the shipwrecked sailor Bjarni Herjólfsson first traveled to these lands, although Eriksson went to explore them further and named them. This discrepancy is perhaps due to different oral traditions, as the accounts do not seem to be textually related. Both accounts in the Vinland Sagas agree that the name Vinland derives from the fact that the Old Norse found vines for wine-making there. Helge Ingstad (1899–2001), among other modern scholars, has contested this notion based on the account that vines are nowhere to be found in Newfoundland. Attempts at different etymological explanations, linking the name with vinjar (“grasslands”) rather than vín (“wine”), have, however, not managed to convince many linguists. It is not clear where the Norsemen thought Vinland was located, but the most common explanation seems to have been that it was a peninsula connected to the African continent. As Greenland was thought to be connected by land to Bjarmaland (the area of Karelia in Russia), it is clear that the Norsemen had a worldview quite different from the modern one, with the continents being placed much closer to another than actually is the case. In Eirík’s saga, nothing further is told of the life of Eriksson after he brought Christianity to Greenland. According to the Greenlandic saga, he inherited his father’s farm at Brattahlíð in Greenland and became the most prominent farmer in the land. Eriksson never traveled again to Vinland, but other Greenlanders stayed there for brief periods of time, using the facilities that Eriksson built. Eriksson lent but always retained ownership of his cabins in Vinland. Nationalistic Norwegian and Icelandic historians have spent much energy quarreling about whether Eriksson ought be considered an Icelander or a Norwegian. This debate has until recently been continued by academics in popular newspapers. In fact, according to the written evidence, Eriksson was born in Iceland of an Icelandic mother, but his father was an immigrant from Norway. Whether this makes him a Norwegian or an Icelander is hardly relevant from a medieval perspective, but a fair compromise might be to call him a Greenlander. The medieval sagas offer no assistance in settling this question, and it seems fair to assume that for medieval historians his identity as a missionary and as a devout Christian was of greater consequence.

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In 1930, the United States government donated a statue of Eriksson to the government of Iceland in order to commemorate the millennial anniversary of the AlÞingi, the world’s oldest parliament. The statue, made by the sculptor A. Sterling Calder (1870–1945), is located at Skólavörðuholt, near the center of Reykjavík.

Biography Leif Eriksson (Leifr Eiríksson) was born c.970, probably in Haukadalur (Iceland). His parents were Eiríkur Þorvaldsson (also known as Eirík the Red) and Þjóðhildur Jƒrundardóttir. Eriksson lived much of his adult life in Brattahlíð, Greenland. According to Saga of Eirík the Red, Eriksson had an illegitimate son by a noble woman referred to as Þórgunna in the Hebrides, where Norse settlers frequently visited from the 8th century onward. This son, who was named Þorgils, later came to Greenland, and was believed to possess magical powers. According to the saga, Þórgunna predicted that their son would cause Eriksson unhappiness, which may be a reference to a legend now lost. No wife of Eriksson is mentioned in the Vinland Sagas. SVERRIR JAKOBSSON See also Eirík the Red; Norse and Icelandic Sagas; Vinland Further Reading Benediktsson, Jakob (editor), Íslendingabók. Landnámabók, Íslenzk fornrit, I, Reykjavík, 1968 BergÞórsson, Páll, Vinlandsgátan, Reykjavík, 1997 Halldórsson, Ólafur, Grænland í miðaldaritum, Reykjavík, 1980 ——— (editor), Eiríks saga rauða. Texti Skálholtsbókar AM 557 4to, Viðauki við Íslenzk fornrit, IV, Reykjavík, 1985 Hermannsson, Halldór, The Problem of Wineland, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1936 Ingstad, Helge, Westwards to Vinland, London and New York, 1965 Jansson, Sven B.F., Sagorna om Vinland I. Handskrifterna till Erik den rödes saga, Lund, 1944 Jones, Gywn, The Norse Atlantic Saga, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1986 Jónsson, Eiríkur & Finnur Jónsson (editors), Hauksbók udgiven efter de arnamagnæanske håndskrifter no. 371, 544 og 675, 4o samt forskellige papirshåndskrfter, Copenhagen, 1892–1896 Magnússon, Finnur & C.C. Rafn (editors), Grønlands historiske Mindesmærker, 3 volumes, Copenhagen, 1838–1845 Morison, S.E., The European Discovery of America, New York, 1971 Nansen, Fridtjof, Nord i tåkeheimen. Utforskningen av jordens nordlige strøk i tidlige tider, Kristiania, 1911 Rafn, C.C. (editor), Antiqvitates Americanæ, Copenhagen, 1837 Strömbäck, Dag (editor), The Arna-Magnæean Manuscript 557 4to, Corpus codicum Islandicorum medii aevi, XIII, Copenhagen, 1940 Þórðarson, Matthías, Vínlandsfer›irnar, Safn til sögu Íslands VI.1, Reykjavík, 1929

ESKIMO Vigfússon, Guðbrandur & Carl Rikard Unger (editors), Flateyjarbók. En samling af norske konge-sagaer med indskudte mindre fortællinger om begivenheder i og udenfor Norge samt annaler, 3 volumes, Christiania: P.T. Malling, 1860–1868

ESKERS An esker is an elongate sinuous ridge, of either simple or compound form, composed of glaciofluvial sediments and marking the former position of streams below (subglacial), within (englacial), or on the surface (supraglacial) of glaciers. Deposited in former icewalled channels, eskers are often the most prominent glaciofluvial landform in freshly deglaciated terrain. The routing of former meltwater channels in glaciers, and their association with ice-marginal configurations, is indicated by the overall form of eskers. There are four major types of esker: (1) continuous ridges (single or multiple) that document tunnel fills; (2) ice-channel fills produced by the infilling of supraglacial channels; (3) segmented ridges deposited in tunnels during pulsed glacier recession; and (4) beaded eskers consisting of successive subaqueous fans deposited in ice-contact lakes during pulsed glacier recession. The former englacial position of some eskers is indicated by the occurrence of buried glacier ice or almost complete disturbance of the stratified core. Most eskers are aligned subparallel to the direction of former glacier flow, thereby reflecting meltwater flow toward the ice margin. If the water is flowing in pressurized conduits, it can flow over topographic obstacles at the glacier bed, giving rise to undulatory long profiles. Such undulatory, or up-anddown, profiles can also be produced by the draping of englacial and supraglacial eskers onto underlying glacier beds during ice meltout. In certain circumstances, specifically where water is flowing at atmospheric pressure, meltwater may flow down the topographic slope of the glacier bed and therefore the resultant eskers may be aligned transverse to flow (“valley” or “subglacially engorged” eskers). Such eskers are normally much shorter than normal eskers and are typically produced at the glacier margin where the ice is thin. Eskers are relatively uncommon in the smaller subpolar glaciers due probably to the lack of well-developed subglacial channel systems with access to debris-rich ice sequences. They are very common, however, in Arctic regions previously affected by ice sheet glaciation forming continuous esker networks of ten of more than 100 km in length. Eskers can pass into stretches of erosional (Nye) channels over long distances, but it is unlikely that such complex and lengthy systems were formed in a single tunnel. It is more likely that esker and tunnel segments were formed in the marginal zone of ablation during ice sheet recession. Where eskers lie within Nye channels,

it is clear that bed conditions changed from erosional to depositional modes due to changing discharges. Eskers are composed of a wide variety of sediments ranging from sorted silts, sands, gravels, and boulders to matrix-supported gravels that have undergone relatively short travel distances, usually less than 15 km. Bedding in subglacial eskers may display a range of sedimentary structures from ripples to massive and cross-bedded gravels. In contrast, the meltout of ice in englacial and supraglacial eskers may destroy all sedimentary structures. Some eskers may contain cyclic sedimentary sequences that fine-upwards. These probably document either seasonal or annual meltwater discharges in the tunnel system responsible for esker deposition. Anticlinal structures in the bedding of eskers are often interpreted as the product of slumping of the esker margins in response to ice wall melting and arched bedding as the product of simultaneous deposition of esker ridge and flanks. DAVID J.A. EVANS See also Glacial Deposition; Glacial Geomorphology; Kames Further Reading Aylsworth, J.M. & W.W. Shilts, Glacial Features Around the Keewatin Ice Divide, Districts of Mackenzie and Keewatin, Ottawa: Geological Survey of Canada Paper 88–4, 1989 Bannerjee, I. & B.C. McDonald, “Nature of Esker Sedimentation.” In Glaciofluvial and Glaciolacustrine Sedimentation, edited by A.V. Jopling & B.C. McDonald, Tulsa, OK: SEPM Special Publication, 1975 Benn, D.I. & D.J.A. Evans, Glaciers and Glaciation, London: Arnold, 1998 Clark, P.U. & J.S. Walder, “Subglacial drainage, eskers and deforming beds beneath the Laurentide and Eurasian ice sheets.” Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, 106 (1994): 304–314 Huddart, D., M.R. Bennett & N.F. Glasser, “Morphology and sedimentology of a high arctic esker system: Vegbreen, Svalbard.” Boreas, 28 (1999): 253–273 Price, R.J., “Eskers near the Casement Glacier, Alaska.” Geografiska Annaler, 48 (1966): 111–125 Shreve, R.L., “Movement of water in glaciers.” Journal of Glaciology, 11 (1972): 205–214

ESKIMO The Oxford English Dictionary defines Eskimo as “(1) a member of a people inhabiting northern Canada, Alaska, Greenland and eastern Siberia; and (2) any of the languages of this people,” but adds a caveat on usage that “in Canada, and increasingly, elsewhere the term Inuit is used to refer to Canadian Eskimos and Eskimos more generally. The term Eskimo may offend some people.” The earliest recorded use of the word Eskimos in English is in Richard Hakluyt’s essay about colonizing eastern North America, Discourse on

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ESKIMO-ALEUT LANGUAGES Western Planting, which was written in 1584, but published more widely in 1877. More accurately, Hakluyt used the spelling Esquimawes to describe the people living around “graunde Bay” on the northern shores of the Gulf of St Lawrence, although Hakluyt’s source for the word is unknown. Many scholars have argued that Eskimo originates from an Algonquian language spoken by Indians living in eastern Canada and, as its meaning has been assumed to be “eaters of raw flesh,” it has been argued that the term was applied as a derogatory term of reference. William Thalbitzer, the Danish linguist and ethnographer, considered the origin of Eskimo to lie in the missionary activities of Jesuit priests in eastern Canada, and thought it likely that the term derived from Excomminquois (excommunicated), as a term applied to a pagan people living to the north of the Indian areas the priests were working in. Wendell Oswalt notes that, since Esquimawes was first used by Hakluyt in 1584 and as the Jesuits did not begin their missionizing activities until 1605, it would appear that the Algonquian origins of Eskimo are more probable. Indeed, the perception of Eskimos as “eaters of raw flesh” entered the popular consciousness and became the standard meaning in the Oxford English and Webster’s New World dictionaries. David Damas (1984), however, argues that the ultimate origin of Eskimo is a Montagnais form ayassime’w, meaning “snowshore-netter,” and that “eaters of raw flesh” fits only Proto-Alqonquian forms, which are not the correct source of the word itself. Although the way the Montagnais word developed into the English and French is uncertain, Damas suggests that the inclusion of a Spanish form, esquimaos, in a Basque historical document on Basque whaling in the Strait of Belle Isle written by Lopi di Isasti in 1625 is significant. Gran Baya (Grand Bay), or the Strait of Belle Isle, was a major landmark in the records of the Basque whalers, and “graunde Bay” was the place Hakluyt located the Esquimawes, while Samuel Champlain’s 1632 map used the first French reference to Esquimaux, who were located near “la grande baye,” at the western end of the Strait of Belle Isle. Esquimaux became the most common English spelling in early usage, which was the same as the French plural (although Esquimau was the French singular, Esquimaux was used in English as singular, plural, and attributive). Other English terms for Eskimo, suggesting a borrowing from Cree forms, are found in the 1749 account of James Isham, an employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company (Damas, 1984). Isham records Cree words referring to the inhabitants of the west coast of Hudson Bay, such as Ehuskemay, Iskemay, Uskemau’s, and Uskemaws. Hudson’s Bay Company employees and coastal whalers used another term,

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Huskemaw and its shortened form Husky (or Huskies), to describe the peoples of Hudson Bay in the 19th century based on these 18th-century forms and William Dall’s (1877) assertion that Husky was a self-appellation used by these groups. It is important to note, however, that Dall also used Inuit, which he spelled as Innuit, as a general term (Damas, 1984). Inuit as a more general term of reference was adopted by the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) an NGO representing the rights and interests of all Inuit) in 1977 in preference to the term Eskimo. Throughout Canada and Greenland, Inuit has replaced Eskimo. Inuit means “the people” (singular “inuk”; person) and is often applied generally across the Arctic to refer to Eskimospeaking peoples, in part because of the (possibly erroneous) belief in the pejorative and derogatory meaning of Eskimo, but also because of the political assertion of rights and the movements for self-government that arose across the North American Arctic from the 1960s. However, this common usage obscures the diversity of Inuit groups, and the variety of local usages for self-designation, who are known as Kalaallit, Inughuit, and Iit in west, northwest, and east Greenland; Inuit and Inuvialuit in Canada; Iñupiaq, Yup’ik, and Alutiiq in Alaska; and Yupik in Siberia. Confusion also arises over the use of Eskimo because archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and linguists often refer to Eskimo cultures, Eskimo peoples, and Eskimo-Aleut languages. In this sense, archaeologists may use Eskimo (or PaleoEskimo) to distinguish Eskimoan groups such as the Independence I, Pre-Dorset, Dorset, and Thule cultures from the historic Inuit, who are the inheritors of much of the Thule culture. MARK NUTTALL See also Alutiit; Eskimo-Aleut Languages; Eskimology; Inuit, Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC); Iñupiat; Inuvialuit; Siberian (Chukotkan) Yupik; Thule Culture Further Reading Dall, William, “Tribes of the Extreme Northwest.” in Contributions to North American Ethnology Volume 1, edited by John W. Powell, Washington: US Government Printing Service, 1877, pp. 1–6 Damas, David, Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 5, Arctic, Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1984 Oswalt, Wendell H., Eskimos and Explorers, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1999

ESKIMO-ALEUT LANGUAGES Languages of the Eskaleut—or Eskimo-Aleut—family are spoken by the Inuit, Yup’ik, and Aleut populations of the North American Arctic (and eastern most Russian Chukotka). The exact number of their

ESKIMO-ALEUT LANGUAGES speakers is difficult to establish, but it may be estimated at approximately 91,000 in the year 2000, out of a total population of 150,000 people of Inuit, Yup’ik, and Aleut ancestry. The bulk of these speakers (c.79,500; or 68% of all Inuit) use an Inuit/Iñupiaq dialect, while 11,200 of them (37% of all Yupiit) speak a Yup’ik language, and 300 (10% of the group) use Aleut. One Eskimo-Aleut language, Sirenikski, died as a living spoken language in the early 1990s, when its last two speakers passed away. According to a majority of specialists, the EskimoAleut family (Sirenikski included) comprises seven separate languages, that is, linguistically related speech forms lacking mutual intelligibility. Most of these are themselves subdivided into a number of dialects, or regional varieties of the same language. The seven Eskaleut languages are the following: (1) Inuit/Iñupiaq (spoken from Seward Peninsula, in central western Alaska, through Arctic Canada to Greenland); (2) Central Alaskan Yup’ik (spoken in southwestern Alaska); (3) Alutiiq (spoken on Prince William Sound and Kodiak Island, south central Alaska); (4) Central Siberian Yupik (spoken in three or four localities of eastern Chukotka, Russia, as well as on Saint Lawrence Island, Alaska); (5) Naukanski (formerly spoken in Naukan, at the easternmost tip of Chukotka; its speakers were later moved to other Chukotkan communities); (6) Sirenikski (formerly spoken in the village of Sireniki, south eastern Chukotka); and (7) Aleut (spoken on Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, and also on the Alaskan Pribilof and Russian Commander Islands). The first six languages all belong—or belonged—to the Eskimo branch of the family: they share many more similarities among themselves than they do with Aleut. Within this Eskimo branch, four languages—Central Alaskan Yup’ik, Alutiiq, Central Siberian Yupik, and Naukanski—form a Yupik subgroup, since they stand linguistically closer one to another than to either Inuit/Iñupiaq or Sirenikski. Because of its number of speakers and geographical extension, Inuit/Iñupiaq is the principal Eskaleut language. It comprises several dialects (from 13 to 18, according to sources), each of which belongs to one of four dialectal groupings: Alaskan Iñupiaq, Western Canadian Inuktun, Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, and Greenlandic Kalaallisut. As a rule, mutual intelligibility is higher among dialects belonging to the same grouping than it is across grouping boundaries. Differences between dialects are principally phonological and lexical. The inventory of phonemes (the functional units of pronunciation), and the rules for combining phonemes together, may vary according to dialect, western dialects being more conservative (they allow more types of combinations) than eastern ones. In lexical terms, word-bases are generally similar (except for

differences in pronunciation) from one area to the other, but the use of affixes (linguistic units added to the wordbase) may vary considerably among dialects. Of course, phonological and lexical variation is much higher between the Inuit/Iñupiaq dialects taken as a whole and the Yupik languages, although the syntax and morphology (use of grammatical units) of all Eskimo languages—Inuit and Yupik—remain amazingly similar. The Inuit/Iñupiaq dialects may be listed as follows: 1. Alaskan Iñupiaq (c.5000 speakers) • Bering Strait dialect (Diomede Islands and northwestern Seward Peninsula) • Qawiaraq (southern Seward Peninsula; according to some sources, Qawiaraq would unite with the preceding dialect) • Malimiutun (northwestern Alaska; it might be a subcategory of the following dialect) • North Slope (Arctic coast of Alaska; some speakers now live in Canada’s Mackenzie Delta) 2. Western Canadian Inuktun (c.6000 speakers) • Siglitun or Inuvialuktun (Mackenzie coast of Canada) • Inuinnaqtun (western Kitikmeot region of Nunavut) • Natsilingmiutut (eastern Kitikmeot region of Nunavut) • Kivalliq (Keewatin region of Nunavut; this dialect might belong to Eastern Canadian Inuktitut) 3. Eastern Canadian Inuktitut (c.18,500 speakers) • Aivilik (northern Keewatin region of Nunavut) • North Baffin (Igloolik and northern Baffin Island) • South Baffin (southern Baffin Island) • Nunavik (Arctic Québec) • Labrador Inuttut (coast of Labrador) 4. Greenlandic Kalaallisut (c.50,000 speakers) • Thule or Avanersuarmiutut (northwestern Greenland) • West Greenlandic (west coast of Greenland) • East Greenlandic (east coast of Greenland). Some dialects are themselves subdivided into subdialects, that is, well-characterized local speech forms. For example, the South Baffin dialect includes two relatively divergent forms: South West Baffin (spoken in Cape Dorset) and South East Baffin (used in Iqaluit, Kimmirut, Pangnirtung, Broughton Island (Qikiqtarjuaq), and Clyde River (Kangiqtugaapik)). In a similar way, the Nunavik dialect is split into two

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ESKIMO-ALEUT LANGUAGES well-defined subdialects: Tarramiut (northern Arctic Québec) and Itivimiut (east coast of Hudson Bay). The rate of linguistic retention (i.e., the percentage of Inuit who still speak their ancestral language) varies considerably among dialects. As a general rule, in the eastern Arctic (Greenland, Nunavik, and the Baffin and Keewatin regions of Nunavut), between 90% and 100% of all Inuit have their local dialect as mother tongue. The only exception is Labrador, with only 35–40% of Inuttut speakers. The situation is different in the western Arctic. Natsilingmiutut is spoken by 80% of the local Inuit population, but Inuinnaqtun is only used by some 40% of all Inuinnait, and Siglitun (Inuvialuktun) and the Alaskan Iñupiaq dialects by less than 20% of the Inuvialuit and Iñupiat. Language loss is due to many decades of sustained contact with non-Inuit, and to the early existence of schools whose sole teaching medium was English. About 45,000 people (almost all the individuals of Inuit ancestry born on the west coast of Greenland) speak the West Greenlandic dialect, which thus qualifies as mother tongue for almost 50% of all speakers of an Eskaleut language. West Greenlandic, called Kalaallisut (“the way of the Greenlanders”) by its speakers, has now become the official idiom of autonomous Greenland. It is used in the local parliament and administration, heard on the national radio and television network, and taught in school up to the end of the secondary level. Knowledge of Danish, the second language of Greenland, is even said to have receded since Greenland Home Rule was granted in 1979. The situation of the other Inuit dialects and Yupik languages is quite different. They survive as minority speech forms, although some efforts are being made to ensure their survival, at least in the eastern Canadian Arctic. In Nunavut and Nunavik, they generally constitute the sole teaching medium up to grade three, while elsewhere they are often taught as second languages to English-speaking native children. Since the advent of Nunavut in 1999, local Inuit dialects have become official in this new territory of Canada. Looking at some phonological and grammatical features of the Eskaleut languages, generally speaking, the inventory of consonants and consonant groupings is larger in Aleut and the Yupik languages than it is in Inuit/Iñupiaq. There are few vowels: in Aleut and Inuit/Iñupiaq there are only three—a, i (pronounced as in see), and u (pronounced as in zoo); in the Yup’ik languages, there are four—a, i, u, and e (pronounced as in golden). In all Eskaleut speech forms, vowel length (usually marked in the orthography by doubling the vowel symbol) is phonemic. In Eastern Canadian Inuktitut for instance, the words kinakkut—with a short i—and kiinakkut—with a long ii—have two very

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different meanings. The former means “who (in the plural),” while the latter can be translated as “across your face.” Eskaleut consonants must belong to one of four positions of articulation: bilabial, palatal-alveolar, velar, and uvular. There are four main modes of articulation: plosive, fricative (and/or aspirated), lateral, and nasal. Aleut differentiates between aspirated and nonaspirated consonants, and the Yupik languages between labialized and nonlabialized velars and uvulars. Yupik also makes a distinction between voiced and voiceless fricatives and nasals, while in Inuit/Iñupiaq, the only voiced/voiceless distinctions occur—in certain dialects—with lateral palatal-alveolar phonemes l (voiced) “and” (voiceless), and J (a voiced palatal whose phonic realization sounds approximately like English r) and sr (the voiceless counterpart of J). By way of example, the North Baffin dialect of Eastern Canadian Inuktitut comprises a total of 17 phonemes: three vowels (a, i, u, either short or long) and 14 consonants. According to their positions and modes of articulation, the consonants are distributed as follows: ● ●

●

●

bilabial: plosive (p); fricative (v); nasal (m) palatal-alveolar: plosive (t); fricative (s, j—realized as English y); lateral (l, and); nasal (n) velar: plosive (k); fricative (g—realized as Greek gamma); nasal (ng) uvular: plosive (q—sounds like kr); fricative (R—realized as French r).

In the Yupik languages, as well as in the westernmost dialects of Inuit/Iñupiaq, groupings of two consonants may start with a bilabial, palatal-alveolar, velar, or uvular consonant, which is more or less assimilated—as to mode of articulation and voicing— to the second consonant of the grouping. As one moves east, however, the types of first consonants become more and more restricted. For example, groupings starting with a palatal-alveolar in western speech forms become geminates in eastern dialects (compare Alaskan North Slope angatkuq and North Baffin angakkuq, “shaman,” where the tk consonant grouping has become kk through gemination). The dialect that assimilates the most is Labrador Inuttut, where, with one or two exceptions, no consonant groupings are found. They have all become geminates. In terms of their grammatical structure, Eskaleut languages are agglutinative: words are formed by adding one or more affixes to a word-base. Up to a point, they may also be considered polysynthetic, that is, a single word can express several concepts. However, their degree of polysynthesis is limited, and it has nothing to do with that of most American Indian languages. By

ESKIMO-ALEUT LANGUAGES comparison with Yupik and Inuit/Iñupiaq speech forms, Aleut is less agglutinative, since it often uses independent words to convey notions that are expressed by way of affixes in other Eskaleut languages. Any Yupik or Inuit/Iñupiaq word—except for a limited number of conjunctions and interjections—must include a word-base, which gives it its basic meaning, and a morphological affix, which indicates the word’s grammatical function in the sentence. A number of lexical affixes, which complete or modify the meaning conveyed by the word-base, may be inserted between the two obligatory components. Here is an example of a two-word sentence in North Baffin Inuktitut: iglujjuaraalungmut pisungniaqpunga (“towards a very big house, I shall walk”) iglu-: “house” (word-base); jjuaq-: “big” (lexical affix); -aaluk-: “very” (lexical affix); -mut: “towards (singular)” (morphological affix) pisuk-: “walk” (word-base); -niaq-: “future tense” (lexical affix); -punga: “first singular person of the indicative” (morphological affix). There are two principal categories of word-bases, which broadly correspond to the nouns and verbs of English and other Indo-European languages. In the example given above, iglu- (“house”) is a nominal word-base, while pisuk- (“to walk”) is a verbal one. Word-bases that correspond to the personal—and, to a certain extent, demonstrative—pronouns of English, as well as to its numerals, may be considered nominal, while qualificative adjectives are generally expressed in a half-verbal form (e.g., North Baffin piujuq, “it is good” or “that which is good”). When a word-base is directly followed by a morphological affix, this affix must belong to the same category (nominal or verbal) as the word-base. Nominal affixes express the number—singular, dual (which has disappeared from Greenlandic Kalaallisut), and plural—of the word, as well as its grammatical function (there are seven or eight different functions). They may also act as possessive adjectives. Here are a few North Baffin examples: iglu (“house”; with a zero affix, i.e., the significant absence of any formal morpheme); igluuk (“two houses”); igluit (“many houses”); igluup (“the house’s”); iglunut (“towards many houses”); iglunnut (“towards my house”); iglungni (“in your house”); igluagut (“through his/her house”). Verbal affixes express the subject person (1st, 2nd, 3rd, and—in subordinate moods—reflexive) and the grammatical mood of the verb. Some affixes also express the person of the direct object. The number of moods varies slightly among languages and dialects. North Baffin Inuktitut has ten of them. Here are a few examples in this dialect: tusaqpunga (“I hear”); tusaqpagit (“I hear you”); tusarit (“hear!”); tusanga (“hear me!”); tusaqpat (“if he/she hears”); tusaqpaatik (“if

he/she hears both of you”); tusarluta (“while we shall be hearing”); tusarlugit (“while we shall be hearing them”). A number of lexical affixes can transform nominal word-bases into verbs, and vice versa. In such cases, the morphological affix must correspond to the transformed nature of the word. For example, iglu- (“house”) and pisuk- (“walk”) may undergo such transformations, as in the following North Baffin sentence: iglujjuaraaluliuqpunga pisungniarvingmi (“I build a very big house in a place where one shall walk”) iglu-: “house”; -jjuaq-: “big”; -aalu(k)-: “very”; -liuq-: “to build”; -punga: “first singular person of the indicative” pisuk-: “walk”; -niar-: “future tense”; -vik-: “place where”; -mi: “in”. Of course, lexical affixes may also follow the transforming element, as in igluliurniaqpunga (“I shall build a house”) or pisugvigjuarmi (“in a big walking place”). Besides nominal and verbal word-bases, the Eskaleut languages possess what several linguists call localizers, or deictics, that is, bases that express a position in space and are followed by a special set of morphological affixes. Localizers enable the very precise expression of the spatial localization of a person or object, in relation to the speaker. Their number varies from ten to twenty, according to language or dialect. Here are a few North Baffin examples: uvani (“here near the speaker”); uvunga (“towards a position near the speaker”); unani (“down there far away”); pikanngat (“from a position up here”); qamuuna (“through a position here inside”). Various theories have been developed as to the origin of the Eskaleut languages. Linguists have tried to connect them to the Uralic (Finno-Ugric), Altaic (Turkish, Mongol), Chukotko-Kamtchatkan (Chukchi, Koryak), or even Indo-European families. The most scientifically researched hypothesis, however, has been exposed by Michael Fortescue in Language Relations Across Bering Strait. According to this linguist, the language(s) spoken by the last wave of prehistoric migrants to the New World, Proto-Eskaleut, belonged to a linguistic mesh that Fortescue calls Uralo-Siberian. This web of typologically similar—at different degrees—speech forms, which might or might not have been genetically related, would have included present-day Uralic, Yukaghir (now represented by one northeastern Siberian language), ChukotkoKamtchatkan, and Eskaleut families. In a very distant past, it could also have been influenced by ProtoAltaic languages, with which it shares several similarities. Proto-Uralo-Siberian might have been spoken somewhere between 8000 and 10,000 years ago across a wide area of southern Siberia centered on the region between Lake Baikal and the Sayan.

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ESKIMO-ALEUT LANGUAGES If this hypothesis holds, the date for ProtoEskaleut’s entry into America should be revised downward from what is commonly believed. According to Fortescue, speakers of this language, ancestral to all modern Eskaleut speech forms, probably crossed Bering Strait some 4500 years before present, a much later date than what had been previously asserted. Their presence in Alaska would have been contemporary with the Cape Denbigh/Arctic Small Tools archaeological tradition, whose bearers most probably spoke an Eskaleut speech form. From central eastern Alaska, some Proto-Eskaleut speakers started migrating toward the Aleutian Islands and, c.2000 BC, across Arctic North America, eventually reaching Greenland. However, these first North American Arctic natives were not the ancestors of present-day Inuit. Instead, they descend from another migratory movement out of Alaska, which took place some 1000 years ago. In the meanwhile, linguistic change had occurred, and ProtoEskaleut had evolved toward the Aleut, Yupik, and Inuit/Iñupiaq languages of today. Over the centuries, Eskaleut languages developed a rich oral literature, consisting of myths, legends, stories, and songs. The themes of these traditional texts may vary from one area to another, but some topics are common to most Aleut, Inuit, and/or Yupik groups: the girl who refused to have a human husband, married a bird, and finally became the mistress of sea mammals; the brother who had incestuous relations with his sister and was later transformed into the moon, his sister becoming the sun; the mistreated blind boy who took revenge on his bad mother, after having been magically cured by three loons. Nowadays, such stories are only known by a dwindling number of elders. Fortunately, however, many texts of oral literature have been put into written form by ethnographers and other researchers, including an increasing number of Yupiit and Inuit interested in the preservation of their own traditions. Writing was introduced in the North American Arctic by Europeans, mostly by Christian missionaries who wanted their flock to read the Holy Scriptures. The first mission was established in Greenland in 1721 by Hans Egede, a Dano-Norwegian Lutheran priest. He and his son Poul started to translate the Scriptures into Kalaallisut using the Roman (European) alphabet. Their orthography was adopted by the Moravian Brethren when they founded missions in Greenland (1733) and Labrador (1771). Both groups of missionaries opened schools where the native language was taught, with the result that by the beginning of the 19th century, most Inuit from West Greenland and Labrador were able to read and write in their language. Greenlandic orthography, which had been standardized by Samuel Kleinschmidt around 1850, was

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reformed in 1973, in order to take into account the phonological changes that had affected Kalaallisut since Kleinschmidt’s time. In Labrador, though, Moravian orthography remains essentially the same as what it was a century ago. In the Canadian Arctic, from 1876 on, the Anglican Edmund J. Peck introduced a syllabic writing system among the Inuit, more or less akin to stenography, that had first been developed by Rev. James Evans for the Cree Indians. It rapidly became popular and still constitutes the preferred way for writing Inuktitut in most of Nunavut and Nunavik. In the Canadian western Arctic, as well as in Alaska, the Inuinnaqtun, Inuvialuktun, Iñupiaq, Yupik, and Aleut languages and dialects were transcribed in the Roman alphabet, although only in the 1970s were their orthographies standardized by school authorities. Finally, in Russian Chukotka, Central Siberian Yupik has used Cyrillic characters since the 1930s. LOUIS-JACQUES DORAIS See also Alaska Native Language Center; Aleut; Alphabets and Writing, North America and Greenland; Alutiit; Inuit; Iñupiat; Languages of the Arctic; Siberian (Chukotkan) Yupik; Yupiit Further Reading Berge, Anna, “Eskimo-Aleut.” In Encyclopedia of Linguistics, edited by P. Strazny, New York and London: Routledge, 2004 Bergsland, Knut, Aleut Dictionary. Unangam Tunudgusii, Fairbanks: University of Alaska, Alaska Native Language Center, 1994 Berthelsen, Christian, Birgitte Jacobsen, Inge Kleivan, Frederik Nielsen, Robert Petersen & Jørgen Rischel, Oqaatsit Kalaallisuumiit Qallunaatuumut. Grønlandsk Dansk Ordbog, Nuuk: Atuakkiorfik, 1990 Collis, Dermot R.F. (editor), Arctic Languages: An Awakening, Paris: UNESCO, 1990 DeReuse, Willem J., Siberian Yupik Eskimo. The Language and its Contacts with Chukchi, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994 Dorais, Louis-Jacques, Tukilik. An Inuktitut Grammar for All, Québec: Association Inuksiutiit Katimajiit (Inuit Studies Occasional Papers 2), 1988 ———, Inuit Uqausiqatigiit. Inuit Languages and Dialects, Iqaluit: Nunavut Arctic College, 1990 ———, La parole inuit. Langue, culture et société dans l’Arctique nord-américain, Paris: Peeters, 1996 Fortescue, Michael, A Comparative Manual of Affixes for the Inuit Dialects of Greenland, Canada and Alaska, Copenhagen: Meddelser om Grønland (Man and Society 4), 1983 ———, West Greenlandic, London: Croom Helm, 1984 ———, Language Relations Across Bering Strait, London and New York: Cassell, 1998 Fortescue, Michael, Steven A. Jacobson & Lawrence D. Kaplan, Comparative Eskimo Dictionary. With Aleut Cognates, Fairbanks: University of Alaska, Alaska Native Language Center, 1994

ESKIMOLOGY Jacobson, Steven A., Yup’ik Eskimo Dictionary, Fairbanks: University of Alaska, Alaska Native Language Center, 1984 ———., A Practical Grammar of the Central Alaskan Yup’ik Eskimo Language, Fairbanks: University of Alaska, Alaska Native Language Center, 1995 Krauss, Michael E., Alaska Native Languages: Past, Present, and Future, Fairbanks: University of Alaska, Alaska Native Language Center (Research Paper No 4), 1980 Schneider, Lucien, Ulirnaisigutiit. An Inuktitut-English Dictionary of Northern Quebec, Labrador and Eastern Arctic Dialects, Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1985 Woodbury, Anthony C., “Eskimo and Aleut Languages.” in Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 5, Arctic, edited by David Damas, Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1984

ESKIMOLOGY Contemporary research in Eskimology covers a diverse field of studies of language, culture, and history in Arctic societies. By definition, research is confined to the Arctic region, and furthermore to the Inuit, Yupiit, and Aleut societies. Eskimology has traditionally had a particular focus on Greenland studies owing to the long-standing relationship between Denmark and Greenland established in the early 18th century, and the academic discipline of Eskimology is today centered at the University of Copenhagen. In the early days of Danish colonialism, the task of gathering information about Greenland and its inhabitants was part of the duties of missionaries and trade employees. Works describing language and people, geography, and zoology by missionaries Hans Egede, Poul Egede, Heinrich C. Glahn and Otto Fabricius, and the Danish trader Lars Dalager have been of continued importance to Eskimology. The establishment of institutions such as Seminarium Groenlandicum (Greenlandic Training College) in Copenhagen in 1737 and a lectureship in Greenlandic language in 1761 show the early involvement of the Danish state in the production of knowledge about Greenland. Hans Egede was the first head of Seminarium Groenlandicum. The so-called Greenlandic lectureship, initially held by Poul Egede (1761), then Heinrich C. Glahn (1779), and Otto Fabricius (1803), was not a university chair. Affiliated to Missionskollegiet (The Royal Mission Board), its purpose was to manage the education of future missionaries at Seminarium Groenlandicum and to supervise the mission board on Greenland matters. A number of pioneering linguistic works such as grammars, dictionaries, and bible translations derive from these first lecturers, although the systematic Greenlandic grammar and orthography created from the 1840s by Samuel Kleinschmidt, a German Moravian missionary in Nuuk, remained until

very recently the standard works of Greenlandic linguistics. During the 19th century, the engagement of the Danish state in scientific research in Greenland intensified remarkably, partly because of the state policy to increase Danish control with the colony, and partly as a result of the general development of the modern academic disciplines. Kongelige Grønlandske Handel (KGH, The Royal Greenland Trade Company) increased its presence in Greenland through the establishment of a large number of new trade posts along the west coast and the initiation of large-scale systematic, statistical surveys in the form of regular censuses and the maintaining of annual catch and trade records. Hinrich Rink, Inspector of South Greenland and later director of Kongelige Grønlandske Handel, was an important figure behind these new research initiatives and himself contributed with several works of lasting significance to Eskimology in Danish and English. Examples are Greenland: Its People and Products (1877) and Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo (1875). Geological and geographic research in Greenland was to become of major interest to the Danish state. In 1878, a commission for geological investigations in Greenland was established and directed by professor of mineralogy Frederik Jonstrup. The commission gradually broadened its focus, and from 1931 it was known as The Commission for the Direction of Scientific Investigation in Greenland. One of the main initiatives of the commission was the launching in 1878 of a broad scientific periodical Meddelelser om Grønland (Messages about Greenland), the first regular journal of Arctic studies, which is still published today. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, state interests of sovereignty played an important role in research initiatives in Greenland. East Greenland was colonized in 1894 and a permanent Danish presence in Thule in Northwest Greenland was established in 1910. Danish sovereignty over the whole territory of Greenland was finally established through the verdict by the international court in The Hague in 1933. One work of special importance to Eskimology produced during this process was naval officer Gustav Holm’s Ethnological Sketch of the Angmagssalik Eskimo originally published in Danish in Meddelelser om Grønland in 1888/1889. Holm’s monograph represents, together with Franz Boas’s The Central Eskimo from the same year, the starting point of genuine ethnographic studies in the Arctic. Studies in Eskimo language and culture were established as a university discipline in 1920 at the University of Copenhagen with the single staff of William Thalbitzer, who was appointed professor extraordinarius in “Greenlandic (Eskimo) language and culture” in 1926. Thalbitzer retired in 1945 and

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ESKIMOLOGY was succeeded by Erik Holtved, who was appointed professor in 1951 and retired in 1967. The term “Eskimology” was not common until 1967, when a genuine department was established and officially named the Department of Eskimology. During the days of Thalbitzer and Holtved, only a couple of Ph.D. students graduated. During the 1970s and early 1980s, the department expanded, under the appointment of Robert Petersen, a Greenlander and a student of Holtved, as professor in 1975. The number of students increased, and the staff came to include, among others, anthropologists Helge Kleivan, and Jens Dahl, eskimologist Inge Kleivan, and linguist Michael Fortescue. Historian Finn Gad and sociologist of religion Birgitte Sonne were also associated. Thalbitzer’s approach to Eskimology was philological. He was a student of the renowned linguist Otto Jespersen and combined studies in Greenlandic linguistics with cultural studies, for example, Inuit mythology and oral literature. Generally, he was international-minded and corresponded, for example, with the German ethnologist Franz Boas and the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss. However, mainly due to personal disagreements with the head of the Ethnography Department at the Danish National Museum, Thalbitzer kept a distance from the ethnographers and archaeologists there. Considering Thalbitzer’s early radical critique of the Danish administration in Greenland, and being one of few at the time to speak of a Greenlandic Nation and People, different political opinions on Danish colonialism might have also played a part in the controversy between Thalbitzer and the museum. Thalbitzer’s contemporaries Knud Rasmussen and Kaj Birket-Smith regarded research in Greenland as a Danish national task and duty. Early Eskimology seems only on the sideline to have influenced the works of Kaj BirketSmith and Terkel Mathiassen from the National Museum. Although Holtved, formerly employed at the museum and actively engaged in archaeology, probably lessened tensions, the separation between the Eskimology university discipline and ethnography at the museum influenced Eskimology until the 1970s, when anthropologists became part of staff at the Department of Eskimology. From the late 1960s, Eskimology changed its focus toward increasingly contemporary and global political issues. The discussions of cultural identity and ethnicity raised, among others, by Norwegian anthropologist Fredrik Barth in Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (1969) and introduced in the Greenland context by Helge Kleivan has remained central to Eskimology since. Through the notion of advocacy, the very role of the eskimologist or social scientist was being questioned in the light of indigenous peoples’ struggle for

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political rights. Eskimologists became actively involved in the struggle for political rights in Greenland, and the Department of Eskimology hosted the secretariat of IWGIA (International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs), when it was founded in 1968. It has been of the utmost importance to Eskimology that the discipline, and Greenland studies, was lifted out of isolation and into this new, global context. Following the achievement of Greenland Home Rule in 1979, Ilisimatusarfik (University of Greenland) was established with professor Robert Petersen as rector. He left the Department of Eskimology in 1983. There was, thus, a clear line of influence from Eskimology in the shaping of the new university of Greenland. SØREN THUESEN See also Boas, Franz; Eskimo; Holm, Gustav; Holtved, Erik; Petersen, Robert; Rink, Hinrich Johannes; Thalbitzer, William Further Reading Gulløv, Hans Christian, “Introduction.” Arctic Anthropology, 23(1–2) (1986): 1–18 ———, “Lyde og billeder fra fortiden. Thalbitzers og Holtveds arbejde med et arkæologisk materiale” [Sounds and Images from the Past. Thalbitzer’s and Holtved’s Work with an Archaeological Material]. Tusaat, 2–3 (1995): 16–19 Kleivan, Inge “William Thalbitzer, His Main Works, Publications and Biographies.” In Arctica 1978, Colloques Internationaux du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, No. 585, edited by Jean Malaurie & Sylvie Devers, Paris: Èditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1982, pp. 233–236 Høiris, Ole, Antropologien i Danmark. Museal etnografi og etnologi 1860–1960 [Anthropology in Denmark. Museum Ethnography and Ethnology 1860–1960], Copenhagen: Nationalmuseets forlag, 1986 ———, “Institute of Eskimology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.” Inter-Nord, Revue Internationale d’Études Arctiques, 18 (1987): 367–371 ———, “William Thalbitzer og Erik Holtved. Et dobbeltportræt af de to første professorer i eskimologi ved Københavns Universitet” [William Thalbitzer og Erik Holtved. A Double-Portrait of the First Two Professors in Eskimology at the University of Copenhagen]. Tusaat, 2–3 (1995): 3–6 Pedersen, Kennet, “Is-interferenser. København som verdenshovedstad for den etnografiske eskimoforskning i perioden 1900–1940” [Ice Interferences. Copenhagen as World Capital of Ethnographic Eskimo Research in the Period 1900–1940]. In Videnskabernes København, edited by Thomas Söderqvist et al. Roskilde: Roskilde Universitetsforlag, 1998, pp. 142–158 Petersen, Robert, “Eskimologi.” In Københavns Universitet 1479–1979 [University of Copenhagen 1479–1979]. Volume IX, edited by Svend Ellehøj, Copenhagen: G.E.C. Gad, 1979, pp. 177–194 Riches, David, “The Force of Tradition in Eskimology.” In Localizing Strategies. Regional Traditions of Ethnographic Writing, edited by Richard Fardon, Edinburgh: Scottish

ETHNOHISTORY Academic Press and Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990, pp. 71–89

ETHNOHISTORY Between Anthropology and History In the 1940s, the term ethnohistory came into frequent use as a reference to the writings of anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians on the history of North American Indians. Ethnohistory developed at a time when anthropologists as well as historians were increasingly interested in what the other discipline had to offer. The French Annales School of history (that coalesced around the scholarly journal Annales d’histoire économique et sociale in the early 20th century) brought anthropological and sociological concerns to the discipline of history. This method differed from thinkers who followed Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard, an English social anthropologist who pioneered a current within British social anthropology that emphasized the importance of history. An increased interest in historical sources stemmed from the belated realization that changes in Native cultures could no longer be kept out of ethnographic descriptions. Indeed, many early ethnohistorical studies were guided by the concept of acculturation. To answer more effectively some of the archaeologists’ questions concerning Indian prehistory, they began exploiting the potential of the “direct historical approach,” as formulated by American anthropologist Julian Steward in 1943, to start from the present and work “upstream” through time with the aid of documentary sources. The American Society for Ethnohistory, which has published the journal Ethnohistory since 1954, has provided a forum for the discussion of the nature, definition, methods, and aims of the approach. Ethnohistory is not a discipline, but rather a set of methods that combine the diachronic dimension of history and the concepts of anthropology to investigate the past of peoples usually studied by anthropologists. Scholars increasingly stipulate that ethnohistorical studies should draw on as wide an array of sources as possible. Whereas many early ethnohistorical studies relied almost exclusively on written sources, oral sources are more widely taken into account. Researchers increasingly rely on data from archaeology, material culture, maps, photographs, language, sound recordings, and other ephemeral material. The notion of ethnohistory itself has been criticized, chiefly because it might perpetuate an ethnocentric distinction between the study of literate and nonliterate societies. Indeed, the authors of many publications that focus on the past of Native peoples do not consider

their writing as ethnohistorical. In an essay for Annual Review of Anthropology, Shepard Krech admitted that the corpus of publications, which he collectively calls ethnohistory, is comprised of a variety of genres, ranging from descriptive historical narratives to theoretically oriented analyses, the more positivistic of which deal with ecology and (political) economy, and others with ideational and emic aspects of cultural change (Krech, 1991). Bruce Trigger, who has written extensively on its nature and methods, remarks that ethnohistory as applied to the study of Native Americans peoples implicitly recognizes that these people do have a history. Trigger’s argument represents a positive departure from the opinion, oft expressed by anthropologists and historians, that small-scale exotic societies resist change and experience time as cyclical, and that modifications in their way of life can in most cases sufficiently be explained by external factors such as long-term environmental change.

Ethnohistory in the North of North America In North America, ethnographic research on northern indigenous peoples has long remained characterized by a lack of interest in historical change. Until the 1950s, most researchers still aimed primarily at reconstructing pre-Columbian states of affairs. Changes consecutive to contact with Europeans were evident to eyewitnesses, and abundantly documented in historical sources, but they were seen as evidence of cultural disintegration, which should be disregarded in ethnographic descriptions. Even the numerous studies of northern communities of the 1950s and 1960s, whose purpose was to uncover the extent of “acculturation,” barely documented the changes that had occurred since early contact times. Beginning in the 1960s, Margaret Lantis (for the Aleuts), Wendell Oswalt, Dorothy Jean Ray, and Jim VanStone (for the Yup’ik and Iñupiat of western Alaska) were among the first to resort to historical sources for the study of northern North American Native peoples. Documentary evidence comes from a variety of sources: records from explorers, trading companies, whaling ships, missionaries, and later police and government. Researchers have used the archives of the Hudson’s Bay Company in particular—which became more widely accessible after its transfer from England to Canada in 1969—since the 1970s to document the fur trade among Algonquian and Athapaskan (Dene) Indians in Canada (see, e.g., Charles Bishop, Daniel Francis, Toby Morantz, Arthur Ray, and Colin Yerbury). Beryl Gillespie, James Smith, and Joan Townsend are also among the first scholars who have documented the history of Athapaskans in Canada and in Alaska. François Trudel has used the Hudson’s Bay

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ETHNOHISTORY Company archives to illuminate different aspects of the history of the Inuit of Nunavik. The logs of commercial whaling ships operating in the Arctic in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, analyzed by John Bockstoce (Chukchi and Beaufort Sea coasts) and Gillies Ross (Hudson Bay), have revealed a wealth of information concerning the Inuit who were in contact with the whalers. Dorothy Eber has recorded the Inuit oral tradition pertaining to their contacts with whalers on Baffin Island. The history of the Labrador Inuit, based primarily on the archives of the Moravian missionaries, has been thoroughly analyzed by Garth Taylor and Helge Kleivan. Historical knowledge about the Inuit and Yup’ik continues to accumulate at a steady pace. Ernest Burch has demonstrated that in certain cases, and using welldefined methodological precautions, oral data allow detailed and reliable reconstructions. He has relied heavily on information he collected from local informants for the reconstruction of Iñupiat social systems and their interactions in early 19th-century northwestern Alaska (Burch, 1998). Burch, Yvon Csonka, David Damas, Guy Mary-Rousselière, and most recently Lyle Dick and Renee Fossett have provided important contributions to the history of Canadian Inuit from the central and High Arctic. A substantial portion of the Arctic volume of the Handbook of North American Indians, which presents all Inuit and Aleut peoples from Asia to Greenland, was conceived as historical ethnography. Other historical overviews of the same geographical scope can be found in Wendell Oswalt (1999) and David Damas (1996). Such studies all point to the geographically varying time depth of contact between Natives and outsiders, and the subsequent asynchronicity of social and cultural change.

The History of Greenland In Greenland, written records have been produced regularly and abundantly since the second European colonization of the island in 1721. Missionaries, government administrators, and later increasingly Greenlanders themselves authored such documents. In the 1960s, Finn Gad made extensive use of these sources for his three-volume History of Greenland (1970–1982). Since the 1970s, Hans Christian Gulløv has made explicit reference to ethnohistory as defined in North America in his studies of the Greenlandic past, combining oral and written sources, and archaeology. Greenlanders themselves have started writing their own history (the first two volumes, edited by H.C. Petersen, appeared in 1987 and 1999), and students are currently being trained as historians at the University of Greenland in Nuuk. Such young scholars would

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have no reason to call the product of their studies ethnohistory rather than history, but they do learn to apply methods developed under this banner.

The Legacy of Ethnogenesis in Russia In the former Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin (1879–1953), ethnography became a branch of the historical sciences, oriented according to Marxist historical materialism. The pioneering work of Boris Dolgikh, starting with his thesis defended in 1946, has inspired numerous works on the history of Siberian Native peoples. Many were conceived as studies of “ethnogenesis.” Given the objective definition of the concept of ethnos central in Soviet ethnography, and the assumption that ethnoses generally develop in situ with minimal diffusion, it was possible, as for example Ilia Gurvich illustrated in several of his works, to study developments over long periods extending back into prehistory. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the study of the history of northern Russian Native peoples tends to align with the methods and assumptions of western scholarship, as exemplified in the broad overviews of James Forsyth and Yuri Slezkine, in the research of Igor Krupnik and Peter Schweitzer on the Yupik (Asian Eskimos), or in the account of the Nenets by Golovnev and Osherenko (1999).

Themes and Periodization Throughout the Arctic, scholars have investigated diverse themes in a historical perspective, such as interethnic relations (including alliances, trade, and war), consequences of commercial whaling and the fur trade, Christianization, migrations, responses to environmental change, health, etc. In North America, the concept of dependency has loomed central in some interpretations. In such historical reconstructions, for the purpose of narration time was divided up into periods of sufficient stability to be described synchronically, separated by so-called watersheds in which most of the social, political, and historical change emerged. The changes identified correspond to further losses of independence in relation to the incoming non-Native population. These scenarios usually include a first period during which, despite some contacts and trade, the Native cultures remain “traditional.” Some events, such as an epidemic or a famine, which may have been caused by changes in the exploitation of the fauna, precipitate the onset of a “contact-traditional” period, during which the fur trade, for example, became an integral part of the Native economy and Christian missionaries attempted conversions. The aftermath of World War II is generally perceived as a watershed in most parts of the Arctic in North America to a higher

EVENKI degree than elsewhere, since it abruptly brought about sedentarization and an increase in governmental involvement. With the exception of World War II, wide geographical variation in the timing and concrete circumstances of earlier stages of the scenarios occurs.

Oral Sources and the Inclusion of Indigenous Views on History Ethnohistory, broadly conceived as an approach combining anthropology and history, is only a few decades old. While for some regions of the Arctic, the extant written sources are few, for many other regions, the potential for new research remains enormous. However, as a response to pressing calls—by scholars and increasingly by indigenous people themselves—to include local voices in the presentation of histories, research increasingly includes the recording of oral data, not only for the reconstruction of historical “facts” but also to elucidate Native views on history. According to an alternative view regularly expressed by a minority over the past half-century, ethnohistory consists in the study of indigenous views of history, which would make it a variety of ethnoscience, the specialized concern with indigenous knowledge systems. Many scholars emphasize that the challenge today consists in combining the viewpoint of the ethnohistorian with that of the people who comprise its subjects. If such a combination can be successfully achieved, it would correspond to a reconciliation of the two concurring definitions of ethnohistory. During the 1980s and 1990s, like its parent disciplines, ethnohistory has been affected by theoretical strains of postmodernism that question the notion of how culture and history are both constructed and known. Many researchers in the field have subsequently positioned themselves near the relativist end of the spectrum, assuming that heretofore “objective” knowledge about indigenous cultures is relative to a culture’s time and place. Most scholars now agree that no single correct way exists to interpret history, an opinion that facilitates the acceptance of diverging indigenous views on it. The willingness to consider such views fits well in the context of empowerment of indigenous peoples in all regions of the North. In the 21st century, more research is being carried out in cooperation with northern communities; an important recent example is the Memory and History in Nunavut project uniting the Department of Anthropology at Laval University in Québec, the Nunavut Arctic College in Iqaluit, and the Pairijait Tigummivik Society. Indeed, to northern indigenous peoples confronted with rapid cultural and social change, the vision they have of their past represents a pillar of their identity.

Some scholars have recently reinterpreted their own role as primarily that of translators for the wider public of what Native peoples wish to convey about themselves and their past. Others remain skeptical that scholarly ethnohistory can be successfully blended with the indigenous points of view on history, but even they agree that these points of view must be elucidated, at least as important elements for the understanding of historical developments. Whether or not it will continue under the designation of ethnohistory, the combined anthropological and historical approach to the past of indigenous peoples of the North remains a highly dynamic field of study. YVON CSONKA See also Dolgikh, Boris; Missionary Activity Further Reading Burch, Jr., Ernest S. The Iñupiaq Eskimo Nations of Northwest Alaska, Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1998 Cruikshank, Julie, The Social Life of Stories: Narrative and Knowledge in the Yukon Territory, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998 Damas, David, “The Arctic from Norse Contact to Modern Times.” In Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, Volume 1, edited by B. Trigger & W. Washburn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996 Forsyth, James, A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia’s North Asian Colony 1581–1990, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992 Gad, Finn, The History of Greenland, translated by Ernst Dupont, 3 Volumes, London: Hurst, and Montreal: McGillQueens University Press, 1970–1982 Golovnev, Andrei & Gail Osherenko, Siberian Survival: The Nenets and their Story, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999 Gulløv, Hans Christian, From Middle Ages to Colonial Times: Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Studies of the Thule Culture in South West Greenland 1300–1800 AD, Copenhagen, Denmark: Commission for Scientific Research in Greenland, 1997 Krech III, Shepard, “The state of ethnohistory.” Annual Review of Anthropology, 20 (1991): 345–375 Oswalt, Wendell H., Eskimos and Explorers, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999 Smith, James G.E. & Ernest S. Burch Jr., Chipewyan and Inuit in the Central Canadian Subarctic, 1613–1977. Arctic Anthropology, 16(2) (1979): 76–110 Sturtevant, William C., “Anthropology, history, and ethnohistory.” Ethnohistory, 13(1–2) (1966): 1–51 Sturtevant, William C. (general editor), Handbook of North American Indians, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution, 1978 Trigger, Bruce et. al. (editor), The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996–2000

EVENKI Evenki (who before 1930 were known as the Tungus) are one of the most numerous indigenous peoples of Siberia and the Far East with an enormous area of

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EVENKI settlement. Before the Yakuts migrated into the area in the 13th century, the Evenki (or their Tungus ancestors) occupied almost the whole of the present territory of Yakutia, except the northeast borderlands where nomadic Even tribes wandered and the Yukagir clans resided. Today 29,900 Evenki reside in the Russian Federation, but only 3400 live in the Evenki Autonomous Okrug. The majority (15,000) live in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), with other large populations in Khabarovsk Kray, Buryatia, Amursky, and Chitinsky Oblasts. About 19,000 Evenki also live in northeast China and 1000 in Mongolia. According to linguistic classification, the Evenki language belongs to the northern group of TungusicManchurian languages. The language shares some features with Mongolian and Turkic and also with later borrowings from Yakut, Buryat, and Samodian languages. Historians consider the Trans-Baikal and CisBaikal regions as a hypothetical motherland of the Evenki, from where in the 10th to 12th centuries Tungus tribes extended to the east to Amur and to the north through Siberia, along the Lena River basin and to the northwest along the Yenisey river, assimilating and forcing out the Paleo-Asiatic tribes of northern Siberia, mainly Yukagirs who in former times occupied vast areas of eastern Siberia. Tungus tribes who by the 17th century reached the Okhotsk Sea became the Even, while those moving north and west formed the Evenki ethnic group. Extending through eastern Siberia and assimilating foreign tribes, the Evenki were split into groups that differed in dialects and developed regional differences. Until quite recently there were three such Evenki groups: “foot,” “reindeer,” and “horse.”

Lifestyle and Subsistence Evenki horse and cattle breeders in the south belonged to the “horse” group, and were engaged in agriculture under Russian influence. Reindeer breeders or settlers of the vast northern area from the Yenisey River up to the Sea of Okhotsk belonged to the “reindeer” group. Hunting and fishing played a significant role in the economy of Evenki reindeer breeders. The main occupation of “foot” or “settled” Evenki was hunting of reindeer, elk, roe deer, mountain sheep, wolf, bear, and birds. Hoofed animals (mainly elk and wild deer) were hunted for subsistence (food, skins, and fur), and big game (e.g., bear) were traded as commodities. Hunting and reindeer herding resulted in a very nomadic way of life. Following Russian colonization of Siberia, the fur trade became important to the nomadic Evenki. They hunted deer, Arctic fox, and sable with bows, traps, and snares. Another hunter’s tool was a koto or

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utken—a big knife with a long hilt, which was used in bear hunting or for clearing growth in taiga. Since the 18th century, the use of firearms and traps has been widespread. Evenki hunted in groups of two or three from autumn to spring. Elk or deer hunts were held in early spring. A trumpet (orevun) made of birch bark, imitating a buck’s cry, and a squeaking instrument (pichavun) were used during deer hunting. The Okhotsk Evenki used a trained deer with a strap wrapped around its antlers, in which a wild deer would get entangled. During deer and elk hunting, they arranged fences with self-shooters and trap holes. In winter they used wide, thin skis, covered with elk or any other animal’s leg skin. They carried loads on a hand sledge or by dragging a skin covered with ice (their small herds meant that not enough tame reindeer were available to haul sledges). A backpack on straps with fasteners for necessities was part of a hunter’s equipment. Fishing was of subsidiary significance. It had a trade value in districts around Lake Baikal to the south from the Yessei Lake, on Upper Viliui, in the southeast of Lake Baikal, and on the Okhotsk Sea coast. Evenki everywhere fished in summer; on Khatanga and Viliui they fished in ice holes in winter. The main fishing tools were nets, harpoons, and hooks. During ice fishing they used a rod and line (khinda), harpoons, and nets. They put a rawhide tent over the ice hole. They fished with a sweep net, adopted from Russians on the Okhotsk Sea coast and Baikal. On Amur they harpooned redfish, and sometimes they shot from a bow. On the Sea of Okhotsk coast and Baikal, they also hunted seal in spring. Gouged boats with a two-blade oar were used, and sometimes boats with plank sides or birch-bark rafts. Evenki bred reindeer for transport, using a packsaddle for riding. Herds were small: up to 25 head per herd. After winter, hunting families grouped together and usually moved to comfortable high, dry places, rich in food and running water. In winter, during a hunting season reindeer were usually pastured near hunters’ nomad camps. In some places (the Sym River, Priangar’ye, and Upper Lena), herds were pastured unattended and were gathered when necessary for far migrations and departures to trading posts. Each season the reindeer herders migrated to new places—in summer along watersheds and in winter along the rivers. Reindeer were harnessed with both riding and packsaddles. The Evenki leant on a stick for support when riding. Evenki sledges were of various types, adopted from neighboring peoples in the Krasnoyarsk Kray, Tomsk, and Tyumen Oblasts. Nenets-type sleds were high with a groove fastening and curved shaft bow at the front, preserving sledges

EVENKI from strikes when riding over trees, and they sat on it from the right side. Olekminsk Evenki used sledges of the Yakut type—low with a strap fastening—and they sat across it with outstretched legs. To the east from Olekma, they used low small sledges, sitting over the loads. Dwelling construction corresponded to a nomadic way of life. Winter camps consisted of one or two rawhide tents; summer camps consisted of ten or more tents. A tent had a conical frame with poles covered by reindeer skin or birch bark. When moving, the frame was left behind and the covering was packed. They arranged a hearth in the center of a rawhide tent, over which there was a pole to hold a boiler. They slept in sacks round the hearth. Poor Evenki lived in conical tents made of bark and covered with ground and turf, or snow in winter. Lightweight tents served as temporary hunting dwellings (in Vitim, Olekma), and small spherical tents were used on Syma. They built wooden pile-floorings to store dried foods and winter clothes. Prosperous Evenki had log storehouses. The staple traditional food was meat (of wild animals, and horseflesh for the horse-breeding Evenki) and fish. Reindeer and elk meat was dried in pieces under the sun, and the dried meat was pounded into flour, which was mixed with boiled water and berries; from broth they prepared soup adding blood; raw kidneys, liver, and brains were eaten at once after flaying a carcass; and they prepared sausages from intestines. Saevaen was a festival food—chopped bear meat with fried bear fat. The Okhotsk, Ilimpisky, and Amur Evenki prepared the so-called yukol and flour from dried fish in which they mixed ringed seal fat; the Okhotsk Evenki ate dried red caviar (salmon roe) with ringed seal fat, and berries. In summer they used deer milk, berries, wild garlic, and onions; they added milk to tea, and flour to porridge. Utensils were made of birch bark. Wooden carved dishes were also popular. Traditional Evenki costume was by design adapted for ski walking and riding reindeer. Evenki clothes, made of thin light reindeer skin, did not meet in front. A special apron or chestpiece was thus a necessary accessory of Evenk clothes. Traditional clothes consisted of skin or woolen trousers, a reindeer skin caftan that met on the chest with the help of tapes, and an apron made of fur strips and fastened at the back with the help of tapes. Women’s aprons were decorated with beads and had straight lower edges; the men’s one ended in a point. Clothes were decorated with fur strips, fringe, horse hair, metal badges, and beads. Later, summer caftans were made of wool, and winter ones, so-called parkas, were made of autumn reindeer skin. Mittens were sewn to its sleeves. In the forest tundra zone, they wore fur clothes—a sokui or shirt under a parka. In winter they wrapped long scarves

made of fur-bearing animals’ tails around their necks and heads. Summer footwear was made of skin, wool, and reindeer skin. Winter footwear was made from reindeer skin of various lengths: up to the ankle or groin. Men wore a belt with a knife in sheath; women wore a belt with a needle set, a drone, and a tobacco pouch. Evenki made great use of decoration on their clothes, especially on the breastplate with embroidery; sometimes it was a real work of art.

Society and Social Structure Although family groups remained the primary economic and social unit, tribal and ancestral hunting grounds became corrupted as different families changed their migration patterns, for example, to reach trading posts or remaining in one area due to smaller herds. Land use according to tribal affiliation was replaced with territorial groupings. By the 19th century, Evenk nomad camps, as a rule, consisted of people of several kins and tribes. But many customs and traditions of the earlier tribal system were retained for a long time within the new territorial groupings. The customs of collective distribution of hunting and fishing produce, mutual aid, and hospitality were strong, and the custom of exogamy (in which people marry outside their own tribal affiliation) was firmly retained. Reindeer were the property of particular families, but were pastured by all tribal members. Class stratification among Evenki was developed on the basis of reindeer breeding. Those who had no reindeer and no opportunities to get to trade posts had to buy necessary goods from the rich reindeer breeders to whom they sold their furs. Poor Evenki also borrowed hunting equipment and food. They paid for it by furs, helped to pasture reindeer, or performed various tasks for their employers. Commercial relations were developed among neighboring nations, with whom they exchanged furs for metal products, wool, cattle, grain, fabric, flour, and adornments. From the 18th century, fairs were arranged. By the late 19th century, the family was the main economic unit. Reindeer were the private property of some family members. Property was inherited through the men’s line, and after the husband’s death it stayed in the family. Although families were headed by the father, the mother still had relatively high authority. Marriage was accompanied by payment of kalym (bride price) to the bride’s family. Usually a fiancee’s dowry was equal to the kalym. Polygamy and levirate (whereby the younger brother married the wife of his dead elder brother and provided for her family) were known.

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Religion and Folklore Christianization of the Evenki began in the 17th century, although adoption of Christianity was mainly a formal performance of rituals during the priest’s visit. Spirit cults, shamanism, and totemic elements were retained. The Evenki had animistic beliefs—that spirits occupied all animals, rocks, and natural objects— and also believed in the existence of an Upper World (in the sky) and Lower World (in the ground) connected by the shaman river Engdekit, along which spirits and the shaman could travel. Shaman ritual dress included a special caftan with a fringe and metal badges, small bells, a cap with fur strips, sometimes with reindeer antlers, a tambourine of unusual oval form with a drumstick, and sometimes a staff and a long strap. There were elements of a bear cult, and rituals connected with the killing of a bear, division of its carcass, and eating its meat. Folklore included song improvisations, new songs, mythological and historical epic sagas, fairy tales about animals, riddles, and legends. Legends were told of the actions of successful hunters and exploits of fearless warriors. Ideas of the earth and celestial bodies, and origins of humans and animals were reflected in Evenk myths, and there were legends about shamans. Epics were usually chanted during the night, listeners often taking part in the performance, repeating some lines after the narrator. A jew’s harp (metal or wooden) and a dried bird larynx were known to be musical instruments, and a circle dance (kheiro, sedjo) performed to song improvisation was known. Games included contests of wrestling, shooting, and running. Wood and bone carving, metal processing, embroidery with beads, silk, fur, and fabric applique (particularly among the eastern Evenki) were well developed. According to the “Rules about the aborigines’ management” of 1822, Evenki were divided into tribal groups, headed by a tribal chief, who was elected for three years. Their duties were mainly juridical—solving disputes and making sure that rules were upheld— and yasak (tax) collecting.

script, was created. In 1931, the first book in the Evenki language was published. Since the 1930s, Evenk has been taught in schools. A national intelligentsia has formed, and today a policy of revival of Evenk culture and traditions is being conducted. Although reindeer numbers have decreased, many modern Evenki still follow a traditional nomadic hunting and reindeer-breeding lifestyle. In 1990, Evenki began to come off the state-farm system and to organize tribal communities once more. MAYA VASIL’EVA See also Evenki Autonomous Okrug; Evens; Northern Altaic Languages; Tungus Further Reading Anderson, D., “The Evenkis of Central Siberia.” In Endangered Peoples of the Arctic: Struggles to Survive and Thrive, edited by M. Freeman, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000 Borisov, M.N., Malochislennye etnosy Severa: vchera, segodny, zavtra (sosiologicheskie ocherki) [The small peoples of north: yesterday, today, tomorrow (sociological sketches)], Rybinsk, 1995 Malochislennye narody severa Yakutii: sostoynie, problemu. Sbornik nauchnyh trudov [The small peoples of northern Yakutia: condition, problems. A collection of the proceedings], Yakutsk: Iakutskii nauchnyi tsentr SO RAN, 1993 Ermolova, N.V., “Evenki: problema etnicheskikh razlichiy i lokal’nykh grupp.” In Etnosy i etnicheskie prosessy [Evenki: Problem of ethnic distinctions and local groups. In Ethnos and Ethnic Processes], edited by V.A. Popov, Moscow: Nauka, 1993 Levin, M.G. & L.P. Potapov (editors), Narody Sibiri, Moscow: Russian Academy of Sciences, 1956; as The Peoples of Siberia, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1964 “Narody Sibiri,” In Ocherki obsh’ey etnografii. Aziatskaya chast’ SSSR [The peoples of Siberia. In Sketches of General Ethnography. The Asian Part of USSR], edited by S.P. Tolstova, M.G. Levina & N.N. Cheboksarova, Moscow: Izdvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1960 Tishkov, V.A. (editor), Narody Rossii, entsiklopediia [The peoples of Russia], Moscow: Bol’shaia Rossiiskaia Entsiklopediia, 1994 Tugolukov, V.A., Tungusy (evenki i eveny) sredney i zapadnoy Sibiri [Tungus (Even and Evenk) of central and western Siberia], Moscow: Nauka, 1983 http://www.raipon.net/Web_Database/evenk.html

Recent Times In 1927, Ilimpiysky, Baikitsky, and Tungus-Chunsky National Districts united to form the Evenk National District (later the Evenki Autonomous Okrug). In the 1930s, reindeer-breeding collectives were formed, settled villages were built, and agriculture was introduced. In the 1950s, integration of collective farms took place. In 1928–1929, an alphabet on the basis of the Latin script, and since 1937 on the basis of the Russian

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EVENKI AUTONOMOUS OKRUG The Evenki Autonomous Okrug, or Evenkia, is one of nine autonomous national areas or okrugs in the Russian Federation. It was established on December 30, 1930 as a national okrug and was named after the indigenous Evenki people. It is part of Krasnoyarsk Kray. The Evenki Autonomous Okrug is situated in eastern Siberia. It borders with the Taymyr Autonomous Okrug in the north, with Sakha (Yakutia) Republic and

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long and severe (average January temperatures are −40°C), and summer is short and warm (average July temperatures in central Evenkia are +15°C). In winter, the Siberian anticyclone (high-pressure zone) maintains fine and windless weather. Annual precipitation is low (350–400 mm). Pine, Dahurian larch, spruce, fir, and a great variety of grasses and moss grow in the taiga forests. Elk, brown bear, sable, squirrel, and stoat are found in the taiga, and are hunted by local peoples for food and fur. Mountain sheep, wild deer, polar fox, and white partridge are found in the forest tundra and tundra in the north of the okrug. The rivers are rich in fish, such as sturgeon, perch, and crucian carp. On June 30, 1908, near the Stony Tunguska River 92 km north of Vanavara, a large aerial explosion, thought to be from a small comet or meteorite, detonated a huge shock wave. The “Tunguska Event,” equivalent to a 10–15 megaton explosion, left no impact crater but the blast flattened trees in a radial direction over 2150 km2.

Administration and Population Location and main towns and rivers in the Evenki Autonomous Okrug.

Irkutsk Oblast’ in the east and southeast, and with the southern districts of Krasnoyarsk Kray in the west and southwest. The territory extends 1500 km from north to south and 800–850 km from west to east, and has a total area of 767,600 km2. The okrug is located in the Central Siberian Uplands. The highest points are located to the northwest in the Putorana Plateau (up to 1700 m). The Podkamennaya (Stony) Tunguska and the Niznyaya (Lower) Tunguska rivers are the two largest rivers in the okrug, and flow north into the Yenisey River. The rivers are navigable for large boats only during spring and autumn floods. The largest lakes are the Essey, the Agata, and the Vivi. Permafrost is discontinuous in southern Evenkia, and continuous in the north. The okrug has rich natural resources, such as coal, oil, gas, graphite, calcite, and timber. Currently however, these are mainly unexploited, with oil and gas reserves being only in the initial stages of prospecting and development. The largest reserves are known in the Yurubcheno-Tokhomsky region in the south. Diamonds and gold have also been prospected. Russia’s largest deposit of optical calcite (used in prisms for communication and optical instruments) is found in Evenki Autonomous Okrug. The territory of the okrug falls mostly within the taiga zone with a transition to mountain tundra to the north. The climate is sharply continental; winter is

The population of the okrug was 24,400 in the 1989 Soviet Census. Recently, the population has decreased to about 18,000 people (1.01.2002, http://www. evenkya.ru/eng/) and is scattered thinly over the territory. The density of the population is 1 per 40 km2. The Russians comprised 67.5% in 1989, and there were both Old Settlers and newcomers. The northern indigenous peoples, the Evenki, Ket, and Essey Yakut totaled about 18% of the whole population in 1989 and 24% in 1999. There are many mixed families of indigenous peoples with Russians, Ukrainians, and other nationalities. There are 30,000 Evenki in Russia, and only 3480 (13%) live within Evenkia (1989 census). Originally the Evenki were hunters and reindeer herders and used their reindeer as a means of transportation. Some of them still follow the seminomadic hunting and reindeer-breeding way of life. The Kets (formerly named Ostyaki) in Evenkia number about 178, mainly settled in the village of Sulomay on the Podkamennaya Tunguska River. They hunt for land mammals, fur animals, and fish. There are about 900 Essey Yakuts in Evenkia; they live in the village of Essey, and their means of living are fishery and hunting. The indigenous peoples had animistic beliefs, associating numerous master spirits with animals, places, and the campfire, and today some remnants of shamanism are preserved. The Russian Orthodox religion, brought by Russian peasants, merchants, and missionaries in the 18th to 19th centuries, became a historical religion among the indigenous population.

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EVENS However, during recent years two Orthodox churches were opened in the villages of Tura and Baikit. The Evenki Autonomous Okrug was formed on the basis of the national state principle in 1930 (when the Soviet government set up national districts named after indigenous peoples in the Russian Far North) and became an autonomous area in 1977, but it is an integral part of the Krasnoyarsk Kray. Relations with Krasnoayrsk Kray and the Federal Center are based on bilateral agreements, which envisage delimitation of the authority. The governor of the Evenki Autonomous Okrug, who is elected by the population, represents the executive power together with the okrug’s administration. The State Committee on Religion and National Affairs works within the structure of the Okrug administration. The Evenki legislative assembly (Suglan) has 23 deputies, who are elected for 4 years. The Evenki Autonomous Okrug has an office and a representative in the federal Duma in Moscow. Most of the population (about 12,500) is rural. There are three administrative districts in Evenkia, including Ilimpiisk, where Tura, the center of the district and of the whole okrug, is located, TungusskoChunsk with the district center of Vanavara, and Baikit with the center in the village of Baikit. About half the total population live in Ilimpiisk District, the largest in the okrug. There are 27 settlements in the okrug, of which half are small and number no more than 300 people, mainly indigenous. Only three villages have a population more than 1000. The nomadic camps of the Evenki people are scattered in the taiga. All settlements are widely separated by great distances and the principal means of transportation for goods and people are planes and helicopters, with small airstrips in larger settlements and airports at Tura and Baikit. There are no railways or paved roads. Reindeer play an important role in communication within the okrug. Although the Evenki Autonomous Okrug has its own budget, it depends upon federal subsidies. From 1930 and during the Soviet period, the Noginsk graphite mine was worked, and Iceland spar (optical calcite) was mined. Today, these no longer form a significant part of the region’s economy. In the 1970s, oil and gas prospecting began and identified large oil and gas reserves. From the 1950s, the Evenki worked as hunters and reindeer breeders on state soviet farms, providing fish, reindeer and wild animals’ meat, and furs. Fur farming was also carried out. Today reindeer numbers have decreased, and hunting for fur animals is the basis of the okrug’s economy. Almost all men living in the okrug are hunters or fishermen on a professional or amateur level. The timber industry is developing in a small scale in the southern pine forests.

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History The Tungus wave of colonization into the Siberia taiga appeared in the area in the middle ages. According to archaeological excavations, a population of Samodian origin previously inhabited the territory, and were probably assimilated by the Tungus. The resultant Evenki people were nomadic reindeer breeders and hunters. Russian fur traders and merchants came to this territory in the early 17th century. By the middle of the 17th century, seven settlements were built on the Niznyaya Tunguska River. The amanat (Evenki hostages) were kept there in order to secure gathering of tribute (yasak) from the indigenous peoples. After Russian colonization of eastern Siberia, this territory became part of the huge Turukhansk administrative unit (uezd); later it became part of the Eniseysk administrative unit (gubernia). Russian peasants came to the southern part of the present Okrug territory to hunt. Here Russians tried to maintain cattle breeding, and grew vegetables and tobacco. In 1926, the population numbered 6000, 75% of whom were indigenous (1926 Arctic Census). Today a local cultural revival movement, the Association of Indigenous peoples of the North “Arun” (which means “Revival”), represents the Evenki, the Ket, the Essey Yakuts, and Old Russian Settlers in okrug and regional negotiations. ANNA A. SIRINA See also Evenki; Krasnoyarsk Kray; Tungus Further Reading “Evenkiiskii avtonomnuy okrug.” In Narody Sovetskogo Severa [The Peoples of the Russian North], edited by I.S. Gurvich & Z.P. Sokolova, Moscow: Nauka, 1990 “Evenkiiskii avtonomnuy okrug.” In Bol’shaya Sovetskaya Enziclopedia [Great Soviet Encyclopedia], Izd. 3, T. 29, 1978, pp. 551–552 Kovyasin, N.M. K.G. Kuzakov (editors), Sovetskay Evenkia: ekonomiko-geograficheskii ocherk [The Soviet Evenkia], Leningrad, 1963 “Ustav Evenkiiskogo avtonomnogo okruga.” In Ustavy kraev, oblastey, gorodov Feferal’nogo znachenia, avtonomnoy oblasty, avtonomnuch okrugov Rossiskoy Federazii [Statutes of the Evenki Autonomous okrug. Statutes of regions, provinces, cities of the Federal significance, autonomous province, autonomous okrugs of the Russian Federation], Volume 5, Moscow: Izdanie Gosudarstvennoy Dumy, 1997, pp. 325–354 http://www.evenkya.ru/eng/

EVENS The Evens (Lamut) are one of the indigenous peoples of the Russian North, and are closely related to the Evenki. Before the 1930s, they were not distinguished as an independent ethnic group, being thought of as a

EVENS collapse following attacks from other tribes, the Tungus tribes were forced to the north of Russia. The Tungus lost important aspects of their culture, such as iron working and tool use, commodity-money relations, and efficient social stratification of the society. By the 11th to 12th centuries, Even had begun to settle in the Indigirka and Kolyma river basins, gradually moving downstream to the Arctic Ocean. By the time of contact with the Russians (mid-17th century), the Even had migrated to the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk and to the west from it, in spurs of the Verkhoyansk Range, Kolyma, Indigirka, and Omolon basins. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, they moved to the northern part of the Okhotsk coast and to Kamchatka. As the Even spread, they came into contact with many different groups, and assimilated with Yukagirs and Koryak.

Lifestyle and Subsistence

Elderly Even woman holding a traditional wooden calendar, Chukotka, Russia. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

territorial subgroup of the Evenki. There are 17,200 Evens in the Russian Federation. Evens live in small groups across a large area from Khabarovsk Kray, Magadan Oblast’, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, and the Sakha Republic (Yakutia). Yakutia is one of the largest concentrations of the Evens in the North, with over 8000 Evens in the Sakha Republic (in Ust-Yanskiy, Oimakonskiy, Nizhnekolymskiy, Srednekolymskiy, Verkhnekolymsky, Tomponsky, Momsky, Allaikhovsky, and Verkhneyansky uluses). The Even language, which is spoken by only about 7000 of the Even people, belongs to the Tungus branch of the Tungusic-Manchurian languages. Isolation of some Even groups led to different dialects within the Even language. Today there are about 20 dialects known, consolidated into eastern, middle, and western groups. The Evens have many similarities in terms of language and culture with the Evenki. The origin of the Evens, like the Evenki, is connected with the Tungus tribes, who probably originated from the Lake Baikal area. According to historical data, the Tungus nation, including Evens, had their own independent state, Bokhai, from the 7th century to about AD 926. This state, in scientists’ opinions and judging by names of the Even families and ancient geographic names of Even origin, was situated in the area of the present northern part of Khabarovsk Kray, not far from the coast. The state had a highly developed culture, with their own alphabet. After Bokhai’s

The main traditional occupations of the Even were and still are reindeer breeding and hunting: fishing has a subsidiary importance. Even reindeer differ from those in Chukotka and Buryatia by their height, strength, and endurance, and are kept in small herds. Reindeer are saddled for transport, and are also used to pull sleds during nomadic movements. Evens hunt deer, elk, and mountain sheep. Fur trade with the Russians was an important economic activity (they mainly hunted squirrels). Evens on the Okhotsk coast led a semisettled life: they fished in the mouths of rivers and hunted marine mammals. Russians gave the name Lamut to these coastal Evens; the word means “living by the sea.” The Even caught humpback and chum salmon with harpoons and nets. In autumn they hunted marine mammals in small groups of four to five persons, using sticks or harpoons (later guns) to beat seals at the edge of the ice. In spring they hunted by boat (usually gouged boats), which they bought from neighboring peoples. Before the 18th century, a floating harpoon of 30 m length was popular. A tandem dog-team, in which dogs were tied from both sides along a central strap, was the main transport among the settled Evens. Since the 19th century an east Siberian type of tandem team, adopted from the Russians, became common. There was a natural trade between settled and nomadic Evens: they exchanged reindeer meat and ringed sealskin. There were two types of Even portable dwellings: conical rawhide and cylindrical conical frame tents. The hunter’s summer dwelling was a conical tent made of poles. Settled Evens lived in rectangular log houses. Before the 18th century, semi-subterranean dugouts with a flat roof and an entrance through the smoke hole were used.

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EVENS Traditional clothes were similar to those of the Evenki—fur trousers and knee-length coats or caftans made of intact skin with sewn-in gussets on the back. Unlike the Evenk caftan, the chest and skirt were trimmed with fur. Seams were covered with a strip, decorated with beads. A breastplate sewn to an apron covered the chest opening down to the knees. Girdles of men’s breastplates were decorated with a fur fringe; the women’s breastplates were decorated with beads, reindeer hair, and fringes with metal pendants (small bells, badges, rings, and coins). Caps were made of fur, with leather strips colored white, black, yellow, and ochre and decorated with beads and reindeer hair. Winter footwear (torbasa) was made from reindeer leg skin and decorated with strips of beads or light-colored fur. In woodland areas, traditional men’s clothes were superseded by Yakut clothes, and in the tundra zone they were superseded by Chukchi clothes. Women’s clothes remained more traditional. The staple food was boiled and dried reindeer meat or game; the coastal Evens also ate boiled or fried fish with seal fat. They also used raw, frozen, and dried fish, making a floury powder from dried fish. Reindeer stomach with berries was a favorite food. They also picked berries, nuts, bark, and cedar needles, and drank imported tea together with teas made of extracts of flowers, leaves, hips, and the dried leaves of willow herbs.

Society and Social Structure Before the 20th century, there were patrilinear kins (clans), some of which were of Koryak and Yukagir origin. Kinship groups were scattered about the region because of far nomad camps and were divided into groups, known in official documents by their ordinal numbers. An elected leader, a representative of a kin, was the head of each group. His responsibilities included collecting yasak (tax) and obtaining and distributing gunpowder. Some of the coastal groups had no kins. Social differentiation was developed, with some dependent families included in the head’s group, often taking his name. Nomadic, hunting, and fishing areas belonged to groups of families of various kins. There was a widespread custom of sharing fish and game with neighbors. Clans were patriarchal, and before their marriage sons were dependent on their father. Grooms paid kalym (bride price) for their fiancées, which was equal to two or three times the bride’s dowry. The custom of exogamy (marrying outside the clan) was widespread for local groups while territorial ones were endogamous; that is, by tradition, members of different local groups belonging to the same territorial association could enter into marriage. Polygamy and child marriage were known. After they

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paid kalym to the bride’s family, relatives brought the bride to the husband’s house. First, they rode round the tent three times, after which she entered, took up her saucepan, and boiled reindeer meat. They hung the bride’s dowry on the outside of the tent for others to observe. At first the young couple lived with the husband’s parents; then they built their own tent. With the birth of a child, they were given a part of the clan’s reindeer herd as dowry, which was considered as the husband’s property.

Religion and Folklore Traditional Even beliefs included shamanism and animistic beliefs in nature spirits. Before Christian funeral rites were adopted in the 17th century, they buried the dead on a wooden pile, and put a raven wooden figure in the coffin. Since the 19th century, they have buried the dead in the ground, constructing a log house with a cross over the grave. They often engraved a bird picture on the cross. They put the dead person’s belongings (saddle, dishes, and bedclothes) near the grave. The cult of the sun was popular, and Even sacrificed reindeers to the sun when a member of the community was sick. The whole community took part in the sacrifice, eating the meat and hanging the reindeer’s skin on a pole. A shaman chose the reindeer or it was chosen by a divination for a sacrifice. The bear cult was also popular. A hunter must greet and thank the bear he killed; a celebration was organized and everybody ate bear meat. The meat of the bear’s head and the front part of the carcass were considered to be sacred, and women were not permitted to eat it. Bear bones were arranged in anatomic order and buried on a pile planking. Sometimes they hung the skull at the top of a larch tree. Even folklore consisted of fairy tales, legends, bylinas of bogatyrs (epic sagas of heros), songs, riddles, and sayings. In bygone days, the ritual folklore of Evens was represented by shaman song-charms and entreaties to the spirits. Fairy tales about animals are known, some of which have plots similar to Evenk and Koryak ones. The main musical instrument was the jew’s harp. A circle dance, similar to the Evenk one, was popular. Arts included women’s embroidery and applique decoration of clothing, men’s wood carving, production of copper and brass pendants with representations of animals and solar symbols, and the blacksmith’s trade (they obtained iron mainly from the Yakuts).

Recent times In the 1930s, collectivization of reindeer-breeding and fishing economies was introduced, often bringing

EXPLORATION OF THE ARCTIC together Even with Chukchi, Yukagirs, Yakuts, and Russians. A transition to a settled way of life began as settlements were established with schools and other facilities, and agriculture and cattle breeding were introduced. The Even alphabet was created in 1931 on the basis of the Latin alphabet and in 1936 on the basis of the Russian alphabet. The written language is based on the Olsk dialect. Even poets and writers (e.g., Nikolai S. Tarabukin and A.A. Cherkanov) began to write in their native language, and Even was taught in schools. During Soviet rule, the indigenous peoples of the North were introduced to the culture of the peoples of the former Russia and Europe, scientific and technical progress, and higher education; they created their own alphabet, mastered new professions, and built villages. But the political experiment in transition of the indigenous peoples of the North from a patriarchal tribal system to socialism had negative results for these people. The centuries-old structure of life of reindeer breeders, hunters, and fishers collapsed. Today a revival of the Even language, traditions, and customs is in progress: associations, assemblies, and communities have been created, and national schools have been opened. The traditional way of life in the form of nomadic tribal communities is being restored. Traditional festivals (reindeer-breeders festival, Urkachak) are once again taking place. MAYA VASIL’EVA See also Evenki; Northern Altaic Languages; Tungus Further Reading Borisov, M.N., Malochislennye etnosy Severa: vchera, segodny, zavtra (sosiologicheskie ocherki) [The small peoples of the north: yesterday, today, tomorrow (sociological sketches)], Rybinsk, 1995 Khatylaev, M.M. (editor), Malochislennye narody severa Yakutii: sostoynie, problemu. Sbornik nauchnyh trudov [The small peoples of northern Yakutia: condition, problems. A collection of the proceedings], Yakutsk: Iakutskii nauchnyi tsentr SO RAN, 1993 Levin, M.G. & L.P. Potapov (editors), Narody Sibiri, Moscow: Russian Academy of Sciences, 1956; translated as The Peoples of Siberia, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1964 Tolstova, S.P., M.G. Levina & N.N. Cheboksarova (editors), “Narody Sibiri.” In Ocherki obsh’ey etnografii. Aziatskaya chast’ SSSR [The peoples of Siberia. In Sketches of General Ethnography. The Asian Part of USSR], Moscow: Izd-vo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1960 ———. (editor), Narody Rossii, entsiklopediia [The peoples of Russia], Moscow: Bol’shaia Rossiiskaia Entsiklopediia, 1994 Tugolukov, V.A., Tungusy (evenki i eveny) sredney i zapadnoy Sibiri [Tungus (Evens and Evenki) of central and western Siberia], Moscow: Nauka, 1983

EXPLORATION OF THE ARCTIC The exploration of the Arctic, as that of most of the world, has historically been configured along Eurocentric lines. Native peoples already lived in the Americas, Australia, Africa, Siberia, and many other parts of the world when Europeans first “discovered” and explored them. Nevertheless, the Europeans tended to produce the first extant written accounts, and such historical documents and texts give some legitimacy to claims of discovery, albeit from the perspective of the West. The first known description of the European Arctic or Subarctic came from Pytheas, a citizen of Massilia (Marseilles), who, around 325 BC, claimed to have passed Britain and sailed to the island of Thule. Scholars have debated the location of Thule, with various arguments made for Iceland, Norway, and the Faroe and Shetlands islands. More than a thousand years passed before, in approximately 880, a Norseman named Ottar presented to King Alfred of England an account of a voyage around northern Norway and into the Barents and White seas. Although undoubtedly not the first voyage to these areas, Ottar’s was the first recorded one. A century later, Eiríkr Thorvaldsson (Eirík the Red) was banished from Iceland for murder and set out westward where he encountered Greenland. Within a decade, a number of colonizing expeditions had founded settlements on that island, although they would disappear before a new series of voyages to Greenland occurred 600 years later. In 1497, John Cabot, sponsored by Henry VII of England, led the first expedition to seek a route to the Orient around the north of Columbus’ newly discovered lands, thereby commencing over 400 years of attempts to navigate the North West Passage. The first major voyage trying to reach the same destination by sailing north over Eurasia—the North East Passage— was also a British venture. However, it ended in disaster in the winter of 1553–1554, when Sir Hugh Willoughby and his entire company of men died in Lapland. Meanwhile, Richard Chancellor, in command of a different ship on the same expedition, made his way to the White Sea, and from there to Moscow, returning the next year with descriptions of littleknown “Muscovie.” Attempts to complete both passages continued on and off throughout the 16th century. Martin Frobisher led two North West Passage expeditions in the 1570s, reaching Baffin Island, before his third expedition concentrated on mining for gold. A decade later, John Davis explored parts of the western coast of Greenland and the eastern coasts of Canada. Other explorers began to be led astray by apocryphal reports of two Spanish expeditions led by Lorenzo Ferrer Maldonado and Juan de 597

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Boats in a swell among ice from Sir John Franklin’s second Arctic expedition (1825–1827). Drawing by Capt. Back, August 24, 1826. Published May 1828 by John Murray, London. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

Fuca, each claiming to have followed the “Strait of Annan” far to the west of where they entered it from the Davis Strait. In the 1590s, the Dutch navigator Willem Barents was involved in three North East Passage expeditions. He found Bjørnøya, made the first certain discovery of the Svalbard archipelago, and explored much of Novaya Zemlya before dying in 1597 after a brutal winter on the northern coast of that island group. In the early 17th century, Henry Hudson, Robert Bylot, and William Baffin continued the British exploring tradition near the coasts of eastern Canada. At the same time, a major whaling trade began to develop in the area of Svalbard. Russia was expanding ever eastward into Siberia, and in 1648 Semyon Dezhnev led an expedition that attained the easternmost extremity of Asia and the strait dividing it from North America. However, the importance of Dezhnev’s findings was not immediately recognized. Following the success of a fur-trading voyage to Hudson Bay, in 1670 King Charles II of England granted a charter to what came to be known as the Hudson’s Bay Company. The charter bestowed the members of the company with sole rights over a vast area of Canada then named Rupert’s Land. The Hudson’s Bay Company would hold these rights and continue to exploit this territory until 1870, when it surrendered its possessions to the new Dominion of Canada. The Danes were also interested in what the new lands could offer, and in 1721 Hans Egede headed a Danish-Norwegian expedition to establish a Christian mission and trading colony on the west coast of Greenland. Egede’s was the first serious attempt by Europeans to colonize Greenland since the Norse settlements began in 1985.

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From 1725 to 1733, Vitus Bering led a Russian exploring expedition to investigate the whereabouts of the easternmost point of Asia. Although he passed through the Bering Strait, a debate continued about whether the continents were connected, and Bering embarked again in 1733 on the Great Northern Expedition. In the next decade, seven semi-independent parties of the Great Northern expedition investigated interlocking areas of the Siberian coast. In 1741–1742, on separate voyages, Bering and his chief lieutenant, Alexei Chirkov, encountered many Alaskan islands, and Bering even reached the coast of the mainland before shipwrecking and dying on Ostrov Beringa. Although numerous western European nations embraced interests in the Arctic, the British lead exploration after the middle of the 18th century, with a large part of their involvement centered on the whaling trade and expeditions by the Hudson’s Bay Company. In 1770–1772, Samuel Hearne of the Company set off on his third attempt to explore northwest of Churchill for copper deposits and a North West Passage. Hearne traveled with Chipewyan Indians and, on July 18 1771—the day after his companions massacred Eskimos fishing at Bloody Falls—he reached the sea, becoming the first white man to stand on the north coast of America, and demonstrating that there was no hope of a low-latitude North West Passage. Five years later, James Cook left Plymouth on his final expedition, in an attempt to find a North West Passage starting in the Pacific Ocean. After almost two years, Cook reached the west coast of North America, and then sailed north, searching for the entrance to the Passage. The ships Resolution and Discovery reached

EXPLORATION OF THE ARCTIC Alaska, and sailed along the south coast of the Alaska Peninsula. In August 1778, Cook’s team attained the northwestern extreme of North America at Cape Prince of Wales, from where he sailed across Bering Strait and sighted the eastern tip of Asia. Sailing northeast, Cook encountered an impenetrable barrier of pack ice, and soon headed south to winter in Hawaii, where he died in 1779. In 1783, fur traders from Montreal established the North West Company, which soon became a powerful rival of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the fur trade of the Canadian Subarctic. The same year, G.I. Shelikov led an expedition that represented the first attempt by the Russians to colonize and establish permanent trading posts in the Russian-American islands of Alaska. In the succeeding decades, such traders would open up major new tracts of land across the American Arctic and Subarctic. The year 1818 marked a renewal of interest in the Arctic by the British Royal Navy. The moving spirit behind the British expeditions was John Barrow, the Second Secretary of the Admiralty, who viewed exploration as a means of occupying officers and men free from duties following the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Barrow also viewed national pride, the quest of scientific knowledge, and potential commercial profit as reasons for exploration. The Navy sent two expeditions that year. One, under David Buchan, attempted to sail from Svalbard to Bering Strait via the North Pole. His attempt proved unsuccessful, reaching only 80°34′ N. The other expedition, led by John Ross, attempted to navigate the North West Passage. After exploring Smith and Jones sounds, Ross entered Lancaster Sound, but decided that it was enclosed by land and turned back. Disappointed with Ross’s results, the next year the Admiralty dispatched another expedition, under the figure who had been Ross’s second-in-command, William Edward Parry. Parry began the true opening of the North West Passage, as he sailed through Lancaster Sound into the totally unexplored Canadian archipelago. He discovered Cornwallis, Bathurst, Byan Martin, and Melville islands, the last of which he wintered at in 1819–1820, the first deliberate Arctic wintering by British naval ships. Parry then explored the local area, with a party of men pulling a cart, before returning home. The same year, another British naval expedition— under the command of John Franklin—was sent to explore the north coast of America east from the Coppermine River to Hudson Bay. Franklin, surgeon John Richardson, and their companions moved slowly along the rivers and lakes of north Canada, finally reaching the mouth of the Coppermine in July 1821. The return was a disaster, as the men starved and

Robert Hood, one of two Royal Navy midshipmen, was murdered by a voyageur. Of the 20 original men in the party, 11 died, but Franklin returned to Britain a hero and was knighted. From 1825 to 1827, Franklin undertook a second journey to extend his survey west of the Coppermine. Parry also conducted sequels, leading two North West Passage expeditions (1821–1823 and 1824–1825) before attempting to reach the North Pole using boats fitted with sledge runners from Svalbard. On this trip, Parry established a farthest north that would remain a record until 1875. In the same period, 1820–1824, the Russians began to improve their knowledge of Siberia, as a two-prong expedition under Ferdinand von Wrangell and Peter Anjou carefully explored the north coast of eastern Siberia as well as the New Siberian Islands. John Ross tried to restore the reputation that had been damaged in his first North West Passage expedition when he led an attempt funded by the distiller Felix Booth in 1829. Although traveling in Victory, a ship with the first steam engine used in polar exploration, Ross and his party were frozen in and forced to spend four winters in the ice. Going out from the ship, in 1831, his nephew James Clark Ross became the first explorer to reach the North Magnetic Pole. Finally, in 1833 they abandoned the ship for open boats and a whaler soon rescued them. In 1845, the British Admiralty sponsored the largest and most lavishly equipped North West Passage expedition in history. Under the command of Franklin, it left England to great expectations and sailed into Lancaster Sound in July. However, nothing was heard from Franklin’s expedition again, and by 1847 the British public began to worry about the 129 men who had disappeared into the strange, cold world of the North. In the following years, numerous expeditions were sent by the Admiralty to search for Franklin, and many of the searchers became legends themselves, James Clark Ross, Horatio Austin, Sherard Osborn, Edward Belcher, Richard Collinson, and Robert McClure among them. McClure was credited with being the first through the Passage when, having sailed from the west to Mercy Bay, Banks Island, where his ship Investigator was beset, after two winters the crew was transferred to HMS Resolute at Melville Island and thence by sledge to Beechey Island. Others entered the search as well. Lady Jane Franklin, Franklin’s wife, sponsored several expeditions and public subscription was applied to efforts to find her husband. In the United States, the merchant Henry Grinnell sponsored two expeditions, the first under Edwin Jesse De Haven and the second under Elisha Kent Kane. Nevertheless, virtually nothing was found until, in 1854, while surveying the Boothia Peninsula, John Rae of the Hudson’s Bay Company

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EXPLORATION OF THE ARCTIC received evidence that the bodies of many white men had been found on King William Island. Rae shocked the western world by announcing that the members of Franklin’s expedition had engaged in cannibalism to prolong their existence. The possibility of such barbarism grew into an object of huge debate at the same time that the searches were suspended due to the British involvement in the Crimean War. When that war ended, Lady Franklin sent yet another expedition to the north. This one, under Francis Leopold McClintock, found two notes left by members of Franklin’s expedition and sufficient skeletons and relics to provide an explanation of its fate: how Franklin had died aboard Erebus in 1847, the men had left the ships in April 1848, and they had died as they attempted to walk to the Canadian mainland. The Franklin searches explored and charted vast tracks of the Canadian archipelago and had also proven the difficulty of navigating the North West Passage. Although occasional searches for additional Franklin relics or pieces of information continued sporadically for several decades—such as those of Charles Francis Hall (1860–1862 and 1864–1869) and Frederick Schwatka (1878–1880)—the emphasis of the major expeditions shifted to exploration of other parts of the Arctic and to reaching the North Pole. In 1867, the United States purchased Alaska from Russia, and major scientific and geographical study of Alaska began by different parts of the US government. The last great Arctic expedition sponsored by the British government attempted to reach the North Pole via Smith Sound in 1875–1876, under the command of George Strong Nares. After wintering near the north of Ellesmere Island, in April 1876 sledging parties were dispatched, one of which, under Albert Hastings Markham, attained record latitude of 83°20′26″. The expedition returned home a year earlier than planned due to massive outbreaks of scurvy. A subsequent American expedition, financed by James Gordon Bennett Jr., the owner of the New York Herald, and led by George Washington De Long, was even more disastrous. Only 13 of the 33 members of the expedition on Jeannette survived after the ship was crushed and sank north of Russia, and the men were forced to retreat to the Lena Delta in three open boats. The relief ship Rodgers also burned off the coast of Siberia. Meanwhile, modern scientific study of the north had been initiated by the Swedish glacial geologist Otto Torell, who led a major expedition to Spitsbergen in 1861. In the next decade, one of Torell’s colleagues, Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld, successfully combined scientific study with geographical exploration and commercial development as no one before had done. The culmination was the voyage of Vega, 1878–1880, in

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which Nordenskiöld became the first person to navigate the entire North East Passage. Another great believer in science as the most important part of exploration was Karl Weyprecht, one of two leaders of the Austro-Hungarian Exploring Expedition (1872–1874), which discovered Franz Josef Land. Upon his return, Weyprecht helped establish the International Polar Year (1882–1883), an international effort that hoped to strip the glamor from polar exploration and concentrate on scientific matters. Of the 14 expeditions of the International Polar Year, the most memorable was the US expedition to Lady Franklin Bay on north Ellesmere Island (1881–1884), under the command of Adolphus W. Greely. The party attained a farthest north (83°24′) and carried out its scientific work, but failed to get relief from inclement conditions. Facing a third winter, Greely led his men south, but they had to winter in terrible conditions and 18 men died, mostly from famine and scurvy, although one committed suicide and another was executed. In 1888, Fridtjof Nansen of Norway led a six-person party that became the first ever to cross the Greenland icecap. Five years later, Nansen—conjecturing that the current that had brought some of the relics from De Long’s Jeannette all the way to the shores of Greenland could be used to explore the Arctic Ocean—stuck his purpose-built ship Fram in the ice north of the New Siberian Islands. A year and a half later, with only one companion, Hjalmar Johansen, Nansen abandoned the ship and skied and sledged to a farthest north of 86°13′06″. Nansen and Johansen retreated to Franz Josef Land where, after wintering in a makeshift hut, they met the British explorer Frederick George Jackson, who sent them home on his supply ship. Meanwhile, the ice eventually released the Fram, under the command of Otto Sverdrup, and it returned to Tromsø only one day before Nansen, having completed major scientific studies. Sverdrup followed in Nansen’s footsteps by taking Fram on an expedition to the Canadian archipelago from 1898 to 1902, on which Axel Heiberg, Ellef Ringnes, and Amund Ringnes islands were all sited and Ellesmere Island was further explored. Several other major Scandinavian expeditions also took place around the fin de siècle. In 1897, Salomon August Andrée of Sweden and two companions attempted to take a balloon from Danskøya to the North Pole. The balloon ultimately landed on the ice far from the Pole, and Andrée and his two companions walked to the littleknown island of Kvitøya where they died. Historians knew nothing of their fate until 1930, when evidence of Andrée’s final camp was found. From 1903 to 1906, the Norwegian Roald Amundsen led a seven-person party on the tiny ship Gjøa, becoming the first ever to navigate the entire North West Passage.

THE EXXON VALDEZ At the same time that Sverdrup was on Ellesmere Island, so was the American explorer Robert E. Peary, who was leading his first North Pole expedition. Peary had already led five expeditions to Greenland before turning his sights toward the North Pole. Obsessed with reaching the Pole, and following his next expedition (1905–1906), Peary claimed to have attained a farthest north of 87°06′, breaking the record set in 1900 on an expedition from Franz Josef Land led by Luigi Amedeo di Savoia, the Duke of the Abruzzi. In 1908–1909 Peary traveled north again, and, following his return, he claimed to have attained the North Pole. The same claim had been made only days before by the American physician Frederick Cook. The Western world catapulted into a long and bitter debate about which man had reached the Pole, a debate that continues in some forms until the present day, although most unbiased polar scholars now feel strongly that neither man attained the North Pole. That honor was reserved for Roald Amundsen. Following his completion of the North West Passage, Amundsen had planned an attempt on the North Pole, but after Cook and Peary claimed to have reached it, he turned south and led the first party ever to reach the South Pole (1910–1912). Amundsen then led a drift in the Arctic Ocean on the ship Maud, in the process navigating the North East Passage. In 1926, Amundsen and Lincoln Ellsworth led an expedition in the dirigible Norge, which flew over the North Pole and the entire Arctic basin, going from Svalbard to Alaska. Initially, Richard E. Byrd received the credit for being the first to fly to the Pole; Byrd claimed to have flown there just days before Amundsen. However, Byrd’s claims have since been proven false. Two years after Amundsen reached the North Pole, his pilot on that journey, Umberto Nobile, led a similar dirigible flight. On the way back from the Pole, however, the airship Italia crashed, instigating a major search that lasted almost seven weeks and during which Amundsen, searching for Nobile, disappeared forever into the frozen North. The first documentation of a figure to actually stand on the North Pole came in April 23, 1948, when three Soviet planes carrying 24 men—including the scientists Pavel Senko, Mikhail Somov, Mikhail Ostrekin, and Pavel Gordiyenko—landed at the Pole. A decade later the US submarine Nautilus reached the Pole while submerged, and the following year, 1959, the US submarine Skate surfaced at the North Pole. The most recent ambitious explorations of the Arctic occurred in 1968 and 1969. The American insurance agent Ralph Plaisted led a party of four that attained the Pole on snowmobiles in 1968, before being evacuated by plane. Meanwhile, Wally Herbert and three companions began the first crossing of the

Arctic basin by dog sledge. Leaving from Point Barrow, Alaska, in February 1968, Herbert’s party finally reached the North Pole on April 5, 1969, and then continued to Svalbard, where a ship evacuated them. BEAU RIFFENBURGH See also Amedeo, Luigi, Duke of Abruzzi; Amundsen, Roald; Andrée, Salomon August; Baffin, William; Barents, Willem; Barrow, Sir John; Bering, Vitus; Bylot, Robert; Cook, Frederick A.; Cook, James; De Long, George Washington; Dezhnev, Semyon; Eirík the Red; Egede, Hans; Franklin, Sir John; Frobisher, Sir Martin; Greely, Adolphus W.; Grinnell, Henry; Hearne, Samuel; Hudson, Henry; Kane, Elisha Kent; Markham, Sir Albert H.; McClintock, Francis Leopold; Nansen, Fridtjof; Nordenskiöld, Adolf Erik; Parry, Sir William Edward; Peary, Robert E.; Rae, Sir John; Sverdrup, Otto; Torrell, Otto; Weyprecht, Karl; Wrangell, Baron Ferdinand Petrovich von Further Reading Barr, Susan (editor), Franz Josef Land, Oslo: Norsk Polarinstitutt, 1995 Barrow, John, A Chronological History of Voyages Into the Arctic Regions, London: John Murray, 1818 Berton, Pierre, The Arctic Grail: The Quest for the North West Passage and the North Pole, 1818–1909, London and New York: Penguin, 1988 Cyriax, R.J., Sir John Franklin’s Last Expedition: A Chapter in the History of the Royal Navy, London: Methuen, 1939 Greely, Adolphus W., Three Years of Arctic Service, 2 volumes, New York: Scribner’s, 1885 Herbert, Wally, The Noose of Laurels: The Discovery of the North Pole, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1989 Holland, Clive, Arctic Exploration and Development c. 500 B.C. to 1915: An Encyclopedia, New York and London: Garland, 1994 Huntford, Roland, Nansen: The Explorer as Hero, London: Duckworth, 1997 Levere, Trevor H., Science and the Canadian Arctic, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993 Nansen, F., Farthest North: Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship Fram 1893–1896, 2 volumes, London: Constable, 1897 ———, Northern Mists: Arctic Exploration in Early Times, 2 volumes, London: Heinemann, 1911 Neatby, Leslie H., Search for Franklin: The Story of One of the Great Dramas of Polar Exploration, Edmonton: Hurtig, 1970 Rawlins, Dennis, “Byrd’s heroic 1926 North Pole failure.” Polar Record, 36 (2000): 25–50

THE EXXON VALDEZ At 12:04 a.m. on March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez Supertanker ran aground on Bligh Reef near Valdez, Alaska and spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil into

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THE EXXON VALDEZ Prince William Sound. The massive spill triggered the largest spill-related clean-up effort in history. Nonetheless, it soiled 1500 miles (2400 km) of pristine coastline, killed thousands of marine mammals and shore birds, affected the lucrative Alaskan commercial fisheries, and spawned legal battles that are still ongoing. Exxon, Inc. paid over $1 billion in fines and penalties and was assessed what was at the time the largest punitive damage award in history, $5 billion. Years later, debate still rages over the long-term effects of the spill and clean-up efforts on the Prince William Sound ecosystem, on populations of fish, mammals, and birds, and on the Alaskan people and communities directly affected by the spill. The 987-foot Exxon Valdez departed from the oil terminal in Valdez, Alaska with 1.3 million barrels (50.4 million gallons) of North Slope crude oil bound for refineries on the US west coast. To maneuver around floating ice from nearby glaciers, Captain Joseph Hazelwood steered the ship out of the normal shipping lane. Then as the ship sailed beyond the Coast Guard’s radar tracking area, Hazelwood left the bridge, leaving the ship in the hands of a third mate who was not licensed to pilot the ship in waters so close to shore. The Exxon Valdez sailed out of the navigational channel and ran aground on Bligh Reef. The grounding, and possibly the captain’s attempt to rock the tanker off the reef, ruptured the hull and spilled millions of gallons of crude oil into the waters of Prince William Sound. Ten hours after the grounding, Hazelwood tested at a 0.061 blood alcohol content, higher than the 0.04 limit Coast Guard regulations permit to operate a ship. Later court testimony indicated that Hazelwood had a history of both great skills as a mariner and of alcohol abuse. He had several alcoholic drinks before his ship departed Valdez on the evening of March 23, and consumed two beers between the time the ship grounded and when the blood alcohol test was administered. Later, Hazelwood was found guilty of a Class B Misdemeanor of negligent discharge of oil and was sentenced to 1000 h of community service. The initial response to the spill was impeded by a lack of preparation, as well as communication and coordination problems. The Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, the consortium of seven oil companies that built the Alaska pipeline, had responsibility for first response to the spill. Later analysis indicates, however, that Alyeska employees were poorly trained and lacked sufficient equipment to respond to a spill of this magnitude. Contrary to Alyeska’s own planning documents, the company had little equipment on hand to handle even a modest spill. Over 14 h elapsed before any containment or cleanup efforts began, and even 18 h after the accident no boom had been placed around the ship to contain the spill. A barge that was supposed

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to be loaded with containment equipment was undergoing repairs instead. Two small oil skimmers dispatched to the scene quickly filled their holding tanks, but had no facility into which they could offload to continue their operations. Further complicating the immediate response were disagreements over decision-making authority and the best cleanup methods. In addition to using floating booms and oil skimmers to contain and collect the oil, Exxon experimented with chemical dispersants and with burning the oil by covering it with a napalmlike substance and igniting it with lasers. One test using chemical dispersants was successful. Proponents argued that the dispersants would speed the natural degradation process and limit the amount of oil reaching shorelines. Opponents argued that the dispersants would only hide some of the oil by dropping it in the water column, and that the chemicals themselves would be toxic to sea life. The argument became moot, however, as little of the required quantity of dispersant was dispatched to the scene in time to be deployed effectively. A storm blew into Prince William Sound on the third day after the spill, forcing skimmer boats and containment boom crews to retreat. By this time, the oil slick covered more than 100 square miles and began to reach nearby coastlines. By the time the crude oil reached shoreline, it had mixed with sea water to form a thick tarlike substance called mousse. Exxon mounted a vast effort to clean oiled beaches, employing a flotilla of local fishing vessels and pleasure craft to shuttle scientists, executives, clean-up crews, and equipment around the affected areas of Prince William Sound. Many workers scrubbed oil off rocks by hand. Oiled beaches also were sprayed with high-pressure, heated water. The heated oily residue was directed back into the ocean, where it was collected using skimmer boats. Some argued that pressure washing the beaches would minimize any long-term ecological damage by breaking up the mousse into smaller oily packets. Pressure-washed beaches also gave an appearance of cleanliness. The pressure washing, however, also killed large numbers of organisms growing in estuary environments that would not have necessarily died due to oil exposure. The effect of the spill was staggering. The oil slick eventually extended nearly 500 miles west and south of Prince William Sound and soiled 1500 miles of coastline. It killed an estimated 2800 sea otters, 200 harbor seals, and 260,000 birds. Herring and salmon fisheries in the Prince William Sound area closed for the 1989 season, with longer-term effects that are still being debated. The degree to which the Prince William Sound ecosystem has recovered is also debated. Casual

EYAK observation would discern few visual effects of the spill on many oiled beaches. Wind and wave action serve to break down oil naturally, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that most sea-borne animal species had returned to levels that are comparable with nonoiled areas by 1992 or 1993. On most oiled beaches, however, even those that were hand-cleaned and pressure-washed, layers of crude oil remain immediately below the surface rocks. It is ironic that the areas that were pressure washed with hot water have not recovered as well as oiled beaches that were not washed. Only about 7% of the 11 million spilled gallons were recovered, and scientists continue to monitor any longer-term effects as the hydrocarbons move up the food chain. As a result of the spill, the Exxon Shipping Company and Exxon Corporation pleaded guilty to violating the Clean Water Act, the Refuse Act, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and agreed to pay $1.025 billion in damages and fines. This was the largest judgment ever levied for an environmental violation. The agreement established funding for scientific research and monitoring and established the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council to disperse and monitor recovery and research costs. In a 1994 Federal court judgment, Exxon also was ordered to pay $0.3 billion in compensatory damages and $5.0 billion in punitive damages to commercial fishers and residents of the affected areas. The US Supreme Court denied one of Exxon’s appeals of this judgment in October 2000, but as of this writing the company was still pursuing other appeals. Concern over the Exxon Valdez oil spill led directly to several legislative and regulatory changes designed to prevent oil spills and facilitate cleanup attempts. The 1990 Oil Pollution Act and 1990 Oil Pollution and Liability Act established a US federal cleanup fund paid for by a 5 cent per barrel oil tax, mandated double hull containment systems for all new vessels in excess of 5000 tons by 2005, established minimum liability limits for shippers, and raised the caps on the maximum liability for oil spills. In Alaska, the state government passed a law requiring the Alyeska Pipeline Company to stockpile enough equipment to combat a 300,000-barrel spill. Oil dispersant storage areas are now located for quick deployment anywhere in the state. As for port procedures, both a tug and an emergency response vessel now escort each tanker leaving the Port of Valdez. Tankers now face a speed limit in the main channel of 10 knots, and ship captains now are tested for alcohol an hour before sailing. Tankers can no longer leave the channel for any reason except emergency, and the Coast Guard’s radar surveillance has been enhanced. The spill also created new interest in scientific research that has resulted in several new methods for cleaning up oil spills. JONATHAN M. KARPOFF AND LLOYD TALIAFERRO

See also Environmental Problems; Environmentalism; Pollution Further Reading Exxon Valdez oil spill cleanup: hearing before the Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Navigation of the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, House of Representatives, One Hundred First Congress, first session, August 10, 1989 Houghton, Jonathan P., Evaluation of the condition of Prince William Sound shorelines following the Exxon Valdez oil spill and subsequent shoreline treatment. Government Document C 55.13/2:NOS ORCA 73/V. 1993 Keeble, John, Out of the Channel, Eastern Washington University Press, 1999 Owen, Bruce M. et al., The Economics of a Disaster: The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, Westport, Conn: Quorum Books, 1995 National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/intro/valdez.html

EYAK Eyaks have historically inhabited the area in between three converging tribes in Alaska: the Chugach Alutiiq (i.e., formerly known as Pacific Eskimo) to the west, the Athapaskan to the north, and the Tlingit to the east (see map in Alaska entry). In historic times Eyak territory in the west extended from Simpson Bay of Prince William Sound to the Italio River south of Yakutat, in the north to Childs and Miles Glaciers, and in the east to the St Elias Mountains and the Nunatak Glacier. Beyond their traditional boundaries, Eyaks were known to travel by river and sea to Alutiiq territory, such as Egg Island and Strawberry Point of Hinchinbrook Island in the Gulf of Alaska. Around 10,500 to 9000 years ago, the Na-Dene people crossed the Bering land bridge from Northeast Asia. The Eyak are direct descendants of the Na-Dene family as are the Athapaskan and Tlingit. The Eyak migrated from central Alaska/Canada north to the Copper River valley, then expanded east to Katalla, Cape Suckling, Cape Yakataga, and Icy Bay, to the Italio River south of modern day Yakutat, and later expanded west and conquered part of Hawkins Island from the Alutiiq. Eyaks of the Copper River delta are today a dwindling minority, with about 50 Eyak people presently alive (Krauss, 1995; US census, 1990). Marie SmithJones, an Eyak born in 1918 and presently living in Anchorage, is the only full-blood language speaker. Eyaks, however, have historically been a small group, due to periodic raids by Tlingit, Alutiiq, and Russians, as well as sporadic epidemic outbreaks resulting from Russian, European, and American contact.

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EYAK The villages of Alaganik (or Alaganu) and Eyak (or Ighiak, Ihaik, Hyacks, Iggiak) were the primary settlements of the Eyak people. There were 117 persons recorded as living at “Ighiak” and “Alaganu” in 1880, in the first census of Alaska by the US government. Alaganik, located on the westernmost side of the Copper River delta, is the oldest settlement of the Eyak people. In 1890, the US census reported twelve houses and twelve families living in Alaganik. In 1892, Alaganik was abandoned due to a severe measles outbreak resulting from European contact. Europeans first noted the village of Eyak, located eight miles west of the mouth of the Copper River, in 1869 (Manchee and McLean, 1999). The US census in 1890 reported 27 houses and 28 families living in Eyak. Each of these villages had two potlatch houses, one for the Eagle and one for the Raven clan. There were also two minor settlements: Glacatl and Bering village. Glacatl was commonly mistaken as part of Eyak village in population and research studies. This site, which later became a Russian post, was located on the western side of Eyak River approximately half a mile below Eyak village, which was on the eastern side. Bering Village was located east of Cape Martin and inland from Kanak Island. Less than 40 Eyaks lived at Bering village and most spoke Tlingit and Eyak (Krauss, 1982). This group was known as the Tlingitized-Eyak. Half the Eyak population died in the 1837–1838 smallpox epidemic (Reedy-Maschner and Maschner, 1999). By 1900, Alaganik, Eyak, and Glacatl were destroyed by epidemics and the surviving Eyaks had moved to Old Town (Krauss, 1982) near the American fishing cannery and modern-day Cordova. In 1899, there were 59 Eyaks living at the canneries (Elliot, 1900: 739). By 1933, there were 38 Eyaks (BirketSmith and De Laguna, 1938) and by 1952, when the first linguist arrived, there were only seven native speakers remaining (Krauss, 1982). The Eyak language is from the Na-Dene language family. The Eyak language is linguistically similar to the Athapaskan languages as well as the Navajo and Apache languages of Arizona and New Mexico. Roughly one-third of the Eyak language resembles the Athapaskan languages and another one-third resembles the Navajo and Apache. The Eyak language is considered a divergent branch of the Athapaskan languages and from a common ancestor called “protoAthapaskan” (Krauss, 1982). Eyak society was a highly stratified system based on elites, villagers, and slaves. Chiefs and eldest males (elites) were the authorities for decisions, based on traditional customs, at the individual, village, and clan level. Villagers had limited rights that were established on a matrilineal system, which meant that the mother’s

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lineage was the basis for the clan design of totems, clothing, and ceremonial dress as well as for an individual’s rights to subsistence areas. Slaves who were not killed had no rights, could not marry, participate in ceremonies, and were responsible for heavy work such as gathering water, chopping wood, and packing animals. Slaves were captives from wars and were referred to as “deer.” Eyak people were divided into two exogamous groups or moieties, meaning members from either the Eagle or Raven clan had to marry outside their group. Marriages were arranged by family members. Beyond the stratified system and the marriage limitation, there were no social restrictions made with in- and outgroup moiety interactions. The Raven and Eagle moiety system was analogous to the Athapaskan (Crow and Seagull) and Tlingit (Raven and Eagle/Wolf) and this similar cultural system allowed for trade and relations. For example, the Eyak and Tlingit invited each other to potlatches at their villages or at Kattala. Yet, the Eyak did not trade, interact, or have potlatches with the Alutiiq because of the moiety organization, food, language, and cultural differences. Wars with the Alutiit were common due to territorial disputes, revenge, and the theft of women. The Eyaks and Tlingitized-Eyaks also fought with the Russian explorers. For example, the Eyaks attacked Aleksandr Baranov’s crew in Prince William Sound in 1792; defeated the Russians and their Native Alaskan slaves at Cape Suckling in 1799; participated in a raid on Fort Sitka; and directed an assault on a Yakutat colony. The Russians also attacked the Eyaks. They raided their villages and captured, tortured, and killed the villagers (Reedy-Maschner and Maschner, 1999). The reasons why these aggressions started are vague. Traditional subsistence foods of the Eyak included fish, mammals, birds, clams, and to a lesser degree sea mammals. The most important food source of the Eyak was the five species of salmon: king, coho (silver), humpback, chum (dog), and the sockeye (red). Salmon were harvested during their runs from May to September, using basket dipnets and fish traps, or speared from canoes, land, and/or scaffolds that rested on one bank and were held up in the river by two poles (Abercrombrie, 1900). Halibut was fished in winter and summer from dugout canoes using a hook and line that was baited with a clam (Birket-Smith and De Laguna, 1938). The most important land animals hunted by the Eyak were bears (black and brown) and mountain goats. During winter, the Eyak went up the Orca Inlet to hunt bear. Goat hunting took place in the various mountains of the Copper River delta and presented a formidable challenge for the Eyak people because it

EYAK was necessary to climb above the goat in rocky and unstable terrain (Birket-Smith and De Laguna, 1938). Small mammals, such as beaver, fox, lynx, mink, martin, muskrat, and weasel, were also hunted for subsistence. Each of these mammals were culled by different methods, such as snares (fox and lynx), deadfalls (minks and martins), bows and arrows (muskrats), and box traps (weasel). Bows and arrows were also used to harvest birds, such as ducks, geese, swans, which were culled during molting in August, while ptarmigan and grouse were gathered during the winter. Sea creatures such as razor clams and cockles were gathered in October, and were dug and cleaned on various sandbars. Hunting of sea mammals was limited to seals and sea otters. The rocks, sandbars, ice, and water surrounding the Copper River delta and Egg Island were the hunting grounds of seals, while sea otters were hunted off Egg Island and Strawberry Point of Hinchinbrook Island. Within Eyak culture, certain animals were considered taboo. For example, Eyaks were forbidden to kill fur-bearing seals, land otters, wolves, and walrus because they were thought to transform into humans. The process of hunting also included numerous taboos for women, such as not sewing new clothes, making noise, and combing/washing their hair. Pregnant women were also forbidden to cross a hunter’s path after he had left the village. These taboos were especially respected when a member went mountain goat hunting. The Eyak worldview was based on everything (such as persons, animals, trees, lakes, rivers, and geographic places) having a soul owner in charge of the object. All phenomena that occurred in or around the community were the result of positive or negative events within the community. For example, the northern lights (aurora) were considered an omen that someone was going to die. Bad weather was the result of a murder, abortion, or birth of an illegitimate child. Good weather could be returned with a pregnant women standing in the smoke of branches burning, the burning of select clothes, and setting egg shells on fire and setting them out to sea. A dead relative’s soul, with the help of the sun, reappeared as a new baby. Lastly, the Copper River’s soul owner was a malicious spirit that stole people in the rapids. Events and spirits could be encouraged or controlled by witches and shamans. Both could be of either gender, but the shaman was more powerful and could kill the witch by forcing him to enter her home in animal form. Witches gained power by skinning and wearing a dog pelt over their heads, could fly through the air in human form, and used their powers to do evil, such as making villagers sick. A witch could

change shape by blowing into a whistle made out of a human bone, removed from a buried corpse (BirketSmith and De Laguna, 1938). Eyak shamans were considered very powerful in the region with access to 50 or more spirits, which were referred to as brother, helper, father, and/or uncle. During a ceremony, an assistant would sing a song to increase the shaman’s power. Shamans used drums or painted wooden figures of humans, mammals, and animals that were made powerful when in the shaman’s possession. These objects were used to heal, foretell the future, prevent evil spirits, treat infertility, and/or travel into the spirit realm. They only wore special costumes when combating another shaman (Birket-Smith and De Laguna, 1938). The Eyak people and the Native Village of Eyak, representing 450 various Native people, are federally recognized within the City of Cordova. With the acceptance of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) in 1971, the remaining Eyak people became shareholders of the local Eyak Corporation and the regional Chugach Alaska Corporation (CAC). The twelve ANCSA regional corporations accepted the US legal system over a tribal government (reservation) system and forfeited their rights to ancestral lands. During the ANCSA negotiations, the state and federal government considered the Eyak people extinct and/or assimilated and enrolled the Native people (Alutiiq, Athapaskan, Tlingit, Aleut, and Yupik) residing in Cordova and the Copper River delta as traditional Eyak village members. The Eyak only made up 37 of the 326 original shareholders of the Eyak Corporation, and number less than 50 descendants of the 2000 CAC shareholders. Due to their minority status, the Eyak are limited in their ability to influence decisions that affect their ancestral lands. As an example, in 1995, the Eyak Traditional Elders Council (ETEC), formed in 1991 by the Eyak people, unsuccessfully challenged the Eyak Corporation, Sherstone, Inc. and Sound Development, Inc. to prevent logging on the eastern side of the Eyak river. The Eyak people produced numerous gravesites and charcoaled rocks on the adjacent beaches as evidence of inhabitance, but the Alaska Supreme Court dismissed the case because the Eyak Corporation and others had failed to find any significant evidence of artifacts or gravesites in the proposed logging area. The ETEC appealed the decision and filed an ANCSA shareholder action to halt the logging on their ancestral land; again, the courts dismissed the case. After the court cases, the Eyak Corporation put the issue up for vote and over 80% of the shareholders voted in favor of protecting the 75,000 acres. The Eyak Preservation Council (EPC), formed after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, is presently advocating

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EYAK on behalf of the Eyak people to preserve and restore the tiny Eyak tribe as an independent and distinct Alaskan tribal Nation. EPC is presently working with numerous state, federal, and international groups along with the Aleuts on preserving their dying Alaskan cultures, heritages, and languages. Through the efforts of the Eyak people, the EPC, and the ETEC the tribe held their first potlatch in more than 80 years, in 1995. ANDREW J. HUND See also Alutiit; Northern Athapaskan Languages; Tlingit Further Reading Alaska Supreme Court, Eyak Traditional Elders Council v. Sherstone, Inc., Eyak Corporation and Sound Development, Inc., 904 P 2d 420, on line, available at: http://touchngo.com/ sp/html/sp-4273.htm, 1995

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Birket-Smith, Kaj & Frederica De Laguna, The Eyak Indians of the Copper River Delta, Alaska, Copenhagen: Levin and Munksgaard, 1938 Davidson, A., Endangered Peoples, San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1993 De Laguna, Frederica, “Eyak.” In Handbook of North American Indians. Volume 7, Northwest Coast, edited by W.C. Sturtevant & W.P. Suttles, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990, pp. 189–96. De Laguna, Frederica, Chugach Prehistory: The Archaeology of Prince William Sound, Alaska, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1956 Johnson, John F., Eyak Legends: Stories and Photographs, Anchorage: Chugach Heritage Foundation, 1988 Krauss, Michael E., In Honor of Eyak: The Art of Anna Nelson Harry, Fairbanks: University of Alaska Native Language Center, 1982 Reedy-Maschner, Katherine L. & Herbert D. Maschner, “Marauding middlemen: western expansion and violent conflict in the Subarctic.” Ethnohistory, 46 (4) (1999): 703–743 Spaan, Laura B., More Than Words [Film], Alaska Moving Images Preservation Association, New York: Cinema Guild, 1995

F FAIRBANKS

Fairbanks is 95 miles (153 km) by road from the Yukon River, 358 miles (576 km) by road from Anchorage, 123 miles (198 km) from the entrance to Denali National Park, and 483 miles (777 km) via the Alaska Railroad from the port of Seward. The Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline (Aleyska Pipeline) passes through Fairbanks. The Alcan Highway connects Fairbanks by land with Canada and what Alaskans call “the lower 48” or “outside.” The climate is typically continental, with very cold winters and pleasantly warm summers. Several consecutive days or weeks of −40°F (−40°C) are not uncommon. Summer temperatures usually top out in the 70–80°F (21–27°C) range. The average annual precipitation is 28.7 cm. Winter snowfall totals vary widely, with both 0.3 m and 3 m being quite common. Winds are typically calm in winter but can be gusty in summer. The generally windless winter has temperatures often below −30°F (−34°C). Fairbanks is located in a valley where temperature inversions are common, and the exhaust gases from thousands of vehicles, dogs, and people, all contribute to the formation of ice fog. Surrounded by vast stretches of taiga, largely underlain by permafrost, lumbering is a major industry, as are support services for gold mining and oil production. The University of Alaska-Fairbanks is located in the suburb of College. Fort Wainwright (Army) and Eielson Air Force Base are nearby. J. RICHARD GORHAM

Fairbanks is situated in the heart of Alaska, 370 miles (595 km) south of Prudhoe Bay, and 93 miles (150 km) south of the Arctic Circle. The city grew rapidly in the 20th century fueled by gold mining, military bases, and discovery of oil in Alaska’s North Slope; but until 1901, the Tanana and Yukon Valley area was known only to the native Athapaskans. On August 26, 1901, the paddleboat Lavelle Young, captained by Charles W. Adams, bumped the south bank of the Chena River at a place that would later become the settlement of Fairbanks. Eldridge Truman Barnette and his wife Isabelle, disembarked in this desolate wilderness, bringing with them $20,000 worth of trade goods. Barnette had wanted to ascend farther up the Tanana River, but the draft was too shallow. Therefore, Captain Adams tried the Chena River, thinking it might be a deeper channel of the Tanana, but it was not. So the Lavelle Young pulled away, leaving behind two discouraged first citizens of the future city. Matters quickly improved. Less than a year later, in July 1902, Felix Pedro discovered gold in a creek about 15 miles (c.24 km) from Barnette’s trading post. The trade goods intended for the miners at Tanacross were soon purchased by stampeders flocking to the Tanana Valley. The gold strike had been announced in the Yukon (Canada) Sun on January 17, 1903 (other strikes soon followed). In April of that year, Judge James Wickersham arrived in Fairbanks, having traveled by dog sled from Circle, Alaska. He established Fairbanks as the seat of the Third Judicial District, thus ensuring a bright future for the tiny settlement. By December 2000, the state-certified population of Fairbanks North Star Borough (FNSB) was 83,814, including 31,423 people in Fairbanks, the administrative seat of FNSB (area, 7443 square miles).

Further Reading Cole, Dermot, “Fairbanks, Metropolis of the Tanana.” Alaska Geographic, 22(1) (1995): 5–19 Gorham, J. Richard, “Biological Studies at Eielson Air Force Base—1970.” Studies of the Biology and Control of Arthropods of Health Significance in Alaska, Fairbanks: Arctic Health Research Center, 1972

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FAROE ISLANDS Henning, Robert (editor), “Alaska’s great interior.” Alaska Geographic, 7(1) (1980): 1–128 ———, “Alaska’s oil/gas and minerals industry.” Alaska Geographic, 9(4) (1982): 1–216 ———, “Adventure roads north: story of the Alaska highway and other roads in The Milepost.” Alaska Geographic, 10(1) (1983): 1–224 Magoun, Audrey J. & C. Dean Frederick, Floodplain Forests Along the Tanana River, Interior Alaska. Terrestrial Ecosystem Dynamics and Management Considerations. Miscellaneous Publication No. 3, Fairbanks: Alaska Boreal Forests Council, 2000 Osterkamp, T.E., L. Viereck, Y. Shur, M.T. Jorgenson, C. Racine, A. Doyle & R. D. Boone, “Observations of thermokarst and its impact on boreal forests in Alaska, U.S.A.” Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research, 32(3) (2000): 303–315 Packee, Edmond C., “Implementation of silvicultural systems for Alaska’s northern forest.” Agroborealis, 33(1) (2001): 21–29 Rennick, Penny (editor), “Alaska’s farms and gardens.” Alaska Geographic, 11(2) (1984): 1–144 ———, “Alaska’s forest resources.” Alaska Geographic, 12(2) (1985): 1–200 ———, “Tanana basin.” Alaska Geographic, 16(3) (1989): 1–96 ———, “Alaska’s weather.” Alaska Geographic, 18(1) (1991): 1–96 ———, “Alaska’s railroads.” Alaska Geographic, 19(4) (1992): 1–96 ———, “Fairbanks.” Alaska Geographic, 22(1) (1995): 1–96 ———, “Rich earth: Alaska’s mineral industry.” Alaska Geographic, 22(3) (1995): 1–96 Woerner, R.K., The Alaska Handbook, Jefferson: McFarland and Company, 1986

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FAROE ISLANDS The Faroe Islands, a self-governing region of Denmark, are situated between 61°20′ N and 62°24′ N and 6°15′ W and 7°41′ W about halfway between Norway and Iceland at the southern edge of the Norwegian Sea. The islands have a total land area of 1397 km2 distributed on 18 individual islands, the largest of which comprises an area of 374 km2. The distance from the southernmost to the northernmost point is about 113 km, and the corresponding east-west distance is about 75 km. The nearest landmass is the Shetland Isles, Scotland (about 350 km), then Norway (675 km), and Iceland (about 450 km). The islands’ native population, the Faroese, are of Scandinavian descent from Viking settlers.

Geology, Topography, Glaciations

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The islands are formed from Tertiary plateau basalts, about 50–60 million years old, with a total thickness of at least 5200 m. The land surface rises gradually from about 600 m a.s.l. in the southwestern part of the islands to more than 800 m a.s.l. in the northern and northeastern areas, which have a mountainous topography. Lava flows form benches on hillsides. The highest

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Location and main towns and islands in the Faroe Islands.

mountain, Slættaratindur (882 m a.s.l.), is situated in the northern part of the island Eysturoy. There are many smaller rivers that have been dammed for hydroelectric power, and the coastline is indented by many fjords and steep cliffs. The Tertiary volcanics overlie Cretaceous clays and sandstones that appear to be cap rocks for hydrocarbons trapped in Devonian and Carboniferous source rocks in the Faroe-Shetland Basin. There are some Tertiary brown coal seams on the island of Suðuroy, mined for local use. Since the Tertiary volcanic evolution, when the present-day Faroes were located close to the present southern central part of East Greenland, coastal erosion has gradually reduced the area of the islands, simultaneous with slow sinking of the basalt plateau due to cooling and isostatic effects. Following cessation of volcanism, the humid and warm Tertiary climate caused strong chemical erosion, by which a low-relief (100–200 m) rolling landscape evolved during the late Tertiary.

FAROE ISLANDS During the Quaternary, recurrent glaciations and cold-climate weathering have left significant geomorphological imprints such as glacial trough valleys, cirques, free faces, talus sheets, and solifluction lobes. According to a regional mapping of glacial striae, many large valley glaciers grew in the Faroes during the Weichselian, covering the landscape up to at least 700 m a.s.l. in the northern central part of the islands, and extending several kilometers beyond the present coastline onto the surrounding shelf. Assuming a postglacial eustatic sea level rise of about 125–130 m, the regional maximum Weichselian ice thickness, however, could not have exceeded 350–400 m, as there are no raised beaches on the Faroe Islands. Little is known about the Late Weichselian deglaciation of the Faroe Islands. A series of rather small moraine ridges relating to a final valley and cirque glaciation have recently been described, and a tentative Younger Dryas age was suggested by comparison with similar moraine systems in Scotland. To date, a proper dating of the moraines has not been successful, and it is therefore not known precisely when the Faroe Islands became ice-free in the Late Weichselian. The oldest relevant radiocarbon date is obtained from a lake bottom core at Hoydalar and gives an age of 9660 ± 150 BP (Jóhansen, 1975, 1985), indicating that glacier ice may have been present in some large valleys up to the beginning of the Holocene. There is no indication of any Holocene reglaciation in the Faroe Islands.

Past Climate The early Holocene (Preboreal 10,000–9000 BP) climate on the Faroe Islands was Arctic-Subarctic with the arrival and dominance of dwarf birch (Betula nana). In Boreal times (9000–8000 BP), the climate changed toward more oceanic conditions, with the disappearance of Betula nana. Following the introduction of a rather warm and wet climate, shrub species such as Juniperus and Salix expanded, covering the lowlands, together with tall-herb vegetation and grass heaths. The Atlantic period (8000–5000 BP) was wet, with evidence of strong leaching of soils. Peat began to accumulate, especially on high ground. From the onset of the Subboreal (5000–2500 BP), the climate became cooler and wetter, leading to widespread peat formation and decreasing amounts of Juniperus and Salix. The Subatlantic period (2500–0 BP) heralded the arrival of humans in two phases, AD 600–700 (monks from Ireland) and AD 800–900 (the Vikings), and was punctuated by the Little Ice Age (1300–1900 AD).

Present Climate and Environment The present climate of the Faroe Islands is strongly maritime, reflecting proximity to the sea and the moderating influence of the North Atlantic Drift. Summers are cool and winters are mild. In general, the present climate can be characterized as windy, humid, and changeable. In Tórshavn, the present mean annual air temperature is 6.5oC (1961–1990), with year-to-year variations of 0.5–1.5oC. August is the warmest month with an average temperature of 10.5oC and the coldest is January with 3.2oC. Lying just south of the Arctic Circle, there is no true “midnight sun.” The annual mean precipitation is around 850 mm w.e. (water equivalent) in the west (Mykines) and increases to about 2750 mm w.e. in the mountainous northern and eastern part of the islands. Precipitation may exceed 3000 mm in the high mountains. At sea level, about 10% of the annual precipitation falls as snow and the snow cover only lasts for 10–20 days. In the high mountains, the duration of the snow cover may locally exceed 200 days. Only few—if any—permanent or semipermanent snow patches are presently found. The mean cloud cover is about 80% in all seasons. The dominant wind direction is from the west, southwest, and south, while especially winds from the east and northeast are less frequent. The Faroes lie on one of the major cyclonic tracks of the North Atlantic, and wind speeds can be as high as 10 m s-1 during winter, when storms with very strong winds from the north are frequent. Since 1867, when official meteorological observations were initiated in Tórshavn, the mean annual air temperature has undergone significant variations. During the 1920s and early 1930s, the mean annual air temperature increased by about 1.8oC while the average Earth surface air temperature increased just 0.1oC, but afterwards a cooling trend has dominated until recent years. These air temperature variations probably reflect contemporary variations in the temperature and intensity of the North Atlantic Drift. At least, the annual number of whales caught in the pilot whale drive (grind) in the Faroe Islands varies much as the mean annual air temperature (surface water temperatures are linked to food availability, suggesting a correlation between water temperatures and air temperatures). In the absence of the North Atlantic Drift, considering the latitude, winter air temperatures would presumably be at least 6–7oC lower than at present. The Faroe Islands are in a climatically very sensitive region, with the ocean as a controlling factor. Changes in the North Atlantic surface ocean current would have a significant and immediate impact on the local Faroese climate. The Faroe Islands has the longest series of sea surface temperatures in the world, going back to 1867. These show considerable variations (about 2oC) in the

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FAROE ISLANDS annual mean ocean surface temperatures. The overall mean sea surface temperature is about 7.7oC; the two coldest periods (1867–1869 and 1965–1969) produced mean temperatures of 6.5oC and 6.9oC, while the two warmest years (1894 and 1951) produced means of 8.5oC and 8.9oC. Knowledge regarding the modern mountain climate of the Faroe Islands is poor. Modern periglacial features, such as small sorted stone circles, stone stripes, deflation surfaces and terraces, solifluction sheets, and lobes are widespread above 300 m, suggesting a mountain climate characterized by extreme humidity and strong winds rather than extreme cold. Adopting a standard vertical lapse rate of about 0.0065oC m-1, the mean winter air temperatures in the high mountains probably lie between −0.3oC and 0oC, with annual mean temperatures of 1–4oC. Permafrost is consequently absent on the Faroe Islands, although winter ground freezing on high ground may affect shallow depths, to 5–10 cm, and occasionally reach depths of 0.5 m. Thin peat soils accommodate few trees, and vegetation consists mainly of low growing shrubs, grasses, and moss. All mammal species are introduced, and sheep are farmed. Offshore waters are rich in plankton, supporting a rich and diverse seabird and marine mammal population. About 40 species of seabirds regularly breed on the islands, the most common species being puffins, guillemots, razorbills, gannets, cormorants, kittiwakes, fulmars, skuas, and petrels. Pilot whales, bottleneck whales, fin whales, killer whales, dolphins, and porpoises are common offshore. Pilot whales have been hunted for meat and blubber since the earliest days of Norse settlement, and up to 1000 whales are taken annually in drives, where groups are herded onto the beaches. Commercially important fish include cod, haddock, Greenland halibut, Atlantic halibut, herring, blue whiting, capelin, and salmon and Arctic char.

History The first settlers may have been Irish monks, probably in the middle of the 7th century. Norwegian colonization, beginning about AD 825 and developing throughout the Viking Age, is well documented and the Faroes form a central part of the Viking settlements along the coasts of the North Atlantic and the Irish Sea. The Viking settlers established their own local parliaments (things) in different parts of the islands and the main parliament (the Althing, now Løgting) on Tinganes in Tórshavn. Christianity was proclaimed here about AD 1000. Shortly after, the islands came under control of the Norwegian kings, one of whom, the famous King Sverre, was brought up at the Faroese bishop’s seat at Kirkjubøur.

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In the 14th century, the Norwegian crown came under the Danish monarchy, and with the Reformation, the independent Faroese bishopric was abolished and its properties were taken over by the Crown. During the Middle Ages, the Faroe Islands were greatly influenced by the North Sea countries, especially through the Hanseatic merchants in Bergen. With the Reformation, the Danish king increased his control of the trade and established a trade monopoly, operated by different merchants and companies, but from 1709 it was taken over by the king himself through the Royal Trade Monopoly. The islands were now governed directly from Copenhagen, with the Løgting acting as a county council advising the Danish state. Danish officials arrived to oversee trade and protect it from competing merchants and the bands of pirates who for centuries had plagued the islands. Fort Skansin, overlooking Tórshavn harbor, is the remnant of the historic fortifications. In 1856, the Royal Danish Monopoly ended and soon enterprising Faroese businessmen were exploring free trade with the outside world. In 1872, an old English sailing smack, named the Fox, was purchased for deep-sea fishing far from the Faroese shore. The Faroe Islanders quickly earned the reputation of being among the best sailors and fishermen in the world. The fishing industry grew until it became the main source of income for the islands. Following a referendum on home rule in September 1946, a slim majority favored independence and secession from Denmark, but the Danish government instead called a Faroe general election, and the new parliament favored the Danish government’s original proposals, with some minor modifications. Since the Home Rule Act in 1948, the Faroe Islands have been a self-governing region of the Kingdom of Denmark, with its own parliament (the Løgting) and its own flag. It is not, however, a member of the European Union (EU), and all international trade is governed by special treaties. Issues affecting both the Faroes and Denmark (trace, foreign policy, defense) are decided in the Danish Folketing, where the Faroe Islands are represented by two democratically elected members. The Løgting, a democratically elected legislative assembly, manages Home Rule affairs and the Landsstyre administers the laws passed by the Løgting or the Folketing.

Language Faroese is the national language and is rooted in Old Norse. Most Faroese readily understand other Nordic languages, and English is also widely spoken, especially among the younger people. The modern Faroese language derives from the Viking Age Old Norse language. The Norse people who were to colonize the Faroes mainly came from

FELL-FIELDS southwest Norway, sailing west and in turn reached the coasts of Scotland, Shetland, Orkney, the Hebrides, the Faroes, and Iceland. At that time, Viking culture was comparatively uniform and there were few linguistic differences. In the course of time, however, the various Norse regions developed their own culture and the Old Norse language split into different dialects. In some places the language even died out completely. The Faroese language survived as an independent language; but for a long time threatened to become extinct. After the Reformation, Danish became the language of the Church; Danish was the written language and in time was used in all official matters. When the first scholarly research into the language was initiated at the end of the 18th century, its aim was to collect and document what was regarded as the remains of the old language. But research soon revealed a vivid collection of old words and sayings, established turns of speech, legends, and ballads. This formed the foundation for the subsequent preservation of the Faroese language, which is still developing today and is a cornerstone of modern Faroese culture.

Present Population The population is 45,296 (July 2000), giving an average population density of about 32 per sq km, although the population is generally confined to coastal areas. The capital of Tórshavn has a population of about 16,000. Klaksvík, the second largest town in the Faroes, has a population of about 5000. Life expectancy is 74 and 81 years for males and females, respectively. Religion plays an important role in Faroese culture, and over 80% of the population belong to the established church, the Evangelical-Lutheran. Ten percent of the population belong to the Christian Brethren (Plymouth Brethren) denomination.

Economy After the severe economic troubles of the early 1990s, brought on by the lowest ever catches of cod and haddock, the Faroe Islands have recovered in the last few years, with a decrease in unemployment. Nevertheless, the economy is overwhelmingly dependent on fishing and fish processing (fish products account for over 97% of the export volume), and is thus vulnerable to fluctuations in prices and the size of catches. At the beginning of the 21st century, the Faroes are vigorously engaged in exploring the potential for oil production in the seas around the islands, which may lay the basis to sustained economic prosperity. The Faroese are supported by a substantial annual subsidy from Denmark. The fishing industry is the most important source of income for the Faroes. Tourism is the second largest industry, followed

by woolen and other manufactured products. Arable land covers only 6% of the total land area: the rest is grazed by sheep, and some cattle and horses. The gross national product is 7440 million Danish kroner (Statistics Faroe Islands; March 1999). OLE HUMLUM See also Archaeology of the Arctic: Scandinavian Settlement of the North Atlantic; Norwegian Sea; Scandinavian Languages Further Reading Berthelsen, O., A. Noe-Nygaard & J. Rasmussen, “The deep drilling project 1980–1981 in the Faroe Islands.” Annales Cocietatis Scientiarum Færoensis (Supplementum IX) (1984) Humlum, O., “The Faroe Islands; The Main Forms of the Landscape and its Evolution.” In Topographic Atlas over the Faeroe Islands, edited by R. Guttesen, Copenhagen: Royal Danish Geographical Society, 1996, pp. 38–41 Humlum, O. & H.H. Christiansen, “Mountain climate and periglacial phenomena in the Faroe Islands, SE North Atlantic Ocean.” Permafrost and Periglacial Processes, 9 (1998): 189–211 ———, Late Holocene climatic forcing of geomorphic activity in the Faroe Islands, North Atlantic Ocean. Fróðskaparrit, 46 (1998): 119–140 Jóhansen, J., “Survey of geology, climate, and vegetational history.” Annales Societatis Scientiarum Færoenis (Supplementum XIV) (1989): 11–15 Rasmussen, J. & A. Noe-Nygaard, “Geology of the Faeroe Islands.” Danmarks Geologiske Undersøgelse, 1 series, No. 25, 1970

FELL-FIELDS “Fell-field” has been used to describe physical and landscape forms as well as specific plant communities. As a landscape form, fell-fields refer to tracts of bare, high mountainous ground with sparse vegetation. The Danish botanist Eugenius Warming first used the expression in his classic exploration of the relationships between plants and their environment (Oecology of Plants. An Introduction to the Study of Plant Communities, 1909), classifying extensive areas of northeast Greenland as fjeld-mark, translated into English as “fell-field.” Warming defined fell-fields firstly in terms of the dwarf nature of their plants, and secondly by the extent of bare substrate (for example, soil, gravel, or rock). He considered that the cushion form or short stature of the plants was a result of the brief cold summer (the mean temperature of the warmest month being less than 6°C), since there were sufficient nutrients and water in the soil to potentially sustain greater growth. He made the link between such communities in alpine Europe and in the Arctic, based on the similar prevailing environmental conditions that shaped their existence. In his descriptions, Warming did not define the extent to which fell-field vegetation

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FENS covered the substrate, but it is now generally recognized that in such communities, higher-plant ground cover rarely exceeds 60% and may comprise less than 5%. However, in many Arctic areas, the “bare” substrate is covered by an organic crust (cryptogram) that can be composed of blue-green algae, extensive lichen growth, and desiccated bryophytes that, while appearing bare, is certainly not devoid of plant life. In looking at vegetation with fresh eyes, Warming was describing fell-field vegetation in terms of form and structure, rather than an assemblage of taxonomically defined species, and it is for this reason that it remains hard to define the vegetation type to the present. The low, creeping growth forms of typical species certainly result from wind exposure and/or low temperatures, the combined effect of which is often a lack of snow cover to protect from penetrating frosts in winter and lack of accumulation of loess or organic material to retain nutrients and moisture in summer. In some situations, the extremely dry nature of the habitat in summer will therefore also shape plant growth forms. The general lack of continuous higher plant vegetation cover may result from an array of processes, such as lack of soil to retain moisture, solifluction processes, patterned ground, or simple instability of the substrate. Typical species varies according to these processes; for example, patterned ground may have Saxifraga species and other herbs on the unstable, wet clayey centers, but dwarf shrubs may characterize the dry gravely polygon ridges. Nevertheless, in the original Greenland habitats, the dry barren types of fell-field may be characterized by the nature of the dominant species present. These may be either heath- (comprising species such as Alpine azalea Loiseleuria procumbens), herb- (e.g., mountain avens Dryas species, or Diapensia Diapensia lapponica), or graminoid-dominated (e.g., nard sedge Carex nardina, three-leaved rush Juncus trifidus). Very similar habitat types exist throughout the globe in alpine situations well south of the Arctic region. These include the highlands of Scotland (where Juncus trifidus and other Arctic species may occur), the Sierra Nevada of California, and the mountains of New Zealand (where different genera occur such as the remarkable vegetable sheep Raoulia bryoides and Haastia pulvinaris showing the extreme forms of cushion habit of Northern Hemisphere plants). TONY FOX See also Dry Tundra Further Reading Böcher, T.W., “Studies of the vegetation of the east coast of Greenland between Scoresby Sound and Angmagssalik (Christian IX Land).” Meddelelser om Grønland, 104(4) (1933): 1–134

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———, “Oceanic and continental vegetational complexes in Southwest Greenland.” Meddelelser om Grønland, 148(l) (1954): 1–336 Holland, R.F., Preliminary Descriptions of the Terrestrial Natural Communities of California, Sacramento, California: Department of Fish and Game, 1986 Warming, E., Oecology of Plants, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1909 ———, “The vegetation of Greenland.” Greenland, 1 (1928): 291–317

FENS Wetlands are considered to be one of the most productive ecosystems on Earth. Wetlands provide important habitats and perform ecological functions that are vital to the health and sustainability of landscapes. Wetlands are regulators of water; they capture and retain surface and ground water and slowly release it into the landscape. Wetlands also restore groundwater, regulate local humidity, and ensure that the base flow of small and large streams is maintained. Natural mechanical and biological filters found in wetlands remove sediments, minerals, nutrients, and other chemicals from inflow by settling and decomposition, resulting in cleaner water being discharged into the landscape. Broadly defined, a wetland is an area of land where the water table is at or above the level of the mineral soil for the entire year. A fen is one of five types of wetlands and is defined as a lowland covered wholly or partly with shallow water with water-loving vegetation that decays to form peat. Fens are one of two types of organic wetlands (the other being bogs) that are also referred to as peatlands, and are areas with accumulations of more than 40 cm of peat above the mineral soil. Fens are often regarded as a transitional stage from a marsh to a bog, particularly in northern climates. Peatlands are the most common form of wetland in wet, cool climates at northerly latitudes and at higher elevation midlatitude zones. Peatlands typically form in poorly drained, waterlogged depressions. Due to wet, cool conditions, dead plant material accumulates faster than it decomposes, resulting in a buildup of organic material called peat. Peatlands are dominated by thick mats of moisture-loving mosses and sedges, and often support a sparse growth of shrubs and stunted spruce trees. The term muskeg is often used in North America to refer to peatlands characterized by a large expanse of Sphagnum moss and sparse shrub and black spruce woodland. In contrast to a bog, where the pH of the organic soil is very acidic, the soil in a fen is alkaline, neutral, or only slightly acid. Fens are influenced by inflows of surface and groundwater, resulting in a more nutrientrich and less acidic environment, which is in contrast to bogs, which receive the majority of their water

FIALA, ANTHONY supply through precipitation. In this less harsh environment, sphagnum moss is not as common, while sedges typically thrive. A wide variety of aquatic plants, grasses, shrubs, and sparse scattering trees find suitable growing conditions in fens. Fens are further classified into 17 different forms, which are dependent upon the surface morphology of the wetland (flat, raised, sloping), presence of patterns (ridges, nets, palsa mounds, polygons), position in the landscape (valley, delta, basin), tidal effects, and proximity to water bodies. The forms reflect the differences caused by environmental factors, including the origin of the water (rainwater, groundwater flow, and water bodies), differential peat development, and permafrost (palsas and polygons). Two of the more common forms of fens are raised and ribbed fens. Raised fens form in old glacial lake basins or in shallow plains where the water table meets the surface of the land. Vegetation overlaying accumulated peat grows upward, resulting in a raised appearance. Ribbed or patterned fens have parallel peat ridges with pools of water oriented perpendicular to the direction of slope and drainage. Fens are most commonly found in the Subarctic. The High Arctic is a polar desert and has few wetlands, while the Mid- and Low Arctic regions have more snow, more meltwater, and more wetlands. The main climatic factors influencing wetland development in the Arctic are cold temperatures and low precipitation. Permafrost plays an important role in wetland development by prohibiting internal drainage and concentrating available water at the surface. Arctic wetlands are subject to frost cracking, which leads to the development of ice-wedge polygons (when ice-filled cracks meet in a geometric pattern to enclose a low or high central area). Many Arctic wetlands are located in depressions caused by glacial scour and filled with water from snowmelt. Wetlands in the Subarctic tend to be distinctive due to the presence of discontinuous permafrost, and include types such as collapse scar fens. Wetlands are among the most threatened ecosystems on earth. Climate, hydrology, natural disturbances, and human activity all influence the function and condition of wetlands and the plants and wildlife that are dependent on these habitats. In particular, fens are fragile environments and walking across one may leave footprints that can last for several decades. AYNSLIE OGDEN See also Marshes; Peatlands and Bogs; Sedge Meadows Further Reading Delesalle, Bruno, Understanding Wetlands: A Wetland Handbook for British Columbia’s Interior, Kamloops, Canada: Ducks Unlimited Canada, 1998

Discover Canada’s Wetland Habitats, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Available on-line at http://www.aquatic.uoguelph.ca/wetlands/wetldcon.htm National Wetlands Working Group, The Canadian Wetland Classification System, Land Environment Canada, Ecological Land Classification Series No. 21, 1987 Nicholson, B.J., L.D. Gignac, S.E. Bayley & D.H. Vitt, “Vegetation Response to Global Warming: Interactions between Boreal Forest, Wetlands and Regional Hydrology.” In Mackenzie Basin Impact Study Final Report, 1997, edited by Stewart Cohen, Environment Canada, 1997, pp. 125–145 Research Report 554, Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station Michigan State University, 1997. Available on-line at http://www.msue.msu.edu/msue/imp/modrr/rr554098.html Roulet, N.T. & M.K. Woo, “Low arctic wetland hydrology.” Canadian Water Resources Journal, 11(1) (1986): 69–75 Rubec, Clayton et al., “Guidelines for developing and implementing National Wetland Policies.” In People and Wetlands: The Vital Link, Seventh Meeting of the Conference of the Contracting Parties to the Convention on Wetlands, San José, Costa Rica, 1999 US Fish and Wildlife Service et al, Classification of Wetlands and Deepwater Habitats of the United States, Washington, District of Columbia: Fish and Wildlife Service, US Dept. of the Interior, 1979 Woo, M.-k. & K.L. Young, “Characteristics of patchy wetlands in a polar desert environment, Arctic Canada.” In Proceedings Permafrost: Seventh International Conference, June 23–27, 1998, Yellowknife, edited by Antoni G. Lewkowicz & Michel Allard, Collection Nordicana, No. 57, 1998, pp. 1141–1146

FIALA, ANTHONY Anthony Fiala, an American journalist, photographer, and explorer, took the first moving pictures of the Arctic at the turn of the 20th century. Fiala was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1869 and displayed abilities both as an artist and artisan, which led him to choose illustrated journalism as a career. He later joined the United States Army and served in the Spanish-American War of 1898–1900, rising to the rank of major. He was also correspondent for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. In 1901–1902, William Ziegler of New York, the wealthy founder and owner of the Royal Chemical Company, which specialized in baking powder, financed an expedition to Franz Josef Land, an archipelago north of Spitsbergen, with the aim of reaching the North Pole. Evelyn Briggs Baldwin was chosen as the leader, and Fiala participated as photographer and second-in-command. The expedition, consisting of 42 American, Scandinavian, and Russian members, traveled in the steam yacht America (ex. Esquimaux, a Scottish whaler) via northern Norway to Cape Flora at the end of July 1901. The expedition included 15 Siberian ponies and over 400 dogs for transport purposes. The main base was established on Alger Island and named Camp Ziegler, and another camp was built 10 km further west on the island. The America was moored close to the main camp, it having proved impossible to

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FIALA, ANTHONY sail the vessel further north through the ice. All but seven men wintered on the ship, and the winter was spent in preparations for the coming sledge journeys. Fiala kept the photographic record of the expedition, including the first motion pictures of the Arctic regions. From January 1902, sledge journeys were made to establish depots. Once the chain of depots had been laid to the north of the archipelago, Baldwin, Fiala, and the artist Russell Williams Porter made an extra trip to visit the site of Fridtjof Nansen’s and Hjalmar Johansen’s wintering in 1895–1896. Here the message Nansen had left to describe what had happened to them so far and how they planned to continue their journey was found and later presented to Norway (1930). The expedition left Franz Josef Land in July, without attempting to strike north across the ice. Ziegler was naturally disappointed at the lack of results, and immediately arranged for a new expedition to return to the archipelago to attempt to reach the North Pole. This time he chose Fiala to lead the expedition, which began in 1903 and continued for two years. Several members of the first expedition applied to return to the America. Altogether, 35 Americans, three Norwegians, and one Englishman participated, along with a large number of dogs and ponies. Vardø in northern Norway was again the last port of call before Franz Josef Land, which was reached in midAugust. Despite bad ice conditions, the ship managed to reach Teplitz Bay on Rudolf Island in the far north of the archipelago (Camp Ziegler was in the south). Just before Christmas in 1903, the America was crushed by the ice in the bay and had to be abandoned. The shore base, however, was comfortable and functional, and preparations for the march to the Pole continued through the winter. They made a start on March 7, 1903, but the large convoy of men, sledges, ponies, and dogs had to return on March 11 for various adjustments. A new start was made on the 25th, but lasted for only two days. A short advance onto the sea ice from Cape Fligely had convinced Fiala to revise the equipment and postpone another attempt until the following winter. Most of the men had by now lost heart and desired to retreat to Cape Flora to await the planned relief ship that summer. At the end of April, 14 volunteers were left at the base by Teplitz Bay, while Fiala led the others toward Cape Flora. Here the crew lived and waited in the houses left by Frederick Jackson’s expedition from 1894 to 1897. A vein of mineable coal was found in the cliff behind the camp and was used for fuel. Unfortunately, the relief ship was not able to reach the Ziegler-Fiala crew that summer, and the expedition spent a second winter in three separate camps, at Cape Flora, Teplitz Bay, and a group of three at Camp Ziegler. Fiala’s account described a great deal of bitterness and resignation among the group that had hoped to leave.

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He returned to Teplitz Bay, where new plans for a far smaller Pole expedition were made. The third attempt began on March 15, 1904. After a week on the sea ice they had reached 82° N, where Fiala was persuaded to return as they met a lead of open water among the jumbled pressure ridges. His reasoning was that he was responsible for the men left behind, who might have to face a third winter. In total, the expedition carried out a considerable amount of sledging around Franz Josef Land, filling in the map of the archipelago and recording various observations. One of the Norwegians died of an illness during the second winter, but otherwise the expedition members were fetched by the Terra Nova at the end of July 1905. William Ziegler had died two months before and therefore did not see the results of his second failed North Pole expedition, which included a brilliant photographic documentation by Fiala. During the course of these two expeditions, Fiala traveled more than 4000 miles by small boat and sledge, acquiring experience of appropriate clothing and equipment. On his return home, he established a sporting equipment firm and devoted himself thereafter to the design of field equipment, also testing it on expeditions. In 1912–1913, he accompanied Theodore Roosevelt on his journeys in the Amazon Basin. After the Soviet annexation of Franz Josef Land and closing of the area to foreigners around 1930, Fiala offered Camp Ziegler and his other cabins to the Norwegian government, although this could only be a gesture.

Biography Anthony Fiala was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1869. He began a career in illustrated journalism, including working as correspondent for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1841–1902). He joined the United States Army and served in the Spanish-American War of 1898–1900, leaving the army as a major. Fiala worked as photographer and second-in-command on the Ziegler-Baldwin Expedition to Franz Josef Land in 1901–1902, and again as the leader and photographer on the Ziegler-Fiala Expedition to the same area in 1903–1905. Both expeditions were originally planned as attempts to reach the North Pole. Thereafter, Fiala developed and sold expedition equipment, testing items on his own smaller expeditions. He died in Brooklyn, New York, on April 8, 1950. SUSAN BARR Further Reading Barr, Susan (editor), Franz Josef Land, Oslo: Norsk Polarinstitutt polarhåndbok No. 8, 1995 Fiala, Anthony, Fighting the Polar Ice, introduction by W.S. Champ, and reports by William J. Peters, Russell W. Porter & Oliver S. Fassig, New York: Doubleday, 1906; and London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1907

FIFTH THULE EXPEDITION The Ziegler Polar Expedition, 1903–1905. Scientific Results Obtained under the Direction of William J. Peters, Representative of the National Geographic Society in Charge of Scientific Work, edited by John A. Fleming under the auspices of the National Geographic Society by the estate of William Ziegler, Washington, District of Columbia: Judd and Detweiler, 1907

FIFTH THULE EXPEDITION The Fifth Thule Expedition from Greenland to Siberia was led by Knud Rasmussen, and explored vast areas of the Arctic, setting a standard by which much later work was to be judged. Between September 7, 1921 and December 2, 1924, various members of the expedition traveled nearly 20,000 miles by dog team, collecting geographic and ethnographic information as well as some 20,000 artifacts. This was compiled into the ten-volume series Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, which is still considered a classic reference for Arctic studies today. Rasmussen’s father was Danish, his mother onequarter Inuit, and Knud himself was born in 1879 on the west coast of Greenland, speaking Greenlandic before he spoke Danish. He grew up running sled dogs across the ice, and expecting to be an explorer. In 1910, together with Peter Freuchen, he established the furthest north trading post in the world at Thule, in the Cape York district of Greenland. Seven major Arctic expeditions would be sponsored from this post between 1912 and 1933, known as the Thule Expeditions. The first four were to northern and eastern Greenland, surveying, collecting Inuit stories, and experiencing life among the peoples that Rasmussen met. By 1921, he was ready to begin the epic voyage known as the Fifth Thule Expedition, with the ultimate goal of tracing the origins of the Inuit people. The Fifth Thule Expedition had been many years in the planning, perhaps from as far back as 1909, when Rasmussen wrote an article in Geografisk Tidsskrift proposing a Danish ethnographic expedition to the Central Inuit regions. This area, particularly to the north and west of Hudson Bay, had not yet been systematically investigated, although material obtained from casual collections, such as that of the whaler Captain George Comer, suggested a relationship between the early inhabitants of Southampton Island, North Greenland, and even Alaska. Hans P. Steensby had aroused interest in 1916 with his theory of Inuit origins, and it was felt by many that the clue to solving the puzzle lay with the Central Inuit. Three different versions of the expedition were proposed between 1909 and 1921, before the final plan, described in Geografisk Tidsskrift, was put into action in 1921. The expedition was to sail from Copenhagen on May 25, 1921. The first stop would be Godthåb,

then north to Upernavik, in order to stock up on supplies and specialist Greenlandic equipment. The Polar Inuit (Inughuit) members and dog teams would be picked up from the post at Thule, and then the expedition would sail south to Holsteinborg and finally set out for Hudson Bay by August 22. Headquarters would be established, from which a number of trips would leave, collecting many kinds of data, but particularly ethnographic and archaeological material. The Thule Committee, comprising Marius Ib Nyeboe (chairperson), Chr. Erichsen, Johan P. Koch, Ad. S. Jensen, Carl H. Ostenfeld, and Thomas Thomsen, would look after the interests of the expedition from Denmark and King Christian X of Denmark would act as Protector to the Expedition. Expenses were estimated to be 315,000 Danish kroner, of which the Danish Government granted 132,000 kr, and private contributions raised a sum of 13,500 kr. In fact, the final expenditure was around 800,000 kr, due to the high costs incurred while purchasing supplies from the Hudson’s Bay Company on various long trips, an extension of the expedition to Alaska, and the employment of a film photographer for a part of the journey (Mathiassen, 1945). The Thule Station eventually paid the remaining 650,000 kr over the years raised partly from its trade in fox furs. The final members of the Fifth Thule Expedition included Knud Rasmussen (leader and folklorist), Peter (cartographer and biologist) and Navarana (housekeeper) Freuchen, Therkel Mathiassen (archaeologist and cartographer), Kaj Birket-Smith (ethnographer and geographer), Helge Bangsted (assistant and secretary), Jacob Olsen (interpreter and secretary), Arqioq and Arnanguaq, Nasaitordluarssuk (“the Bo’sun”) and Aqatsaq, Iggianguaq and Arnarulunguaq, Ajako, and Qavigarssuaq (the Polar Inuit), and Leo Hansen (film photographer). The Fifth Thule Expedition officially sailed aboard the Bele on June 18, 1921, taking Rasmussen, Mathiassen, Birket-Smith, and the majority of the expedition’s equipment to Greenland. The Freuchens, Bangsted, Olsen, and of course the Polar Inuit were already in Greenland and would be picked up from various locations there. After a series of disasters, including a shipwreck and the deaths of Navarana, Ajako, and Iggianguaq, the expedition finally left the shores of Greenland for Arctic Canada on September 7, 1921. Eleven days later, the Søkongen anchored in the bay of a small island, which was subsequently christened Danish Island, and the base camp was established. On September 24, the Søkongen sailed and the expedition members found themselves alone. The scientific work soon began. The position of the base camp was fixed astronomically, meteorological records were started, and on short excursions about the

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FIFTH THULE EXPEDITION island geological, botanical, and zoological specimens were gathered. These activities would continue throughout the entire expedition, resulting in vast amounts of data. Much of the work done by the Fifth Thule Expedition involved such long-term projects as mapping the areas traveled, taking meteorological observations, collecting specimens, and of course hunting and securing provisions for the expedition members and dog teams. Danish Island was discovered to be separated not from the mainland but from another larger island, meaning that there were two straits to be crossed on long journeys. This caused considerable difficulty, as travel by dog sledge was time consuming. Sea ice conditions had to be taken into account at all times, and could not always be predicted. On November 26, when the ice was stable, Rasmussen, Freuchen, and the Bo’sun departed for the Hudson’s Bay Company post on Repulse Bay, hoping to make contact with the local Inuit. On December 4, they met a band of Netsilik Inuit returning from Repulse Bay to Lyon Inlet, and Rasmussen noted the similarity in language around the circumpolar north, which would help to demonstrate the basic unity of all Inuit cultures. On January 16, 1922 Birket-Smith and Olsen traveled south to Chesterfield Inlet to begin ethnographic investigations. From here, Birket-Smith journeyed to Baker Lake and stayed for six weeks studying the tribes who came from other areas to trade and carrying out anthropometric studies. On May 15, Rasmussen, Bangsted, and Qavigarssuaq joined him in a trip further south in search of the Caribou Inuit, three tribes who were described as purely inland oriented. By June 25, five separate inland settlements had been visited, ethnographic material had been collected, and Rasmussen had committed many local legends to writing. Meanwhile, Mathiassen and Freuchen, accompanied by a local couple and several of the Polar Inuit, had left for Baffin Island on February 28, 1922, traveling through temperatures of −50°C. They reached Iglulik (Igloolik), the largest settlement in the area, on March 30. The final part of this journey was covered by Mathiassen on foot, as there were not enough dogs for him to have a sledge of his own. From Iglulik, the group split into two: Freuchen to map the unknown west coast of Baffin Land and Mathiassen to the head of Admiralty Inlet to map the southern half of the fjord complex there. Despite a shortage of food, and a bout of temporary snow blindness that afflicted Freuchen, both missions were completed successfully and the reunited party returned to Danish Island on May 29. With the approach of summer, Mathiassen was able to begin archaeological excavations at an old settlement called Naujan in Repulse Bay. From June 14, he worked alone, until Olsen arrived on July 8. Altogether, 12 houses, 50 graves, and part of a large midden were

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excavated. Another two houses at Aivilik were excavated, 3000 artifacts were collected, the surrounding area was mapped, and, as usual, geological and botanical specimens were gathered. On August 14, they traveled with a group of Aivilik Inuit to Southampton Island to excavate sites of the now extinct Sadlermiut tribe. By September 1, when the ground had frozen, some 800 artifacts had been excavated from ruins at Kuuk. Unfortunately, it now proved impossible to cross back to the mainland, and the pair had to winter on the island, living with the Inuit, but with limited supplies and ammunition. They learned that, in ignorance, they had broken some of the tribe’s taboos by digging in the ancient ruins, taking stone samples from the rocks, and smashing caribou skulls to eat the brains. Relations became tense, and shamans blamed the Danes for sickness in the tribe. One of the Inuit was overheard urging her husband to kill the strangers. Later a gun discharged, making six holes in Mathiassen’s inner coat but luckily not harming him. Finally, they were rescued by Audlanâk who had been sent by Rasmussen when Frozen Strait became passable, and they reached Danish Island on February 21, 1923. On March 23, 1923, Birket-Smith and Olsen set out to study and collect specimens from the coastal Inuit south of Chesterfield Inlet, and to study the Chipewyan Indians around Churchill, who were the southern neighbors of the Caribou Inuit. They traveled along the coast, proceeding south to Eskimo Point. Conditions were poor, and there was little game, so that plans to journey further inland were abandoned. On July 9, they continued south to Churchill, where there was a Hudson’s Bay Company post. On the 11th, they sailed aboard the Nascopie to York, where ethnographic specimens were obtained from the Cree Indians, and then traveled by canoe up the river to Kettle Rapids. From here, a train took them through Winnipeg, Ottawa, Montreal, and New York, and the final voyage to Copenhagen saw them arrive on September 25, 1923. Mathiassen left Danish Island on March 22, 1923, traveling via Iglulik to Pond Inlet, which lay midway between Repulse Bay and Thule. Again, he walked much of the distance, leaving each camp early in the morning, being passed by the sledges, and catching up with them in the evening. In May, he began excavations at Pond Inlet and Button Point, and ethnographic studies of the local Tununermiut. Cartographic work, as always, was undertaken: in particular, ascending Mt Hérodier and mapping the region with a theodolite. On September 16, Mathiassen sailed aboard the Nascopie for Labrador and Newfoundland, and then traveled back to Denmark via Montreal, Ottawa, and New York, arriving on October 30, 1923. Peter Freuchen remained on Danish Island until June 6, 1923, when he traveled to Chesterfield to have

FIFTH THULE EXPEDITION a frostbitten toe amputated. While waiting for the doctor to arrive on the Nascopie, despite his impediment, he made cartographic observations and excavated some ancient house ruins. He returned to the sealing ground at Frozen Strait, where other members of the expedition had spent the summer, arriving on October 5. On December 2, everyone returned to Danish Island, and the process of closing the base camp began. Bangsted left on December 28, and the remainder of the gear was divided between four local Inuit who had worked for the expedition. Freuchen and the Polar Inuit began their journey home via Pond Inlet on January 19, 1924. The year was a bad one for many of the Inuit tribes, and as they traveled they heard stories of a shortage of game, and passed settlements of starving people. An attempt to travel from Pond Inlet to Thule via North Devon and Ellesmere Land had to be abandoned due to poor ice conditions, although they ventured as far as Admiralty Inlet. Spring arrived early, the thaw making travel difficult. The Bo’sun fell ill from blood poisoning, and so Freuchen and a young Inuit called Mala traveled alone to Pond Inlet from Admiralty Inlet, to be picked up by the Søkongen. Freuchen and Mala reached Pond Inlet on June 15, purchasing more archaeological specimens, before sailing for Admiralty Inlet on August 2, and for Melville Bay and Upernivik on August 7. Freuchen returned to Copenhagen on September 27, 1924. Helge Bangsted reached Chesterfield on February 10, 1924, hoping to travel on to Baker Lake and supplement the collections from the Caribou Inuit. There was famine here too, however, and although he delayed his trip until the beginning of April, the situation did not improve. Having managed to collect a few more specimens, he returned to Chesterfield, and then aboard the Nascopie to Churchill via Kettle Rapids and thence through Winnipeg, Ottawa, Montreal, and New York, arriving in Copenhagen on September 30, 1924. Rasmussen himself began his journey west on March 11, 1923. Traveling through Pelly Bay, Shepherd Bay, and Wellington Strait, he reached a settlement near Cape Adelaide, where he traded for ethnographic specimens, including many valuable amulets in exchange for locks of his own hair, which was thought to hold great powers of protection. The summer was spent on King William Land, where the Netsilik tribe gathered, and there were ruined settlements to be excavated. In October, he traveled to the east coast of the Adelaide Peninsula, building a cairn for relics of the Franklin Expedition. Continuing west, he passed Melbourne Island on November 13 and met members of the Kitdlinermiut from the Copper Inuit tribe. The next day, the expedition arrived at a Hudson’s Bay Company post on the Kent Peninsula, where the film photographer Leo Hansen joined the

party. Ethnographic work among the “Muskox People,” another branch of Copper Inuit, concluded Rasmussen’s investigation of the intellectual culture of the Central Inuit. Now Rasmussen set out by sledge over 2200 km to the Mackenzie Delta, where he would meet the Western Inuit. He met the first Alaskan Inuit on March 3, 1924, who proved to be English-speaking trappers. By the 17th, they arrived on Baillie Island and met Inuit who seemed more similar to Greenlandic Inuit than to their Central Inuit neighbors. On May 23, they reached Pt Barrow, the northernmost point in Alaska, at the height of the whaling season. Leo Hansen remained behind to film the whaler’s festival before traveling by ship to Nome. Rasmussen’s sledge journey was completed at Icy Cape on June 8, 1924, having covered around 6000 km in 15 months. He proceeded by boat to Pt Lay, and then to Pt Hope, which was described as “the ancient center of Alaska’s whaling,” where a large collection of archaeological specimens was purchased. Finally, Rasmussen arrived at Nome on August 31, where Inuit from all parts of Alaska had gathered, and he was thus able to study many tribes. On a brief visit to Whalen, in Siberia, Rasmussen failed to obtain the necessary passport to expand his studies to the USSR, although he did manage to collect information from two Inuit. Ironically, when he arrived back at Nome the necessary permission was awaiting him, but it was too late to return. Instead, Rasmussen traveled from Nome to Seattle, and on to New York and Copenhagen, arriving on December 2, 1924. These three years of exploration resulted in ten volumes of description, as well as numerous supplementary works. The official report comprises: Volume 1, Report of the Expedition, Topography and Geology (Mathiassen, Birket-Smith, Teichert, and Laursen, 1946); Volume 2, Botany (Grøntved, Hesselbo, and Lynge, 1937); Volume 3, Linguistics and Anthropology (Fischer-Møller, Birket-Smith, and Ostermann, 1941); Volume 4, Archaeology of the Central Eskimos (Mathiassen, 1927); Volume 5, The Caribou Eskimos, (Birket-Smith, 1929); Volume 6, Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos, Ethnographical Collections from the Northwest Passage, and Contributions to Chipewyan Ethnology (Mathiassen, 1928; Birket-Smith, 1930, 1945); Volume 7, Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos (Rasmussen, 1929), Observations on the Intellectual Culture of the Caribou Eskimos (Rasmussen, 1929) and Iglulik and Caribou Eskimo Texts (Rasmussen, 1929); Volume 8, The Netsilik Eskimos, Social Life and Spiritual Culture, (Rasmussen, 1931); Volume 9, Intellectual Life of the Copper Eskimos, (Rasmussen, 1932); and Volume 10, Eskimo Archaeology and Ethnology (Mathiassen, Ostermann, and Holtved, 1952).

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FIN WHALE The passing of 80 years has, of course, seen various critiques of the observations and studies made by the various members of the Fifth Thule Expedition. The theory of Rasmussen and Birket-Smith, for example, that the Eskimo culture originated somewhere in the northern interior of Canada and then spread east to Greenland and west to Alaska, was challenged as early as 1925 by Mathiassen and has not subsequently held up to further research. Other, more specific criticisms have been that “some of his transcriptions were wrong, his sampling was weak, his numbers do not always add up” (Kleivan and Burch, 1988). Not all the material that was gathered was immediately published, and even the official report was written over a span of nearly 30 years. Rasmussen himself died in 1933, and thus did not see the final compilation. It has been noted that the posthumous publications, while of great value in themselves, would have benefited further from Rasmussen’s personal insights and memories. Other technical problems have also been recognized; for example, Volume 2 notes in the preface that none of the expedition members were trained botanists, and field notes were brief, making it “impossible” to use the material fully. Despite this restriction, Volume 2 comprises nearly 600 pages. Other issues arising from the expedition include their political impact. Not everybody viewed the collections of Inuit artifacts and skeletal remains in the light of their benefit to scientific knowledge. In 1990, an Inuit politician accused both Mathiassen and Rasmussen of grave robbery, and called for repatriation of grave gifts and human remains. The National Museum of Denmark, while pointing out that the actions of the explorers had been acceptable by the standards of their day (although not perhaps the standards of the Inuit themselves, as Mathiassen’s adventure on Southampton Island illustrates), also expressed sympathy with the Inuit communities involved, and the material was returned to Naujat-Repulse Bay, Pond Inlet, and Arctic Bay (Hansen, 1997). Despite these and other criticisms, the work that was done by the Fifth Thule Expedition remains a classic reference on the shelf of Arctic researchers, and was invaluable for its presentation of basic primary source material, which further studies continue to reference. JENNIFER I.M. NEWTON See also Birket-Smith, Kaj; Freuchen, Peter; Mathiassen, Therkel; Rasmussen, Knud Further Reading Carpenter, Edmund, “Arctic Witnesses.” In Fifty Years of Arctic Research, edited by R. Gilberg & H.C. Gulløv, Copenhagen: National Museum of Denmark, 1997

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Giddings, J. Louis, Ancient Men of the Arctic, New York: Knopf, 1967 Hansen, Jens Peder Hart, “Repatriation of Ancient Human Remains: Recent Cases from the Arctic Region.” In Fifty Years of Arctic Research, edited by R. Gilberg & H.C. Gulløv, Copenhagen: National Museum of Denmark, 1997 Rasmusson, Knud, Across Arctic America: Narrative of the Fifth Thule Expedition, New York: Putnams, 1927 (1999 edition, University of Alaska Press) Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921–24, Volumes 1–10, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, 1927–1952; see details in narrative above “The work of Knud Rasmussen.” Inuit Studies, 12 (1–2) (1988)

FIN WHALE Second only to the blue whale in size, the fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus) can reach a maximum length of 80 ft, and a reported weight of 75 tons. Finners are less robust than blues, and they are considerably faster and more graceful. The fin whale is a rorqual (i.e., a member of the Balaenopteridae family) and gets its common name from its falcate dorsal fin, which may be 2 ft high, and is much larger and further forward than that of the blue whale. (The name “rorqual” is derived from the Norwegian rorhval, which means “grooved whale.”) The tall, hooked dorsal provides an easy way to differentiate the fin whale from the blue whale at the surface, and where a blue whale looks bluish in the water, the fin whale is definitely gray, often tending toward brown. Unlike the blue whale, which usually shows a curved back and then the relatively tiny dorsal fin, the fin whale’s blowhole often appears concurrently with a flattened expanse of back and the tall dorsal fin. Finners, also known as “razorbacks” for the sharply defined caudal peduncle, are among the fastest whales, having been clocked at 25 mph. Their lower jaws are black on the left side and white on the left, making them the only consistently asymmetrically colored animals in the world. Moreover, the baleen plates on the forward part of the mouth match the coloration of the jaws: black on the left and white on the right. In addition to its striking asymmetry, the fin whale is also decorated with a pattern of swoops and swirls, where the darker coloration on the left side seems to flow from a black band that originates behind the right eye and arches over the whale’s right shoulder behind the blowhole until it blends with the uniform dark gray coloring on the animal’s left side. There are also some pale streaks, one of which emanates from the right ear hole, and a more or less symmetrical V-shaped mark on the back that is referred to as a “chevron.” The underside of the fin whale, including the ventral surface of the flippers and flukes, is white. Males and females are similarly colored, and the reason, if there is one, for their

FIN WHALE curious coloration is unknown. (Fin whales have been seen to turn on either their white or their black side when feeding on schooling fishes.) The ventral pleats, which number about 85, end evenly at the navel. Through examination of ear plugs, where layers are laid down annually, it has been determined that fin whales in the wild can live for up to 90 years, but in the recent past, few individuals were allowed to reach that age unmolested, and ear plug analysis was commonly employed as a tool to determine how old the animal was when the whalers killed it. Fin whales are born at about 21 ft in length, and weigh about 2 tons. The young are weaned at 6 or 7 months when they are 36–39 ft in length. Weaned calves travel with their mothers to the winter feeding grounds. Females probably reach sexual maturity between 6 and 12 years of age and will reproduce every 2 or 3 years thereafter. Full physical maturity is not attained until between 25 and 30 years. Fin whales are found throughout the temperate and subpolar waters of the world, and are probably the most common of the large whales. They are opportunistic feeders, feeding on whatever prey item is abundant in a particular area. In Norwegian waters, they prefer small schooling fishes like capelin and herring, but they will also eat krill and other small crustaceans. In the western North Atlantic, they sometimes eat cod, and in Antarctic waters, their primary food item is krill. Feeding fin whales turn on their side and swallow huge mouthfuls of water and prey, greatly distending their throats before forcing the water out through the baleen plates and swallowing the prey items. Fin whales are commonly found in deeper waters, and although they are capable of deep dives, they submerge to depth only if pursued or harpooned, since their prey, especially krill, is usually found within 100 m of the surface. Fin whales do not echolocate, but emit lowfrequency sounds that are probably used for intraspecies communication. As with those of other large baleen whales, fin whale vocalizations are loud, low-frequency (20–100 Hz) sounds. The most common sounds produced by a fin whale are the so-called 20 Hz pulses, which are short- (usually between 0.5–1 s) frequency sweeps, usually downsweeps, but sometimes constant-frequency calls, upsweeps, or wavers. No aboriginal hunters in times before EuroAmerican contact are known to have targeted fin whales, probably due to its size, but they were not averse to utilizing a carcass that had washed ashore. Inuit names for the fin whale include tykyshkok, keporkarnak, vapaklichan, and nitkokkein uiiuit, and the Aleuts refer to it as mangidadakh. Norwegian fin whaling began in 1868 in Varanger Fjord, Finnmark,

and lasted until 1904, when a shortage of whales prompted the whalers to seek other fin whale populations in other parts of the North Atlantic. Whaling from Icelandic stations began in 1883, and in the Faroes in 1894. In 1898, modern whaling was introduced to the western North Atlantic, as the Norwegians set up shore stations at Snooks Arm and Hermitage Bay, Newfoundland. The first floating factory was employed off Svalbard in 1903, and a shore station was built in the Hebrides in 1904. In almost all cases, the larger blue whale was the primary target, but as blues became scarcer, the whalers concentrated on the somewhat smaller but far more numerous fin whales. When the whalers had substantially reduced the blue and fin whale populations of the North Atlantic, they headed south, with the same intentions and the same results. They decimated the blue whale population of the Antarctic, and then turned their harpoons on the fin whales and killed them in astonishing numbers. For example, in the period between 1946 and 1965, Antarctic whalers killed 417,787 fin whales: an average of 20,889 per year. During this period, fin whales were also being hunted in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, so these numbers are only part of the total. Although their numbers were severely depleted, finners are now protected throughout the world under the US Marine Mammal Protection Act, Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and IUCN Red List, and commercial whaling banned under the International Whaling Convention. Aboriginal subsistence hunting in Greenland is permitted under the International Whaling Convention. RICHARD ELLIS See also Whaling, Historical Further Reading Aguilar, A., “Fin Whale.” In Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals, edited by W.F. Perrin, B. Wursig & J.G.M. Thewissen, London and San Diego: Academic Press, 2002 Ellis, R., The Book of Whales, New York: Knopf, 1980 ———, Men and Whales, New York: Knopf, 1991 Gambell, R., “Fin Whale Balaenoptera physalus (Linnaeus 1758).” In Handbook of Marine Mammals, Volume 3, The Sirenians and Baleen Whales, edited by S.H. Ridgway & R. Harrison, New York: Academic Press, 1985, pp. 171–192 Hershkovitz, P., “Catalog of living whales.” United States National Museum Bulletin, 246 (1966): 1–259 Jonsgård, Å., “Biology of the North Atlantic fin whale Balaenoptera physalus (L): taxonomy, distribution, migration and food. “Hvalrådets Skrifter,” 49 (1966): 5–62 Mowat, F., Sea of Slaughter, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1984 Tønnesen, J.N. & A.O. Johnsen, The History of Modern Whaling, London: C. Hurst and Company and Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1982

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FINLAND

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Finland is a sovereign Nordic, but not Scandinavian, country in the northeast of continental Europe. With almost a quarter of its territory north of the Arctic Circle, Finland is one of the most northerly countries of the world. A 1200 km land border separates Finland from its neighbor to the east (Russia), while the coastline of the Baltic Sea forms its natural boundary to the south and halfway up its western edge. Moving further north, the Gulf of Bothnia ends and the Tornio River serves as the border between Swedish Lapland and western Finland. Finland’s northern border is with Norway’s Finnmark Province, which occupies a narrow coastal region between the Arctic Ocean and Finland’s province of Lappin lääni. With an area of 338,144 km2 and roughly situated between 60° and 70° N, Finland is the world’s 63rd largest country, but populationwise (just over 5 million inhabitants) it only ranks 104 among the world’s most populous countries in the year 2000. Finland’s highest peak, the 1328 m high Halti, is located in Finland’s northwest, but true mountain ranges or glaciers are absent. Most of the country is low-lying with relatively little topographic variation, although a flat western coastal plain can be distinguished from the rugged fells of Lapland in the north, the undulating landscape of central Finland with its multitude of lakes, and the flat, rocky southern island archipelago or skerries. About 10% of Finland’s total area is occupied by lakes, of which at least 188,000 have names. Although most of the lakes are small, some like Lake Saimaa (the fourth largest in Europe and home to a unique subspecies of freshwater seal) and Lake Inari are substantial and contain numerous islands, which themselves have lakes. Most of the lakes are shallow, with Lake Pääjärvi being an exception at nearly 100 m depth. In the Archipelago Sea at the connection between the Gulf of Bothnia and the central Baltic Sea, more than 80,000 islands and islets are to be found. With an area of 1481 km2, the selfgoverning Åland/Ahvenanmaa Islands is the largest group of these islands. The reason for Finland’s large number of lakes and islands as well as its serrated coastline has to be sought in the last Ice Age. An enormous volume of ice not only carried off virtually all topsoil 14–10,000 years ago and scraped the 1800–1900 million year old bedrock clean, but it also depressed the land to such an extent that when the ice was removed the land could noticeably rebound. This uplift continues to this day and it has been calculated that 7 km2 of land area is added to Finland each year. Archaeologists in Finland have located the remains of fishing villages up to 60 km inland, dramatically demonstrating where the coastline had been 5000 years ago.

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Main cities, rivers, and lakes in Finland.

Rivers in Finland are relatively short, but many play an important role economically. Most of the rivers (91%) discharge into the Baltic Sea; the remainder, flowing northward like the Tana or eastward like the Ivalo, end in the Arctic Ocean or the White Sea. With a total length of 552 km, the longest Finnish river is the Kemijoki-Kitinen; other important rivers, originating in Finland and flowing into the Baltic Sea, are the Ii and the Oulu-River. Rock shelters in boulders and bedrock are relatively common in Finland and are due to weathering, but actual limestone caves are extremely rare and confined to the Åland/Ahvenanmaa Archipelago and the south of Finland, for example, the Torhola Grotto. Seismically, Finland is a quiet place;

FINLAND there are no volcanoes and no major earthquakes (minor tremors have, however, been felt on some occasions in the east of the country).

Climate Given its northern location, the Finnish climate is surprisingly mild. The winters are, of course, long and dark and the Finnish summers are short and bright. In northern Finland, the polar night, known as “kaamos,” lasts 52 days and winter temperatures can fall to −40°C and even −50°C. The aurora or northern lights, known locally as revontulet, are visible on most clear winter nights. The brief summer, on the other hand, can produce occasional temperatures in excess of +30°C and the sun does not set for over a month. In the Oulu region at around latitude 65° N, the coldest two months are January and February, with a daily mean temperature of around −12°C, while in Helsinki, Finland’s capital city at latitude 60° N, the corresponding value is −6°C. The average summer temperatures of the two cities are 15°C and 16°C, respectively. The Finnish lakes freeze over regularly and so does the northern end of the Gulf of Bothnia. Cars may then cross from the mainland on ice roads to offshore islands, for example, from Oulu to the island of Hailuoto, but icebreakers keep the main ports open and important ferry routes operational even throughout the winter. The Gulf of Finland also frequently freezes over, but to a lesser extent than the Gulf of Bothnia. Spring, which arrives in the south of Finland during the month of April, in the Oulu region during mid-May, and in northern Finland not until mid-June, is short, but spectacular. Although early summer tends to be the drier season; within days the landscape turns green and fresh growth emerges from under the melting snow. Rainfall is heaviest in late summer toward the end of the growing season, but severe storms are rare in Finland. Autumn frosts can arrive in the north in August itself, but in southern Finland do not become common until late October or November. Not surprisingly, snow cover reaches its greatest thickness in the north and east of the country. Permafrost is restricted to small areas in the far north of the country and higher altitudes.

Flora and Fauna Finland is the most densely forested country in Europe: pine and spruce cover 69% of the country and much of the native forest can be regarded as a western extension of the Siberian taiga. Northern birch, alder, mountain ash, and willow are also common throughout Finland, but beech tree and oak are confined to small pockets of deciduous forests in the southwest and on the Åland Islands. A collection of maple species, lime, larch, and fruit trees (e.g., apples) are cultivated in gardens

and parks. Finland’s flora does not significantly differ from that of other northern European countries and contains a large number of grasses, flowers, and berries. Perhaps most remarkable are the great variety of lichens in northern Finland and some of the wetland species like mosses, ferns, sedges, and other plants characteristic of bogs and mires (e.g., insectivorous Drosera and Utricularia species). In late summer and early autumn, a great multitude of mushrooms and toadstools appear in Finnish fields and forests. Marine brown algae occur only around the southern and southwestern shores of Finland. The brackish waters of Finland’s seacoast are rich in salmon, trout, smelt, flounder, Baltic Sea herring, and cod. The viviparous eelpout Zoarces viviparus and sea sticklebacks ought to be mentioned as well, but economically they play no role. Sturgeons, which used to be present, are now virtually extinct, but the ringed seal (Phoca hispida) of the Baltic Sea is said to be still common in Finnish waters and the porpoise Phocaena phocaena is a regular visitor there as well. Since Finnish sea water contains no more salt than approximately 5–8 parts per thousand, typical representatives of the marine realm like starfish, sea-urchins, and jellyfish are missing, but every now and then a swell of slightly saltier than normal water can lead to sudden population explosions of jellyfish in the southwestern part of the Gulf of Finland. Finnish rivers and lakes are home to a large variety of fishes, comprising lamprey, pike, various perches and salmonids (e.g., char, trout, whitefish, grayling), carp and kin (e.g., rudd, tench, loach, bleak, minnow), burbot, and eel. Aquatic insects (in particular, the larvae of mosquitoes, stone-, caddis-, may-, damsel-, and dragon-flies) together with the tadpoles of three species of frogs provide ample food for the fish population. Two species of newt are also found in Finnish waters. The poisonous common European adder (a viviparous species of snake, also known by the name “viper,” i.e., Vipera berus) is found throughout Finland, but the grass-snake is restricted to the more southerly regions. Two species of lizard, the viviparous Lacerta vivipara and the legless Anguis fragilis, are widespread, but nowhere very abundant. However, insects (at least during the short summer) are extremely abundant and the more than 3.5 cm long aquatic beetle Dytiscus latissimus and the terrestrial scarabaeid Oryctes nasicornis together with the moth Acherontia atropos as well as some species of dragonflies represent some of the largest species that northern Europe has to offer. Bumblebees are a typical feature of spring; they emerge from their winter resting places early and may fly around while patches of snow still cover the ground. Small wolf spiders are extremely common in the forests and bogs, but the huge diving spider Dolomedes fimbriatus and the diving-bell spider Argyroneta aquatica need to be specially mentioned on account of their size

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FINLAND and lifestyle. Numerous species of birds either live permanently in Finland, pass through Finland on their migratory routes, or visit Finland during the summer to breed. Species rare or threatened in other European countries like sea- and fish-eagles, goshawks, capercaillie, or owls are still quite common in Finland, although some species of grouse have significantly declined in number over the past decades. Finland’s mammalian fauna is typical of that associated with the boreal coniferous zone and includes brown bear, wolf, lynx, wolverine, reindeer, and European elk. Of the smaller animals, hedgehogs, badger, beaver, squirrel, voles, shrews, snow hare, stoat, polecat, marten, and fox need to be mentioned; rabbits are not found in Finland. The flying squirrel Pteromys volans reaches its northwestern limit in Finland, while a couple of bat species can even be found north of the Arctic Circle. The only mammal considered to be endemic to Finland is Phoca hispida saimanensis, a subspecies of the ringed seal confined to the fresh waters of Lake Saimaa. Finland has 19 nature reserves and 32 national parks.

Population and Government By spring 2000, Finland had a population of 5,171,302, an average population density of 17 inhabitants per km2. However, the south of the country is considerably more densely populated than the north. There are nearly 26,000 inhabitants of the Åland (Ahvenanmaa) Islands, who live on only 1% of the 6500 or so islands of the archipelago. About 93% of the population speak Finnish as their mother tongue, 6%, mainly in the southern coastal regions (including the Åland Islands), speak Swedish, and less than 1% speak Saami (3–4000). Other minority languages are Romany of the 9000-strong population of Finnish gypsies, and Somali and Russian of the more recent immigrants. Although Finns are a small nation, about 36% of the global population living north of latitude 60° N are Finnish. Several other small Finno-Ugric nations are scattered in the northern parts of Russia. Foreigners making Finland their home number nearly 90,000. Over 51% of the country’s population constitutes female and two-thirds of all Finns are in the working-age bracket of the 15–64-year-olds. The average household size is 2.2 persons and the room area per person is 33 m2. Forty-two percent of the population live in apartment blocks, and 55% live in singlefamily houses. The overall fertility rate in 1998 was 1.7 births per woman and the average child-bearing age of a Finnish woman was 29.9. Finland is a democracy with a president, elected by direct popular vote for a six-year term, and a 200-member parliament, that is, the legislative body, elected for a four-year term. Tarja Halonen, the first female president,

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was elected in 2000. As a result of a referendum, Finland joined the European Union in 1995, and from 2002 replaced the Finnish Markka with the Euro as its currency. In 2001, Finland ratified the so-called Schengen agreement. There are 16 Finnish members in the European parliament and three votes in the Council of Ministers. The Finnish Constitution guarantees extensive individual rights to all citizens. All Finnish citizens above the age of 18, male and female, have enjoyed the right to vote in elections since 1906. Over one-third of all members of parliament are women. Certain, one could say “privileges” apply to Åland/Ahvenanmaa Islanders and the Saami minority. As a result of the 1999 elections, the three main political parties are the Social Democratic Party (SDP) with 51 seats, the Centre Party (KESK) with 48 seats, and the National Coalition (Conservative Party, KOK) with 46 seats; the Left-Wing Alliance (VAS) picked up 20 seats, while the Greens, the Swedish People’s Party, and the Christian League (SKL) each won 11, 12, and 10 seats, respectively. For administrative purposes, Finland is nowadays divided into six provinces called “lääni” (Eastern Finland, Lappland, Oulu, Southern Finland, Western Finland, and the Åland/Ahvenanmaa Islands), of which only one, the Åland/Ahvenanmaa Islands Province, is autonomous. The six provinces are subdivided into 20 regions or counties which then all together include a total of 455 municipalities. Although military service in Finland is compulsory for men (and voluntary for women), residents of the Åland (Ahvenanmaa) Islands are exempted on account of the island province’s demilitarized status. Finland is a nonaligned state and not a member country of NATO, but in 1994 it joined the “NATO Partnership for Peace.” As a member of the United Nations, a participant of numerous peace-keeping missions, and the host of the 1975 Security Conference, Finland has sometimes been called a superpower of peace-keeping, a predicate the country bears with pride. The trained reserve forces are about half a million strong, which represents one of the highest proportions of trained reservists in Europe. Important organizations relevant to its Arctic location that Finland is a member of include the Nordic Council (member since 1955), Council of Baltic Sea States (1992), Barents Euro-Arctic Council (1993), Arctic Council (1996), and Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (1997). Finland was chair of the Arctic Council from 2000–2002.

Settlements and Towns The 455 municipalities (=local authorities) of Finland lay down their own municipal tax rate on the basis of their needs for financing the required services of maintaining local infrastructures, water supply, electricity generation, operation of ports, etc. The

FINLAND state pays the local authorities to provide welfare services in proportion to population, but allows the local authorities to decide on how best to provide the services of health care, basic education, libraries, fire-fighting, rescue, etc. The size of the municipalities varies considerably both in terms of population and geography, but health care, family allowances, unemployment benefits, and other social services are excellent throughout the country. Sixty-four percent of the population live in towns, of which the Finnish capital Helsinki (Helsingfors), a port city with c.550,000 inhabitants, is the largest. Together with the neighboring towns of Espoo (200,000), Vantaa (170,000), and Kauniainen, almost one-fifth of the Finnish population live in the greater metropolitan area. Other major towns are Tampere (186,000), the two seaport towns of Turku (170,000) and Oulu (120,000), Lahti (95,000), Kuopio (85,000), Pori (77,000), Jyväskylä (75,000), Lappeenranta (57,000), Kotka (56,000), and Vaasa (55,000). The smallest Finnish town with a university is Rovaniemi (36,000) in Lappin lääni.

Religion Pre-Christian Finns had gods as natural phenomena. Ahti ruled the lakes, Tapio was the master of the forests, and Ilmarinen, the hammer-wielding blacksmith, was the creator of the skies and stars, the northern lights, day, and night. When Christianity arrived in Finland in the 12th century, it came from two sides: the Orthodox version was introduced from the east through the Principality of Novgorod and Catholicism came from the west via Swedish conquerors. In the peace of Stolbova in 1617 between Sweden and Novgorod, the Swedes extended their rule eastward and began to convert the population to the Lutheran faith, causing about 25,000 Karelians of orthodox faith to flee their country and settle c.200 km to the northwest of Moscow. The present Finnish state is neutral in religious matters, but the Evangelical-Lutheran Church is mentioned in the Constitution Act. Although administrative details and activities of both the Evangelical-Lutheran and the Finnish Orthodox churches are regulated by the Church Act, both churches have extensive autonomy. In 1998, 4,400,000 Finns were members of the Evangelical-Lutheran congregations and 54,000 were members of the Orthodox Church; 634,000 Finns are classified as nondenominational and about 100,000 follow various revivalist movements. Catholics number no more than 6000 and Jewish congregations have about 1000 members. The number of Muslims has increased dramatically over the last 10 years due to immigrants, but few are registered as members of official religious communities.

Language Although Finns are genetically no different from other Europeans, the Finnish language is. As part of the Finno-Ugric phylum (to which Hungarian, Estonian, the Lapp- or Saami languages, Karelian, Vepsälainen, and a few other little known tongues and dialects also belong; see Northern Uralic Languages), Finnish does not share syntax or grammar with languages of the Indo-European phylum. Finnish is an agglutinating language with word-stems that have suffixes added, whereas in Indo-European languages prepositions are used. Nouns have no articles and “he” and “she” are not distinguished. Finnish words, usually rich in vowels, are always stressed on the first syllable irrespective of how long they are and they almost never begin with a b, d, f, or g. The Asian origins of Finnish are obscure and some linguists align ancient Finnish with Ural-Altaic languages, while others claim to find links to East Asian or south Indian Dravidian languages. Finnish as a written language existed since the Reformation when Mikael Agricola (c.1510–1557) had published the first Finnish ABC and translated the New Testament and other works into Finnish. During the 600 years Finland was under Swedish dominance however, the Finnish language had little opportunity to assert itself; however, under Russian rule (1809–1917) it flourished. Elias Lönnrot (1802–1884) published compilations of folk poetry, including the national epic Kalevala, and Aleksis Kivi (1834–1872) and later Mika Waltari (1908–1979) wrote widely popular novels in the Finnish language. Finnish is now ensconced as one of the official languages of the European Union and Finns are regarded as among the world’s most voracious readers. The annual number of visits by Finns to Finnish libraries (6 million) is proportionally the world’s highest; so is the number of newspapers, magazines, and books published in Finland per capita and per year.

Education For all children in Finland between the ages of 7 and 17, school education is compulsory, ensuring virtually 100% literacy. All stages of education are free in schools run by the state (a few private schools charging fees do exist as well). State education caters to Finnishspeaking as well as Swedish-speaking Finns, and in regions with a predominantly Saami population it is now possible for children to receive instructions in Saami. To be able to enter one of the 20 universities and colleges of the country, an entrance examination has to be passed. In some subjects (medicine, for instance), a few seats may be reserved for students of Saami origin. All Finns, irrespective of ethnicity, have to learn Finnish, English, and Swedish at school. In addition,

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FINLAND they may choose another foreign language like German, French, or Russian. The metric system was introduced by law in July 1886. About 53% of the present population have completed postprimary education and 11% have a university degree. Finland’s first Nobel Prize winner was Frans Eemil Sillanpää, who received this honor in the Literature category in 1939. Then in 1945, A.I. Virtanen, a biochemist, was awarded the prize in Chemistry for a new fodder conservation method that he had developed. So far, Finland’s last Nobel Prize winner was Ragnar Granit, who received the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1967 for his fundamental studies on the human nervous system, and principally his research on visual physiology.

Specifically Finnish Finnish society is an egalitarian society. On the basis of a 1995 OECD study, it has been said that Finland has the world’s most even income distribution. An average family of four with two providers paid 38% tax in 1998 and spent an average of 2 h per day in front of the TV. Slightly less time is spent in the sauna, but still virtually every Finnish home has a sauna and most Finns regularly enjoy sauna at least once or twice a week. Vappu on the first of May heralds the arrival of spring and is celebrated with marches, congregations, beer, vodka, and of course the wearing of the white high-school graduation caps (ylioppilas). Midsummer is celebrated with a sauna, a meal of new potatoes and other fresh produce, sausages, home-brewed beer, and a bonfire outside. In July, the berry-collecting season starts: first cloudberries, then blueberries, later raspberries and currants, and finally in September lingonberry, cranberry, and crowberry. Mushrooms are collected in large quantities and stored for winter. In August freshwater crayfish are for sale, and in September hunters prepare to shoot elk and deer. Herring is in season in October and a sip of glöggi (mulled wine) precedes the Christmas festivities and replaces the otherwise ubiquitous and unbelievably common cup of coffee (per capita, Finns are the world’s greatest coffee consumers). It may come as a surprise that even in winter Finns may have outside barbecues in snow and ice, but winter is the cross-country skiing season, the time to play ice hockey, and go skating or even ice sailing. Most Finns love sport and the country has certainly produced its share of sporting heroes, be it at the summer or the winter Olympics. Paavo Nurmi won nine gold and three silver medals at the Olympic Games for his country and Lasse Viren won both the 5000 and 10,000 m races at the 1972 and 1976 Olympics. Regarded by many as the greatest ski jumper of all time, Matti Nykänen won four Olympic golds and five world championships in the 1980s. In 1995, Finland’s ice hockey team became

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world champions with a win over Sweden in the final, and the whole country celebrated. Finnish architecture, thanks to the pionering designs of Alvar Aalto, enjoys world fame and attracts architecture students from all over the world to Finland. Music plays an important part in the lives of Finns, and the annual Opera Festival, held in the medieval stone castle of Savonlinna, has become an institution. Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) is Finland’s greatest composer and his fame, based on seven symphonies, a violin concerto, Finlandia, Valse triste, and other works, overshadows many other Finnish composers of stature. Apart from the opera festival, Finland hosts numerous other music festivals in summer and the combined attendances amount to over one million. Although folk music, characteristic of the different regions of Finland, exists and is performed, the greatest appeal countrywide is a rhythm known as Finnish Tango. Several musicians and singers from the Finnish gypsy community have been very successful in the music business. Not surprisingly, ballroom dancing is a popular pastime for the young and old in Finland.

Economy Traditionally a farming and fishing nation (60% of the population earned their living as farmers in 1930, but only 8% did so in 2000), Finland began to diversify after World War II ended in 1945. The main crops farmed nowadays are rye, oats, and barley, but vast strawberry plantations and new agricultural industries compete with the more traditional forms. The fur and pelt industry is an important, though controversial, sector of Finnish agriculture and so is fish farming. The forestry industry is still of immense importance to Finland with timber, paper, and pulp accounting for 28.7% of exports, but the electronics and high-tech industries (with Nokia as the Finnish flagship company) have become equally important in terms of their business turnover (27.9% of all exports). Finland is also one of the world’s leading manufacturers of paper machines. The furniture, glass, and ceramics industries, although smaller in terms of export earnings than the above industries, enjoy a high reputation worldwide. The chemical industry, largely through Kemira, a company originally set up by the government, is involved in the production of fertilizers and paints, while Neste refines oil and distributes natural gas. Finnish metal industries have a long tradition (e.g., shipbuilding began in Turku and Helsinki in 1737 and 1865, respectively), but even now some of the best cruise vessels or icebreakers are still being constructed in Finnish shipyards. The Åland Islands have traditionally relied on cargo shipping for their livelihood. During the first half of the 20th century, the province became world famous for its sailing ship fleet—bought second hand at a time

FINLAND when foreign shipowners were making the transition to steam. Today, merchant shipping remains the main source of income for the islands. Finland has become an increasingly popular tourist destination for enthusiasts of cross-country skiing, snow-boarding, hiking, and fishing. A special tourist attraction is the Santapark near Rovaniemi with Father Christmas, reindeers, a toy workshop, and other sights. There are more than 200,000 reindeer in Lapland and the annual roundup also attracts scores of visitors. Surprisingly, the 50,000 elk hunted yearly yield more meat than the reindeer. For about 300,000 Finns, hunting is a hobby, but even more engage in sport fishing. Despite its many lakes, Finland obtains only 4% of its energy from hydroelectric sources; 28% of Finland’s energy requirements are covered by imported oil and 18% come from nuclear power plants. Local peat provides 6% of the energy needs of the country. In the year 2000, approximately 9% of the Finnish workforce were unemployed, but were housed, fed, and looked after through the Finnish social welfare program. Of the 2.5 million or so people employed, 66% worked in various service industries (including health, financial, transport, and communication services), 22.8% in industries like consumer goods, manufactured items, forest products, metal and engineering products, and 6% each in agricultural and construction industries.

History When exactly the first Finns invaded Finland, from where they came, and whom they found on their arrival in their Nordic setting—these are questions we are still unable to answer satisfactorily. Even the origin of the Finnish name for Finland, “Suomi,” is not without controversy. To some the word “Suomi” stems from the Finnish “suo” (swamp) and “maa” (land) and refers to the many lakes, bogs, and swamps that the new arrivals must have found. To others, the word “Suomi” appears to be related to Saami. Apparently, the Finns’ forefathers came to the shores of Finland approximately 10,000 years ago. Several waves of immigration took place and local cultures evolved. Cultures clashed, and at around 5000 BC encounters between so-called Finnish Comb ceramic sealers and Åland Pitted ware people may have resulted in cannibalism: at least this is the conclusion of examinations of human bones and skulls from Jettböle (Åland/Ahvenanmaa Islands). On the basis of the many Saami names that are in use for places and landscape features in southern Finland, there can be no doubt that the Saami once used to live much further than now. What is unresolved is whether invading Finns pushed them northward or changes in climate and reindeer migratory routes caused the ancient

Saami to vacate the more southerly regions voluntarily. Ptolemy, apparently, was aware of the Finnish population and is said to have referred to them as “Phinni.” Between the years 1155 and 1293, Swedes carried out three crusades into Finland and in 1323 concluded with Novgorod the Treaty of Pähkinäsaari, defining the eastern border of Finland for the first time in history. The territory annexed by Sweden became known as the “Eastland,” a name first mentioned in the 1340s. Turku became its principal town and the seat of the Bishop. Helsinki was founded in 1550, but the first university (the Academy of Turku) was established in Turku in 1640. During the Great Northern War (1700–1721), Russia occupied Finland, but in the Treaty of Uusikaupunki (Nystad) all the Finnish provinces, except for the southeastern part, reverted to Sweden. After almost 600 years of domination by Swedes, the situation changed in 1809, when after a brief war Sweden had to cede Finland to Russia and Russia awarded its newly-annexed province the status of a Grand Duchy and gave it considerable autonomy. Since Turku was geographically and culturally too close to Sweden, the Russians made Helsinki the capital of Finland. As a consequence of food shortages, mass emigrations of Finns, chiefly to Canada, occurred between 1899 and 1902. Reaching 25,000 per year, they left entire regions of Finland depopulated. During the rule of Czar Nicholas II, a program of “Russification” of Finland began. This was, of course, resented by the Finns and led, in the wake of the revolution taking place in Russia and the turmoil of World War I, to the declaration of Finnish independence on December 6, 1917. A civil war, in which the Senate received assistance from Germany and which ended in mid-May 1918, ensued. At the close of the civil war, it was decided to turn Finland into a monarchy, not with a Finnish or Swedish or Russian king, but with Prince Friedrich Karl of Hesse (brother-in-law to Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany) selected as the first King of Finland. However, following the collapse of Germany at the end of World War I, an inauguration never took place and Finland became a presidential republic in the summer of 1919. A conflict on the future of the Åland Islands (which till then had been under Russian authority) arose between Finland and Sweden. The matter was decided by the League of Nations in 1921 and the islands became an autonomous province of Finland. The League of Nations was the cornerstone of Finnish security policy in the 1920s and was involved in solving the thorny issue of the status of Finland’s only entirely Swedish-speaking province, the Åland/Ahvenanmaa Islands. During World War II, the Soviet Union broke the 1932 nonaggression pact with Finland and invaded, thus starting the infamous Winter War. Although a treaty, in which

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FINNBOGADÓTTIR, VIGDÍS the Soviet Union gained southeastern Finland, was signed the following year, hostilities continued until September 1944, when Finland had to cede the Petsamo corridor (now Pechenga in Murmansk province) to the Soviet Union, Finland’s only access to the Arctic Ocean and a place of valuable nickel and copper mines, as well as Karelia. After the war, Finland sought friendly relations with the Soviet Union, but not at the expense of relations with western countries. Helsinki hosted the summer Olympic Games in 1952, and the Soviet Union ended its occupation of the southern Finnish region of Porkalla in 1956. Under the postwar presidents J.K. Paasikivi (1946–1956), Urho Kekkonen (1956–1982), Mauno Koivisto (1982–1994), Martti Ahtisaari (1994–2000), and now Tarja Halonen, Finland asserted itself more and more internationally. In 1989 it joined the Council of Europe, and in 1995 it became a member of the European Union. V.B. MEYER-ROCHOW See also Karelia; Lapland; Lappin lääni; National Parks and Protected Areas: Finland; Rovaniemi; Saami Further Reading Dahlgren, M. & M. Nurmelin, Sauna, Sisu, and Sibelius, Helsinki: Yrityskirjat Oy, 1999 Elovainio, P., “The Modern Welfare State.” In Facts about Finland, 2nd edition, Helsinki: Otava, 2000 Huurre, M., 9000 vuotta Suomen historiaa [9000 Years of Finnish History], Helsinki: Otava, 1995 Irwin, J.L., The Finns and the Lapps, Newton Abbot: David Charles, 1973 Möbius, M. & A. Ster, Lappland, Cologne: DuMont, 1994 Nunez, M. & K. Lidén, “Taking the 5,000 year old ‘Jettböle skeletons’ out of the closet: a Palaeo-medical examination of human remains from the Åland (Ahvenanmaa) Islands.” International Journal of Circumpolar Health, 56 (1997): 30–39 Singleton, F. & A.F. Upton, A Short History of Finland, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998 Suikkari, R., Finland Today, Helsinki: RKS Tietopalvelu 1999 Tarkka, J., “A Society of Nordic Values.” In Facts about Finland, 2nd edition, Helsinki: Otava, 2000 Tiitta, A., “A Land of Many Faces.” In Facts about Finland, 2nd edition, Helsinki: Otava, 2000 Zetterberg, S., “Finland Through the Centuries.” In Facts about Finland, 2nd edition, Helsinki: Otava, 2000

FINNBOGADÓTTIR, VIGDÍS In 1980, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir made history when she was elected president of Iceland, serving as president until 1996. Although her margin of victory was small (only 33.8%, with the nearest of three rivals getting 32.2%), it was sufficient to make her the world’s first female head of state elected by popular suffrage. As the powers of the president of Iceland are largely

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symbolic and ceremonial, the office did not provide her with much executive power. As an icon for women, her influence around the world has been considerable. Of the four candidates for president in 1980, Finnbogadóttir was the last to join the fray. The need for a female candidate was often mentioned as an argument in favor of her standing for president and she received the backing of many activists for women’s rights. Because the outcomes of presidential elections in Iceland often turn on personalities rather than causes, it is difficult to connect her candidacy with any political grouping or issue, although women’s rights were undoubtedly a factor. When she stood for president, Finnbogadóttir had not been active in traditional politics. During the campaign, some right-wing opponents tried to discredit her by drawing attention to her opposition to the NATO base in Keflavík. These attempts failed, and may even have resulted in a backlash, with left-wing voters moving from other candidates to support her. Attempts to highlight the fact that she was not married also failed to sway voters. At the time of her election to the presidency, Iceland was easily the most backward of the Nordic countries with respect to women’s political representation. There were only three women in the parliament, or 5% compared with 24–26% in the parliaments of the other Scandinavian countries. Within communal authorities, the figure was 6.1% compared with 17.7–29.3% in the other Nordic countries. Iceland’s presidents serve as cultural ambassadors and symbols of national unity, although the Icelandic constitution also requires that they sign into law all bills passed by the parliament (alÞingi). No president has refused a signature to date, but Finnbogadóttir came close. In 1985, the Icelandic government wished to implement a legislation against a strike by women flight attendants for Icelandair. This coincided with the ten-year anniversary of the women’s national holiday in Iceland, October 24. Finnbogadóttir wanted to postpone the signing of this bill, but was dissuaded. Finnbogadóttir is the only Icelandic president to have been forced into an election by a rival. This was in 1988 when she was opposed by Sigrún fiorsteinsdóttir. The result was a landslide; 92.7% of the votes fell to Vigdís while the rival polled only 5.3%. Having overcome cancer earlier in life, Finnbogadóttir became the protector of the Icelandic Cancer Association. She was also a founder and patron of the “Save the Children” Association in Iceland. One of her last acts as president of Iceland was to fight prejudice against same-sex couples. Finnbogadóttir is arguably the most respected statesperson that Iceland has produced. After her retirement from presidency, she kept a high international

FINNMARK profile, participating in many ethical, environmental, and linguistic projects for both UNESCO and the United Nations. She was made a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador of Languages in November 1998. She is also chairperson of the UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST), of which the first session took place in Oslo in April 1999. She also chairs the Council of Women World Leaders, which was founded in 1997. In office, she was a keen spokesman for close ties between Iceland and its Arctic neighbors. In recognition of this, she was made the chairperson of the Committee for the development of a North-Atlantic harbor (Komitéen til Udviklingen af Den Nordatlantiske Brygge) in Copenhagen, a project designed to enhance cultural cooperation among Denmark and its former North-Atlantic colonies (Greenland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands).

Biography Vigdís Finnbogadóttir was born on April 15, 1930 in Reykjavik. Her father, Finnbogi Rútur fiorvaldsson (1891–1973), was a civil engineer and professor at the University of Iceland. Her mother was Sigríður Eiríksdóttir (1894–1986), chair of the Icelandic Nurses Association for 36 years. A younger brother died in an accident in the prime of life. She married and divorced Ragnar Arinbjarnar (1929–1997), M.D., and has one daughter (adopted): Ástríður (born 1972). Finnbogadóttir studied French language and literature in Paris and Grenoble, and later on lived in Denmark and Sweden. She later worked for the National Theatre and organized the French language department at a Reykjavík college. She was a member of Gríma, the first experimental theater group in Iceland. For a number of years, Finnbogadóttir worked for the Icelandic Tourist Bureau as a tourist guide during the summer. Her job was to receive foreign journalists, guide them around Iceland, and help gather the information and material they requested. She was also instrumental in the development of the guide training program, which she headed for several years. Finnbogadóttir served as director of the Reykjavik Theatre Company from 1972 to 1980. Under her guidance, the Company flourished and she was especially active in opening channels for Iceland playwrights. When she was a candidate for president, she received nearly unanimous support from former theater colleagues. She taught French drama at the University of Iceland and gave French lessons on Iceland State Television. She served as chairperson of Alliance Francaise. From 1976 to 1980, she was a member of

the Advisory Committee on Cultural Affairs of the Nordic Council, and its chairperson from 1978. SVERRIR JAKOBSSON Further Reading Dahlerup, Drude, Blomster og spark, Samtaler med kvindelige politikere i Norden, Stockholm, 1985 Friðriksson, Guðjón & Gunnar Elísson, President Vigdís. Her Election and First Year in Office, Reykjavík, 1981 (revised edition) Sigurðardóttir, Steinunn, Ein á forsetavakt. Dagar í lífi Vigdísar Finnbogadóttur, Reykjavík, 1988

FINNMARK Finnmark county is Norway’s northernmost county, the largest county of Norway by area, but smallest by population. The prefix “Finn” from Finne means “Fin” or “Saami,” and “mark” means “settled border area.” Finnmark county, which has an area of 48,637 km2 (18,778 sq mi) has its coastline along the Arctic Ocean and the Barents Sea, its borderline in the east to Russia, in the south to Finland, and in the west to the Troms county. The county includes 2760 km of coastline and 1261 islands. Midnight Sun in Finnmark occurs from May 11 to July 31 (North Cape) and May 30 to July 11 (Alta); the Dark Period occurs from November 18 to January 24 (North Cape) and November 23 to January 19 (Alta). The northernmost point in Norway and mainland Europe is Knivskjellodden, located at 71°11′8′′ N. The North Cape (Nordkapp)—discovered and named by Richard Chancellor in 1553 on the island of Magerøy (since 1999 connected by undersea tunnel)—is slightly further south at 71°10′21′′ N. The North Cape features impressive cliffs rising 307 m above the Atlantic Ocean. The easternmost point in Norway is the island Hornøya located at 31°10′4′′ E. The landscape in Finnmark is different from the other parts of Norway. The fjords are wide and open with flat peninsulas between them, falling steep at the coast, east of North Cape without skerries. Between the fjords and the Finnmarksvidda (Finnmark mountain plateau or Finnmark Plain, 300–400 m), old sandstone formations are folded and pressed upward, forming a number of pyramid-shaped mountains (Gaissene). Tana River, Kautokeino River, and Alta River are the three major watercourses running out from the plateau and in long fjords into the sea. The mighty Alta, running through Europe’s largest canyon, is a rich salmon river; up to 20 tons of salmon are caught here every summer. The construction of a hydroelectric power station caused violent protests from the local Saami reindeer herders in the early 1970s. North of the Alta Fjord, on the island of Seiland, Norway’s two northernmost glaciers, Seilandsjøkelen

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(9076), Sør-Varanger (Kirkenes 9547), Vadsø (6122), and Kautokeino (3022 people—the largest municipality by area of Norway—9704 sq km) (Statistics Norway, 2003). Eighty percent of the population live in the coastal area and the islands; the largest Saami settlements are located inland on the Finnmark Plain. The administration center of the county is Vadsø, and the county parliament has 35 members, with four seats in the Stortinget (national parliament). The Saami Council, established on October 1, 1989 with 39 representatives, is located in Kárásjohka (Karasjok) and gives recommendations to the Stortinget (Norway) regarding Saami related issues. Finnmark’s State Church, to which 80% of the population belong, is Protestant. The county has a number of independent churches, and especially among the Saami population, Laestadianisme (inspired by L.L. Laestadius, 1800–1868) is prevalent. The northernmost Catholic church is located in Hammerfest, serving the almost 300 Catholics in the entire county. Finnmark and parts of Troms county are the areas in Norway where a distinct Norwegian model for regional development is used.

ARCTIC CIRCLE

Economy Location and main towns and rivers in Finnmark.

and Nordmannsjøkelen, are located. The highest point in Finnmark is the Svartfjelljøkelen mountain at 1218 m. Finnmark’s large geographic area, a complex coastline, and the long fjords cause substanial regional differences in the climate. The warm Gulf Stream keeps the coast ice-free, with a temperature in February between −2°C and −7°C, while the inland climate is more continental with long periods with temperatures around −15°C (the lowest temperature ever measured was −51.4°C in Karasjok on January 1, 1886). The average summer temperature is 10–12°C along the coast and around 14°C inland (temperatures above 30°C occur during the summer). The annual precipitation is 600–1000 mm along the coast and 300–500 mm inland. Around the Alta Fjord, it is possible to grow free land vegetables like carrots and potatoes; turnips can be grown on a commercial basis. The world’s northernmost pine forest is located in the Stabbursdalen National Park (803 km2). Finnmark’s other two national parks are Øvre Anarjåkka National Park (1399 km2) and Øvre Pasvik National Park, where brown bears live (67 km2).

Population and Government Finnmark has a population of 73,514. There are 19 municipalities in total—Alta (17,359), Hammerfest,

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For several hundred years, coastal fishing has led to the special settlement pattern along the coast of Finnmark. The one-person sjark (a small fishing boat) reflects the traditional way of fishing. New and more far-reaching catching techniques have resulted in emigration from many of the fishing villages starting in the late 1960s. Today’s fishery fleet is based on the modern stern trawling fleet, supplying the extensive receiving apparatus on land or processing the fish directly on board. In recent years, fish plants along the coast bought fish regularly from Russian trawlers as well. Aquaculture is about to become Norway’s secondmost important export industry after oil. Many of the fish farms are located along the Finnmark coast, raising salmon. On Stjernøya Island outside Alta, mining companies extracted almost ten million tons of nephelin syenite (an intrusive igneous rock used in glass and ceramics) since 1961. Each day, 120 employees commute to the otherwise uninhabited island. Zinc and copper were exploited earlier, but although gold and silver have been found in Finnmark county, no commercial mining has been established so far. Slate, which is found all over the northwestern part of the county, has been used commercially since the mid-1800s. Alta slate is the hardest of its type, and for the production of slate slabs approximately 250 m3 of mountain are removed in the Alta area. Oil and gas were found offshore of the county, and from 2005 onwards the “Snøhvit” project on Melkøya Island

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Reindeer migrate across the high tundra of the Finnmark Plain. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

outside Hammerfest will be Europe’s first export facility for liquefied natural gas (LNG). Reindeer are bred mainly by the Saami people in Finnmark. In order to take advantage of the grazing areas on the plateau, the Saami migrate with their herds of reindeers out to the coast in spring and back to the inland in fall. International tourism is a growing industry in Finnmark county, relying on the traditional Hurtigruten (coastal steamer) to operate year round. A small-scale production of crowberry wine started in the mid-1990s, which is probably the world’s northernmost wine producer.

History Finnmark and Alta was the site of one of the oldest settlements in Norway, the Komsa Culture, which seems to date back to 8000 BC. The Saami people are the oldest known inhabitants, and permanent settlement started around 1300, when Norwegians also settled to trade. A Russian settlement has been known from 1500. In the 1700s and 1800s, immigration from Finland— kverner—took place. A large number of rock carvings (c.6200–2500 years old) have been found at Hjemmeluft, Alta, which have been protected as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site since 1985. Alta Museum was established in 1991. The first permanent Northern Light Observatory on the mountain of Halddetoppen (900 m), built on the Initiative of Kristian Birkeland, has been in use from 1899 to 1900 and 1912 to 1926. The Finnmark College in Alta enrolls 1900 students, and is the northernmost college in the world. The town of Hammerfest was an important place to recruit Arctic sailors and supplies for Arctic

expeditions. In World War II, Hammerfest was evacuated by the German troops and burned to the ground. The eastern part of the county was of strategic importance during the Cold War. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the importance of Kirkenes and its harbor as an important hub traveling to northwest Russia has increased. From 1989 onward, trade with Russia has resumed and increased political interest in the area is reflected in the establishment of the Barents Regional Council (1993) in Kirkenes. JOCHEN PETERS See also Alta/Kautokeino Demonstrations; Barents Regional Council; Fjords; National Parks and Protected Areas: Norway; Norway; Saami; Saami Council; Troms Further Reading Bjørklund, Ivar, Jakob J. Møller & Per K. Reymert, The Barents Region, Tromsø: University of Tromsø, Tromsø Museum, 1995 Finnmark County website: http://www.finnmark-f.kommune.no/ Geology and Petroleum Resources in the Barents Sea, Stavanger: The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, 1996 Hirsti, Reidar (editor), Finnmark, Bygd og by i Norge, Oslo: Gyldendal, 1979 Hønneland, Geir, Compliance in the Barents Sea Fisheries, Oslo: University of Oslo, 2000 Johnson, Pål Espolin, Norway’s Coastal Voyage to the Top of the World, Oslo: Cappelen, 2000 Kristiansen, Roald E. & Nickolai M. Terebikhin (editors), Religion, Church and Education in the Barents Region, Arkhangel’sk: Publishers of Pomor State University, 1997 Nilsen, Dag Viggo & Kjersti H. Johnsen (editors), Facts about Norway, Oslo: Schibsted, 2000 Statistics Norway, http://www.ssb.no/english/

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FISH Stokke, Olav Schram, Governing High Sea Fisheries: the Interplay of Global and Regional Regimes, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001 Svensson, Bo, Politics and Business in the Barents Region, Stockholm: Fritzes, Statens institut för regionalforskning, 1998 Thuen, Trond, Quest for Equity: Norway and the Saami Challenge, St John’s: Memorial University of Newfoundland, ISER, 1995

FISH Fish encompass a diverse assemblage of aquatic vertebrates that have fins (if any) rather than limbs, and gills for breathing throughout life. In Greenlandic, aalisakkat is the word for fish; in Russian, the word is Pыбa. In Alutiiq and in the north Baffin Island dialect of Inuktitut, the word for fish, iqalluk, also refers to salmon or trout; in the Central Yup’ik language, neqa or neqet refers both to fish and food, emphasizing the importance of salmon as fish and fish as food. Indigenous peoples of the Arctic have a refined vocabulary for referring to individual species and even subpopulations of fish. For example, the Saami have seven different names for distinct sizes, classes, stages of life history, and sexual maturity of Atlantic salmon (Salmon salar), and the Inuit of northern Baffin Island recognize three distinct forms of Arctic char (iqaluppik), Salvelinus alpinus. The term “fish” does not correlate with a specific taxonomic rank, but is used to refer to individual species of three major taxonomic lines that do not include all descendants of a common ancestor, thereby excluding tetrapods (four-footed creatures). Fish are the most numerous and diverse of the major vertebrate groups, constituting more than half of the world’s living vertebrate species, with 482 families and almost 25,000 recognized species (Nelson, 1994). Two superclasses, Agnatha and Gnathostomata, within the phylum Chordata and subphylum Vertebrata encompass the species that are typically classified as fish. Agnatha are jawless, long, and cylindrical animals without ribs or paired fins and include the hagfishes and lampreys. Their teeth are horny, their skeletons are cartilaginous, and they are typically scavengers, parasites, or predators on larger fish. Hagfishes are the most ancestral line of modern fish, and are not even considered true vertebrates by some taxonomists. Several species occur in the Arctic such as Atlantic hagfish and Arctic lamprey. Although humans consume some species, such as the European lamprey, many fishermen consider hagfish and lampreys a nuisance because they destroy or scar the host fish on which they feed as parasites. The Gnathostomata encompass three classes of jawed fish with living species: Chondrichthyes, Sarcopterygii, and Actinopterygii. The Chondrichthyes

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possess cartilaginous skeletons, hard teeth, scales that are either absent or toothlike, and well-developed jaws. The Chondrichthyes comprise two main groups, sharks and rays (elasmobranches), and chimaeras. The Greenland shark, Somniosus microcephalus, which grows up to 8 m in length, is one of the most prominent Arctic elasmobranches. The Inuit harvest the Greenland shark for subsistence use of its skin and oil, and also sell them commercially. The class Sarcopterygii includes lobe-finned bony fish and the class Actinopterygii includes ray-finned bony fish. The Sarcopterygii, thought to have given rise to the vertebrate tetrapods (that is amphibians and reptiles), include coelacanths and lungfishes and are not found in the Arctic. The Actinopterygii contain the majority of the world’s living fish species as well as most of those found in the Arctic, including many prominent Arctic species in the following families: Cottidae (sculpins), Cyclopteridae (lumpfishes), Zoarcidae (eelpouts), Liparidae (snailfishes), Pholidae (gunnels), Gadidae (cods), and Pleuronectidae (righteye flounders). Fish dominate the marine and fresh water, tropical, temperate, and polar waters of the world and exhibit a tremendous diversity of form, physiology, life cycle characteristics, behavior, and habitat. They live in all types of aquatic environments, including open ocean, coastal continental shelf, littoral (shoreline waters), lacustrine (lakes), and fluvial (streams and rivers). Within these environments, fish occupy a wide variety of niches and are found at all depths from pelagic (surface) waters to demersal or benthic waters (on or near the bottom). Although fresh water accounts for a small percentage of the total waters of the world, 40% of all fish occur in or usually in fresh waters. Almost 200 species are diadromous, that is, living part of their lives in fresh water and part in marine waters. Most of these are anadromous, meaning that they spawn in fresh water but spend much of their life at sea. Fewer are catadromous, that is, they spawn in marine waters and return to fresh water to live much of their lives. Anadromy has been a very successful life history strategy in the Arctic. This may be because it confers a high degree of flexibility to the fish, facilitating their exploitation of newly emerging postglacial habitats. The Salmonids are the dominant anadromous family with 11 anadromous species found at least as far north as 71° N. The marine Arctic region has relatively few fish species (probably fewer than 110 species are found on a regular basis) and low endemism (20–25%) (endemism refers to species that are indigenous and confined to a certain region) compared to other regions of the world (Moyle and Cech, 2000). Arctic fish tend to be circumpolar in range. Many are cold-tolerant species

FISH that also occur in the North Atlantic and North Pacific and, with recent climatic warming trends, several have extended their ranges north into the Subarctic and Arctic regions. Examples include the Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua), the pollock or coalfish (Pollachius virens), the ling (Molva molva), and the haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus). Most are demersal, feeding on benthic organisms such as molluscs or crustaceans. Only a limited number of fish species are found in the Arctic; many are temperate species at the northern edge of their range. The anadromous Arctic char may be the most northerly occurring fish species found in fresh water, identified in Lake Hazen on Ellesmere Island in Canada (81° N). Two freshwater species, burbot (Lota lota) and northern pike (Esox lucius), are circumpolar in distribution. Approximately 55 freshwater fish species occur in the Canadian Arctic. Many fish species have developed physiological mechanisms to withstand the extremely cold-water temperatures of the Arctic. Arctic and Greenland cod produce glycoprotein antifreezes to keep their bodies from freezing; other species produce peptide antifreezes. These proteins are found in the blood of certain fish and prevent freezing by binding to ice crystals and inhibiting their growth. Some fish can decrease the production of antifreeze compounds in the summer months in order to tolerate the higher temperatures. Fish play a significant role in the functioning of aquatic Arctic ecosystems. Many fish species produce large eggs in shallow waters. The larval fish spend their first months floating in surface waters and comprise an important component of the zooplankton, consumed by marine mammals, seabirds, and fish, and descending to deeper waters at the end of summer. Arctic cod, Boreogadus saida, are a valuable source of food for many bird and marine mammal species, including the ringed seal. Additionally, Arctic cod, Polar cod (Arctogadus glacialis), and American sand lance (Ammodytes hexapterus) are characteristic and important faunal components of the sea-ice ecosystem. Fish (especially capelin (Mallotus villosus), char, pike, grayling (Thymallus arcticus), herring (Clupea harrengus), several species of whitefish (Coregonus spp.), flatfish, cod, and salmonids) are important subsistence foods for Arctic peoples. Intensive fishing forms the basis of subsistence for the Koryak, Itel’men, and Yup’ik Eskimo. A study of 98 Alaskan communities found that subsistence-fishing output was higher than hunting, comprising 57–68% of total subsistence output, up to 1239 pounds per capita, for example, in the village of Hughes situated on the Koyukuk River (Wolfe and Walker, 1987). Fish are also an important component of the ceremonial diet of Arctic peoples, accorded a place of prominence in the feasts marking significant events such as deaths, marriages, and births.

Large commercial fisheries provide the primary source of income and employment in many areas. Some of the world’s largest fisheries are located in the Subarctic waters of the Bering and Barents seas. Combined with a highly valued recreational fishery (targeting lake trout, Arctic char, Arctic grayling, walleye, and northern pike among others), fish constitute the largest and most lucrative living resource in the region. The worldview of many indigenous peoples of the Arctic holds that the natural world is spiritually endowed. Living organisms have spirits and must be accorded respect and treated appropriately, and a variety of prohibited and permitted behaviors are stipulated within different cultures. Strong prohibitions against waste dictate that what is caught should be used or consumed. In the spiritual world of the Koyukon Indians, fish have unnamed spirits that are powerful but less powerful than named spirits. In contrast to this, nets and traps used to capture fish have very powerful spirits, and harsh punishments such as sickness or death may result from stealing fish or using gear without permission (Nelson, 1983). SYMA ALEXI EBBIN See also Arctic Char; Capelin; Cod; Greenland Halibut; Greenland Shark; Herring; Pollock; Redfish; Salmon; Sculpin Further Reading Clarke, Andrew, “Life in cold water: the physiological ecology of polar marine ectotherms.” Oceanographic and Marine Biology Annual Review, 21 (1983): 341–453 Damas, David (editor), Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 5, Arctic, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1984 Fienup-Riordan, Ann, Boundaries and Passages Rule and Ritual in Yup’ik Eskimo Oral Tradition, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994 Fitzhugh, William & Aron Crowell (editors), Crossroads of Continents Cultures of Siberia and Alaska, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988 Hart, J.L., Pacific Fishes of Canada, Ottawa: John Deyell, 1980 Helfman, Gene, Bruce Collette & Douglas Facey, The Diversity of Fishes, Oxford and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1997 Klekowski, Romuald Z. & Jan Marcin Weslawski (editors), Atlas of the Marine Fauna of Southern Spitsbergen (Vertebrates), Warsaw: Polish Academy of Sciences Press, 1990 Moyle, Peter & Joseph Cech, Fishes An Introduction to Ichthyology, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 2000 Nelson, Joseph, Fishes of the World, New York: Wiley, 1994 Nelson, Richard K., Make Prayers to the Raven, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983 Reynolds, James (editor), Fish Ecology in Arctic North America, Bethesda: American Fisheries Society, 1997 Wolfe, Robert & Robert Walker, “Subsistence economies in Alaska: productivity, geography, and development impacts” Arctic Anthropology, 24(2) (1987): 56–81

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FISH FARMING

FISH FARMING With an increase in the total world population and a growing demand for high-quality proteins and unsaturated fat, the expansion of fisheries has experienced an annual growth rate of 2.4% since 1961, compared to the annual population growth of 1.8% (FAO Fisheries Department Statistical Database, 2003). Since the late 1980s, however, population has surpassed the growth in total fish supply, decreasing the supply to a level of 13.1 kg per capita (FAO Fisheries Department Statistical Database, 2003). In 2000, total catches for marine areas were 71.3 million tons and 6.6 million tons from inland waters (both excluding China due to unavailability of reliable statistics). Including catches from China, the estimate of total global catches is 94 million tons, close to the estimated maximum sustainable yield of 100 million tons; several areas have experienced overharvesting and extinction of former productive fish stocks. The increased demand cannot be met by fisheries, and aquaculture has been developed as a means of surpassing this limit. The organized production of marine products has become an important and still growing contribution to the securing of food for humankind. Aquaculture is not a new idea. It is known to have been practiced for at least 3000 years, offering an important contribution of muchneeded proteins in Southeast Asia and other places relying on the regulation of water resources. Moreover, by 2001 the global production of aquaculture products had grown to a level of around 48 million tons per year, China being the main producer with 34 million tons (FAO, 2003). Most of the production in these regions has been based on freshwater species; the development of ocean-based production is a more recent activity. Two features are important for aquaculture—access to clean temperate water and access to sheltered conditions with either deep water or water with a high flow rate. Fish and crustaceans are poikilothermic animals, with their body temperature close to the temperature of the surrounding water. Because their life functions and growth rate are dependent on the body temperature, the temperature of the water plays a central role in their activity and growth. Fish such as salmon have an optimal growth rate at temperatures around 13–17oC and the growth rate decreases at lower temperatures. For these reasons, those interested in developing fish farming in the North have concentrated on regions where currents from the south bring warm water to nutrient-rich northern seas, and most of the Arctic generally does not provide the conditions needed for commercial aquaculture. The perfect example of suitable conditions for aquaculture is the North Atlantic Current, which brings water from the Mexican Gulf to the west coast of Norway, creating excellent conditions for fish farming beyond the

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Arctic Circle. The expansive coastline with deep fjords and clean water provides the perfect conditions for supporting fish farming. The fjords provide excellent shelter for the cages and nets used in connection with the rearing activity, just as the combination of steady currents and deep fjords provides a continuous flow of oxygenrich water and the outflow of excess fodder and waste products from the site. Similar conditions exist at the Faroe Islands, and in part around Iceland. The economic outcome from aquaculture contributes to the economies of the coastal communities, and may help to ensure the existence of many of the settlements in the North. Diseases among young fish kept in cages have been a major problem, but appear to be under control. There are, however, many problems in relation to the environment, which have caused major concern. The use of medicine in preventing diseases leads to outflow of unwanted antibiotics in the environment, just as the intermixture of native and introduced species may affect the continuing existence of local strains of fish. Norway is by far the largest producer of aquaculture products in the Circumpolar North. With a total production of 512,000 tons (FAO Fisheries Department Statistical Database, 2003) in 2001, the major part of the production is fish, with 438,000 tons salmon, 71,000 tons rainbow trout, and 1500 tons cod and other finfish products; crustaceans and mussels are around 3000 tons. The excellent conditions in Norway have been the basis of a boom in aquaculture during the last ten years. In the beginning, it had been seen as a new way of survival for the traditional livelihood of combining small-scale fishing and farming to also include aquaculture, eventually as a community-based activity. But by and large, the activity has developed into a large-scale industry with only a few players in the game. Faroe Islands, well situated in the North Atlantic Current, have some of the same favorable conditions as Norway, even though the coastal conditions differ slightly. The total production in 2001 was 46,000 tons, with salmon (44,000 tons) and rainbow trout (2000 tons) as the major products. Favorable conditions exist in Iceland also and there has been a long tradition of experiments with fish farming; yet, the total production in 2001 was only registered as 5000 tons, with salmon (3000 tons), trout (1000 tons), and Arctic char (1000 tons) as the major species. In Greenland, the only attempt to develop aquaculture so far failed due to economic collapse. An inland-based production facility for Arctic char was established in the late 1980s, but stopped its activities in the beginning of the 1990s due to problems in finding profitable markets for the products. Recent investigations have shown possibilities for profitable production of wolffish in the South Greenland fjords, but so far no attempt has been made to start production.

FISHER, ALEXANDER Production in Finland and Sweden is primarily concentrated in the more southern parts of the countries. The Finnish production of 16,000 tons is partly based on inland production of trout (3000 tons), and the major part of the production is concentrated in the Baltic Sea with a total production of 13,000 tons of rainbow trout. In Sweden, rainbow trout (3000 tons inland, 2000 tons in the Baltic Sea) is the major part of the total of 7000 tons. In addition, there is a small production of blue mussel (2000 tons). The second largest producer in the Circumpolar North is Canada, with a total production of 152,000 tons in 2001 (FAO, 2003), of which inland freshwater products (trout, rainbow trout, and a few other species) constitute 13,000 tons. The Canadian Atlantic coast— Québec, the Maritimes—includes a total of 64,000 tons, with salmon (37,000 tons) and mussels (21,000 tons) as the major species. And in Pacific Canada, that is, British Columbia, a total of 76,000 tons includes major species such as salmon (53,000 tons), chinook and coho (14,000 tons), and clams and oysters (9000 tons). Due to the moratorium on fisheries of major species such as cod, the aquaculture of Canada represents nearly a quarter of the total value of Canadian fish and seafood production, and in 1999 all aquaculture production in Canada accounted for close to 23% of the dollar value of the country’s total harvest of fish and shellfish. In Alaska, statute 16.40.210 prohibits finfish farming. However, Alaska does allow nonprofit ocean ranching, that is, releasing into public waters young fish that are available for harvest by fishermen upon their return to Alaskan waters as adults. The aquaculture therefore is limited to the production of shellfish and mussels, with a total production of 39,000 tons in 2001, including a total of 35,000 tons of oysters and 3000 tons of shellfish. The Russian aquaculture production of 90,000 tons in 2001 was mainly due to more southern production of carp (89,000 tons), and only with a total production of less than 1000 tons from sea-based production facilities. In an attempt to establish more profitable production of high-value products, the Kamchatka crab (king crab) was brought from Kamchatka to a test site in the Barents Sea close to Murmansk in the late 1960s. This attempt seems to have succeeded in the sense that a stock of Kamchatka crab has been established, and is slowly expanding to the west, into Norwegian waters where a quota on Kamchatka crab has been established. The total stock is still too small to provide lucrative fisheries with the species, and small-scale fishermen in the region complain about the crab having a major influence on the environment, wiping out most of the species traditionally caught in the region. The attempts to expand the limits of profitable aquaculture with new species are being constantly researched

and focus on Arctic char as well as other northern species such as halibut, wolfish, and mussels. Arctic char has always been an important food source for the Inuit in Canada’s north, but is becoming an increasingly popular delicacy all over the world. Its new-found success is partly due to aquaculture. The flesh is not only fine textured, flaky, and moist but is also leaner than its salmon relatives. The fish is well suited to aquaculture because it feeds successfully as low as 0°C and as high as 16°C. Research Stations in Tromsø, Norway, Akureyri and Reykjavik in Iceland, and aquaculture companies such as Icy Waters in Canada’s Yukon Territory are working to develop new and improved hybrid strains of Arctic char. One successful strain is marketed in North America under the name “Yukon Gold.” Now sold in North America, the market for this char is expanding to include Europe and Asia. The worldwide expansion of aquaculture has led to indirect negative consequences for Northern fisheriesdependent communities. The world market for fish and fish products is very sensitive to the expansion of production in specific market segments, and the expansion in the aquaculture production of salmon during the 1990s has led to a world market price for farmed salmon at a level in 2001 of one-third the price in 1991. Similarly, the expansion of shrimp farming in South East Asia, together with a marked increase in the catches of cold water shrimp, has led to a situation where the average world market price of coldwater shrimp is reduced by 10% per year (in fixed prices). RASMUS OLE RASMUSSEN See also Arctic Char; Fish; Salmon Further Reading Coull, James R., World Fisheries Resources, New York: Routledge, 1993 FAO Fisheries Department Statistical Database Website: http://www.fao.org/fi/statist/FISOFT/FISHPLUS.asp Fisheries Administration in the Field of Aqua Culture and Restocking, TemaNord: Nordic Council of Ministers, 1999, p. 501 Huet, Marcel, Textbook of Fish Culture. Breeding and Cultivation of Fish, Fishing News Books, 2001 Nordic Strategy for the Environment and Fisheries 1999–2002, TemaNord: Nordic Council of Ministers, 1999, p. 567 A Review of Research of Market Outlets for Nordic Fishermen, Nordic Council of Ministers, Nord: 2000, p. 524

FISHER, ALEXANDER The British explorer Alexander Fisher is best known for publishing the journals that he kept during the 1818 John Ross and the 1819–1920 Edward Parry expeditions in search of the North West Passage. Very little is known about Fisher’s life. An assistant surgeon in the British Royal Navy, he served on the

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FISHER, ALEXANDER Alexander under the command of Parry while expedition leader Ross took charge of the larger Isabella. Greenland and Davis Strait whalers had indicated that the Arctic seas had less ice than in many decades past and, because of this opportune moment, the British government resolved to send out ships to decide whether a North West Passage existed between the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the Bering Straits. The government did not build ships designed especially for Arctic voyages, preferring to strengthen transports with an additional lining of oak plank from the heel to above the waterline along the outside while covering bows with iron to prevent damage from floating ice. Additional beams were placed in the hold to enable the ship to withstand lateral pressure if it became trapped between two fields of ice. Merchant ships were chosen for service instead of ships of war because large storage capabilities were required. There was enough coal on board to last for two years as well as a sufficient number of vegetables to prevent scurvy. Lastly, the provisions included articles for bartering with the Inuit: trousers, jackets, umbrellas, needles, thread, cowrie shells, glass beads, and rifles. The crew was provided with additional clothing, including 40 wolf skin blankets. As Fisher’s anonymously published Journal of a Voyage of Discovery to the Arctic Regions Performed Between the 4th of April and the 18th of November, 1818, in His Majesty’s Ship Alexander, Wm. Edward Parry, Esq. Lieut. and Commander makes clear, exploration of the Arctic was as much a goal of the trip as the discovery of the passage. The latitudes and longitudes of places that were imperfectly known were to be determined while coasts and harbors were to be surveyed. Charged with finding the location of the magnetic pole, the expedition planned to observe the difference in the vibrations of the pendulum in high latitudes as well as collect natural history objects. After setting sail, the men took regular measurements using such scientific instruments as Fahrenheit’s thermometer, azimuth compasses, a barometer, hygrometer, hydrometer, Troughton’s spinning horizon, and Wollaston’s dip sector. Arriving in Greenland on May 31, the ships had difficulty in getting through densely packed ice. They encountered Inuit who came in canoes to barter sealskins, fowl, and eggs for clothes, iron, tobacco, and alcoholic spirits. Fisher noted details of their canoe construction and use. The British next took time to carefully examine icebergs, concluding that they had taken years to form. Once again setting off, both ships towed small net bags astern to secure marine items. In this manner, they picked up a piece of fir wood and a section of whale blubber that they then used to determine the course of the current. Since fishermen had killed the whale, the blubber had presumably carried on the current from Davis Strait.

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The travelers failed to kill any seals but did acquire specimens of loon, fulmar, kittiwake, and Greenland swallow. Dissections showed that the birds had a fat layer to protect against the climate, much to the surprise of the team. They shot and ate other birds such as rotges. By mid-June, the expedition crossed the Atlantic and entered Davis Strait to Baffin Bay. They encountered Inuit who taught the British how to catch seals by mimicking the animals through lying on the ice, grunting, and hopping along on elbows. On Hare Island, the British examined the ruins of Inuit huts and exhumed a grave before trading guns for Inuit dogs. When Ross saw a mirage that he mistakenly believed to be a mountain range, he believed that the ships could not move forward. The expedition returned to Britain and Parry immediately began to plan a return voyage. Fisher again served as assistant surgeon on Parry’s ship. Much like the first voyage, the Parry expedition planned to add to the general store of Arctic knowledge. Appendices to Fisher’s Journal of a Voyage of Discovery to the Arctic Regions in His Majesty’s Ships Hecla and Griper in the Years 1819 and 1820 contain listings of the instruments on board and the measurements taken. Fisher served on the Hecla, formerly a 12-gun brig. The explorers sailed up Davis Strait to Lancaster Sound and attempted their primary objective of finding the passage. They discovered Barrow Strait, crossed the meridian of 110° W, and settled in Winter Harbor at Melville Island. Fisher described the British system of treating frostbite with friction by snow, followed by immersion in cold water until sensation is restored. He noted that snow blindness, a common and severely painful condition, felt like sand in the eyes and could be prevented by using a cloth covering. Men suffering from its effects recovered in two to three days through an eye bath of a cooling lotion and by keeping their eyes shut. Blaming bed places for creating dampness that allowed scurvy to take hold, the men were provided with hammocks instead. On June 1, with Parry, three other officers, and eight seamen, Fisher traveled north across Melville Island on a two-week journey to a spot that Parry named Hecla and Griper Bay. In the first example of naval personnel man-hauling equipment, the group dragged 800 pounds of supplies on a two-wheeled cart. In honor of Fisher, the northern extremity of the blue hills by the bay was named Cape Fisher. Upon their return to the ship, ice still choked the harbor at Melville Island. Fisher spent his time carving the names of the two ships on a huge sandstone boulder by the beach—a famous monument in the years to follow. On August 1, they sailed out of Winter Harbor. Although disappointed that they had not found the North West Passage, the Britons took heart in that they had also not disproved its existence.

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Biography Most of Alexander Fisher’s life is lost to historical record. He was probably born in England around 1790. His education and Royal Navy officer status indicate that he probably came from a prosperous background, very possibly an upper class one. Fisher’s writings indicate that he had a strong knowledge of science as well as medicine. His detailed descriptions of the dissections of birds, walrus, narwhal, polar bear, and seal illustrate that he was a careful, meticulous man. Fisher quickly put his account of the 1819–1820 Parry-led voyage into print, thus forcing an annoyed Parry to rush his journal before Fisher grabbed all the attention. Fisher’s act may indicate a desire for glory or money, perhaps both. Fisher’s publication may also explain why he made no further Arctic journeys with Parry. Fisher is believed to have died in 1838, location and cause of death both unknown. CARYN E. NEUMANN Further Reading Berton, Pierre, The Arctic Grail: The Quest for the North West Passage and the North Pole, 1818–1909, New York: Viking Penguin, 1988 Thomson, George Malcolm, The North West Passage, London: Secker and Warburg, 1975

FISHERIES, COMMERCIAL The definition of the Arctic with respect to marine fisheries is generally not limited to Arctic waters proper, but also comprises Subarctic and cold temperate waters lying immediately to the south of the Arctic. The main reason for this is that, due to an unusually efficient nutrient renewal through vertical mixing in spring and autumn, the border between these two areas is particularly rich in primary and secondary production, that is, microscopic algae and zooplankton, which together form the basis for the well-being and size of numerous stocks of fish and invertebrates, as well as sea mammals and birds. Furthermore, Arctic fodder fish like capelin and polar cod feed in cold water in their adult phase. As they return to Subarctic regions, these species transfer enormous energy to more southern areas as they fall prey to cod and numerous other demersal species and semipelagics like saithe. The areas considered in this essay comprise the Barents and White Seas, the northern Norwegian Sea, Icelandic waters and the Iceland Sea, Greenlandic waters and those off Labrador and Newfoundland, that is, the Davis Strait and the Labrador Sea. On the Pacific side there are the eastern and western parts of the Bering Sea.

Working fishing boat, Bering Sea, Alaska. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

Fisheries in Arctic waters and adjacent sea areas have a long history, albeit not well documented until the 20th century. These fisheries developed differently in the various regions, but can be considered as fully developed around 1960. As defined here, the combined volume of Arctic fisheries is huge. Thus, the total annual average landings from all areas over the last four decades of the 20th century is about 6 million tons. Since some stocks are presently in depleted stages, the potential harvest could be even larger. The following is an account of the fisheries in the above areas.

The Arctic Fisheries Regions The Barents Sea and the Northern Norwegian Sea The Barents Sea is a shallow (150–250 m), Mediterranean semienclosed area: bordered to the north by the Svalbard and Franz Josef archipelagos, in the east by the large island of Novaya Zemlya, and in the south by the north coasts of Russia and Norway. The Barents Sea is open to the west, allowing the entrance of warm Atlantic water without which the whole area would be covered by Arctic waters. The Polar Front (the boundary between Atlantic and Arctic waters) is commonly found in the central and southeastern Barents Sea. The front may move quite far west in winter but retreats to the north and northeast in

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FISHERIES, COMMERCIAL summer. The Atlantic influence is variable. A strong Atlantic influence driving the Polar Front far to the east and north is believed to enhance the survival of larval fish, while a small inflow of Atlantic water has the reverse effect. Through its size and generally high productivity at the lower links of the food chain, the Barents Sea is one of the most productive fishing grounds of the world. For the past 1000 years, fishing for cod and herring has been important for coastal communities in northern Norway and Russia. Throughout the centuries, fishing was purely coastal and seasonal and based on the huge numbers of adult cod and herring migrating into nearshore waters for spawning during winterspring, as well as on the schools of adolescent cod feeding on spawning capelin along the northern coasts of Norway and Russia in April-June. Although offshore fishing began at the end of the 19th century, when cod were caught on the Svalbard banks and herring was fished with drift nets north of Iceland, the quantities caught in these fisheries were small compared to the coastal fisheries. Estimates of annual yields prior to 1900 indicate large fluctuations in the catches of both cod and herring. Otherwise, the dominant feature of these old catch series is the five- to ten fold increase between 1820 and 1880 as compared to yield levels of previous centuries. For fish species other than cod and herring, reliable estimates of yield prior to the 20th century are not available. Total landings from the area cod, other demersal (bottom-dwelling fish), herring, as well as the Arctic species of capelin, polar cod, Greenland halibut, and northern shrimp increased from about 0.5 million tons at the beginning of the century to about 3 million tons in the 1970s. This increase has been related to a series of major technological improvements of fishing vessels and gear, as well as electronic instruments for fish finding and positioning. The two most important fisheries in the Northeast Atlantic are still those of cod and herring. Prior to 1920, the bulk of the cod catch was from the large seasonal and coastal fisheries. In the 1920s and 1930s, an international bottom trawl fishery, targeting cod as well as other demersal (bottom dwelling) species like haddock and redfish and the semidemersal saithe, developed in offshore areas in the Barents Sea and off Svalbard. Annual catches increased from about 400,000 t in 1930 to 700—800,000 t at the end of the decade. Landings also remained high after World War II until the end of the 1970s, when catches declined sharply due to reduced stock size and the introduction of exclusive economic zones (EEZs) in 1977. Management measures have, at least periodically, been more effective since 1977, but fishing mortality of Barents Sea cod is still high, the spawning stock

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biomass well below the recommended precautionary level of 500,000 t, and recruitment to the stock has been low in recent years. Herring, which spawn off the west coast of Norway in spring, grow to maturity at the age of 3–4 years in the southern Barents Sea, north Norwegian fjords and, in case of large year classes, even in the northeastern Norwegian Sea. Together with two much smaller stocks spawning in spring at the Faroes and Iceland and mixed with the Norwegian herring in the feeding season, this is potentially by far the largest herring complex in the world and was collectively called the Atlanto-Scandian herring. Until the mid-1960s, these herring would migrate to feed in summer north and east of Iceland, in the oceanic area between northeast Iceland and the island of Jan Mayen (c.71° N 8° W) as well as in the western Norwegian Sea. At this time, the overwintering area (October-December) was approximately 50–80 nautical miles east of Iceland, from where the spawning migration back across the Norwegian Sea to Norway, as well as to spawning grounds at Iceland and the Faroes, started in late December. In 1965 and subsequent years, there was a large cooling of the waters north and east of Iceland as well as of the northwestern and western Norwegian Sea. This was accompanied by a decimation of the stock of “redfeed” (calanoid copepods, mainly Calanus finmarchicus) in these areas. This, together with rapidly dwindling stock size caused by overfishing, completely disrupted the previous migration pattern of these herring. Until the 1950s, Norwegian herring fisheries remained largely seasonal and nearshore. These fisheries were based on prespawning and spawning herring at or near the spawning grounds on the west coast as well as on the so-called small and fat juvenile and adolescent herring in the fjords of North Norway. The bulk of the landings came from Norwegian vessels. In the 1950s, Russian fishers developed a gillnet fishery in offshore waters in the Norwegian Sea, and in the late 1950s to early 1960s Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese purse seiners started using echo sounding equipment to locate herring and power blocks to haul the large seine nets. These technological developments resulted in a large increase of the total catch until 1966 (2 million tons). Thereafter, catches decreased rapidly and the stock collapsed. Effective management measures were neither advised nor implemented before the stock had collapsed completely. For a few subsequent years, a complete ban on fishing herring was enforced, followed by a period of a small experimental fishery for monitoring stock developments. For 25 years, stock abundance was low, the herring remained in Norwegian coastal waters throughout the year, and the stock was managed by Norway. During the 1990s, the

FISHERIES, COMMERCIAL stock recovered, started feeding migrations into the Norwegian Sea, and catch quotas and landings increased. In 2002, the total landings were 830,000 t. A Norwegian fishery for capelin began in the 1950s and expanded rapidly in connection with the collapse of the herring in the 1960s. Russian vessels soon entered this fishery, and from 1965 and during the next 20 years Norwegian and Russian capelin catches were taken in autumn and winter and averaged approximately 2 million tons annually. In the mid-1980s, the stock crashed due to overfishing, but recovered in around four years. Since then, the Barents Sea capelin have twice declined drastically in abundance. The present-day capelin fishery in the Barents Sea is now pursued only in winter.

Iceland Because Iceland is an island with a relatively small continental shelf, the Icelandic marine ecosystem is different from that of the Barents Sea in that it is smaller and of a much more open nature. South and west of Iceland there is a complete dominance of Atlantic water, while off the north and east coasts the Atlantic influence diminishes in that direction through mixing with colder waters from the north. In “normal years,” the Polar Front approximately follows the North Icelandic shelf edge, but may move close to the north and east coasts in cold periods. If it were not for the warm Atlantic water, the Icelandic climate and oceanic conditions would be just as harsh as those of East Greenland. The history of fishing in the waters around Iceland goes back hundreds of years, but is mainly centered round Atlantic cod, the preferred species in northern waters in olden times. Demersal fisheries at Iceland fall into two categories: the local land-based fisheries conducted by Icelanders, and those of distant water foreign fleets. Until the late 19th century, the Icelandic fisheries were primarily conducted with open rowboats, while the distant water fishing fleets consisted obviously of much larger, decked ocean-going sailing vessels. Until the last decade of the 19th century, almost all fishing for demersal species at Iceland, whether from small open rowboats or larger oceangoing sailing vessels, was carried out by hand lines. It has been estimated that the combined landings by Icelandic, Dutch, and French fishing vessels were in the order of 35,000 t annually in the period 1766–1777. One hundred years later, the combined French and Icelandic catches averaged about 55,000 t. Compared to the subsequent development of fishing effort and knowledge of stock sizes and exploitation rates, it is obvious that even large fleets of several hundred sailing vessels and open rowboats, fishing with primitive hand lines, cannot have had any serious effect on the abundant cod stock and other demersal species at Iceland.

This changed dramatically with the introduction of the steam and combustion engines to the fishing fleet, as well as the adoption of active fishing gear at the turn of the 19th century. Thus, by the beginning of the 20th century, the otter trawl had been adopted among the foreign fleet, while the smaller motor-powered Icelandic boats started using gill nets, long lines, and Danish seines. Landings no longer consisted almost exclusively of cod, but species like haddock, halibut, plaice, and redfish also became common items of the catch. It has been estimated that the demersal catch at Iceland increased from about 50,000 t in the 1880s to about 160,000 t in 1905, reaching 240,000 t just before World War I. Although cod was still the most important species, the proportion of other demersal species rose to about 30% in this period. Catches declined during the late 1930s, while the exploitation rate increased until the fishing effort decreased drastically due to World War II. After World War II, demersal fish catches increased again. From 1955, the exploitation rate of all demersal stocks, but especially that of cod, increased rapidly and with few exceptions remained high during the last 45 years of the 20th century. Until 1976, this was due to a combined effort of Icelandic and foreign distant water fleets. However, since the extension of the Icelandic EEZ to 200 miles in 1977, the high rate of fishing has been due to the enhanced efficiency of Iceland’s fishing fleet. In the Icelandic area, pelagic fisheries have a shorter history than demersal fisheries. Commercial fishing for herring started in the 1860s when Norwegian fishermen initiated a land-based fishery on the north and east coasts using traditional Scandinavian beach seines. This fishery proved very unstable and was abandoned in the late 1880s. Drift netting was introduced at the turn of the 19th century and purse seining was introduced in the early 20th century (1904). The latter proved very successful in the fishery of the Atlanto-Scandian herring off the north coast in summer, where the herring schools used to surface regularly. On the other hand, drift nets had to be used in the autumn fishery off the south and west coasts where the herring rarely surfaced. During the 1920s and 1930s, the fishery was limited mainly by the lack of processing facilities. Around 1945, the herring behavior pattern changed and, as a result, purse seining for surfacing schools became ineffective and catches declined. The reasons for this change of behavior have never been identified. The technical innovations of the herring fishery described in the previous section, as well as better knowledge of the migration routes of the great AtlantoScandian herring complex, led to an international herring boom in which Icelandic, Norwegian, Russian, and Faroese fishermen were the main participants. This

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FISHERIES, COMMERCIAL extraordinary herring fishery ended with a collapse of the Atlanto-Scandian herring complex during the late 1960s. Present-time catches of Atlanto-Scandian herring since the mid-1990s have mainly been taken outside of Icelandic waters. The Icelandic spring spawning herring have not shown any signs of recovery. An Icelandic capelin fishery began in the mid1960s, and within a few years replaced the rapidly dwindling herring fishery. The capelin fishery is conducted by the same high-technology fleet as that used for catching herring. During the first 8–10 years, the capelin fishery only pursued capelin spawning runs in nearshore waters off the southwest and south coasts of Iceland in February and March. In 1976, an oceanic summer fishery began north of Iceland and in the Denmark Strait. In 1978, the summer fishery became international as it extended north into the EEZs of Greenland and Jan Mayen (Norway). The most recent addition to the Icelandic fisheries is that of the semipelagic blue whiting, a straddling species commonly encountered in that part of the Icelandic ecosystem dominated by Atlantic water, that is, off the west, south, and southern east coast.

Greenland The Greenlandic marine ecosystem is an Arctic one. The waters of the East Greenland shelf are dominated by the cold East Greenland Current. These cold waters may be somewhat ameliorated by the western branch of the Irminger Current, and off South and West Greenland the influence of Atlantic waters of the Irminger Current may be found as a subsurface layer that reaches quite far north and influences the temperature in the upper layers through diffusion. Although cod has been fished intermittently in West Greenland waters for centuries, the success of this fishery has been variable. In spite of patchy data from the 17th and 18th centuries, there is little doubt that cod abundance at West Greenland fluctuated a great deal. Information from the 19th century suggests that cod were fairly plentiful in Greenlandic waters until about 1850. After that there seem to have been extremely few cod off southwest Greenland until in the 1910s, when a small increase in the occurrence of cod in inshore areas was noted. Cod were also registered in offshore regions off West Greenland in the 1920s, where fisheries by foreign vessels expanded quickly and catches increased from about 5000 t in 1926 to 100,000 t in 1930. From then until the end of World War II, this fishery yielded annual catches between about 60,000 and 115,000 t. By 1950, the total catch had reached almost 200,000 t and then fluctuated around 300,000 t during 1952–1961. The increase of the cod catch continued

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and landings varied between about 380 and 480,000 t during 1962–1968. However, by 1970, the catch had decreased to 140,000 t and was, with large variations, within a range of 10,000–150,000 t until the early 1990s. Since 1993, practically no Atlantic cod has been caught in Greenlandic waters. Before the introduction of a 200-mile EEZ around Greenland in 1978, the cod fishery was mostly conducted by foreign fleets, but the Greenlandic fleet has since dominated the fishery. A fishery for Greenland halibut began in a modest way around 1915 and by 1970 had only reached about 4000 t, most of which was taken by Greenland. From 1970 to 1980, other countries participated in the Greenland halibut fishery, which peaked in 1976 at about 26,000 t. By 1980, the catch had fallen to about 7000 t. During the 1990s, the catch increased rapidly to about 23,000 t in 1992 and a record high of about 35,000 t in 1999. After 1980, foreign vessels have not played a significant role in the Greenland halibut fishery off West Greenland. The catch of northern shrimp off West Greenland has increased steadily since 1960. In the beginning, this species was fished only by the Greenland fleet, but from 1972 large vessels from other countries joined this fishery. Between 1976 and the early 1980s, the catch by other countries decreased and has been insignificant since. On the other hand, the Greenlandic catch increased steadily from a total catch of about 1800 t in 1960 to 132,000 t in 2002. Historically, capelin have been caught at Greenland for domestic use and animal fodder. A small commercial fishery for roe-bearing females began at West Greenland in 1964. There were relatively large fluctuations of the capelin catch from 1964 to 1975, but since then the catch of capelin has been insignificant. This fishery is conducted by Greenlanders. East Greenland waters have been fished commercially only since after World War II. The main species, which have been fished commercially off East Greenland, are Greenland halibut, northern shrimp, cod, and redfish. With the exception of northern shrimp in the last two decades, the fisheries off East Greenland have almost exclusively been conducted by foreign fleets.

Northeastern Canada Along the northeast coast of Canada, Arctic conditions extend southward to the central Grand Bank (46° N). This extension far to the south results from the Labrador Current, which transports cold water southward from Davis Strait, the Canadian Archipelago, and Hudson Bay over the plateau east of Labrador and Newfoundland. The median southerly extent of sea ice is on the northern Grand Bank at approximately 47° N and

FISHERIES, COMMERCIAL bottom water temperatures on the northern Grand Bank are below 0°C for considerable periods. Fish has always dominated the history of Newfoundland. The great interest in Britain for Newfoundland after its “discovery” during the Cabot voyage of 1497 was generated by the presence of incredibly large amounts of codfish. Exploitation of this fishery by the British would reduce that country’s dependence on Iceland for fish, a dependence that was creating difficulties at that time. The French also saw the value of Newfoundland’s fishery; hence, possession of the island was one of the goals of both sides during the colonial wars of the 18th century. The distribution of Atlantic cod along the coast of Canada has historically been from the northern Labrador Shelf southward beyond the limit given above, although during the 1990s there have been few cod off Labrador. Atlantic cod tend to live on the continental shelf, but have been found at depths up to at least 850 m on the upper slope off eastern Newfoundland. The European fishery for Atlantic cod off eastern Newfoundland began in the late 15th century. For the first few centuries, fishing was conducted by hook and line, so the cod were exploited only from late spring to early autumn in shallow water along the coast and on the plateau of Grand Bank to the southeast of the island. Annual landings increased through the 18th and 19th centuries to about 300,000 t during the early decades of the 20th century. Landings increased gradually from about 150,000 t in 1850 to between 200 and 300,000 t during the first half of the 20th century. In the 1960s, there was a dramatic increase of cod landings as large numbers of trawlers located and exploited the overwintering aggregations on the edge of the Labrador Shelf and the Northeast Newfoundland Shelf. At the same time, the numbers of large cod in deep water near the coast of Newfoundland are thought to have declined quickly as the local longliner fleet switched to synthetic gill nets. Catches peaked at 894,000 t in 1968, and then declined steadily to only 143,000 t in 1978. Following Canada’s declaration of a 200 nautical mile EEZ in 1977, the stock recovered somewhat and catches were in the range 230–270,000 t during most of the 1980s. However, catches fell rapidly during the early 1990s as the stock declined to very low levels. A moratorium on directed fishing was declared in 1992. A small cod-directed fishery was opened in inshore areas in 1998, but closed once again in 2003. The Greenland halibut fishery in northeast Canadian waters has been conducted primarily with otter trawlers in the second half of the year. Landings come mainly from off southeastern Baffin Island. The fishery expanded even further north into Baffin Bay in the mid- to late 1990s. This fishery, which extended to 73° N in 2002, has been limited by ice cover to the months of September to November.

Prior to the initiation of a commercial offshore fishery during the early 1970s, capelin were fished on or near the spawning beaches. Annual catches, used for local consumption, may have reached 20,000–25,000 t. Offshore catches by foreign fleets increased rapidly, peaking at about 370,000 t in 1976, and then declined rapidly. This offshore fishery continued at a low level until 1992. During the late 1970s, as the foreign fishery declined, Canadian fishermen began fishing mature capelin near the spawning beaches to supply the Japanese market for roe-bearing females. This fishery expanded rapidly, exhibited highest catches during the 1980s, and declined during the 1990s. The catches in the inshore fishery have generally not been as high as those from the offshore foreign fishery. Although the fishery for Canadian capelin has been relatively small when compared to the capelin fisheries in Iceland and the Barents Sea, there has been concern about the potential impact of a commercial fishery on capelin because of its role as a forage species. However, there is no scientific evidence to support the notion that the fishery has had an impact on capelin abundance. Arctic cod is broadly distributed through the Arctic and in cold waters of adjacent seas. It occurs on the shelf from northern Labrador to eastern Newfoundland, with the average size of individuals and the size of aggregations decreasing from north to south. There has been no directed fishery for Arctic cod off eastern Canada, but it is likely that small quantities have been taken as bycatch by other countries. Northern shrimp is distributed off West Greenland from Cape Farewell northward to about 74º N and thence southward off eastern Canada to beyond the Arctic. The depth of highest concentration tends to vary from area to area, but is generally in the range 200–600 m. A fishery with large trawlers began off northeastern Canada in the late 1970s. For the first decade, most of the catch was taken from two channels in the central and southern Labrador Shelf, but in the late 1980s there was an increase in effort and landings both to the south on the northeast Newfoundland Shelf and to the north off northern Labrador. Catches increased above 25,000 t by the mid-1990s. New survey technology introduced in 1995 indicated that commercial catches of shrimp were very small relative to survey biomass, and quotas were increased considerably during the late 1990s. Much of the increase in catch from 1997 onward came from a new fleet of small (<100 ft) vessels that fished with bottom trawls primarily on the mid-shelf.

The Bering Sea The Bering Sea is a subpolar sea bounded by the Bering Strait to the north and the Aleutian Islands

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FISHERIES, COMMERCIAL archipelago to the south. Geographically, the Bering Sea lies between 52° N and 66° N, and 162° E and 157° W. The narrow (85-km long) and shallow (<42 m deep) passage of the Bering Strait connects the Bering Sea to the south with the Chukchi Sea and the Arctic Ocean in the north. The sea area covers almost 3 million km2 and is divided almost equally between a deep basin in the southwestern part and a large, extensive continental shelf in the eastern and northern parts. The eastern continental shelf is 1200 km in length, exceeds 500 km in width at its narrowest point, and is the widest continental shelf outside the Arctic Ocean. The shelf is characterized as a featureless plain that deepens gradually from its extensive shoreline to the shelf break at about 170 m depth. Very limited commercial fisheries are prosecuted in the Chukchi Sea or in the Arctic Ocean north of the Bering Strait due to known low resource abundance, operating difficulties, and distance from markets. Marine mammal populations are locally important for subsistence use. The continental shelves of the eastern and western Bering Sea combine to produce one of the world’s largest and most productive fishing areas. They also contain some of the largest populations of marine mammals, birds, crabs, and groundfish in the world. In all, 25% of the total global yield of fish came from the region in the 1970s. Commercial fisheries in the Bering Sea are generally large-scale trawl fisheries for groundfish, of which about 30% of the total catch is processed at sea and the remainder is delivered to shoreside processing plants in Russia and the United States. The home base for many of the Bering Sea vessels is outside the Arctic region, reflecting the comparative advantage of supply and service available in lower cost regions. Small coastal communities have a strong complement of indigenous peoples with subsistence fishing interests. They depend on coastal species, especially salmon, herring, and halibut; however, the overlap with commercial activities is generally small. Anadromous species (marine species that spawn in fresh water) extend far inland via the complex river systems and are critical resources for native peoples. Annual catches of all commercial groundfish species for the period 1990–2001 in the US eastern Bering Sea EEZ ranged from 1.3 to 1.8 million tons and averaged 1.6 million tons. The walleye pollock catch averaged 1.2 million tons and ranged from 0.99 to 1.45 million tons. In the western Bering Sea, the total groundfish catch reached 1.45 million tons in 1988, of which walleye pollock contributed 1.29 million tons. The annual catch for the period 1990–2001 averaged 0.73 million tons, ranging from 0.45 to 1.06 million tons. On average, walleye pollock comprised 89% of the catch over the 11-year period.

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The Bering Sea is an important habitat for many stocks comprising the five species of Pacific salmon during the ocean phase of their life history. Here, the diverse stocks intermingle from origins in Siberia, Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, Japan, Canada, and the US west coast. The earliest fisheries for salmon were likely by native subsistence fisheries in which salmon were captured returning to their native streams to spawn. During the 20th century, there were three main fisheries for salmon in the Bering Sea: (1) the Russian and Alaskan domestic fisheries, (2) the Japanese highseas gillnet and longline fishery, and (3) the bycatch of salmon in the groundfish fisheries. Salmon canneries first appeared on the Alaskan side of the Bering Sea in the late 1890s to process fish returning to Bristol Bay. It is reported that between 1894 and 1917, the Kvichak and Nushagak rivers flowing into Bristol Bay produced 10 million sockeye salmon annually. Purse seines and gill nets were the primary fishing gear used in the early days of the fishery. Gill nets were hauled from the beach using horses, which were later replaced by engines, whereas the purse seine fishery started around the time of World War I with the advent of powered fishing craft. Purse seining continues to the present as the primary gear in a highly mobile fleet fishing nearshore, which assures the targeting of specific salmon stocks. Although all five species of Pacific salmon are present in Bristol Bay, sockeye salmon are by far the most abundant and have dominated the salmon catch for years. The Bristol Bay salmon catch for all species totaled 42 million fish in 1993, of which 41 million were sockeye salmon, the largest catch on record. On average, pink salmon contributed 73.8% of the Russian salmon catch in the western Bering Sea from 1952 to 1993, chum salmon—24.2%, sockeye salmon 1.3%, Chinook— 0.6%, and coho only 0.1%. Since 1989, the runs of pink salmon to the eastern Kamchatka coast have been in good condition during odd years. The historical high catch totaled 83,640 t in 1999. The average pink salmon catch (38,390 t) for 1989–2001 is more than twice the level for 1952–1993 (15,996 t). Similarly, chum salmon catches were also stable at 11,000–12,000 t in 2000–2001 compared to 5250 t for 1952–1993. The recent improved stock conditions coincide with new fishery regulations that limit the chum salmon bycatch during the pink salmon fishery. The main sockeye salmon fishery in eastern Kamchatka results from the productive Kamchatka River, slightly southward of the Bering Sea. The Japanese high-seas gill-net and long-line salmon fishery expanded into the Bering Sea in 1952 with three motherships and 57 catcher boats, which grew to 14 motherships and 407 catcher boats by 1956. The peak catch of 116,200 t occurred in 1955 and ranged from

FJORDS 71,000 to 87,000 t for the 21-year period 1957–1977. Sockeye, chum, and, pink salmon comprised 95% of the catch in this fishery, which ceased operations in 1983. The floating gill nets were typically 50 m wide and were assembled in separate sets ranging from 6 to 9 nautical miles in length. Mesh sizes were 13 cm and the gear was set at twilight and retrieved after 1 a.m. The bycatch of salmon in the commercial groundfish fisheries is of less importance than the directed fisheries mentioned above, but still accounts for fishing mortality important to resource managers. Observer sampling of the groundfish fishery indicates that Chinook salmon are more frequent in the bottom trawl catch and the other salmon species are more frequent in the pelagic trawls. In the western Bering Sea, primarily Chinook and chum salmon were present in the bottom trawl catches during research surveys in 1974–1991. ALF HÅKON HOEL AND HJALMAR VILJAMSSON See also Barents Sea; Bering Sea; Capelin; Cod; Fish; Fish Farming; Greenland Halibut; Herring; Pollock; Salmon Further Reading Bakkala, R.G., Structure and Historical Changes in the Groundfish Complex of the Eastern Bering Sea, NOAA Tech. Rep. NMFS 114, 1993 Blindheim, J. & H.R. Skjoldal, “Effects of Climatic Changes on the Biomass Yield of the Barents Sea, Norwegian Sea, and West Greenland Large Marine ecosystems.” In Large Marine Ecosystems: Stress, Mitigration and Sustainability, edited by K. Sherman, L.M. Alexander & B.D. Gold, Washington, District of Columbia: AAAS Pub. 92–395, 1992 National Research Council, The Bering Sea Ecosystem, Washington, District of Columbia: National Academy Press, 1996 Palsson, Gisli, Coastal Economies, Cultural Accounts: Human Ecology and Icelandic Discourse, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001 Rasmussen, Rasmus O. & Lawrence C. Hamilton, The Development of Fisheries in Greenland, Roskilde: North Atlantic Regional Studies, Roskilde University, 2001 Sakshaug, Egil & John Walsh, “Marine Biology: Biomass, Productivity Distributions and their Variability in the Barents and Bering Seas.” In The Arctic: Environment, People and Policy, edited by Mark Nuttall & Terry V. Callaghan, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000, pp.163–196 Wespestad, V.G., “The status of Bering Sea pollock and the effect of the ‘donut hole’ fishery.” Fisheries, 18 (1993): 18–24

FJORDS Fjords are spectacular examples of glacial erosion by ice flowing through major rock channels and thereby producing landscapes of selective linear erosion. A fjord is essentially a glaciated valley that is now flooded by the sea, to form a long, narrow, steep-sided coastal inlet. Since fjords are essentially drowned

troughs, the literature on trough formation is relevant to fjord evolution and so this review does not isolate the two forms. The cross-sectional profiles of troughs and fjords are often referred to as U-shaped, but in fact are best approximated by the formula for a parabola: Vd = awb where w is the valley half width, Vd is valley depth, and a and b are constants. However, true cross profiles deviate from this mathematical parabola largely due to the production of breaks in slope by pulsed erosion through time. These effects have been modeled by imparting a valley glacier on a fluvial, V-shaped valley. Ice velocities at the base of the glacier are highest partway up the valley sides and lowest below the glacier margins and center line. By assuming that the erosion rates are proportional to the sliding velocity, the greatest erosion occurs on the valley sides, thereby causing broadening and steepening of the valley. The development of the steep sides of troughs and fjords may be aided by pressure release or dilatation in the bedrock. The long profiles, or longitudinal section along the valley, of troughs and fjords are different from those of river valleys in that they possess overdeepened basins on their floors at points where glacial erosion is concentrated. This occurs at the junctions of tributary valleys or at constrictions in the valley cross profile where ice discharges increase. Each basin terminates at a sill or threshold where the ice flow becomes less constrained and velocities decrease. This gives rise to long profiles that are typically stepped. In addition to changing glacier ice discharges, spatial variations in bedrock lithology and structure and preexisting physiographic features may also dictate the location of overdeepenings and thresholds. Trough and fjord long profiles have long been employed as a means of classification. Specifically, a fourfold classification recognizes: (1) alpine types, cut by valley glaciers emanating from high ground; (2) Icelandic types, with closed trough heads at their upper ends, having been cut by ice spilling over from surrounding plateaux; (3) composite types, which are through-troughs or through-valleys open at both ends and cut beneath an ice sheet; and (4) intrusive or inverse types, which are cut against the regional slope. The shallowing of fjords and the occurrence of thresholds reflect the increased buoyancy and eventual flotation of the glacier down flowline. Glacier flow will also diverge where the glacier emerges into the lower and less constricted topography of the coast, giving rise to a reduction in erosional capacity. As isostatic rebound of the land takes place during deglaciation, fjord thresholds may emerge to form skerries or numerous low-lying bedrock islands and strandflats. The locations of fjords reflect the present and past distributions of low-altitude outlet glaciers and occur along the coasts of Greenland, Alaska,

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FLOE EDGE

The steep sides of Kjosnesfjord, seen from Jolstravatnet, Norway. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

Norway, many of the islands of the Canadian Arctic archipelago, and the Svalbard archipelago. The longest fjords in the Arctic are Greely Fjord (Nansen Sound, Nunavut) at 400 km and Nordvestfjord (Ittoqqortoormiit (Scoresbysund), Greenland) at 300 km. There are a variety of fjord plan forms ranging from sinuous to rectilinear. Sinuous or meandering forms are often regarded as preglacial legacies, where glacier ice has excavated and accentuated preexisting (preglacial) fluvial valleys. Where fjord alignments can be linked to bedrock structure or lineaments, it is often suggested that glacier ice has exploited lithological weaknesses rather than preexisting fluvial valleys. Rectilinear fjord plan forms have been linked to regional patterns of intersecting fractures or faults. There is undoubtedly a continuum of forms ranging from tectonically controlled grabens through glacially modified river and fault systems to entirely glacially eroded fjords. An excellent example of the juxtaposition of different fjord plan forms occurs on northern Ellesmere Island, where the occurrence of both rectilinearity and sinuosity attests to the long-term impact of a combination of factors in the glacial erosion of fjords. DAVID J.A. EVANS See also Ellesmere Island; Glacial Erosion; Ittoqqortoormiit (Scoresbysund) Further Reading Benn, D.I. & D.J.A. Evans, Glaciers and Glaciation, London: Arnold, 1998 Dowdeswell, E.K. & J.T. Andrews, “The Fjords of Baffin Island, Description and Classification.” In Quaternary Environments: Eastern Canadian Arctic, Baffin Bay and West Greenland, edited by J.T. Andrews, London: Allen and Unwin, 1985

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Harbor, J.M., “Numerical modelling of the development of U-shaped valleys by glacial erosion.” Geological Society of America Bulletin, 104(1992): 1364–1375 Loken, O.H. & D.A. Hodgson, “On the submarine geomorphology along the east coast of Baffin Island.” Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, 8 (1971): 185–195 Syvitski, J.P.M., D.C. Burrell & J.M. Skei, Fjords: Processes and Products, New York: Springer, 1987

FLOE EDGE The floe edge is a constantly moving and dynamic line that marks the end of fixed fast ice (ice that is anchored to the shore) and the start of the Arctic Ocean. The word floe probably comes from Norwegian, where flo means a “flat layer.” In English, a floe is defined as floating ice formed in a large sheet on the surface of a body of water. In the fall as the ocean freezes, the floe edge moves farther and farther out from land and may eventually completely disappear once the body of water is frozen completely solid. In the spring, as the ice starts to break up, the floe edge recedes and gradually comes closer to land until it eventually disappears completely. As the weather warms, a combination of currents and meltwater runoff form cracks in the ice known as leads. These cracks may be many kilometers behind the floe edge, but once they connect on both sides with free water enormous pieces of ice will float out and away. For this reason the floe edge very rarely recedes gradually, but rather in large pieces. Animals tend to be abundant in open water near the ice edge, which is generally the most active biological area in the Arctic. As spring moves into summer, the Arctic Circle is immersed in 24 h of sunlight. The bottom of the pack ice becomes covered with single-celled algae. These algae are eaten by a number of small

FLORA OF THE TUNDRA

Seal on an ice floe, Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Copyright W.E. Garrett/National Geographic Image Collection

crustaceans, which in turn are consumed by a wide variety of invertebrates, fish, birds, and mammals. These birds and mammals seek access to the abundant food supply under the ice. Since birds and mammals must breathe, they cannot feed under fast ice and are thus often found feeding and resting in open water near the floe edge. Seals and walrus may also rest and warm up on the ice as it provides an easy escape into the water from polar bears that frequently patrol the edge. Bowhead, narwhal, and beluga whales also gather at the floe edge, waiting for the ice to break up and open up migration routes to their feeding grounds. The Arctic whales can swim underneath the ice and find small holes that they can breathe through, as none have dorsal fins that would prevent them from aligning their blowholes flush with the ice. They cannot swim too far away from the edge, however, as they will suffocate if they cannot find a breathing hole. The whales use the ice as a sanctuary against orcas (killer whales), who will not pursue them under the floe edge. Orcas cannot breathe under the ice because their large dorsal fin makes it impossible for them to place their blowhole against the ice. After an Arctic winter, ice can be many feet thick and is strong enough to safely support people, animals, and even snowmobiles right up to the edge. Inuit who camp on the floe edge must be careful that what may be fixed fast ice when they arrive does not break away some kilometers in and drift away. Hunting and tourist camps are frequently set up close to the floe edge because of the wildlife that moves along the edge. Attention must therefore be paid to ensure that the floe

edge does not break and become the edge of a floating piece of ice, thereby leaving a new floe edge many kilometers back. People normally travel to the floe edge by snowmobile or dog sled and then use boats to go beyond the edge into the Arctic Ocean. These boats, kept close to camp, provide a safety measure against the possibility of the campsite floating away. GRAHAM DICKSON See also Leads; Sea Ice Further Reading Pielou, E.C., A Naturalist’s Guide to the Arctic, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994

FLORA OF THE TUNDRA Botanists define the Arctic as being above the polar treeline. Along this line, the mean July temperature is around 10°C: somewhat higher on continents and lower in oceanic areas. The treeline criterion is applicable for northern Fennoscandia and Iceland, even if the forests there are only remnants of what was present before the Viking settlement. It is not applicable to the Faroe Islands that have not had any known Holocene forests. While the treeline follows a fairly uniform line across Eurasia, in North America it varies from above 68° N in Alaska to approximately 54° N in southern Hudson Bay, Canada. The position is influenced by ocean currents and prevailing winds. Where the Gulf Stream reaches Scandinavia above 70° N, mountain tops have an alpine tundra that has some

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Arctic poppies (Papaver Radicatum), Greenland. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

plant species that occur predominantly further north, but many species are reaching their northernmost limit. This area is not considered Arctic tundra (see Arctic: Definitions and Boundaries). Within the Arctic, the flora has been divided into five zonal units that reflect a July mean temperature range of about 2°C. The coldest zone has a desertlike appearance with less than 5% ground cover composed of herbs like Saxifraga, Draba, Cerastium, and Papaver. This zone is absent from a broad area around Bering Strait. The next zone, coming south, has a typical component of prostrate shrubs, like Dryas and Salix. The plant cover is discontinuous, but not desertlike. Peat accumulation occurs, particularly in mires with Carex and Eriophorum. The third zone is dominated by the dwarf-shrub heather, Cassiope tetragona, which occurs widely around the pole, but does not grow in Novaya Zemlya, on alkaline, fine-textured soils, and in small oceanic areas. The vegetation cover is closed and minerotrophic fens often cover large areas. Fireweed, Epilobium latifolium, communities are present along most rivers. In the next zone, dwarf-shrubs still dominate, but heather is replaced by species of birch (Betula), Empetrum, Salix, and Vaccinium, some of which only grow on acidic substrates. In the amphi-Beingian area, tussock tundra dominated by the cottongrass, Eriophorum vaginatum, dominates. The zone closest to the boreal forest features shrubs (taller than 0.5 m) in the genera Salix, Alnus, and Betula and a podzol soil profile is often developed. Tall

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herbs dominate in snow-bed vegetation and the moss Sphagnum produces oligotrophic bogs. Proximity to the Arctic ocean also influences vegetation because the land warms up as the longest day approaches, but the ocean often remains ice-covered until early August when much of the summer plant growth has occurred. While the Canadian Arctic Archipelago reaches from 62° to 82° N, the average maximum and minimum temperature through that range of latitudes is uniform for most of the area. Many places below the treeline in continental North America record colder temperatures than does the far north Eureka weather station at 82° N on Ellesmere Island. The distribution of plants is also influenced by topography, precipitation, soil type, and soil pH. Areas of the Arctic have less than 250 mm annual precipitation and this contributes to the desertlike appearance of the coldest zone. In these areas, groundwater seeping up from melting permafrost is available for plant growth in the summer, so that the area is not a desert in the sense that water is limiting growth. One site on eastern Ellesmere Island at 80° N has sufficient moisture and soil to have more than 140 species, a number similar to that recorded on Baffin Island at 62° N. Many of the species at the two sites are the same. The differences in species composition are thought to reflect differences in the plants that have been able to reach the areas since the last glaciation. The Russian Wrangel Island has many unique and relict species, and this is thought to have resulted in part from its isolation from the mainland in recent times and its position as a refugium during marine transgressions in the Pleistocene. Woody species in the High Arctic are shrubs that form prostrate mats. These are Mountain avens, Dryas integrifolia, other Dryas species common in Eurasia, and the Arctic willow. The western Canadian Arctic Islands along the vast expanse of Arctic Ocean are among the coldest areas in the Arctic, with a July mean temperature below 4°C at 75° N, and in this area there is a mini-treeline where the woody shrubs cease to grow. The circumpolar Arctic land vegetation has 1600–2000 species of flowering, or vascular, plants in 95 families. There are no Arctic palms, and gymnosperms, if present, occur in a taiga zone at the treeline. The numbers of mosses, liverworts, and lichens relative to the numbers of vascular plants are high. There are ferns (19+) and their relatives, horsetails (7), clubmosses (10), and quillworts (2). Among the flowering, about one-quarter are monocotyledons, mainly grasses (approximately 200 species in many species aggregates), sedges (160), rushes (15–17), and reeds (15–17), with approximately 75 species in 17 smaller monocotyledon families, including around 20 orchids. Among the dicotyledons, the major families are those containing carnations (Caryophyllaceae), daisies

FLORA OF THE TUNDRA (Asteraceae), heaths (Ericaceae), legumes (Fabaceae), mustards (Brassicaceae), roses (Rosaceae), saxifragas (Saxifragaceae), and snapdragons (Scrophulariaceae). There are many Arctic willows (Salicaceae) that occur near the treeline, but only Salix arctica occurs at high latitudes. Many smaller families have fewer than five species. Some of the uncertainty in the numbers of species to be recognized in the tundra flora reflects differences among botanists in different Arctic countries in the concept of what is a plant species. Other uncertainties result from many species that are in the process of speciating, that is, the process of developing as distinct species, and these are sometimes better regarded as species aggregates. Speciation may result from founder effects where a limited number of individual plants of a species reach an island and, cut off from the main source of genetic material, slowly evolve in isolation. Another complication results from the sex life of many Arctic plants that may self-fertilize, either as a fallback to attempt to set seed if crosspollination does not occur normally or from choice (cleiostogamy or agamospermy). This can result in large populations of almost identical plants that are not interbreeding to set seed, but sometimes have a unique characteristic that cause them to be regarded as distinct species by some botanists. By contrast, other species successfully hybridize and result in viable hybrids that are unique new species. Recent DNA evidence suggests that successful hybridization may have occurred long ago, but may also be occurring currently. Many plants have high chromosome numbers, some of which are a result of the simple doubling of lower numbers, while others represent the coming together of two or more species to produce a new species, either in the distant past or in the more recent present. The floristic integrity of the Arctic is very high, even at the species level. The circumpolar species account for 30–80 of local Arctic floras and less than 10% are endemic, or naturally occurring only in the Arctic. Grasses are successful because many of them are pioneering species that are able to colonize disturbed sites, near shorelines of oceans or lakes and rivers, or on slumping, frost-heaved soils. Grasses respond vigorously to additional nitrogen at sites around present or past communities, animal burrows, and bird cliffs. Some species are aquatic and grow in standing water. While grasses are able to colonize many different habitats, they form less of the total plant biomass than do the sedges. Several sedge species grow well in wet or soggy ground, forming meadows that are a major source of food for muskoxen and caribou or reindeer. The heaths and rose families have woody members that grow close to the ground in dry and barren tundra.

Since 1997, major efforts have been made to increase understanding among botanists and resolve differences in botanic tradition toward publishing a Checklist of the Panarctic Flora to reflect a consensus of scientific names to be used and document species where differences of opinion exist.

Adaptations Plants that are successful in the Arctic have developed ways to survive the winter and the often very dry desertlike climate. Many of the grasses have root systems that may extend 5–7 times further below ground than the plant is high. Some members of the rose and legume families have significant underground stem development, with much more of the plant below ground level than above. Several members of the daisy family have long tap roots with only a crown of leaves that lie close to the tundra. These plants are like dandelions and there are several native species of dandelions in the Arctic. The leaves of monocotyledon species die back, building up a thatch of dead leaves that insulate and protect the growing shoots. This thatch also insulates ice that forms around the plants in the winter, so that plants that have been grazed and are less insulated often begin growing earlier in the summer and are more likely to flower. The leaves of many heath and woody rose species are leathery, often very close together on the stem, and modified in ways that retain water. The leaves survive for several years. When they die, they remain around the plant, forming a mulch that helps hold water near the plant. Herbaceous leaves of dicotyledon species larger than 1 cm long usually last only one season, are killed in the winter, and seen as ghosts of themselves lying on the tundra early in the following spring. Many Arctic plants develop flowering stalks with the buds close to the tundra. Only when the flowers are ready to open, do the flowering stems become erect. This is striking in many grasses. Species that flower early in the season very often have buds with the outer surface of the sepals covered in dark hairs that appear to trap heat and assist the flowering process. The petals of Arctic plants may appear delicate, but many can be intact after snowfall and when the snow melts. The petals of Arctic poppies (Papaver species) and Dryas species are shaped like a satellite dish. They are heliotropic, that is, they point toward the direction of the sun as it moves across the sky in the 24 h daylight and, in doing so, focus the warmth toward the sexual center of the flower.

Use of Plants Plants have been used for food, medicine, fuel, and the wicks of oil lamps by the indigenous peoples of

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FOOD CHAINS the Arctic. The underground stems and roots of some species are gathered and eaten (Eskimo potato, Hedysarum boreale; Alpine bistort, Persicaria vivipara). The fresh leaves of mountain sorrel (Oxyria digyna) are deliciously fresh and today are often eaten in salads. The flowers of the purple saxifrage, one of the first species to bloom, are relished after a winter without fresh food. The heath family has several species that produce edible berries that are gathered when they are ripe and were traditionally preserved in seal oil, or with seal meat for the winter. These include different species of bear berries (Arctostaphylos sp.), mountain cranberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea), bilberry (Vaccinium uliginosum), crowberry, or curlewberry (Empetrum nigrum). Several species were used medicinally by people living in the Arctic, for example, cloud-berry Rubus chamaemorus L. that was used to calm upset stomachs. The leathery leaves of Arctic heather (Cassiope tetragona (L.)D. Don) are used as a fuel for small fires to boil water for tea in a landscape where there are no trees. The fluff that helps disperse the seeds of willows (Salix sp.) and cotton grass (Eriophorum sp.) was traditionally gathered to make wicks for the large oil lamps that were kept burning in houses during the winter (see Food Use of Wild Species; Plant Gathering). SUSAN AIKEN See also Tundra; Vegetation Distribution Further Reading Aiken, S.G., M.J. Dallwitz, L.L. Consaul, C.L. McJannet, L.J. Gillespie, R.L. Boles, G.W. Argus, J.M. Gillett, P.J. Scott, R. Elven, M.C. LeBlanc, A.E. Zamluk & A.K. Brysting, Flora of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago: Descriptions, Illustrations, Identification and Information Retrieval. http://www.mun.ca/biology/delta/arcticf/1999 onwards Edlund, S.A., “High Arctic plants: new limits emerge.” GEOS, 13 (1984): 11–15 ———, “Plants: living weather stations.” GEOS, 16(2) (1987): 9–13 Edlund, S.A. & B.A. Alt, “Regional congruence of vegetation and summer climate patterns in the Queen Elizabeth Islands, Northwest Territories, Canada.” Arctic, 42 (1989): 2–23 National Atlas Information Network, National Atlas of Canada, www.atlas.gc.ca; Geogratis, www.geogratis.cgdi.gc.ca, Ceonet, www.ceonet.cgdi.gc.ca, 2001 Nordal, I. & V. Yu. Razzhivin (editors), The Species Concept in the High North—A Panarctic Flora Initiative, Oslo: Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, 1999

FOOD CHAINS A food chain, or trophic chain, is a group of organisms in an ecosystem connected consecutively with each other by the “consumer-food” principle. The food chain concept relates to the position of a group of organisms in an ecosystem but not to their taxa, since a species may occupy different trophic levels at different parts of its life

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cycle, or eat from more than one trophic level. Food chains begin with primary producers or autotrophs that obtain their energy directly from the sun (plants, algae, and cyanobacteria) and move through one or more levels of consumers or secondary producers (heterotrophs). The simplest food chain in the Arctic begins, for example, with lichens, grasses, and undershrub consumed by reindeer, or caribou, which in turn become the prey of the wolf. Marine food chains (see Food Webs, Marine) generally have a higher number of trophic levels. Food chains result in the transformation of energy and materials in ecosystems, and a major part (c.80–90%) of the potential energy (stored as carbohydrates) is lost at each transition to a higher trophic level. For example, the formation of 1 kJ of energy of a predator biomass requires the consumption of about 100 kJ from the primary producer, in a three-level food chain. This low efficiency of food conversion to biomass is due to the energy required for respiration, motion, and keeping warm, and incomplete consumption or indigestibility of the food mass (much of the food mass may be poorly digestible chemical substances, such as bones, cellulose, and chitin, or may contain chemical inhibitors). The efficiency is also represented by the number of steps in the food chain. Organisms acquiring their energy from the sun through a similar number of steps belong to the same trophic level. The organisms of the lower trophic levels generally consume a higher relative mass of food than those from the higher levels: for example, herbivores require relatively more food in proportion to their body mass than predators. The number of trophic levels in food chains is usually three or four, and even in the impoverished Arctic communities the food chains are usually no longer than in the tropics. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain this, including hypotheses based on the energy flow, selective feeding, and ecosystem dynamics. There are two main types of food chains: those where consumers feed on living organisms, and detritus chains where consumers are decomposers or eat dead organisms. The first type is represented by autotrophic organisms as the base, followed by phytophagous animals (herbivorous mammals, phytophagous zooplankton, etc.), then first-order predators (e.g., some fishes and salamander larvae consuming zooplankton), then second-order predators (e.g., predatory fishes and birds). In the detritus chains, a major part of the plant production is not consumed by phytophagous animals, but is decomposed by saprotrophic organisms. Such food chains are most widespread in forests, but have a lesser role in terrestrial ecosystems of the Arctic. However, they play a more important role at considerable depths of the ocean and in small eutrophic water bodies on land.

FOOD CHAINS The two types of food chain are not isolated from one another. For example, the annual primary production in Arctic seas is shared between the zooplankton (floating) and the detritus (benthos, or sea-bottom) chains. The switch between these energy flows may take place as a response to environmental change, ensuring the productivity of populations of fish that consume different groups of invertebrates. Primary production in the Arctic is low, which causes low levels of the production at higher trophic levels. Both parameters increase significantly from the polar deserts and semideserts to the Low Arctic. The intensity of energy transfer through food chains in the Arctic varies more significantly than in the more southern regions due to sharp seasonality in behavior and migrations of many dominant species of animals. The level of influence of herbivorous animals on the community depends not only on their energetic peculiarities but also on the exemption of plants from the community. Marine zooplankton usually consumes more phytoplankton than it may assimilate, and the excess enters the detritus chain. The food chains undergo significant seasonal changes, both in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. For example, there is a clear annual cycle in the diet of cod feeding in the Barents Sea. In February–April, after the winter period of scarce feeding, the cod move eastward and forage intensively on pelagic fishes such as herring. The shoals of the spawned groups come somewhat later and also forage on fish. In summer, the cod forage on higher crustaceans, Euphasiacea and Hyperiidae in the central regions, and are concentrated in autumn in the eastern parts of the sea, where they use the secondary food resource, crustaceans and molluscs. The beginning of the westward migration coincides with the transition to fish feeding, and some groups may cease feeding for a certain time. Food chains in the Arctic seas are also significantly dependent on the seasonal development of the plankton, which comprise a significant basis of the chain. For example, the spatial distribution of herring in the Barents Sea and the directions of its horizontal movements depend, in large part, on the composition and distribution of this food resource. The southwestern part of the Barents Sea represents the main foraging area of the herring, whereas at the end of winter, when plankton production is decreased, the fish recede back into the Norwegian Sea. The seasonality in fish and marine mammalian migrations influences the plans of fishing and the size of catches. In terrestrial ecosystems, small herbivores, and especially rodents from the genus Lemmus (Lemming), may comprise more than 90% of all terrestrial vertebrates. Populations of these rodents undergo significant cyclic increases and decreases, which leads to a corresponding change in their pressure on the herbaceous

cover, and especially overgrazing of monocotyledons during years of peaks of population. The fluctuations in population numbers of vertebrate predators in tundra, for example, the Arctic fox (Alopex lagopus), follow the fluctuations in their main prey, the rodents. This is caused by the scarcity of alternative food sources (resulting from low overall species diversity) in severe conditions of the Arctic. The existence of some predatory birds in tundra in winter is probably possible only due to high abundance of lemmings in winter. The smallest mammalian predators of the Arctic, the shorttailed weasels (Mustela rixosa and M. erminea), also depend primarily on lemmings, but often eat bird eggs and nestlings. Thus, the fluctuation of the primary food source of predatory Arctic animals causes significant corresponding changes in higher trophic levels. Large herbivorous mammals also play an important role in food chains in the Arctic. This especially concerns the wild reindeer or caribou. They influence most seriously areas with a weak plant cover, and a significant destruction of plant cover occurs in some places. Muskox (Ovibos moschatus) is the largest High Arctic terrestrial herbivore. As with reindeer, it displays significant feeding migrations. In winter, it grazes mainly on lowlands, where plants are more available, and occurs in more marginal lands in summer. The muskox tends to be a more intensive grazer than the sympatric caribou. Herbivorous animals in the Arctic terrestrial ecosystems depend in large part, on the plant resource abundance and availability. Lichens constitute a very important component in the food of reindeers. Other herbivorous animals consume mainly green parts of higher plants. Stems, seeds, and underground organs, having lower energetic value, are consumed in smaller amounts. Berries play an insignificant role in the feeding of tundra animals, because such plants are more widely distributed southward, in the southern tundras, forest tundras, and forests. The abundance and availability of plants are lower in the tundra ecosystems as a result of low primary productivity in high latitudes. In addition, the rate of recovery of the plant cover there is lower than southward. In this situation, overgrazing represents a serious threat, and the population number, density, spatial distribution, and behavior of wild herbivorous animals there are adapted to peculiarities of the Arctic vegetation. These feedback connections between components of trophic chains were formed in the course of evolution of organisms and ecosystems to ensure the long-term coexistence of predator and prey natural populations. Artificial interference in this system leads to its disturbance, which may result in a significant destruction of ecosystems and impoverishment of natural communities (as in the conditions of unsustainable cattle breeding in the North).

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FOOD USE OF WILD SPECIES Although the number of bird species is not high in Arctic ecosystems and seasonality is one of the main traits of the Arctic bird fauna, the number of trophic levels occupied by them is similar to that in the temperate zone. Birds play the most important role in the coastal zone, where the nesting aggregations may cover some areas almost totally. Their predatory pressure on fishes is more significant than the pressure on components of terrestrial ecosystems. The diversity of trophic niches is highest in semiaquatic birds, and many of them reach high trophic levels. Some marine birds, for example, large gulls, display cleptoparasitism, where one bird often forages by attacking another individual with a fish and taking its food. Such individuals may occupy highest trophic levels. Like in predatory mammals, predatory birds also depend on fluctuating prey, for example, the abundance of owls follows that in lemmings. Herbivorous birds may influence significantly the plant cover in tundra. For example, different species of migrating geese, forming dense aggregations, destroy the herbaceous cover to such an extent that moss tundras are formed on the places of cotton grass—moss tundras with subsequent development of other types of tundras. Thus, the trophic activity of animals is a factor of community successions in the Arctic. Carrying of seeds by birds may represent another factor of change in plant associations in the Arctic. As a rule, such transfer occurs within a community, but in some cases the seeds may cross considerable distances, and new species may appear in some habitats. Species foraging on insects and other invertebrates may be seasonally abundant in Arctic regions, but their active periods are short and they have to migrate southward or hibernate due to impossibility of feeding in cold time. Their feeding ecology undergoes some changes resulting from their adaptation to Arctic environment. For example, the Siberian newt (Salamandrella keyserlingii) and some brown frogs (Rana amurensis and R. arvalis) consume more aquatic prey in tundra than in the temperate forest zone, because of their tendency to stay near small water bodies. Like in other geographic zones, the newt at larval and adult phases of its life cycle is the top predator in such fishless habitats. Among higher vertebrates of the Arctic, there are almost no animals that store their food. Thus, the majority of animal species in the Arctic are polyphages, for example, the forms with relatively broad food spectra. Food specialization, for example, adaptations to feeding on a specific type of food, is rare due to the relatively low prey species diversity. Under conditions of sharp fluctuations of prey abundance and availability both within and between years, predators should be able to switch quickly to alternative prey types for survival. The absence of food specialization corresponds, neverthe-

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less, to more or less developed selective feeding. The adaptive significance of selective feeding is the enhancement of net energy intake under conditions of short vegetative period and scarcity of food. Food chains result in the transfer, and sometimes concentration, of certain contaminants such as heavy metals, radionuclides, and pesticides. The rate of their concentration depends on the particular organisms, their habitats, type of contaminant, and many other factors. In many cases, it is not easy to identify the disturbance at early stages of pollution, and the situation becomes clear only after significant changes have taken place. The pollutants may concentrate with increasing trophic level, and long chains, such as marine food chains, are the most vulnerable. The low rate of renewal of components of Arctic ecosystems makes them highly sensitive to pollution, and the possibility of concentration of toxic substances in food chains should be considered in the revision of protective measures for Arctic ecosystems, for example, in plans for oil transportation, extraction of minerals, and burial of radioactive substances at sea. Finally, it should be noted that many species consume organisms belonging to different trophic levels, and it is more realistic to consider the real situation in nature as a trophic network (food web) instead of a linear chain. Although the number of trophic levels is similar in the Arctic and in regions with higher species diversity, the complexity of the food network depends on the community diversity, which increases southward from the Arctic. SERGIUS L. KUZMIN See also Food Webs, Marine; Primary Production; Secondary Production; Trophic Levels Further Reading Giller, P.S., Community Structure and the Niche, London and New York: Chapman and Hall, 1984 Murray, J.L., “Ecological Characteristics of the Arctic.” In AMAP Assessment Report: Arctic Pollution Issues, Oslo, Norway: AMAP Secretariat, 1998 Steele, J.H. (editor), Marine Food Chains, London: Oliver and Boyd Publ., 1970 Zenkevich, L.A., Biologiya Morei SSSR, Moscow: USSR Academy of Sciences, 1963; as The Biology of the Seas of the USSR, New York: Wiley, 1963

FOOD USE OF WILD SPECIES A broad range of species of wildlife are contained in Arctic ecosystems. Many of these are used by Arctic residents for food, and in particular by indigenous peoples resident in the Arctic. Although indigenous peoples used large quantities of wildlife foods in the past, the forces of dietary change, most notably the

FOOD USE OF WILD SPECIES Nations (Indian) people cook all of their wildlife animal foods. All indigenous peoples are recognized for their preferences to consume all edible parts of animals harvested. Seasonality is another factor affecting the availability and quantities of wildlife animals and plants used as food. Larger quantities are used during summer and autumn when animals can most easily be hunted and plants collected. In one Canadian Inuit community of approximately 400 people, the total quantities of wildlife animals and plants consumed varied from 100 kg per day in the low season to 180 kg per day in the high season, with a six-season average being 130 kg per day.

Recent Dietary Change of Arctic Peoples

A Cree woman (Elizabeth Brien) picks cranberries near her camp, Québec, Canadian Subarctic. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

availability of market food, have resulted in the diets of contemporary Arctic residents containing a smaller proportion and fewer species of wildlife than when food subsistence was entirely derived from huntinggathering-fishing activities. To illustrate this point, recent studies of indigenous peoples in the Canadian Arctic defined the number of species currently known and used by community residents, albeit some of them infrequently. Research on Dene/Métis, Yukon First Nations, and Inuit communities revealed that 62, 53, and 129 species of animals, including fish, were used, respectively; plant species reported were 40, 48, and 42, respectively, in the three communities. Broad food group categories of species used as food are sea mammals (seals, whales, walrus), land animals (e.g., caribou, moose, hare), birds (e.g., geese, ducks, grouse, gulls), fish (e.g., char, salmon, trout, cod, halibut), and shellfish (mussels, shrimp, clams, scallops) as well as plants (seaweed, berries, greens). Although the varieties of species used differ, the same families/species of most Arctic wildlife animals and plants used for food are similar across the circumpolar Arctic. However, patterns of harvest, preparation, and use of wildlife vary from region to region. Sea mammals are used primarily by the circumpolar Inuit, who usually reside in sea coastal areas, particularly favorite items being rich in fat (blubber, muktuk, seal flippers, etc.). The Inuit are also known to prefer animal and fish tissue foods in the raw state; however, most First

As noted above, contemporary Arctic residents have diets that contain both traditional wildlife food and market food purchased in food stores. In some areas of Greenland and the European Arctic, wildlife food is also sold in food stores. However, for the purposes of comparison, it is possible to consider wildlife food in contrast to purchased food derived from agricultural production and imported into the Arctic. Studies that investigate the personal consumption of Arctic foods generally depend on techniques based on 24-h recall or food frequency interviews. These are then treated by computer with databases of food composition to derive quantities and contents of the food consumed. Today, Yukon First Nations, Dene/Métis, and Inuit community adult residents in the Canadian Arctic are reported to consume from 5% to 40% of their average energy intake from wildlife animal and plant foods, with the balance coming from imported market food. Communities that are closer to urban centers accessible by road consume less traditional wildlife food than those in rural areas, particularly those without road access. Children and young adults consume smaller quantities of wildlife foods than older adults and elders, and men generally consume greater quantities of wildlife meats than women. Portion sizes of wildlife food vary greatly, depending on seasonal availability and preferences; however, it is reported that when meat is consumed by families that have a hunter or fisher in the family, the quantities consumed in meals can be very large, and up to 700 g of meat or fish may be consumed by one person in a day. Arctic families who depend on purchasing market meats consume much smaller quantities of these foods, which contain high protein and other nutrients. The multiple cultural benefits of the use of wildlife animals and plants by indigenous peoples are reported in the entry on Animal Rights Movements and Renewable Resources.

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Nutrient Contributions of Wildlife There are several ways to understand the nutritional contributions of wildlife animals and plants to diets of Arctic residents. The first avenue of understanding is based on laboratory studies of food components, particularly nutrients, of sampled wildlife tissues. The second avenue is to understand the contribution to daily nutrition of the portion of the individual or community diet derived from wildlife. Both avenues are required for an assessment of dietary intake and quality. Research on the use of food by Arctic residents has been carried out for communities in Alaska, Canada, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Norway, Sweden, and Russia. Arctic wildlife animal foods are very high in nutrient quality. Although all nutrients have not been documented in all food species tissues consumed, the general knowledge of analyses completed to date has shown remarkable nutrient contents in several animal wildlife foods. Sea mammal blubbers and Arctic fish have high contents of omega fatty acids (the good fats), vitamin A, vitamin E, selenium, and vitamin D. Sea mammal and land animal muscle tissues are lean and low in fat, and rich in many essential minerals for human nutrition, particularly iron and zinc. Vitamin C is known to be present in high levels in sea mammal mattak or muktuk (skin of whales), livers of all species, and fish roe. Unusual foods comprised of organ meats or other tissues (e.g., goose lungs) are now known to be rich sources of iron. Wildlife plants consumed in the Arctic, although small in yearly quantities consumed, provide important contributions of fiber, vitamin C, and minerals. It is therefore evident that understanding Arctic animal and plant wildlife food use and composition gives important knowledge on the biodiversity of global food resources. Although it is evident that Arctic peoples consume only a portion of their average daily food intake as animal and plant wildlife foods, it is useful to consider the contribution of this portion to overall nutrition. This can be done using techniques of assessing dietary nutrient density. Recent studies on nutrient density for selected nutrients in diets of Arctic adults have consistently shown that the portion of the diet containing wildlife food is higher in protein, iron, zinc, magnesium, and copper than is the portion of the diet from purchased store food. Vitamin A is in higher density in the traditional food component of Inuit diets than in the market food component, but market food makes a greater contribution today to dietary calcium. Inuit adult diets contain a greater density of fat from traditional food than traditional food components of diets from First Nations adults; however, Dene/Métis diets contain a greater density of fat in purchased food. In considering overall daily fat intakes, older adults and elders in Inuit or First Nations communities who

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consume more traditional wildlife meats than younger people consume less total dietary fat. Generally, all Arctic communities consume reasonably equivalent quantities of dietary fat grams from the two portions (traditional, market) of the diet; however, Inuit consume more total fat from traditional food sources than First Nations adults. Younger people throughout the Arctic are consuming more of this fat from market food than from traditional food. It is therefore important to conclude that Arctic wildlife animals and plants are excellent sources of nutrients. It is also known that dietary nutrient quality is less when wildlife foods are consumed in lower quantities. Wildlife fats are not consumed in excess, and are important sources of essential nutrients. To reduce fat intakes in Arctic diets, the best strategy is to reduce intakes of market sources of fat (such as fried foods, chips/crispy snacks, pastries) rather than wildlife food.

Exposure to Contaminants Through Wildlife Recent research on contaminants in Arctic wildlife foods has been conducted in several Arctic countries through the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP) and the Canadian Arctic Environmental Strategy/Northern Contaminants Program. Research on exposure to contaminants to residents of Arctic communities through food consumed was carried out using the interview strategies noted above combined with laboratory analyses of food contaminants, particularly heavy metals and organochlorines. The encyclopedia entry on Bioconcentration describes general findings about the contents of these contaminants in wildlife. In this section, we will describe the exposure through diet to Arctic residents, particularly indigenous peoples. The contaminants present in wildlife foods are different from those in agricultural and processed/purchased foods. The wildlife contaminants are present as a result of long-range transport or point source emissions, and are accumulated through the food chain. Fat foods are generally sources of organochlorines, and muscle and skin tissues are sources of heavy metals. Organ food items (liver, kidney, brain, etc.) are sources of both heavy metals and organochlorine contaminants. Each contaminant has a tolerance level for daily intake from food, which results from estimating the amount of contaminant in a food item and the quantity of food consumed. Further, consideration is given to the repeatability and seasonality of intake, with a greater risk when a particular food is consumed regularly on a year-round basis. The contaminants of greatest concern at this point of time are thought to be the heavy metal mercury, and the organochlorines chlordane and toxaphene. These three

FOOD WEBS, MARINE contaminants are found in a variety of sea mammals, fish, and the organs of land animals; they are rarely found in plants. On an average basis, Inuit communities consume more of these contaminants than do indigenous peoples who harvest a majority of their foods from land-based sources, and who consume less fat derived from wildlife. Dietary exposure estimates across the circumpolar Arctic have shown a wide variance in mercury intakes. The highest levels of mercury in maternal blood were found among those who eat large amounts of marine food, especially in Greenland and East Canada. The daily intake of mercury by some Inuit in Greenland and eastern Canada may be more than five times the limit set by the World Health Organization (WHO). At present, there are no studies documenting a positive correlation between this high intake and negative health effects, for example, neurological effects. The high levels of selenium also found in sea mammals and Inuit from Greenland and eastern Canada may counteract the potential negative effect of mercury. It is important to recognize that the benefits of traditional food use (cultural and nutritional) must be weighed against the risk of contaminant exposure. At this time, no adverse effects from contaminant intakes derived from wildlife food have been documented. However, every effort must be made to reduce the emission of persistent heavy metals and organochlorine contaminants into the global environment. LAURIE H.M. CHAN AND HARRIET V. KUHNLEIN See also Bioconcentration; Contaminants; Hunting, Subsistence; Nutrition and Food; Plant Gathering Further Reading Blanchet, C., E. Dewailly, P. Ayotte, S. Bruneau, O. Receveur & B. Holub, “Contribution of selected traditional and market food to Nunavik Inuit women’s diets.” Canadian Journal of Dietetic Practice and Research, 61(2) (2000): 50–58 Bjerregaard, P., H.S. Pedersen & G. Mulvad, “The associations of a marine diet with plasma lipids, blood glucose, blood pressure and obesity among the Inuit in Greenland.” European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 54 (2000): 732–737 Kuhnlein, H.V., “Benefits and risks of traditional food for indigenous peoples: focus on dietary intakes of Arctic men.” Canadian Journal of Physiological Pharmacology, 73 (1995): 765–771 Kuhnlein, H.V. & H.M. Chan, “Environment and contaminants in traditional food systems of northern indigenous peoples.” Annual Review of Nutrition, 20 (2000): 595–626 Kuhnlein, H.V. & O. Receveur, “Dietary change and traditional food systems of indigenous peoples”. Annual Review of Nutrition, 16 (1996): 417–442 Kuhnlein, H.V., O. Receveur & H.M. Chan, “Traditional food systems research with Canadian indigenous peoples.” International Journal of Circumpolar Health, 60 (2001): 112–122 Nobmann, E.D. & A.P. Lanier, “Dietary intake among Alaska native women resident of Anchorage, Alaska.” International Journal of Circumpolar Health, 60 (2001): 123–137

Nobmann, E.D., T. Byers, A.P. Lanier, J.H. Hankin & M.Y. Jackson, “The diet of Alaska Native adults: 1987–1988.” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 55 (1992): 1024–1032 Receveur, O., M. Boulay & H.V. Kuhnlein, “Decreasing traditional food use affects diet quality for adult Dene/Metis in 16 communities of the Canadian Northwest Territories.” Journal of Nutrition, 127 (1997): 2178–2186 VanOostdam, J., A. Gilman, E. Dewailly, P. Usher, B. Wheatley, H.V. Kuhnlein, S. Neve & J. Walker, “Human health implications of environmental contaminants in Arctic Canada: a review.” Science of the Total Environment, 230 (1999): 1–82

FOOD WEBS, MARINE Marine food webs refer to the combinations of feeding relationships that exist in marine ecosystems. They describe the pathways along which energy and materials are transferred as organisms feed upon each other. An understanding of food webs is critical to gaining an insight into how species interact or how natural communities of species are organized. Species can be grouped into two general categories with respect to their feeding strategy. Those organisms that can produce their own food are termed autotrophs (self-feeders). These organisms capture energy and produce their own organic materials. Autotrophs include both green plants (marine vascular plants, marine algae, and phytoplankton) that capture energy from the sun through the process of photosynthesis, and some forms of bacteria that utilize the energy contained in inorganic chemicals through the process of chemosynthesis. The second group, called heterotrophs, encompasses those organisms that feed on other organisms, and includes two types: consumers that eat living organisms, and decomposers or detritus eaters that eat dead organisms. Food webs are often understood in terms of the relationships among trophic (feeding) levels with respect to some primary energy source. In accordance, primary producers or autotrophs constitute the first trophic level. Herbivores (plant-eaters) that consume primary producers constitute the second trophic level. The third trophic level includes carnivores (meateaters) that feed upon herbivores. Finally, additional trophic levels include various carnivore species that feed upon other carnivore species. Ultimately, the population of heterotrophs in any ecosystem is dependent upon the level of primary production. The reality of marine food webs is more complicated than the linear conception that emerges from this discussion. In fact, a single organism may consume a variety of different species, including organisms at several different trophic or feeding levels, as is the case with omnivores, animals that consume both plant and animal species. In turn, this organism may be preyed upon by a variety of other species also at different trophic levels. Additionally, developmental changes in

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Nutrients and detritus in snow and ice

Nutrients and detritus in water

Phytoplankton, Pelagic invertebrates

Benthic algae, kelp

Epontic algae

Ntiiurients and detrtus in sedments

Benthic invertebrates

Bowhead whale

Zooplankton

Capelin, small pelagic fish

Waterfowl, Whitefish

Walrus

White whale

Demersal fish

Arctic cod

Greenland halibut

Arctic char

Narwhal

Killer whale

Humans

Bearded seal

Polar bear

Atlantic cod

Hooded seal, harp seal

Arctic fox

organisms may alter food preferences throughout their life history, and some species may be preyed upon as juveniles by species that they in turn prey upon as adults. Finally, all organisms enter the detrital food web after they die and begin to decompose or are eaten and excreted as feces. Thus, food webs are complex constructs, encompassing a number of changeable and interconnected food chains. Although concentrations of dissolved gases such as oxygen and carbon dioxide are usually sufficiently high in Arctic waters, nutrient constraints coupled with seasonal light limitations confine most primary production to the summer months. Ocean water tends to form horizontal layers that are composed of water with differing salinities and temperatures, and hence different

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Ringed seal

Seabirds, Gulls

Glaucous gull

Generalized marine food web. From AMAP Assessment Report: Arctic Pollution Issues. Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, 1998. Reproduced with permission.

densities. Arctic water tends to have a pronounced horizontal stratification and a high degree of vertical stability. Vertical stability refers to a configuration in which the most dense water layer is on the bottom and the least dense is on the top. As a result, horizontal changes in water characteristics are less pronounced than vertical changes. This limits overall production by inhibiting the recharge of nutrients from subsurface to surface waters where primary production occurs. Arctic waters experience only one phytoplankton bloom during the summer season, compared with Subarctic waters that experience two. This single burst of productivity declines as nutrients are used up and the plankton sink into subsurface waters. Fish are able to follow plankton into deeper waters, and indeed most Arctic fish species

FOOD WEBS, MARINE are demersal, that is, dwelling near the bottom. Species in the higher trophic levels, namely the birds and marine mammals, migrate to more southern latitudes until the next season. The dying plankton create a rich food resource for the benthic (bottom-dwelling) decomposers and detritus feeders: various worms, clams, and sponges. Primary producers in Arctic marine environments include a variety of photosynthetic and chemosynthetic organisms (see Primary Production, Marine). Chain-forming diatoms (microscopic, yellow-green, or brownish phytoplankton with cell walls composed of silica) and flagellate plankton usually dominate the summer phytoplankton bloom in ice-free Arctic waters. The term “ice algae” refers to the diatoms and other species of microalgae (including many flagellate species) that live attached to and within sea-ice, actually the interstitial brine channels that form between ice crystals. Over 300 species of algae, with diatoms usually exhibiting the greatest abundance, form the basis of the distinctive food web associated with sea-ice, which includes various amphipods, copepods, gadoid fish, seabirds, and ringed seals. Methanotrophic bacteria (i.e., bacteria that utilize methane as the basis of their primary production) have also been found in the deep waters of the Arctic. The bacteria are symbiotic with two species of tubeworms (Pogonophora), and form the basis of the marine food web in the living communities of the cold-seep mud volcanoes of the Arctic. (Cold-seep volcanoes are differentiated from hot vents from true submarine volcanoes, which discharge nutrient-rich sea water heated up to 400°C. Cold-seep mud volcanoes usually discharge methane in small bubbles or dissolved in water. The Håkon Mosby mud volcano, discovered in 1995, was the first such formation found in Arctic waters. Sediments taken from this volcano had abnormally high temperatures of 15°C.) Phytoplankton are consumed by zooplankton, primarily crustaceans and the larval stage of many bottom-dwelling organisms that float in the ocean currents with the phytoplankton. These plant-eating zooplankton are in turn the prey of other zooplankton. Large calanoid copepods (a planktonic genus of crustaceans), which constitute the bulk of the zooplankton biomass, euphausids (krill) and other crustaceans, form an important link between the primary producers and higher trophic levels. Together, these planktonic organisms provide food for a variety of pelagic (or open sea) fish, including Arctic char, capelin, smelt, as well as baleen whales and seabirds. They additionally provide food for a diverse sea-bottom community (including polychaete, crustacean, molluscan, and echinoderm species) as they die and descend through the water column. Deepwater fish species such as Arctic cod, halibut, and Greenland shark, along with

various marine mammals (i.e., walrus, narwhal, bearded seal, and beluga whale), consume these benthic organisms. Seabirds and some of the large vertebrate predators (seals, sea lions, walruses, and polar bears) connect marine and terrestrial food webs, transferring nutrients of marine origin to the land. Humans are, of course, a part of all marine food webs, acting as high trophic level predators, consuming a wide variety of both invertebrate and vertebrate animals. In this regard, the exploitation of living marine resources by humans constitutes a significant impact to Arctic marine ecosystems and an even greater impact in Subarctic areas that support larger marine animal populations and human harvests. Pollution constitutes another significant anthropogenic impact in Arctic marine environments, causing both immediate, acute toxicity and chronic problems in marine animals. Some pollutants such as persistent organic pollutants and heavy metals are especially pernicious, moving through the various trophic levels of the food web as animals eat and in turn are eaten by others through processes of bioaccumulation and biomagnification. Finally, global climate change may be the greatest challenge that the Arctic environment faces. At present, the warming climate has directly affected Arctic marine food webs by altering ocean and atmospheric circulation patterns, the duration and extent of sea-ice, levels of primary productivity, and the abundance and distribution of many species. Given the uncertain trajectory of future climate change and the interconnected nature of marine food webs, it is difficult to predict what longterm ramifications these changes will have. SYMA ALEXI EBBIN See also Food Chains; Large Marine Ecosystems; Plankton; Primary Production, Marine; Secondary Production; Trophic Levels Further Reading Barnes, Peter, Donald Schell & Erk Reimnitz, The Alaskan Beaufort Sea: Ecosystems and Environment, New York: Academic Press, 1984 CAFF (Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna), Arctic Flora and Fauna: Status and Conservation, Helsinki: Edita, 2001 Dunbar, M.J., “Arctic Marine Ecosystems.” In The Arctic Ocean: The Hydrographic Environment and the Fate of Pollutants, edited by L. Rey & B. Stonehouse, New York: Wiley, 1982 Herman, Yvonne, The Arctic Seas: Climatology, Oceanography, Geology, and Biology, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1989 Horner, Rita, “Arctic Sea-Ice Biota.” In The Arctic Seas: Climatology, Oceanography, Geology, and Biology, edited by Y. Herman, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1989 Pimenov, N., A. Savvichev, I. Rusanov, A. Lein, A. Egorov, A. Gebruk, L. Moskalev & P. Vogt,“Microbial processes of carbon cycle as the base of food chain of Hakon Mosby Mud Volcano Benthic Community.” Geo-Marine Letters, 19 (1999): 89–96

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FORESTS: ENVIRONMENTAL INITIATIVES Rey, Louis & B. Stonehouse (editors), The Arctic Ocean: The Hydrographic Environment and the Fate of Pollutants, New York: Wiley, 1982 Roots, E.F.,“The Changing Arctic Marine Environment: Some Basic Considerations.” In The Arctic Ocean: The Hydrographic Environment and the Fate of Pollutants, edited by L. Rey & B. Stonehouse, New York: Wiley, 1982 Springer, Alan & David Roseneau, “Copepod-based food webs: auklets and oceanography in the Bering Sea.” Marine Ecology— Progress Series, 21 (1985): 229–237 Springer, Alan, C. Peter McRoy & Kathy Turco,“The paradox of pelagic food webs in the Northern Bering Sea—II. Zooplankton communities.” Continental Shelf Research, 9(4) (1989): 359–386 Stonehouse, Bernard, Animals of the Arctic: The Ecology of the Far North, New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1971

One of the most challenging environmental issues facing humanity at the dawn of the 21st century is to stop the loss and degradation of the world’s forests, halt the exploitation of the boreal forests further and further north into areas that had been previously left untouched, and ensure that the rights of indigenous peoples are fully respected. The boreal countries should and can set an example in promoting ecologically sustainable, economically viable, and socially responsible forest management. This paper explores some of the initiatives that have been taken at the intergovernmental level as well as in the market place to ensure the conservation and sustainable use of the world’s forests, including boreal forests.

FORESTS: ENVIRONMENTAL INITIATIVES

Public Initiatives

The boreal forest, also known as the taiga in Russia, is the world’s largest terrestrial biome, stretching from Western Alaska throughout most of Canada to Northern Europe, Siberia, and the Russian Far East. It is a unique and fragile ecosystem, submitted to extreme climatic conditions and providing a wide range of crucial ecosystem services (watershed protection, climate regulation, etc.). The boreal forest is also home to some of the most threatened species on the planet, such as the Amur tiger, the Far Eastern leopard, the red wolf, and the sikha deer. According to the World Resources Institute, Russia and Canada host more than half of the world’s remaining frontier forests, defined as large, ecologically intact, and relatively undisturbed areas of primary forest. Russia is the world’s most forested country with 22% of the world’s forests and Canada ranks third after Brazil with 7% of the world’s forests. The sheer extent of forest cover makes the boreal forest an important strategic natural resource providing raw material for the wood, pulp, and paper industry, one of the leading industry sectors in the boreal countries. The boreal forests provide 60% of the world’s supply of industrial roundwood. Canada is the world’s largest exporter of wood and wood products. Russia is the world’s largest exporter of raw logs, after the United States. For decades, the forest industry has been the backbone of the Finnish and Swedish national economies. However, forestry practices in the boreal region are primarily based on large-scale industrial forestry techniques, leading to habitat loss and degradation, dependent local economies, and culturally and socially impoverished indigenous communities. Forest-dependent indigenous peoples around the Arctic are confronted with the depletion of the resources they rely on, weak rights to the ownership, control and management of their traditional lands, and lack of political power resulting in a loss of traditional knowledge and social disruption.

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Proposals, ideas, and recommendations for sustainable forest management have been discussed and agreed upon by many of the world’s governments with the support of civil society and the private sector, but action has been and still is lacking. Promoting Sustainable Forest Management at the Intergovernmental Level The history of intergovernmental environmental initiatives in the forest sector goes back to the mid-1980s when tropical deforestation first made the headlines across the world and led to the formation of the Tropical Forestry Action Program (1985), the largest ad hoc forest initiative to date. Up to the early 1990s, most of the international forest policy efforts remained focused on the tropics rather than on the boreal and temperate zones. Following UNCED (1992), however, new processes were set in motion to promote more sustainable boreal and temperate forest management both because of accusations of double standards from the tropical countries and because of growing international awareness that the response of the boreal zone to global climate change could exaggerate and amplify global warming itself. The most ambitious efforts to date toward promoting international environmental agreements on forest issues—including boreal forests—were those initiated at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. A suite of legally binding conventions, legally nonbinding documents, and follow-up processes were to develop and attract the attention of governments, the private sector, and NGOs alike for the decade to come. Underlying many of the forest policy discussions, a heated debate on the need for a global legally binding treaty for sustainable forest management, a Forest Convention, has been regularly popping up and

FORESTS: ENVIRONMENTAL INITIATIVES undermining efforts to implement existing agreements. At the time of writing this paper, there was still no consensus among various countries, the private sector, and NGOs on whether a Forest Convention is desirable and needed to further sustainable forest management and conservation of all forest types across the world. The Forest Principles—1992 The Rio Conference endorsed two documents related to forests: Chapter 11 of Agenda 21, Combating Deforestation and a NonLegally Binding Authoritative Statement of Principles for a Global Consensus on Management, Conservation and Sustainable Development of all Types of Forests. These so-called Forest Principles are a sort of soft law intended to guide countries on sustainable forest management, including in austral and boreal zones. The Statement called on countries to commit themselves to implement the principles and included a proviso that “national policies should recognize and duly support the identity, culture and rights of indigenous peoples, their communities and other communities and forest dwellers.” The Intergovernmental Panel on Forests—1995–1997 It soon became evident that the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), the body created to follow up on the agreements of the Rio Conference, could not handle the complex and time-consuming forest-related issues. Thus, in 1995, the CSD recommended the establishment of a separate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF), to examine ways to develop the Forest Principles into a legally binding instrument or to identify other options to coordinate the future action on global forest policy. IPF resulted in a list of over 150 Proposals for Action, which were discussed and approved at UNGASS (Rio + 5). It is interesting to note that all governments involved agreed formally to implement the IPF’s recommended Proposals for Action, which gives these recommendations’ otherwise nonbinding status greater political weight. During UNGASS, considerable time was also spent discussing—once again—the need for a legally binding global Forest Convention. Canada, Finland, and other Scandinavian nations advocated in favor while others such as the United States were against it, arguing that a Convention was only one of many ways to achieve sustainable forest management throughout the world and the Arctic regions. In February 1997, at the IPF’s fourth and last session, nearly 100 NGOs from more than 30 countries released an “International Declaration Against a Global Forest Convention,” outlining their reservations about the potential adverse impacts a Convention could have on existing forest and environmental agreements and

initiatives, forest biodiversity, and forest-dependent communities. UNGASS recommended a continuation of the intergovernmental policy dialogue on forests and established the Intergovernmental Forum on Forest, whose primary purpose was to facilitate the implementation of the IPF’s Proposals for Action. The Intergovernmental Forum on Forests—1997–2000 The Intergovernmental Forum on Forests (IFF) was essentially a continuation of the IPF process focusing on major unresolved issues. IFF was also asked to “identify the possible elements of and work towards a consensus on international arrangements and mechanisms, for example, a legally binding instruments on all types of forest” (read: Forest Convention). Although the IFF’s primary mandate was to promote and facilitate implementation of the IPF’s Proposals for Action and formulate international arrangements and mechanisms to promote the management, conservation, and sustainable development of all types of forest, it ended up achieving nothing but more paper work and more Proposals for Action. Many argue that the continuing debate over a Forest Convention overshadowed the implementation of the IPF Proposals and led to the failure of the IFF. Another reason might be the reluctance of governments to effectively implement the Proposals for Action unless they are pushed very hard to do so, for instance, by NGOs and civil society. NGOs were successful at organizing and attracting government funding for a major international conference on the underlying causes of forest degradation and deforestation, thereby following up on one of the important recommendations of the IPF’s Proposals for Action. The United Nations Forum on Forests—2000–2005 The outcome of the last session of the IFF was the creation of yet another intergovernmental body called the United Nations Forum on Forest as well as an enhanced interagency task force on forests called the Collaborative Partnership on Forests. The UNFF was established for a period of five years as a subsidiary body of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). In theory, the UNFF is an important intergovernmental instrument for protecting the world’s forests. However, its track record has already disappointed many so far. The mandate of the UNFF is to promote the management and sustainable development of all types of forests and to strengthen long-term political commitment to this end. Participation rules have made the participation of Indigenous Peoples Organizations and NGOs more difficult and far from the spirit that reined in the open-ended and more participatory practices that ruled the IPF and IFF meetings.

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FORESTS: ENVIRONMENTAL INITIATIVES Assessing sustainable forest management at the national level Since the 1990s there has been a proliferation of Criteria and Indicators (CandI) to monitor the sustainable management of forests, mostly initiated and defined by governments as a way to follow up on the recommendations of UNCED’s Forest Principles and Chapter 11 of Agenda 21. Both documents called for the identification of criteria and indicators to evaluate progress to manage forests for a wide range of environmental, social, and economic goods and services at the national level. These national-level CandI are essentially assessment tools. Two processes are relevant to boreal forests:

action-oriented work program on forests, which addresses forests in a holistic manner and proposes a list of 130 activities that could help tackle the forest crisis, including:

• the Helsinki process for European forests and • the Montreal process for non-European temperate and boreal forests.

However, no global priority or a timetable for national implementation was agreed upon, which therefore cast doubts on whether the work program was going to be implemented at all. To date, the main impact of the CBD’s ratification has been the development of National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs). The implementation of other forest-related commitments has been sporadic however. The adopted decision on forest biological diversity places significant emphasis on collaboration with the UNFF, which might mark a turning point in developing a more cooperative relationship, which could strengthen both processes. The CBD access to GEF funds provides another incentive for the collaboration, since the UNFF has no dedicated resources for implementation. It remains to be seen how countries will integrate the 130 activities from the CBD’s work program and the more than 270 IPF Proposals for Action on forests, such that the overlaps are used to promote mutual supportiveness and actions that will significantly contribute to end the global forest crisis.

The Helsinki process, which was started in 1994, brings together European timber growers of boreal, temperate, and Mediterranean forests. It includes six common criteria and 27 quantitative indicators. The Montreal process, which started more or less at the same time as the Helsinki process, contains a set of seven criteria and many indicators for boreal and temperate forests. The United States as well as Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay have joined this process. Both the Helsinki and the Montreal processes have incorporated to one extent or another the importance of biological diversity, ecosystem functions, soil and water resources, and a wide range of social benefits into their sets of CandI. However, the purpose of these CandI is limited to collecting data and makes no requirements of forest managers that any particular result be achieved in the forest. Also, very few of the countries involved in the CandI processes have actually started collecting forest data according to the indicators defined. The CandI therefore have been of limited value to land-use planners or policy-makers so far. Other Intergovernmental Instruments: Competing or Supportive Claims? The Convention on Biological Diversity The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was adopted and ratified by more than 150 governments at the UNCED conference in 1992. For the world’s forests, the CBD is potentially a very important instrument, since the majority of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity lies in forests. The Convention objectives are the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of biological resources, and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from utilization of genetic resources. It is a legally binding intergovernmental instrument. At the sixth Conference of the Parties (COP6) in April 2002, the CBD adopted an eight-year

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• Seeking to resolve land tenure and resources conflicts. • Eliminating perverse incentives (in particular, subsidies that result in favoring unsustainable use or loss of forest biological diversity). • Facilitating the participation of indigenous peoples and local communities in forest management.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is the other legally binding convention that was adopted in Rio. The Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997, lists a series of actions aimed at tackling climate change. There are two important links between forests and climate change. First, forests play an important role in regulating the earth’s temperature and weather patterns by storing large quantities of carbon and water. Second, climate change affects forests, thereby exacerbating forest degradation. A 1994 Greenpeace report states: Studies on the global carbon cycle suggest that boreal forests are not absorbing as much carbon as they did before 1976. As a result, the atmosphere already appears to contain 10–15 billion tones of carbon more than it would have if forests had continued to absorb carbon at the pre-1976 rate. If boreal forests continue to decline, estimates suggest that burning and rotting of

FORESTS: ENVIRONMENTAL INITIATIVES boreal forests could contribute to the release of up to 225 billion tones of extra carbon into the atmosphere, increasing current levels by a third. This would accelerate the rate of climate change. (The Carbon Bomb, p. 2)

While it is possible that the boreal forest could expand into the frozen tundra as temperatures increase, such an expansion would likely be delayed by slow tree migration rates. Even in the long term, the boreal forest is unlikely to move northward fast enough to compensate for the breakdown of boreal forests at the southern part into open woodlands and grassland, which in turn will result in a lowered biological diversity and a reduced ability of these ecosystems to store carbon and water. The Kyoto Protocol focuses a great deal on forest ecosystems as a way to limit climate change. Because trees act as “carbon sinks” by storing large amounts of carbon inorganic matter, the Protocol encouraged Parties to engage in reforestation and afforestation projects. One could think that this is good news for forests, but unfortunately priority has been given to the establishment of tree plantations rather than the conservation of natural forests. There are therefore no indications that the Kyoto Protocol will help protect boreal and other forests.

Private Initiatives: Forest Certification Over the last decade, a number of nongovernmental processes to support sustainable forest management have emerged throughout the world and the boreal region. These processes were initiated by civil society, namely nongovernmental environmental organizations, the forest industry, and major trade unions, mainly as a response to the growing frustration created by conventional approaches to forest policy. Certification is a market-based tool, which aims at enabling consumers to purchase wood products from well-managed forests through a labeling system. The main certification schemes in use in the boreal region include: • the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), • the Pan-European Forest Certification Scheme (PEFC), • the American Forest and Paper Association (AF and PA)’s Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), and • the Canadian Standard Association’s Sustainable Forest Management Standard (CSA). All the above-mentioned schemes operate in a similar way, although there are important differences among them. They all aim at providing an independent, third-party assurance that a forestry operation meets a set of environmental, social, and economic standards for sustainable forest management, which are predefined by the respective certification scheme.

All certification schemes are voluntary (forest companies choose whether or not they want to apply for certification) and the government has no direct role in the process. When a company decides to pursue certification of its forestry operations, the forests are evaluated according to previously defined standards and certified as well managed by an independent auditor. Wood products from those forests are then labeled so that consumers can identify them as coming from well-managed sources. The standards set by all four schemes operating in the boreal region vary greatly from each other, and so does the reliability of their respective logos. For instance, the FSC has developed rigorous performance-based criteria covering ecological, social, and economic aspects while none of the other schemes have a performance-based certification standard. This means that a forest can be certified under the PEFC without being visited by an auditor. The SFI and the CSA do not have adequate monitoring and control mechanisms and have both certified clear cutting in high conservation value forests. There are also important variations between the schemes with respect to the involvement and decision-making power of various interest groups. Here again, the FSC system— which was set up by NGOs, industry, and trade unions—is the only one among the four schemes to assure equal decision-making power to economic, social, and ecological interest groups. The other schemes are all dominated by economic interests as they were set up by the forest industry. Although consultation processes with affected parties are required in most cases, neither PEFC, SFI nor CSA consider those consultations binding. Consumer demand for certified forest products is a powerful incentive for forest managers to adopt more ecologically, socially, and economically sound practices, and for retailers and manufacturers to seek wood from certified forests. However, the proliferation of various certification schemes with different logos and different requirements for sustainable forest management may lead to confusion on the market place. ELISA PETER Forest areas certified under different certification schemes in Canada, Russia, and Scandinavia (ha)

Canada Alaska Sweden Norway Finland Russia

FSC

PEFC

SFI

CSA

3,061,532 ? 9,930,034 5100 93 1,040,594

0 0 2,276,444 9,352,000 21,910,000 0

? ? 0 0 0 0

? 0 0 0 0 0

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FOSSIL PERIGLACIAL PHENOMENA See also Boreal Forest Ecology; Coniferous Forest; Taiga Further Reading Agarwal Anil, Sunita Narain & Anju Sharma, Global Environmental Negotiations 1—Green Politics, New Delhi: Center for Science and Environment, 1999 Fern, Behind the Logo—An Environmental and Social Assessment of Forest Certification Schemes, 2001, see Fern website: www.fern.org Grayson, A.J. & W.B. Maynard, The World’s Forests—Rio +5: International Initiatives Towards Sustainable Management, Commonwealth Forestry Association, 1997 Greenpeace International, The Carbon Bomb: Climate Change and the Fate of the Northern Boreal Forests, Amsterdam: Greenpeace International, August 1994 Mankin William E., Entering the Fray—International Forest Policy Processes: An NGO Perspective on their Effectiveness, Policy that works for forests and people Series No: 9, edited by James Mayers, London: International Institute for Environment and Development 1998 Status of Implementation of Forest-Related Clauses in the CBD—An Independent Review and Recommendations for Action, Fern and Global Forest Coalition, 2002. Taiga Rescue Network web site: www.taigarescue.org

FOSSIL PERIGLACIAL PHENOMENA A general definition of periglacial environments refers to conditions where frost action and permafrost-related processes dominate the physical environment. Common to all periglacial environments are cycles of freezing and thawing of the ground and the presence of permafrost, or perennially frozen ground. Presently, these environments primarily occur at high latitudes in the Arctic and Antarctic and at high elevations in mountainous areas at midlatitudes. About 25% of the Earth’s land surface currently experiences periglacial conditions. Certain geological processes and landforms are unique to the periglacial environment. These include the formation of permafrost and wedge and injection ice, development of thermal contraction cracks, and the formation of thermokarst or subsidence features due to thawing of permafrost. Other processes, such as frost heaving, soil creep, solifluction, and wind action processes acting on barren soils, are also important in the periglacial environment. Recognizing and interpreting fossil periglacial phenomena is an integrated part of reconstructing Quaternary climate development. Fossil periglacial phenomena commonly occur at midlatitudes in Eurasia and North America: areas that experienced periglacial conditions during cold spells of the Pleistocene but which today have temperate climates. Pleistocene periglacial conditions were not restricted to midlatitude locations. Extensive areas in the central and eastern Siberian Arctic as well as parts of the Beringian

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area and northwestern Canadian Arctic remained icefree through long periods in the Pleistocene and were subject to intensive periglacial activity. A number of phenomena are indicative of frozen ground and intense frost action, and can be used for paleoclimate reconstructions. These include frost fissures; blockfields, screes, and rock glaciers; frost creep and frost-disturbed deposits; tors; fossil permafrost; massive ground ice; and aeolian sediments and ventifacts. Frost fissures are wedge-shaped structures interpreted to be casts of thermal contraction cracks. Since the development of frost fissures only occurs under permafrost conditions and intense cooling (−15°C to –20°C), these are first-order indicators of periglacial environments. Fossil frost fissures, in the form of frost fissure polygons and ice and sand wedge casts, have been described from extensive areas in northern and central Europe and North America, and have been mapped to provide evidence on the distribution of Pleistocene permafrost. Blockfields, screes, and rock glaciers indicate frost action and weathering. Extensive accumulations of angular boulders blanketing mountain plateaux and talus scree accumulations along mountain slopes are thought to have formed primarily by frost wedging and cracking of bedrock. In Europe, North America, and Asia, blockfields talus and frost-shattered debris occur on uplands and mountains outside the present-day distribution of permafrost, and are taken to indicate occurrences of Pleistocene permafrost. Rock glaciers form in the periglacial zone of mountains, and are unique permafrost landforms. They are often fed by taluses formed upslope by frost shattering of bedrock. Relict (inactive) rock glaciers, occurring below the periglacial zone or below the treeline, have been reported from many mountainous areas in the world. In the Alps, many of these turned inactive by the end of the Pleistocene. In permafrost areas with frequent freeze-thaw cycles, frost heaving of the surface layers can lead to downslope movement of the material by frost creep. This is a process that was probably more active at midatitudes than high latitudes during the Pleistocene, since midlatitudes experienced more freeze-thaw cycles than colder Arctic environments. Frost-disturbed deposits, or cryoturbated deposits as they are also referred to, very frequently occur in Pleistocene soils at both high- and midlatitude sites. They form by repeated frost heaving and disturbance in the active layer, as well as by gravity loading and water saturation in connection with thermokarst degradation. Hillslope and summit tors (rocky crags) commonly occur in both high- and midlatitude uplands and mountain areas. Tors are frequent in the alpine landscapes

FOSSILS: ANIMAL SPECIES today, for example, in western Spitsbergen, occurring on mountain ridges and arêtes between glaciated cirques and valleys. Their formation has been attributed to intense frost shattering at nonglaciated sites, although an alternative explanation for some tors suggests that they are mainly the result of chemical weathering and thus are not indicative of frost action. Much of the thick permafrost in Siberia is in disequilibrium with the present climate and is largely a relict (i.e., fossil permafrost) of Pleistocene climate conditions. The present occurrence of subsea continental shelf permafrost in the Arctic Ocean, developed during periods of low global sea levels during the last glacial maximum, illustrates the preservation of relict permafrost. The history of permafrost in the Russian Arctic has been traced some 2–1.5 million years back in time, and it is presumed that much of it might have started to form in the Middle Pleistocene. Thick bodies of massive ground ice have been described from northern Alaska, the western Canadian Arctic, China, and western Siberia. A favored origin is that most bodies of massive ground ice formed through ice segregation and injection processes, where excess pore water froze within the sediments. An alternative explanation is that massive ground ice is buried glacier ice and remnants of Pleistocene ice sheets. Other theories explaining the genesis of massive ground ice include buried lake, river or sea ice, and buried snow bank ice. It has been pointed out that massive ground ice in the Arctic primarily occurs within the limits of formerly glaciated areas. One explanation for this relationship is that most of these ice bodies might be relict glacier ice. It has long been recognized that wind action was particularly intense in the Pleistocene periglacial environment. Huge, nonvegetated outwash plains dried out during late summer and fall, and strong winds generated extensive dust clouds. Aeolian sediments such as sand dunes, cover sands, and loess deposits, which occur in belts outside formerly glaciated areas, mainly at midlatitudes, are the geological products of the periglacial wind action. Pleistocene ventifacts—or stones facetted by dust-laden wind abrasion—are very common in midlatitude regions of Europe and North America, and have been used to infer prevailing wind directions at the time of their deposition/abrasion. The interpretation of fossil periglacial phenomena is not always straightforward, and some structures, sediments, and forms may develop under nonperiglacial conditions as well. As the understanding of the present periglacial environment increases, there will be an improved understanding of how fossil periglacial phenomena relate to and provide an insight into climates of the past. ÓLAFUR INGÓLFSSON

See also Frost and Frost Phenomena; Ground Ice; Patterned and Polygonal Ground; Periglacial Environments Further Reading Black, R.F., “Periglacial features indicative of permafrost: ice and soil wedges.” Quaternary Research, 6 (1976): 3–26 French, H.M., The Periglacial Environment (2nd edition), Harlow, Essex: Addison-Wesley, Longman, 1996 Guoqing, Q. & C. Guodong, “Permafrost in China, past and present.” Permafrost and Periglacial Processes, 6 (1995): 3–14 Kondratjeva, K.A., S.F. Krutsky, & N.N. Romanovski, “Changes in the extent of permafrost during the Late Quaternary Period in the territory of the former Soviet Union.” Permafrost and Periglacial Processes, 4 (1993): 113–119 Péwé, T.L., “The Periglacial Environment in North America during Wisconsinan Time.” In The Late Pleistocene. Late Quaternary Environments of the United States, Volume 1, edited by S.C. Porter, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 157–189 Vandenberghe, J. & A. Pissart, “Permafrost changes in Europe during the last glacial.” Permafrost and Periglacial Processes, 4 (1993): 121–135 Washburn, A.L., “Permafrost features as evidence of climatic change.” Earth Science Reviews, 15 (1980): 327–402

FOSSILS: ANIMAL SPECIES Arctic fossil deposits preserve an immense diversity of ancient terrestrial and marine animals, which span over 500 million years of Earth history and range from some of the oldest marine invertebrates to the Ice Age mammoths that were hunted by our ancestors a few thousand years ago. The majority of these animals lived in much warmer climates than the frigid temperatures, ice, and snow that have characterized the Arctic for only the past 1.6 million years.

Earth’s First Animals The oldest fossil animals in the Arctic are some 550–600 million years old, and consist of soft-bodied invertebrates that inhabited the seafloor. Coined the Ediacaran fauna, for the most famous locality in Ediacara, Australia, these animals are found embedded in sandstones in northern Russia, Siberia, and Canada’s Northwest Territories. The most diverse Ediacaran fauna is in the Arctic realm, where some 50 species of body fossils and 20 different trace fossils (that is, fossils that are not part of the actual body of the animal, but an impression, trail, burrow, or footprint) have been found in the White Sea region of northern Russia (Fedonkin, 1992). Fossils include: impressions resembling a disk, interpreted as jellyfish by some, and as burrows and mollusclike animals by others; sea pen-like, stalked animals that stood up from the seafloor; primitive members of the Phylum

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FOSSILS: ANIMAL SPECIES

Reconstruction of the Devonian tetrapod Acanthostega from Greenland, with permission from Jennifer Clack.

Arthropoda; and the large (up to 1 m) Dickinsonia, an invertebrate resembling a flatworm. Many Ediacaran animals cannot be comfortably placed into any modern group, but their presence on all continents except Antarctica is evidence that a great radiation of animals was well under way on a global scale, including the Arctic, over 500 million years ago. Phanerozoic Eon (The Age of Visible Life) Earth’s history from 543 million years (Ma) ago to today—the Phanerozoic Eon—is divided into three great eras: Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic. These which are in turn subdivided into numerous geological periods. The boundaries between eras and periods typically correspond to important changes in life on Earth, such as a major extinction event or adaptation to a changing climate. In fact, the evolution and extinction of fossil organisms form the basis of the geologic time scale. Ancient Arctic animals are discussed below for each of the three eras. Paleozoic Era (543–248 Ma) The Cambrian Explosion— the greatest evolutionary radiation of animal life in the oceans—took place over the relatively short time of 25 Ma from the late Proterozoic to early Cambrian, and included the first appearance of animals with skeletons and many modern phyla. Fossil evidence of this event is best preserved in the 505 million-year-old Burgess Shalelike fauna in the Canadian Rockies. However, a diverse, early Cambrian, Burgess Shale-like fauna is also known from northern Greenland. This latter fauna, termed the Sirius Passet fauna, contains about 40 species, most of which are arthropods, although worms (including armored varieties) and sponges also occur.

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The earliest vertebrates, which include both jawless fishes (agnathans such as ostracoderms, anaspids, and thelodonts) and jawed fishes (gnathostomes, including sharklike placoderms and acanthodians), are well represented in Paleozoic rocks in the Canadian Arctic, Spitsbergen, northwestern Europe, and Siberia (Dineley, 1990). One of the most exciting paleontological discoveries in the Arctic is Ichthyostega—among the oldest known tetrapods (vertebrates with four limbs) and the first undoubted amphibian—in late Devonian (~360 Ma) rocks of eastern Greenland. Traditionally considered to evidence the emergence of vertebrates onto land, Ichthyostega had a large, heavily built skeleton (>1 m in length) and scales (unlike today’s amphibians, such as salamanders and frogs, which have skin), a massive ribcage, powerful limbs and feet, and a fishlike tail. Ichthyostega was more fishlike than anything else, spending most of its time in rivers and perhaps occasionally hauling itself onto land. Its eastern Greenland contemporary, Acanthostega, was even more aquatic, as evidenced by a fish’s spine and tail, fishlike gills, and paddlelike legs that lacked wrists and ankles and could not have supported its weight on land. Both Ichthyostega and Acanthostega are best thought of as “fishes with legs,” rather than as missing links in the vertebrate invasion of land (Clack, 2002). Marine invertebrates, primarily crablike arthropods, echinoderms, corals, and molluscs, are known from many localities throughout the Arctic, especially northern Canada and northern Alaska, and attest to the tropical and subtropical oceans that prevailed globally in the Paleozoic. It should be noted, however, that warmwater Paleozoic faunas now preserved in the Arctic actually lived at lower latitudes, prior to the continents moving to their present locations. In addition, the several tectonic plates that now comprise the modern Arctic were parts of different continents in the early Paleozoic. It was not until just after the Paleozoic, during the earliest period of the Mesozoic Era, the Triassic, discussed below, that the Arctic Ocean assumed its present configuration as a separate northern ocean (see Geological History of the Arctic).

Mesozoic Era (248–65 Ma) Dinosaurs inhabited the Arctic for millions of years. However, they are relatively recent discoveries in Arctic regions—most have been discovered since the mid-1970s, and few Arctic dinosaurian faunas are fully studied. To date, dinosaurs are known from Jurassic and Cretaceous-age rocks in Russia and Alaska, and from Cretaceous-age rocks in northern Canada (Yukon and Northwest Territories, as well as Ellesmere and Bylot Islands) and Spitsbergen (Rich et al., 1997). The most

FOSSILS: ANIMAL SPECIES diverse Arctic dinosaur fauna, preserved in latest Cretaceous (~69 Ma) rocks along the Colville River on Alaska’s North Slope, contains Ceratopsians (horned dinosaurs), the tyrannosaur Albertosaurus, the smaller meat-eating dinosaurs Troodon and dromaeosaurs, and duck-billed dinosaurs, including Edmontosaurus. Fossils of mammals, sharks, and fishes also occur in northern Alaska. However, terrestrial, cold-blooded tetrapods—notably amphibians and nondinosaurian reptiles such as champsosaurs (crocodilelike reptiles), turtles, and crocodilians whose fossils are common in midlatitude North America—are conspicuously absent at the Colville River site. This suggests that dinosaurs tolerated the Arctic’s Cretaceous environment—including lower temperatures (mean annual temperature of 2–8°C) and winter darkness—that restricted amphibians and nondinosaurian reptiles to midlatitude regions (Clemens and Nelms, 1993). However, recent discoveries of slightly older Cretaceous (~92–86 Ma) fossils of champsosaurs, turtles, and fishes on Axel Heiberg Island (Canadian Arctic) suggest a much milder climate, with mean annual temperatures greater than 14°C (Tarduno et al., 1998). Regardless of the temperature, Arctic dinosaurs must have contended with 24-h darkness during winter months, which raises a variety of questions regarding dinosaur physiology and behavior. Other notable dinosaur discoveries in Arctic regions include: Late Jurassic stegosaurs, camarasaurs, and allosaurs from Kempenyay, Siberia; Late Cretaceous duck-billed dinosaurs and Troodon from Kakanaut, Siberia; ankylosaurs and duck-billed dinosaurs from south-central Alaska; and duck-billed dinosaurs from the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (Bylot and Ellesmere Islands) and from the Yukon and Northwest Territories. Dinosaur footprints are known from Spitsbergen (in Svalbard) and Alaska’s North Slope (Rich et al., 1997). While dinosaurs reigned over the Mesozoic landscape, giant marine reptiles ruled the oceans. Triassicage ichthyosaurs (“fish-lizards”), which closely resemble fishes and even modern dolphins, were among the first Mesozoic marine reptiles found in the Arctic regions. In the 1850s, ichthyosaur fossils were discovered in Triassic-age rocks on Exmouth and Cameron Islands in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago by the Belcher Search Expedition, which had been sent out to search for the lost Franklin Expedition. Similarly, old ichthyosaur fossils have since been discovered on Ellesmere Island (Canadian Arctic), Alaska, and Spitsbergen (Russell, 1990). Jurassic ichthyosaur fossils are known throughout the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and from Alaska’s North Slope (Davis, 1987). Other marine reptiles include fossils of Cretaceous mosasaurs (giant, seagoing Monitor lizards) and plesiosaurs (Loch Ness Monster-like marine reptiles) from the Canadian

Arctic Archipelago. During the Mesozoic, the marine reptiles inhabiting Arctic regions were similar to midlatitude forms, suggesting a distribution throughout the Northern Hemisphere (Russell, 1990). In Triassic time, the earliest period of the Mesozoic Era, the Arctic Ocean assumed its present configuration as a separate ocean. This earliest Arctic Ocean basin occupied the western part of the present-day Arctic Ocean and was joined to the Pacific by a broad seaway across northeastern Asia. This precursor of the modern Arctic Ocean thereby formed a northern embayment of the Pacific Ocean, whose Late Triassic shores are now delineated by the distribution of the distinctive bivalve Monotis (Westermann, 1973; Marincovich et al., 1990). Jurassic-age ammonites (extinct relatives of today’s Nautilus, squid, and octopus) and other molluscs flourished in this northernmost ocean and were largely the dominant species as in the adjacent North Pacific. Plate tectonic movements constricted the seaway connection between the Pacific and Arctic oceans, as evidenced by progressively more distant similarities of ammonite species between these two realms, until the isolation was complete by about 105 Ma in the middle Cretaceous. However, at about the same time, the Arctic Ocean came into contact with the world ocean through two epicontinental seaways: the Western Interior Seaway in North America, and Turgai Strait in western Siberia. Sporadically during middle Cretaceous time and continuously during the Late Cretaceous, the Western Interior Seaway extended some 7000 km from the Arctic Ocean to the tropical to subtropical Gulf of Mexico (Balkwill et al., 1983), as evidenced by marine molluscs and microfaunas. This seaway sometimes contained barriers to marine faunal dispersal in the form of increased or decreased salinity, increased temperature, and reduced oxygen content. Marked deviations from normal salinity conditions affected the shelf regions, as indicated by the poor representation of many normal marine groups such as echinoderms, corals, bryozoans, sponges, brachiopods, planktonic foraminifers, and radiolarians. The close similarity of Late Cretaceous ammonite faunas between the Western Interior Seaway and central West Greenland (Birkelund, 1965) indicates that an arm of the Arctic Ocean extended into the present-day Baffin Bay region (Balkwill et al., 1983). The Western Interior Seaway was closed by latest Cretaceous time, due to a major drop in eustatic sea level and active tectonism in the rising Rocky Mountain region that caused sedimentary infilling of the seaway from the west. In contrast to the environmental barrier of the Western Interior Seaway of North America, Turgai Strait in western Asia was alternately a physical barrier to marine and terrestrial migrations, because this

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FOSSILS: ANIMAL SPECIES seaway was not continuously present. Beginning in the late Jurassic and for much of Cretaceous and early Tertiary time, Turgai Strait extended southward from the modern Kara Sea to Tethys, the tropical marine realm of that time. Turgai Strait was fully open throughout the Late Cretaceous, but became progressively more constricted into the early Tertiary, until its closure by marine regression in the late Eocene or Oligocene (Vinogradov et al., 1967). During the Paleocene, Turgai Strait, at times as little as 120 km wide, was the narrowest part of a seaway some 5000 km long. Gradients in temperature, salinity, and oxygen content, although not yet documented, probably also hampered marine migrations, just as they did in the Western Interior Seaway. Turgai Strait Paleogene deposits are entirely subsurface and known only from marine microfossils recovered from drill holes. There are genus-level similarities between late Paleocene marine ostracods of the Prince Creek Formation in northern Alaska and ostracods in deposits at the northern part of the Turgai Strait region (Marincovich et al., 1990).

Cenozoic Era (65 Ma–Today) Among the most significant contributions to vertebrate paleontology in the last century was the 1970s’ discovery of early Eocene (~55 Ma) fossils of alligators, turtles, lizards, fishes, 0and a variety of mammals (including primate relatives and tapirs) in the Canadian High Arctic (~75° N) by Mary Dawson and colleagues. Their discovery was the “smoking gun” for the longstanding hypothesis, originally based upon plate tectonics and faunal data from midlatitude North America and Europe, that a land bridge once connected northern Europe to North America, allowing the migration of land mammals across the North Atlantic (see McKenna, 1975). Furthermore, the presence of alligators, giant tortoises, varanid lizards, and primate relatives at 75° N proved beyond a doubt what evidence from fossil plants had been suggesting for years—the early Eocene High Arctic was warm, temperate, and ice-free. Other notable fossil vertebrate discoveries in the Canadian High Arctic include early Miocene (~22–23 Ma) fossils of rhinoceros, rabbit, shrew, and swan from Haughton Astrobleme, a meteorite impact-crater on Devon Island (Dawson, 1990), and a 3.5 millionyear-old beaver pond on Ellesmere Island, under study by Richard Harington and colleagues. The beaver pond site contains fossils of beaver, rabbit, badger, ancestral wolverine, three-toed horse, shrew, fish, and frog, as well as beaver-cut sticks, seeds, leaves, mosses, freshwater sponges, molluscs, and beetles, suggesting a warmer, forested Arctic environment 3.5 million years ago, similar to today’s treeline environment (Harington, 2001).

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Fossils of Ice Age (Pleistocene) mammals are known from Siberia, Alaska, and northern Canada (including the Canadian Arctic Islands, Yukon, and Northwest Territories). Among the most famous are the frozen, virtually complete, carcasses of mummified mammoths from permafrost in Siberia and the Russian Far East, including the Berezovka mammoth (discovered in 1900 by a Lamut tribesman) and a baby mammoth named Dima (discovered in 1977 by a placer gold miner). Mummies of woolly rhinoceros, horse, and bison are also known from Siberia, while the frozen mummy of a steppe bison coined Blue Babe was discovered in 1979 at a placer gold mine in Alaska (Guthrie, 1990). Roughly 10,000 years BP, mainland mammoths became extinct, alongside many other large, Ice Age mammals, including mastodonts, giant ground sloths, and sabertooth cats. However, a relict population of small woolly mammoths (and the youngest recorded mammoths) survived into historic times (~3700 years BP) on Wrangel Island, off the north coast of Siberia (Vartanyan et al., 1993). The Arctic Ocean was almost completely isolated from the world ocean during the early Paleogene (Marincovich et al., 1990; Marincovich, 1993), owing to the absence of the Western Interior Seaway and the intermittent presence of a progressively constricted Turgai Strait. However, a new Paleocene seaway began to form between the Arctic Ocean and the North Sea Basin of northwestern Europe. In turn, the presence of a few identical species of marine molluscs, ostracods, coccoliths, planktonic and benthic foraminifers, corals and fishes in West Greenland and the North Sea Basin is evidence for an indirect Paleocene marine connection between the Arctic Ocean and the world ocean. This marine link has been best evidenced by late Paleocene marine molluscs in the Prince Creek Formation of northern Alaska and the Mount Moore Formation of northern Canada (Marincovich et al., 1990). There is a conspicuous absence of marine deposits in the Arctic Ocean from the Paleocene to the late Miocene or Pliocene, owing to nondeposition or, more likely, to subsequent erosion and submersion beneath the modern sea. The oldest post-Paleocene Arctic Ocean marine fauna is in the upper Miocene or lower Pliocene Nuwok Member of the Sagavanirktok Formation in northeastern Alaska, in which the marine fauna of molluscs, ostracods, and foraminifers shows a strong North Atlantic influence. The most significant change in the Arctic Ocean marine fauna was caused by the initial submergence of Bering Strait in the late Miocene at 5.4–5.5 Ma (Marincovich and Gladenkov, 1999), owing to the combination of a eustatic sea-level rise and a tectonically related depression of the Bering Strait region. This new gateway permitted the first connection of North Pacific and Arctic Ocean marine

FOSSILS: PLANT SPECIES faunas since the middle Cretaceous, a span of some 100 million years. When the strait first opened, the Arctic and North Atlantic bivalve Astarte migrated into the North Pacific and is found in southwestern Alaska. However, a major shift in Arctic Ocean oceanography was directly caused by the emergence of the Isthmus of Panama and the ensuing reorganization of Northern Hemisphere ocean circulation (Marincovich, 2000). As a result, the flow of water through Bering Strait shifted from southward to its modern northward direction. As a consequence of this, North Pacific molluscs and marine vertebrates (walruses and seals) came to dominate the modern Arctic Ocean fauna. The onset of the Ice Ages at 1.6 Ma resulted in the Bering Strait being closed off by glacial ice at least four times, separated by interglacial episodes of marine flow. This waxing and waning of the Ice Ages is clearly evidenced in Pleistocene molluscan faunas of the Gubik Formation in northern Alaska and unnamed deposits in the Bering Strait region. JAELYN J. EBERLE AND LOUIE MARINCOVICH JR. See also Beringia; Geological History of the Arctic; Mammoth; Pleistocene Megafauna Further Reading Balkwill, H.R., D.G. Cook, R.L. Detterman, A.F. Embry, E. Hakansson, A.D. Miall, T.P. Poulton & F.G. Young, “Arctic North America and Northern Greenland.” In The Phanerozoic Geology of the World II, The Mesozoic, B, edited by M. Moullane & A.E.M. Nairn, Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1983, pp. 1–31 Birkelund, T., “Ammonites from the Upper Cretaceous of West Greenland.” Meddelelser om Gronland, 179(7) (1965): 192 Clack, J., Gaining Ground: The Origin and Early Evolution of Tetrapods, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2002 Clemens, W.A. & L.G. Nelms, “Paleoecological implications of Alaskan terrestrial vertebrate fauna in latest Cretaceous time at high paleolatitudes.” Geology, 21 (1993): 503–506 Dawson, Mary R., “Terrestrial Vertebrates from the Tertiary of Canada’s Arctic Islands.” In Canada’s Missing Dimension: Science and History in the Canadian Arctic Islands, edited by C.R. Harington, Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Nature, 1990, pp. 91–104 Dineley, D.L., “Paleozoic Fishing—The Franklinian Grounds.” In Canada’s Missing Dimension: Science and History in the Canadian Arctic Islands, edited by C.R. Harington, Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Nature, 1990, pp. 55–80 Fedonkin, M.A., “Vendian Faunas and the Early Evolution of Metazoa.” In Origin and Early Evolution of the Metazoa, edited by J.H. Lipps & P.W. Signor, New York: Plenum Press, 1992, pp. 87–129 Guthrie, R. Dale, Frozen Fauna of the Mammoth Steppe: The Story of Blue Babe, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990 Harington, C.R., “Life at a 3.5 million-year-old beaver pond in the Canadian Arctic Islands and the modern scene.” Meridian, fall/winter (2001): 11–13

Marincovich Jr., L., “Danian mollusks from the Prince Creek Formation, northern Alaska, and implications for Arctic Ocean paleogeography.” Paleontological Society Memoir, 35 (1993): 35 ———,“Central American paleogeography controlled Pliocene Arctic Ocean molluscan migrations.” Geology, 38(6) (2000): 151–154 Marincovich Jr., L. & A.Y. Gladenkov, “Evidence for an early opening of the Bering Strait.” Nature, 397 (1999): 149–151 Marincovich Jr., L., E.M. Brouwers, D.M. Hopkins & M.C. McKenna, “Late Mesozoic and Cenozoic paleogeographic and paleoclimatic history of the Arctic Ocean Basin, based on shallow-water faunas and terrestrial vertebrates.” The Geology of North America, volume L, The Arctic Ocean Region, Geological Society of America, 1990, pp. 403–426 McKenna, Malcolm C., “Fossil mammals and Early Eocene North Atlantic land continuity.” Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 62 (1975): 335–353 Rich, T. H., R.A. Gangloff & W.R. Hammer, Polar Dinosaurs.” In Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs, edited by P.J. Currie & K. Padian, San Diego: Academic Press, 1997, pp. 562–573 Russell, Dale A., “Mesozoic Vertebrates in Arctic Canada.” In Canada’s Missing Dimension: Science and History in the Canadian Arctic Islands, edited by C.R. Harington, Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Nature, 1990, pp. 81–90 Tarduno, J.A., D.B. Brinkman, P.R. Renne, R.D. Cottrell, H. Scher & P. Castillo, “Evidence of extreme climatic warmth from Late Cretaceous Arctic vertebrates.” Science, 282 (1998): 2241–2244 Vartanyan, S.L., V.E. Garutt & A.V. Sher, “Holocene dwarf mammoths from Wrangel Island in the Siberian Arctic.” Nature, 362 (1993): 337–340 Vinogradov, A.P., V. Vereshchagin, V. Nalivkin, A. Ronov, A. Khabakov & V. Khain, Atlas of the LithologicalPaleogeographical Maps of the USSR, Paleogene, Neogene and Quaternary, Moscow: USSR Ministry of Geology and Academy of Science and Ministry of Geology, 1967, 15 maps Westermann, G.E.G., “The Late Triassic bivalve, Monotis.” In Atlas of Biogeography, edited by A. Hallam, Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1973, pp. 251–258

FOSSILS: PLANT SPECIES Plant fossils are remains of ancient vegetation, including wood, leaves, pollen, spores, and seeds. Paleobotany is the branch of paleontology concerned with the scientific study of ancient plants. Because plant remains, especially leaves, are easily rotted and destroyed, they cannot be transported far; hence, fossils preserve a record of local plant life. The Arctic (limited here to the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard, and other polar islands) is a northern geographical region defined by harsh climate. But the Earth’s surface is constantly changing as a result of continental drift, explained by the theory of plate tectonics. By studying rocks, and now by direct satellite measurement, scientists know that the land beneath our feet moves by a few centimeters every year. Over our lifetime, this amounts to only a few meters, but over millions of years, these slow movements bring about great changes to our planet.

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Bathurstia reprinted with permission from Kotyk, M.E. & J.F. Basinger “The Early Devonian (Pragian) zosterophyll Bathurstia denticulata Hueber.” Canadian Journal of Botany, 78 (2000): 193–207.

For example, 400 million years ago (400 Ma), when the earliest plants colonized land, Greenland lay at the equator. What, then, is meant by “Arctic”? To complicate matters, the Earth’s climate changes tremendously over geological time. Only 40 Ma ago the Earth was without ice caps on either pole, and the Arctic tundra biome and therefore the “polar regions” were not “Arctic.” Fossil plants discovered in the modern Arctic thus preserve a record of changing life and environment of a vast region, journeying thousands of kilometers over more than 400 Ma, from equatorial tropics to beyond the Arctic Circle. The study of Arctic fossil plants began with the monumental seven-volume work of the great Swiss paleobotanist Oswald Heer, published from 1868 to 1883. He revealed a polar world unlike today, and posed questions of global geography and climate that remained unanswerable during his lifetime. Since then, Arctic exploration has brought to light rich resources of fossil plants spanning the history of land vegetation. This entry will focus on episodes in land plant evolution of particular significance to our understanding of land environments, and for which the North is well known. Colonization of the Land It is difficult to imagine Earth without land vegetation, yet for most of the Earth’s 4500 Ma history land plants 664

Archaeopteris reprinted with permission from Andrews, H.N., T.L. Phillips & N.W. Radforth, “Paleobotanical studies in Arctic Canada: I. Archaeopteris from Ellesmere Island.” Canadian Journal of Botany, 43 (1965): 545–556.

did not exist. The oldest fossil land plants are about 425 Ma (the Silurian period). Delicate, small, and restricted to only the most favorable sites, they were rare on the landscape, and they are extremely rare as fossils. Fossils of Silurian and Devonian (about 354–417 Ma) age tell us about colonization of land by plants, bringing about greening of the Earth’s surface and making it possible for animals to exploit the land. Well-preserved plants of this age are known from Bathurst Island (Canadian Arctic Archipelago) and Spitsbergen (Svalbard Archipelago), at that time in equatorial latitudes. These plants were very primitive—simple stems without leaves, flowers, or seeds. They reproduced by spores, borne in sporangia (spore sacs) at the tips, or along the sides, of stems. They lacked any way of thickening their stems; that is, they lacked wood, so were herbaceous. Bathurstia, a plant known from the Early Devonian of Bathurst Island, had robust, spiny stems that ended in dense clusters of sporangia, but even these, among the largest plants of the time, were not even knee-high. The Origin of Forests By the Middle Devonian (370–390 Ma), as revealed by fossils from Spitsbergen, several types of plants had evolved a means of stem expansion, so they could continue to grow over many months or years, becoming large and tough. Branches and appendages borne on these stems later evolved to become leaves and seeds.

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Dawn redwood reprinted with permission from McIver, E.E. & J.F. Basinger, J.F., “Early Tertiary floral evolution in the Arctic.” Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 86 (1999): 523–545.

Cycadophyte reprinted with permission from Harris, T.M., “The fossil flora of Scoresby Sound, East Greenland. Part 3.” Meddelelser om Grønland, 85(5) (1931–1937).

These innovations literally changed the planet, as large woody trees formed the first great forest ecosystems, and the Earth’s surface was cloaked in dense vegetation. Early amphibians crawled into these forests. The earliest large trees are called Archaeopteris, and these are well known from Late Devonian rocks on Bear Island (Svalbard) and Ellesmere Island. Archaeopteris means “ancient fern,” a misnomer, for its beautiful, leafy branches, originally thought to be large fern fronds, were discovered to be borne by massive coniferlike trunks. Contributing to the confusion was the fact that Archaeopteris did not bear seeds, but reproduced by spores in a fernlike manner. These “preseed plants,” with the stature of woody seed plants but free-sporing reproduction, represent an extinct, “missing link” between the earliest land plants and their

descendants the seed plants, which now dominate virtually every habitable place on the Earth’s surface. Although these Archaeopteris forests were studied by the Norwegian and Swedish polar expeditions of the late 19th century, it was not till many years later that it was realized that these were not floras of polar ecosystems, but equatorial, and that they were preserving a record of ancient tropical vegetation. Much remains to be learned about these forests, for we know that modern forests host a diversity of shrubs and herbs. Archaeopteris remains are found with fossils of early club mosses, horsetails, and ferns, such as the earliest known true fern Ellesmeris, discovered among leafy branches of Archaeopteris on Ellesmere Island. Forests During the Age of Reptiles The Mesozoic Era (“Age of Middle Life,” about 248–65 Ma) spans the rise of reptiles, and their dominion over land, sea, and air. Mesozoic forests would appear more familiar to us than those earlier, for many of the principal trees were conifers, with their distinctive foliage, and ferns thrived in the understory. Cycadophytes, a distinct evolutionary line of trees and shrubby seed plants, were also common. Although most cycadophytes became extinct long ago, a handful of cycads survive today. Cycads typically have thick, columnar trunks with stiff, pinnate leaves (with leaflets on either side of a central axis) superficially 665

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Larch reprinted with permission from Bennike, O., “The Kap København Formation: stratigraphy and palaeobotany of a Plio-Pleistocene sequence in Pearly Land, North Greenland.” Meddelelser om Grønland, Geoscience, 23 (1990).

resembling palms. An abundance of cycadophytes often distinguishes Mesozoic vegetation. Among the world’s richest sources of Triassic/ Jurassic fossils are the Ittoqqortoormiit (Scoresbysund) deposits of East Greenland, documented by the British paleobotanist T.M. Harris from 1931 to 1937 in the primary work on the Triassic/Jurassic flora of Greenland. By Jurassic time (210 Ma), Greenland had drifted into mid-northern latitudes and was attached to both North America and Scandinavia—neither the North Atlantic Ocean nor Iceland existed. The primeval Jurassic forests of Greenland were dominated by towering stands of early conifers closely related to living redwoods, cypresses, and cedars. Today, in a few places, their relicts persist as survivors from the former cool temperate climate. Entering the bald cypress swamps of southeastern North America, the redwood forests of California, or the coniferous rainforests of British Columbia and Alaska is eerily stepping into the past, to a time of dinosaurs and pterodactyls, the earliest birds, and tiny primitive mammals. Missing entirely from the Ittoqqortoormiit (Scoresbysund) floras were flowering plants, which emerge in the Cretaceous (144–65 Ma), and are therefore relatively young land plants. Nevertheless, flowering plants have eclipsed all other groups, and are the vast majority of plants that surround us and on which we depend. We commonly think of the transition from Mesozoic (Age of Middle Life) to Cenozoic (Age of Recent Life) as symbolized by extinction of the reptiles and the rise of mammals and birds, but the world’s vegetation was also being reshaped by flowering plants. 666

The Early Cenozoic As the Cenozoic dawned (65 Ma), world geography was becoming modern, as continents drifted toward their current positions, and the north polar regions took shape. As mammals, birds, and flowering plants flourished, ecosystems the world over began to resemble those of today—except, that is, for the North. More than a century ago, when polar expeditions discovered their remains, it was known that lush polar forests once existed where now there is tundra and ice. This polar fossil record is the most convincing evidence for large-scale global climatic change. Fossil plants of Early Tertiary age (65–40 Ma) are found across the North, from the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, West Greenland, Spitsbergen, Franz Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya, and beyond. Throughout this region, and southward below the Arctic Circle, all lands were covered by similar forest vegetation. Trees were large, in places fossil stumps more than 2 m diameter were found, and from wide annual growth rings in their wood we know that they grew rapidly under a warm, moist climate. Rainfall was plentiful, with lowland swamp forests creating thick coals, some mined commercially on Spitsbergen. Trees included a rich diversity of deciduous species, for example, from the redwood, oak, walnut, elm, birch, and sycamore families. Closest living relatives can now be found in southeastern Asia, southeastern North America, and central Europe, thousands of kilometers south of their former range. Dawn redwood, a deciduous conifer, suitably represents this polar forest, for its distinctive leafy branches are extremely common as fossils. Known as a “living fossil,” it is now confined to central China. These fossils tell us much about the origins of modern northern vegetation. They also help us understand how climate has changed to create the Arctic as a distinct ecological zone. Throughout Earth’s history, polar regions have experienced continuous summer daylight and continuous winter darkness. One thinks of the North as Arctic, yet cold polar regions have been unusual in the Earth’s past. Rather, high latitudes have been warm, as during the Early Tertiary. Moreover, summers above the Arctic Circle may be gloriously warm. Fossil plants reveal warmth in summer, but also in winter, as living relatives cannot tolerate winters with prolonged, hard frost. Fossil turtles, lizards, alligators, and many types of mammals are also known from these rocks, and alligators, too, cannot survive cold winters. Warm polar winters are the most profound difference between the ancient and modern world. Winter temperatures in the North were mild, seldom slipping below freezing, and then briefly and not severely. Mild winters, without sunlight, indicate a prodigious supply of heat from far south, and a global system of heat storage and circulation quite unlike that of today.

FOSSILS: PLANT SPECIES Dark, mild winters posed a challenge to plants, for without light for photosynthesis, plants may rapidly deplete their energy reserves. Dormancy was essential, and deciduousness, thereby reducing the plant body mass to absolute minimum, is an effective strategy. Only rarely do we encounter evergreen plants in these fossil floras, an example being cedar, with tiny, scalelike leaves. In 45 Ma fossil forests of Axel Heiberg Island, Canadian Arctic, we see signs of change in polar vegetation, for within typical Early Tertiary forests is the presence of pine, spruce, larch, and other conifers. Although spruces and pines are evergreen, their tough leaves are well suited to winter dormancy, especially when temperatures stay well below freezing. This evidence of chilling polar winters was ominous, for the supply of heat to polar regions was weakening, and world climate was changing. The Late Cenozoic Polar vegetation was transformed during the Late Cenozoic (the past 10–15 Ma), as the old deciduous polar forest was displaced southward, replaced by mixed broadleaf/coniferous forest, with deciduous hardwoods such as walnuts and birches, and abundant pine and spruce. Iceland and islands of the western Canadian Arctic preserve an exceptional record of Late Tertiary forests, the forerunners of modern taiga, or boreal forest. A key factor in this change was the harshness of the winter, which had come to characterize the North. Yet still, forest cover was continuous, and there was no evidence of tundra. By 2 Ma, forests of larch, spruce, and dwarf birch grew throughout the Far North, as fossils at Kap København, northernmost Greenland, reveal. In these forests lived bear, deer, rabbits, horses, weasels, wolverine, and beaver, as revealed by 3 Ma bones from Ellesmere Island. The stunted appearance of the trees indicates that they were coping with increasingly inhospitable climate. Today, such forests are characteristic of bitterly cold winters and cool, short summers. Just under 2 million years ago, northern polar forests finally gave way to tundra and ice, as great continental glaciers of the Ice Age grew in North America, Asia, and Europe, and the Arctic was born. The repeated advance and retreat of ice sheets has shaped northern lands, and ice-age climate imposes strict limits on the survival of vegetation. Fossil plants from the Arctic regions document the long decline of global climate, from the northern “greenhouse” of 50 million years ago to the “icehouse” of today, demonstrating, in the most vivid way, the impact of global cooling on northern vegetation. They reveal that the tundra biome, which defines the Arctic, is a geologically recent phenomenon, no older than the first species of humankind.

Fossil plants thus provide us with insight into the dynamic history of our planet, and serve to remind us that the only enduring feature of the Arctic is change. JAMES BASINGER See also Geological History of the Arctic

Further Reading Early Land Plants Boyd, A., “The Thyra Ö flora: toward an understanding of the climate and vegetation during the Early Tertiary in the High Arctic.” Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, 62 (1990): 189–203 Boulter, M.C. & H.C. Fisher, “Cenozoic Plants and Climates of the Arctic.” NATO ASI Series 1: Global Environmental Change, Volume 27, Berlin: Springer, 1994 Christie, R.L. & N.J. McMillan, “The fossil forests of Tertiary age in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.” Geological Survey of Canada, Bulletin 403, 1991 Harris, T.M., “The fossil flora of Scoresby Sound, East Greenland. Parts 1–5.” Meddelelser om Grønland, 85(2, 3, 5); 112(1, 2) (1931–1937) Koch, B.E., “Fossil plants from the lower Paleocene of the Agatdalen (Angmârtussut) area, central Nûgssuaq Peninsula, northwest Greenland.” Meddelelser om Grønland, 172(5) (1963) Kotyk, M.E., J.F. Basinger, P.G. Gensel & T.A.de Freitas, “Morphologically complex plant macrofossils from the Late Silurian of Arctic Canada.” American Journal of Botany, 89 (2002): 1004–1013 Kvaek, Z. & S. Manum, “Ferns of the Spitsbergen Palaeogene.” Palaeontographica, Abt. B 230 (1993): 143–155 Kvaek, Z., S. Manum, & M.C. Boulter, “Angiosperms from the Palaeogene of Spitsbergen, including an unfinished work by A.G. Nathhorst.” Palaeontographica, Abt. B 232 (1994): 103–128 McKenna, M., “Eocene paleolatitude, climate, and mammals of Ellesmere Island.” Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 30 (1980): 349–362 McIver, E.E. & J.F. Basinger, “Early Tertiary floral evolution in the Canadian High Arctic.” Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 86 (1999): 523–545 Schweitzer, H.-J., “Die “teriären” Koniferen Spitzbergens.” Palaeontographica, Abt. B 169 (1974): 1–89 Schweitzer, H.-J., “Die Devonfloren Spitzbergens.” Palaeontographica, Abt. B 252 (1999): 1–122

The Late Cenozoic Bennike, O., “The Kap København Formation: stratigraphy and palaeobotany of a Plio-Pleistocene sequence in Pearly Land, North Greenland.” Meddelelser om Grønland, Geoscience, 23 (1990) Harrington, C.R., “Life at a 3.5 million-year-old beaver pond in the Canadian Arctic Islands and the modern scene.” Meridian (2001 fall/winter): 11–13; http://www.polarcom.gc.ca/pdf/ 01fall_winter_meri_en.pdf Matthews Jr., J.V. & L. Ovenden, “Late Tertiary plant macrofossils from localities in arctic/subarctic North America; a review of the data.” In: Circum-Arctic late Tertiary/early Pleistocene stratigraphy and environments. Arctic, 43 (1990): 364–392

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FOXE, LUKE Luke Foxe was denied a berth as mate on John Knight’s 1606 East India Company voyage to find the North West Passage, but his diligent pursuit of cartographic and hydrographic knowledge of the Arctic led to his acquaintance with nautical writer and stationer John Tapp, globe maker Thomas Sterne, and Henry Briggs, Professor of Astronomy at Oxford. Briggs instilled in Foxe his unwavering conviction of the existence of a North West Passage, instructed him in applying advanced mathematics to navigation, and in 1629 supported Foxe’s petition to the Crown for aid to mount an expedition. Thomas Button lent his support when the Lords of the Admiralty consulted him about the feasibility of the proposal. Thus, Foxe was given use of the 70-ton Charles, which was refitted for the voyage, although too late to embark during 1630. The death of Briggs and the dwindling of Foxe’s financial backers might have ended the venture, but word of a similar expedition, under the command of Thomas James and financed by Bristol merchants, elicited the support of other London investors, including John Wolstenholme and diplomat Thomas Roe. Foxe was unable to recruit men with experience of northern ice, so he was compelled to accept Trinity House’s selection of officers and crew, including Dunne as ship’s master and Yourin as mate. With 20 other men and boys, provisions for 18 months, and “a Mappe of all my Predecessors Discoveries, His Majesty’s Instructions, with a Letter to the Emperour of Japan,” Foxe sailed from Deptford in England on May 5, 1631, two days after Thomas James left Bristol. Foxe reached Kirkwall in the Orkneys on May 19. Westering along the 60th parallel brought the Charles to fog-bound Cape Farewell, Greenland, on June 13. Crossing the Davis Strait, Foxe sighted Cape Chidley, and entered Hudson Strait on June 22. Dodging icebergs, and bedeviled by both erratic compass readings and his crew’s demand for greater liquor rations, Foxe coasted the northern shore of Hudson Strait for more than a fortnight. Turning south, past Mill and Salisbury Islands on July 10, he stopped at Nottingham Island the following day, passed Mansel Island on July 17, Coats Island and Cary Swan’s Nest two days later, and passed along the southern shore of Southampton Island, before landing on an island he christened Roe’s Welcome, a name thereafter applied to the surrounding strait between Cape Kendall and Cape Fullerton. There, on July 27, Foxe reached Button’s “furthest north” and encountered a cemetery. The Inuit custom of knees-to-chest burial led Foxe to assume that the occupants were a race of pigmies. Foxe spent another month sailing south along the western shore of Hudson Bay, which Button had

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explored in 1612–1613. Despite staying close inshore, and anchoring by night, Foxe missed seeing both Chesterfield and Rankin Inlets, perhaps because of bad weather. Foxe investigated the tidal flow that Button had observed at the mouth of the Churchill River, then continued south, and reached Port Nelson on August 9, where he found the remains of Button’s winter encampment, including a tent, hogsheads, broken anchors, a gun, shot, and a cross. After the small pinnace stowed aboard the Charles was assembled, Foxe explored upriver, amid dense spruce forest. He nailed a new inscription on Button’s cross and renamed the area New Yorkshire, then sailed southeast, as frost and flocks of migrating geese heralded imminent winter. On August 29, at the mouth of the Winisk River, between Port Nelson and James Bay, Thomas James’s ship, the Henrietta Maria, hove into view, and the next day Foxe went aboard to dine on roast partridge and confer with his rival. James suggested that Foxe seek a safe, winter harbor, but Foxe took his leave on August 31, after presenting his host with some small arms, and headed east. Rounding Cape Henrietta Maria, he entered James Bay, and closed the gap between the discoveries of Button and Henry Hudson. At approximately 55°14′ N, on September 4, he turned northward, at a cape he dubbed Wolstenholme’s ultima vale, after his principal sponsor, for he was certain no passage lay that way. After sighting and naming the Sleeper Islands, Foxe reached Coats Island on September 8, passed Southampton Island near Seahorse Point, and, from September 15 to 20 recorded numerous soundings and observations while sailing up Foxe Basin, where he found the tides flowing from the southeast, not the west as Button had reported. Rounding the Foxe Peninsula, just beyond the promontory that he named Cape Dorchester, he reckoned that he had crossed the Arctic Circle on September 20. Two days later, Foxe calculated that he had reached his furthest north at 66°47′—a probable exaggeration of one degree—and backtracked to continue his exploration among the islands along the north shore of Hudson Strait. He reached Resolution Island on September 28, amid proliferating ice and an exhausted and querulous crew, so Foxe wisely headed home, doubling Cape Chidley through heavy seas on October 5. Although the open seas were free of icebergs, Foxe deemed it safer to follow the southern route, and wrote that on October 31 he “came into the Downes with all my men recovered and sound, not having lost one Man, nor boy, nor any manner of Tackling, having beene forth neere 6 moneths.” Foxe was a good observer and excellent navigator, who vividly described what he saw, measured, and, in the case of polar bears, tasted. The first to circumnavigate Hudson Bay, completing the work of Hudson,

FRAM STRAIT Button, Robert Bylot, and William Baffin, Foxe dispelled visions of any westward passage therein. Further English interest in the Passage lay dormant until the Hudson’s Bay Company’s ill-fated 1719 expedition. Although Foxe deserved much credit for his discoveries, as well as for not losing a single life, he was criticized by Thomas Roe and others for not wintering and continuing to search for the Passage in which he still firmly believed. This criticism was fed not only by his recalcitrant officers, but also by his arrogant manner. Thus, James, a less-experienced mariner, reaped great public acclaim, despite achieving less.

Biography Luke Foxe was born at Kingston-upon-Hull, Yorkshire, on October 20, 1586, the son of Richard Fox, master mariner and assistant of Trinity House. Schooled for the sea, he apprenticed on numerous coasting voyages and North Sea crossings, as well as trips to the Baltic and Mediterranean. Overcoming limited formal education through diligence, he studied the latest techniques of navigation (including the use of logarithms, which he learned from Briggs), digested the books of Hakluyt and Purchas, among others, and interviewed veterans of Arctic voyages. Foxe hoped to locate the North West Passage near the Churchill River estuary named by William Baffin, whom Foxe greatly admired. Foxe also compiled and published what was perhaps the first history of Arctic exploration, which includes the only surviving narrative of Button’s voyage, as well as Foxe’s colorful account of his own voyage (Foxe, 1635; see also Miller, 1894). Portions of Foxe’s narrative are also in Rundell (1849). Foxe’s book originally appeared with a large folded map of the Arctic regions, which some consider as one of the most interesting and important documents in the history of Arctic exploration. In 1614, Foxe married Anne Barnard of Whitby, and they appear to have been childless. He had no further opportunity to pursue his search for the North West Passage, and died in relative poverty at Whitby in July 1635. MERRILL DISTAD See also Button, Sir Thomas; James, Thomas; North West Passage, exploration of Further Reading Barrow, John, A Chronological History of Voyages Into the Arctic Regions (1818); Undertaken Chiefly for the Purpose of Discovering a North-East, North-West or Polar Passage Between the Atlantic and Pacific: From the Earliest Periods of Scandinavian Navigation, to the Departure of the Recent Expeditions, Under the Orders of Captains Ross and Buchan, London: John Murray, 1818, reprinted New ton Abbot: David and Charles, 1971 and New York: Barnes and Noble, 1971

Dodge, Ernest S., Northwest by Sea, New York: Oxford University Press, 1961 Fox, Luke, North-West Fox, or, Fox From the North-West Passage, Beginning with King Arthur, Malga, Octhvr, the Two Zeni’s of Iseland, Estotiland, and Dorgia; Following with Briefe Abstracts of the Voyages of Cabot, Frobisher, Davis, Waymouth, Knight, Hudson, Button, Gibbons, Bylot, Baffin, Hawkridge, originally published 1635, reprinted New York: Johnson Reprint, 1965 Kenyon, Walter, Arctic Argonauts, edited by M.T. Kelly, Waterloo, Ontario: Penumbra Press, 1990 Macpherson, M.A., Silk, Spices, and Glory: In Search of the Northwest Passage, Calgary, Alberta: Fifth House, 2001 Markham, Clements R., The Lands of Silence: A History of Arctic and Antarctic Exploration, Cambridge: The University Press, 1921 Miller, Christy (editor), The Voyages of Captain Luke Foxe of Hull, and Captain Thomas James of Bristol, in Search of a NorthWest Passage, in 1631–32; With Narratives of the Earlier North-West Voyages of Frobisher, Davis, Weymouth, Hall, Knight, Hudson, Button, Gibbons, Bylot, Baffin, Hawkridge, and Others, 2 volumes, London: Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1894, reprinted New York: Burt Franklin, 1963 Rasky, Frank, The Polar Voyagers, Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1976 Rundall, Thomas (editor), Narratives of Voyages Towards the North West, in Search of a Passage to Cathay and India, 1496 to 1631, London: Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1849, reprinted New York: Burt Franklin, 1970. Thomson, George Malcolm, The North-West Passage, London: Secker and Warburg, 1975 Waters, David W., The Art of Navigation in England in Elizabethan and Early Stuart Times, London: Hollis and Carter, 1958

FRAM STRAIT The Fram Strait is located between Greenland and Svalbard at about 79–80° N. About 500 km wide, it separates the Arctic Ocean to the north from the Greenland Sea to the south. With a sill depth of about 2200 m, it is the only deep passage between the Mediterranean Arctic Ocean and its surrounding oceans, thereby providing the most important exchange in terms of volume and energy. A major fraction of Arctic sea ice—about 3000 km³ per year—is advected into the North Atlantic through this passage. The transport of surface water masses between the North Atlantic and the Arctic occurs in two major currents. The ice-free West Spitsbergen Current (WSC) in eastern Fram Strait has its roots in the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Current and introduces warm (4°C) saline (salinity about 35 psu) Atlantic water far north into the Arctic, where it submerges north of Svalbard below the cold (−1.8°C) but less saline (below 33 psu) Polar Water. A large fraction of the WSC is deflected to the west and contributes to the southward-flowing Return Atlantic Current. The heat transported within the WSC causes a relatively mild climate on the west coast on Svalbard, which is ice-free nearly year-round. On the

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FRANKLIN, LADY JANE west flank of the Fram Strait, conditions are extremely different. Cold polar water with sea ice is transported south with the East Greenland Current (EGC) with current speeds highest close to the surface (about 20 cm s−¹). The Polar Front, the borderline between the EGC and the WSC, is marked by strong horizontal and vertical gradients in water temperature, salinity, current speeds and directions, as well as sea ice concentrations. The fluxes of sea water and sea ice through Fram Strait influence the heat and freshwater budget of the Arctic Ocean and North Atlantic. At 80° N, about 4–6 Sv (1 Sverdrup = 106 m³ s−¹) are transported out of the Arctic within the EGC, while the northward transport by the WSC accounts for about 1–3 Sv. Changes in the current strengths are of crucial importance in understanding the annual, interannual, and decadal variability of the climate in the Northern Hemisphere and the Earth, as they partially control the thermohaline circulation of the world’s ocean. Ongoing research projects in this area include measurements from satellites, ships, and moored instrumentation to determine, for example, the thickness of sea ice or current speeds in Fram Strait. Apart from water masses, the Polar Front also separates ecosystems, which are dominated by Arctic and Atlantic species according to the hydrographical regime. Biological productivity on the western Arctic side of Fram Strait is generally lower than on the eastern Atlantic side because of the sea ice cover. An exception is the Northeast Water Polynya on the Greenlandic shelf. Local currents and wind fields open the ice pack each year leading to elevated phytoplankton productivity, which in turn enhances pelagic and benthic life. Highest concentrations of plankton as well as birds and marine mammals are found in the marginal ice zone at the Polar Front, induced by locally enhanced phytoplankton growth from spring to autumn. ROLF GRADINGER See also Arctic Ocean; Greenland Sea; North Atlantic Drift; Thermohaline Circulation Further Reading Aagaard, K., “Inflow from the Atlantic to the Polar Basin.” In The Arctic Ocean: The Hydrographic Environment and the Fate of Pollutants, edited by L. Rey, London: Macmillan, 1982, pp. 69–81 Aagaard, K., C. Darnall & P. Greisman, “Year-long current measurements in the Greenland-Spitsbergen Passage.” Deep Sea Research, 20 (1973): 743–746 Aagaard, K., E. Fahrbach, J. Meincke & J.H. Swift, “Saline outflow from the Arctic Ocean: its contribution to the deep waters of the Greenland, Norwegian, and Iceland Seas.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 96 (1991): 20433–20441 Barthel, K.-G., “Relationship of food uptake and body components of Calanus finmarchicus, C. glacialis and C. hyperboreus to particulate matter and water characteristics in Fram Strait.” Polar Biology, 10 (1990): 343–350

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Berner, H. & G. Wefer, “Clay-mineral flux in the Fram Strait and Norwegian Sea.” Marine Geology, 116 (1994): 327–345 Gradinger, R.R. & M.E.M. Baumann, “Distribution of phytoplankton communities in relation to the large-scale hydrographical regime in the Fram Strait.” Marine Biology, 111 (1991): 311–321 Gradinger, R., M. Spindler & J. Weissenberger, “On the structure and development of Arctic pack ice communities in Fram Strait: a multivariate approach.” Polar Biology, 12 (1992): 727–733 Hebbeln, D. & G. Wefer, “Effects of ice coverage and ice-rafted material on sedimentation in the Fram Strait.” Nature, 350 (1991): 409–411 Hirche, H. J., M.E.M. Baumann, G. Kattner & R. Gradinger, “Plankton distribution and the impact of copepod grazing on primary production in Fram Strait, Greenland Sea.” Journal of Marine Systems, 2 (1991): 477–494 Muench, R.D., M.G. McPhee, C.A. Paulson & J.H. Morison, “Winter oceanographic conditions in the Fram StraitYermak Plateau Region.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 97 (1992): 3469–3483 Piepenburg, D., W.G. Ambrose Jr., A. Brandt, P.E. Renaud, M.J. Ahrens & P. Jensen, “Benthic community patterns reflect water column processes in the northeast water polynya (Greenland).” Journal of Marine Systems, 10 (1997): 467–482 Rudels, B., H.J. Friedrich & D. Quadfasel, “The Arctic circumpolar boundary current.” Deep-Sea Research, 46 (1999): 1023–1062 Schlichtholz, P. & M.-N. Houssais, “An inverse modeling study in Fram Strait. Part I.: dynamics and circulation.” Deep-Sea Research, 46 (1999): 1083–1135 Smith Jr., W.O., R.I. Brightman & B.C. Booth, “Phytoplankton biomass and photosynthetic response during the winterspring transition in the Fram Strait.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 96 (1991): 4549–4554

FRANKLIN, LADY JANE Lady (née Griffin) Jane Franklin, the second wife of Sir John Franklin, was a woman of indominable will and spirit. Through her efforts to find traces of her husband’s last Arctic expedition to the Canadian Arctic archipelago, she became the sponsor of several, and the inspiration for many other, Arctic expeditions to the North West Passage in the period 1850–1875. The role for which Franklin is perhaps best known did not commence until her husband’s disappearance on what proved to be his third and final Arctic expedition, which sailed from England in May 1845. When no word had been heard by 1848, Franklin led the public demand for a search expedition, and when the Admiralty’s efforts bore no fruit, she organized and funded her own. The first expedition she sponsored, commanded by the veteran whaling captain William Penny in 1850–1851, was one of several parties that penetrated Barrow’s Straits and located Franklin’s first winter camp on Beechey Island, off Devon Island. Franklin also wrote to the government of the United States, which, with the assistance of the expatriate British businessman Henry Grinnell, dispatched a

FRANKLIN, LADY JANE search expedition of its own under the command of Edwin J. De Haven (1850–1851). Franklin sponsored further expeditions commanded by Charles Codrington Forsyth on the Prince Albert (1850) and William Kennedy and Joseph-René Bellot (1851– 1852). Although neither found any sign of Franklin, Kennedy and Bellot traveled extensively by sledge, discovering Bellot Strait on the Boothia Peninsula and passing, although they did not know it, within a hundred miles of where Franklin’s ships had been abandoned. The Admiralty next sent a fleet of five ships under Sir Edward Belcher (1852–1854), but they discovered no further traces of Franklin’s party. His ships froze in the ice, and Belcher’s order to abandon them proved both unpopular and costly. Calls for further expeditions were put on hold by the outbreak of the Crimean War (1854–1855), but Franklin continued her assault on the government, so much so that her home in London became known as the “Battery.” Miraculously, the Resolute, one of Belcher’s ships, drifted unpiloted to the Davis Straits, whence it was remanned by an American whaling crew, refurbished, and presented to the British government as a token of friendship. Yet despite the symbolic force of these events, Franklin was unable to persuade the Admiralty to send the Resolute, or any other ship, to the Arctic. A further challenge emerged in 1854 when John Rae returned to England with artifacts from Sir John Franklin’s expedition, including Franklin’s own Hanoverian Cross of knighthood. Rae reported that the Inuit had told him of cannibalism among Franklin’s men, a charge Lady Franklin labored to refute. In part at her behest, Charles Dickens penned a scathing rebuke of Rae’s charges, which ran for two consecutive issues of the journal Household Words. In the meantime, despite the financial and emotional toll of her fight, Franklin continued to travel, venturing as far as India, North Africa, and Hawaii. As the Crimean War drew to a close, Franklin renewed her attempts to change the government’s mind. When letters to the Times and petitions to Parliament signed by a hundred men of science failed to bring about any change at the Admiralty, Franklin recruited Frances Leopold McClintock—a veteran of earlier searches—and obtained for him the small yacht Fox, on which he sailed in 1857. Adverse ice conditions cost McClintock a year, but he persisted. In 1859, his lieutenant discovered the last official record left by Franklin’s men on King William Island, which disclosed that Sir John Franklin had died in July 1847, and that the ships had been abandoned early in 1848. Only then, with concrete evidence in hand, did Jane Franklin allow herself to assume the public role of widow. Her search for Franklin inspired songs and

ballads, and the Times dubbed her “our English Penelope,” but she had little time for such public laurels. Franklin continued to travel, once undertaking a trip from San Francisco to Sitka, Alaska, in the hope that some records of her husband’s expedition might have found their way into the archives there.

Biography Jane Griffin was born in 1791 in London, the daughter of John Griffin, a well-to-do silk weaver. She was a close friend of John Franklin’s first wife, Eleanor Ann Porden, who died shortly after Franklin departed for his second Arctic land expedition in 1824. When Franklin returned, he renewed his acquaintance with Jane Griffin. They were married in 1828 and, although they had no children, raised Franklin’s daughter from his first marriage, Eleanor. She led an active life, traveling around the world, and working, for example, as a leader in the cause of prison reform in Tasmania during her husband’s years as governor there. In 1843, she founded the Tasmanian Society for the Reformation of Female Prisoners. Franklin also traveled widely in New Zealand, Australia, and Tasmania, becoming the first woman to climb Mt Wellington, as well as the first to cross Tasmania from Hobart to Macquarie Harbor. She founded a college (Jane Franklin Hall, an impendent college of the University of Tasmania), and was an active horticulturist. She established a private botanic gardens, “Ancanthe,” and a natural history museum at Lenah Valley, near Hobart in Tasmania. Jane Franklin’s niece Sophia Cracroft became her constant companion, and they frequently traveled together. She sponsored expeditions commanded by William Penney (1850–1851), Charles Codrington Forsyth (1850), William Kennedy and Joseph-René Bellot (1851–1852), Francis Leopold McClintock (1857– 1859), and Allen Young (1875). In 1860, she was awarded the Founder’s Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. In 1873, at the age of 82, still intent on vindicating her husband’s reputation, she financed an Arctic expedition led by Allen Young aboard the Pandora in search of the elusive papers that she believed would set the record straight. Eventually, age and illness confined her to bed, and her vast expenditures forced her to seek more modest lodgings. She was ill, and unable to observe the work when her marble monument to Sir John was being erected at Westminster Abbey in 1874. She died on July 18, 1875, on the eve of its dedication. RUSSELL A. POTTER See also Franklin, Sir John; McClintock, Francis Leopold; North West Passage, Exploration of; Penney, William; Rae, John

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FRANKLIN, SIR JOHN Further Reading Dickens, Charles, “The Lost Arctic Voyagers.” Household Words, December 2, 1854 Rawnsley, Willingham Franklin (editor), The Life, Diaries, and Correspondence of Jane Lady Franklin, 1792–1875, London: Erskin Macdonald, 1923 Woodward, Frances J., Portrait of Jane: A Life of Lady Franklin, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1951

FRANKLIN, SIR JOHN As an officer in one and leader of three Arctic expeditions between 1818 and 1845, Sir John Franklin was directly responsible for mapping a considerable amount of the northern coastline of North America. Although he died prior to the completion of his final expedition (1845–1848?), the search for his whereabouts, which consumed the years 1849–1859, removed from the map nearly all the remaining blanks in the long-sought North West Passage. The mysteries attending the disappearance of his last expedition have proven to be of enduring interest, inspiring writers from Charles Dickens to Margaret Atwood. Franklin entered the Navy at the age of 14, and saw service in the Napoleonic wars. He also accompanied his uncle Matthew Flinders on the latter’s circumnavigation of Australia. Franklin’s first Arctic expedition took place in 1818, when he was appointed secondin-command under Captain David Buchan in the Admiralty expedition sent to probe the polar ice. The expedition’s vessels, Dorothea and Trent, battered by heavy pack ice north of Svalbard, were forced to retreat after emergency repairs. Franklin earned credit for keeping order on the Trent despite severe collisions with the ice. In 1819, he was appointed to lead a land expedition to explore the coast of what was then referred to as the “Polar Sea” near the outlet of the Coppermine River at Coronation Gulf in present-day Nunavut. In the first year, Franklin established a base at Fort Enterprise north of the Great Slave Lake; in the second year he began his journey to the coast. Using canoes paddled by crews of hired voyageurs, he managed to chart a remarkable amount of coastline before making a disastrous retreat, during which most of the voyageurs perished of starvation. One of Franklin’s native guides was accused of cannibalizing their corpses, and shot midshipman Hood before being shot by John Richardson, the surgeon on board. Franklin also nearly starved to death before his rescue by George Back and a party of Dene hunters. Despite the loss of life, Franklin was hailed on his return to England as “the man who ate his boots,” and his published account of the expedition was widely admired. Franklin returned to the Arctic in 1824, establishing a second survey west of the coastline he had previously

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Historical portrait of Sir John Franklin, published by McFarlane and Erskine, Edinburgh. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

explored, and making his way as far as Prudhoe Bay. The success of this second land expedition earned him a knighthood as well as an honorary degree from Oxford. As the Admiralty was not contemplating any further Arctic voyages, Franklin accepted an appointment as governor of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), where he arrived in January of 1837. Although he earned the admiration of many in this position, he managed to provoke the ire of a key political faction loyal to his colonial secretary, who eventually engineered his ouster in 1843. Franklin’s departure from office coincided with Sir John Barrow’s decision to pursue one final attempt at the North West Passage, and Franklin actively sought the assignment, which he received despite some reservations about his age. Captain Francis Crozier was appointed second-in-command. The expedition left Greenhithe, England, en route to Lancaster Sound aboard HMS Erebus and Terror on May 19, 1845, and by July 4 had reached the Danish village of Godhavn, on Disko Island off the Greenland coast. That first summer, Franklin navigated Barrow’s Straits as far as Wellington Channel, through which he circumnavigated Cornwallis Island. In 1845–1846, he wintered at the tiny Beechey Island off southwest Devon Island; three crew members died there of natural causes and were buried (their bodies were exhumed in the 1980s by

FRANKLIN, SIR JOHN physical anthropologist Owen Beattie, and were found to have high levels of lead). In 1846, Franklin was able to penetrate as far as the straits north-northwest of King William Island, where his ships were beset by ice on September 12. Erebus and Terror remained stranded in the pack ice until their abandonment on April 22, 1848. In the interim, 12 more crew members and nine officers perished, including Franklin himself, who died on June 11, 1847. The ultimate fate of the remaining 105 persons has never been definitively established, although it is clear that many of them met their deaths while on a sledge journey along the southern coast of King William Island. The Admiralty dispatched a mission in 1849 under the command of James Clark Ross, but he was unable to locate any traces of Franklin. The following season, several further expeditions, both government and private, arrived in the Arctic Archipelago. Captain William Penney, sent by Lady Jane Franklin, located traces of the Franklin party camp on Beechey Island, including the three graves. Successive missions, including a flotilla of ships under the command of Admiral Belcher, disclosed nothing new about Franklin’s fate, although they made immense contributions to the geographical knowledge of the area. In 1854, Hudson’s Bay Company doctor John Rae encountered several Inuit who had heard of two ships that had been crushed in the ice far to the west. They showed him many artifacts, including cap-bands, utensils, and Franklin’s own Guelphic badge (an insignia of the Royal Guelphic Order). The Inuit also told Rae that they had seen evidence of cannibalism among the survivors. No definitive written record was recovered until 1859 when, sledging from the yacht Fox (dispatched by Lady Franklin), Francis Leopold McClintock discovered a note left by James Fitzjames and Francis Crozier near Victory Point on King William Island. The note contained particulars of the expedition up through April of 1848, and contained the enigmatic postscript “and start to-morrow for Back’s Fish River.” If that was indeed their destination, the bulk of the survivors never made it. Inuit hunters who met with one group described them as being in very poor health. One party may have crossed Simspon’s Straits before expiring at “Starvation Cove”; a second party, possibly a detachment from this group, died near the Todd Islets, where remains were found in 2000. Even after McClintock’s return, numerous parties searched for further traces of Franklin, among them Charles Francis Hall, Sir Allen Young, and Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka. However, aside from a few graves and skeletons, no written records were recovered. Contemporary scholar David C. Woodman has used the Inuit testimony collected by Hall as the basis for two books and several modern searching expedi-

tions (1991). Owen Beattie (1988) and others have conducted forensic examinations of the remains of Franklin crew members, and found evidence of lead poisoning (probably due to poorly soldered food tins) as well as cannibalism.

Biography John Franklin was born on April 16, 1786 at Spilsby, Lincolnshire, England, the ninth child of Willingham Franklin and Hannah (née Weekes). After a brief education at St Ives and Louth Grammar School, he entered the Navy at the age of 14, and was present at the battle of Copenhagen. From 1801 through 1804, he served as a midshipman under his uncle Matthew Flinders on board the Investigator during his circumnavigation of New Holland (Australia), returning in time to join the crew of HMS Bellerophon not long before the battle of Trafalgar. He also commanded the HMS Rainbow during the Greek war of independence in 1830–1833. He was married twice, first in 1823 to the poet Eleanor Ann Porden (1795–1825), with whom he had a daughter, Eleanor Isabella (1824–1860), and second in 1828 to Jane Griffin (1791–1875). He was second-in-command to David Buchan on the North Pole expedition of 1818; commanded two overland expeditions to the “Polar Sea” (1819–1822; 1825–1827); was governor of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) (1837–1843); and commanded the expedition in search of the North West Passage (1845–1847). Franklin died on June 11, 1847; his burial place is unknown, but there is a monument to him in Westminster Abbey. RUSSELL A. POTTER See also Franklin, Lady Jane; Hall, Charles F.; McClintock, Francis Leopold; North West Passage, Exploration of; Rae, John; Richardson, Sir John Further Reading Atwood, Margaret, “Concerning Franklin and his Gallant Crew.” In Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995 Beattie, Owen & John Geiger, Frozen in Time: Unlocking the Secrets of the Franklin Expedition, Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1988 Cyriax, Richard J., Sir John Franklin’s Last Arctic Expedition, London: Methuen, 1939. Dickens, Charles, “The Lost Arctic Voyagers.” Household Words, December 2, 1854 Franklin, John, Narrative of a Journey to the Polar Sea in the Years 1819–20–21–22, London: J.M. Dent; New York: E.P. Dutton, c.1910 Woodman, David C., Unravelling the Franklin Mystery: Inuit Testimony, Montreal and London: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991

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FRANZ JOSEF LAND

FRANZ JOSEF LAND Franz Josef Land is a Russian archipelago of 191 islands located in the Barents Sea north of Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya between 79°46′ and 81°52′ N and 44°52′ and 65°25′ E, and stretching 375 km (233 miles) east to west and 234 km (145 miles) north to south. The total land area measures 16,135 km2, with over 4425 km of coastline. Small islands dominate Franz Josef Land, which is separated by narrow straits. Islands of the central region reach up to 620 m elevation. Glacier ice covers about 13,700 km2 or 85% of the archipelago, and tidewater glaciers reach the sea over approximately 60% of the coast. Braided meltwater streams are common, and over a thousand small lakes are found located in depressions formed by glacial erosion. Two types of weather system dominate the region of Franz Josef Land. Depressions moving toward the east or northeast produce cloudy and stormy weather, while high-pressure stable conditions produce moderate winds and frequently clear skies. In winter, low pressure dominates, and temperatures show high interannual variability. The mean January temperature is −20°C to −30°C, the mean July temperature is 0–2°C, and the annual mean is −10°C to −13°C. The annual solid precipitation is 150–250 mm at sea level. The snow precipitation period typically lasts over ten months with liquid rain accounting for only 10% of annual precipitation. Ice covers the seas around Franz Josef Land typically from late September to May, although in some years sea ice survives year-round. Ice masses occur on 54 of the islands, and glaciation is greatest in the east and southeast. Ice caps typ-

ically measure 350–500 m high, and 300–450 m thick. Ice cap drainage patterns are generally determined by the underlying bedrock relief, and many ice margins are floating. Many glaciers show evidence of retreat during the last century, particularly tidewater glaciers, where significant mass is lost by iceberg calving. Many low-elevation ice caps are undergoing rapid downward wasting. Vegetation typically covers less than 10% of the ice-free ground. The number of species and percentage of vegetation cover decreases from southwest to northeast. Lichens are the most widespread flora, and over 100 species have been recorded. Vascular plants and bryophytes are present only in small quantities. From 0 to 130 m elevation, grass-moss desert predominates, from 130 to 175 m moss-lichen desert dominates, from 175 to 315 m lichen desert dominates, and above 315 m vegetation is rare. On talus slopes located below cliffs occupied by seabird nesting colonies, vegetation can cover up to 100% of the ground. Forty-one bird species have been observed on Franz Josef Land, and 14 are known to nest. The number of nesting species decreases from southwest to northeast with increasing climatic severity. The five most common nesting species are seabirds: fulmar, kittiwake, Brünnich’s guillemot, black guillemot, and little auk. Franz Josef Land is an important polar bear denning area, and Arctic foxes occur in small numbers as well. Harp seal, ringed seal, and bearded seal are all common. Atlantic walruses are relatively common, and a small local population of bowhead whales exists as well. Well-developed plankton and benthic faunas exist in the waters around Franz Josef Land, but only

The remains of Walter Wellman’s 1898–1899 expedition to Franz Josef Land are found near the rocks of Cape Tegetthoff. Copyright Bryan and Cherry Alexander Photography

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FRANZ JOSEF LAND 33 fish species have been recorded, none of which are commercially exploited. The surface geology is dominated by horizontal or gently dipping layers of sedimentary rocks underlying basalts and dolerites. The basalt rocks crop out as vast plateaux around the northern, western, and southern periphery. Inside the basaltic arc, sheets of dolerite are exposed. On the eastern islands, the basaltic plateaux and dolerites have been removed by erosion to leave low plains of horizontal friable sedimentary rocks pierced by dykes. A series of coastal ramparts up to 50 m high are noted around the island margins, formed during the Holocene period by glacio-isostatic rise of the archipelago. Deglaciation began some time after 17,000 years BP. Raised glacimarine terraces, dated at 8000 years BP, suggest that Franz Josef Land ice masses were at or behind their present margins by the early Holocene. The archipelago was not charted until 1873, although hunters knew of the presence of land in the area. The 1872–1874 Austro-Hungarian Teggetthoff expedition, led by Carl Weyprecht and Julius Payer, reached Franz Josef Land on November 1, 1873 and mapped the southern area. The Benjamin Leigh Smith expeditions (1880 and 1881–1882), JacksonHarmsworth expedition (1894–1897), Fridtjof Nansen and Lars Emil Johansen expedition (1895–1896), Walter Wellman expedition (1898–1899), and Georgiy Y. Sedov expedition (1912–1914) conducted further mapping. The remains of Wellman’s hut were found near the distinctive rocks at Cape Tegetthoff. Until 1926, Franz Josef Land was considered a no-man’sland (Terra Nullius). On April 15, 1926, the Soviet Union proclaimed the islands as Russian territory (part of the Arkhangel’skaya Oblast’). In 1939, the Soviet government established a manned Russian meteorological station and research base at Bukhta Tikhaya, on Hooker Island. The meteorological station operated until 1958, when it moved to Hayes Island, and the research base closed in 1959. In 1930 and 1931, international expeditions to Franz Josef Land were permitted, including a visit by the airship Graf Zeppelin in 1931, but from 1932 to 1990 the archipelago remained closed to Westerners. A clandestine German weather station did, however, operate undetected on Alexandra Land from September 1943 to October 1944. During the early part of the Cold War, the archipelago was of strategic military importance. In 1952, the Soviet Union established military bases at Nagurskoye on Alexandra Land and on Graham Bell Island. Limited Russian scientific activity was permitted from 1931 to 1962, including International Geophysical Year glaciological investigations in 1957–1958 and 1958–1959. From 1962 to 1990, scientific activity was severely curtailed

due to Soviet military restrictions. However in 1990, a joint Russian-Norwegian-Polish research base was established at Bukhta Tikhaya by the Murmansk Marine Biological Institute in cooperation with Norsk Polarinstitutt (Norwegian Polar Institute), Norway, and the Institute of Oceanography, Polish Academy of Sciences. International scientific expeditions were permitted limited access by the Russian government to much of Franz Josef Land between 1990 and 1994. The absence of commercial activity due to restricted access has contributed to environmental preservation on Franz Josef Land. Around military bases the localized environmental damage is severe, but the remainder of the archipelago is largely unspoiled. Easing of access restrictions in 1990 by the Russian government led to a steep increase in both commercial and scientific activity, causing environmental concerns. In April 1994, a nature sanctuary was established by the Russian Federation covering Franz Josef Land. The sanctuary is of the zakaznik category, allowing supervision and coordination of research and tourism. MEREDITH WILLIAMS See also Amedeo, Luigi, Duke of Abruzzi; Arkhangel’skaya Oblast’; Jackson, Frederick; Leigh Smith, Benjamin; Nansen, Fridtjof; Sedov, Georgiy Yakovlevich; Wellman, Walter Further Reading Barr, Susan, Franz Josef Land, Oslo: Norsk Polarinstitutt, 1995 Dowdeswell, Julian A., Andrey F. Glazovsky & Yuri Y. Macheret, “Ice divides and drainage basins on the ice caps of Franz Josef Land, Russian High Arctic, defined from Landsat, KFA-1000, and ERS-1 SAR Satellite Imagery.” Arctic and Alpine Research, 27(3) (1995): 264–270 Govorukha, L.S., “Zemlja Franca-Iosifa” [Franz Josef Land]. In Sovetskaja Arktika [Morja ostrova severnogo Ledovitogo Okeana], edited by Ya.Ya. Gakkel’ & L.S. Govorukha, Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Nauka, 1970 Grosswald, Mikhail et al., Oledeneniye Zemli Frantsa Iosifa [Glaciers of Franz Josef Land], Moscow: Nauka, 1973 Horn, Gunnar, “Franz Josef Land: natural history, discovery, exploration and hunting.” Skrifter om Svalbard og Ishavet, 29 (1930): 1–54 Savoia, Luigi Amedeo di, Farther North than Nansen; Being the Voyage of the Polar Star, London: Howard Wilford Bell, 1901 Sharov, A.I., “Sputnikovyy topograficheskiy monitoring lednikovykh landshaftov vysokoshirotnoy arktiki” [Satellite topographic monitoring of glaciological landscapes of high latitude Arctica], Materialy Glyatsiologicheskikh Issledovaniy, 85 (1998): 166–177 Uspenskiy, Savva Mikhaylovich & P.S. Tomkovich, “The birds of Franz-Josef Land and their protection.” Polar Geography and Geology, 11(3) (1987): 221–234 Vinogradov, O.N. & T.V. Psareva, Katalog lednikov SSSR. Tom 3. Severnyy Kray. Chast’ 1. Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa, basseyn Barentseva morya [Catalogue of glaciers of the USSR, Volume 3, Northern region. Part 1. Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa. Barents Sea basin], Moscow: Gidrometeoizdat, 1965

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FRESHWATER ECOSYSTEMS Williams, Meredith & Julian Dowdeswell, “Mapping seabird nesting habitats in Franz Josef Land, Russian High Arctic, using Landsat Thematic Mapper imagery.” Polar Research, 17(1) (1998): 25–30

FRESHWATER ECOSYSTEMS The freshwater ecosystems described here are found in the tundra and boreal forest (taiga) biomes of the Palearctic and Nearctic Regions (the latter emphasized here). Since the substrata of most of the tundra and much of the taiga consist of permafrost, most of the water that reaches the surface as precipitation (rain, sleet, and snow) stays close to the surface (in some places, the subsurface soils may permit some penetration and underground flow of water in summer). This accounts in large part for the myriad of lentic (standing water) habitats so characteristic of both tundra and taiga. Another factor that contributes to the abundance of surface water on the summer Arctic tundra is the often gentle slope of the land. Rain and meltwaters tend to remain where they occur and to accumulate rather than run off. Nevertheless, there is slope, and water does move. In the solitude of the tundra, where the only sounds are the calls of the birds, the rustling of the breeze in the cottongrass, and the distant rumble of thunder, one can often hear all around the faint murmurs of myriads of tiny rivulets that are unobtrusively yielding to the pull of gravity. Water also moves on alpine tundra, but there in early summer, streams large and small tend to be full (of meltwaters from snow and glaciers) and fast because the slope is often steep.

Habitats: Ponds and Lakes Many tundra and taiga aquatic habitats freeze solid during the long winter. Surface ice may form temporarily at any time during the warm season, but this event occurs more commonly at higher latitudes and higher altitudes. Obviously, there is a gradient from north to south with regard to temperature and light exposure. Winters are longest, coldest, and darkest, and the growing season is the shortest in the High Arctic. Continuous (or nearly so) summer sunshine partially compensates for the short summer everywhere in both biomes. While these climatic characteristics are generally applicable across the tundra and taiga, they are not uniformly applicable. This is because local variations in topography, hydrology, soil type, snow accumulations, protection from winds, and favorable exposure to sunshine all work together to produce microclimates and microhabitats where plants and animals can flourish to a far greater degree than would be possible in nearby but less favorable situations. As plants and animals flourish in these microhabitats, they tend to further alter the local conditions,

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usually in the direction of making them even more favorable for living things. Were it not for permafrost in both tundra and taiga, which largely prevents downward movement of water, the tundra would be a desert (since it gets only around 250 mm total precipitation annually) and the taiga, with only about 250–500 mm total precipitation annually, would be clothed in xerophytes (actually, to a large extent, the taiga is clothed in xerophytes: members of the pine family are generally more resistant to drought—and to cold—than are many species of deciduous trees). In the early days of mineral and petroleum exploration in the North, it was common practice during the warm season to deploy survey crews in heavy, usually tracked, vehicles. Evidence of those journeys may often be seen even now in the form of two parallel lines of puddles stretched out across the land. When the weight of these vehicles compressed the surface layer of peat moss, the insulation efficiency of the moss diminished, resulting in shallow melting of the underlying permafrost. Scars formed in this manner usually take decades to heal. Eventually, however, as is the case with most tundra and taiga ponds, these thermokarst depressions begin to be filled in with growing plants, dead plants and animals, and wind-blown mineral and plant debris. Such materials gradually displace the water and very slowly build up to the point where they begin to have some insulating properties. With the overlying insulating materials restored to some extent, the permafrost, which always reformed beneath the scar in winter, during summer now begins to persist longer and longer with each successive season until the underlying ground remains permanently frozen, a condition roughly comparable to its original state. Chemical and botanical studies of a series of High Arctic ponds (81.49° N 70.18° W) on Ellesmere Island, Canada, revealed that the water is hard, rich in dissolved solids, and alkaline (pH 6.8–8.9), and that the ponds are populated by several kinds of vascular and primitive plants (e.g., moss, Drepanocladus brevifolius; cottongrass, Eriophorum spp.; and water sedge, Carex aquatilis) that are either aquatic or tolerant of water-saturated substrates. The vast majority of the millions of tundra and taiga ponds are rather small in size, many being no more than puddles, often in thermokarst depressions or patterned ground such as polygons. There are, however, many thousands of large and deep lakes. Lake Baikal in southeastern Siberia, the most famous of the taiga lakes (for its great depth, biological diversity, and numerous endemic species), covers 31,500 km2 and is 1741 m deep. The seventh largest lake in the United States is Alaska’s Lake Iliamna—2590 km2. Many other very large lakes are spread across the circumpolar North.

FRESHWATER ECOSYSTEMS Many lakes are indispensable as spawning and nursery areas for salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) and serve as nesting areas for many kinds of migratory waterfowl. Some of the more accessible lakes have been damaged by industrial pollution and to a lesser extent by recreational housing, boating, and fishing. Within their range, moose (Alces alces) utilize the aquatic plants associated with ponds and lakes of all sizes.

increasing rate of thinning in this more recent time frame. This meltwater contributes to a sea level rise of 27 cm per year. One of the practical observations that Paul Okalik, premier of Nunavut, Canada, offered in his argument that Canada should ratify the Kyoto Protocol (to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere) is that he has seen a river running at unusually high levels due to unprecedentedly rapid melting of glaciers near the town of Pangnirtung.

Habitats: Rivers The circumpolar tundra and taiga are drained by great numbers of great rivers (and by many more lesser ones, too) that have played important roles in the history, exploration, and exploitation of the North. Most of the great rivers of North America and Eurasia have served as avenues for prospectors and explorers, as routes of commerce, and as highways for anadromous fish (which spend most of their life cycle in the sea but spawn in fresh water, e.g., salmon, Arctic char). Most importantly, the rivers of the North serve as vital links between terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Smaller streams (and in Siberia, even some sizable rivers) typically freeze solid in winter. In other cases, a shallow portion of a stream freezes solid, while deeper channels freeze over but retain an unfrozen layer along the bottom where fish and invertebrates may remain active. When water from upstream encounters an ice dam downstream, the water usually and repeatedly overflows the existing surface ice and then freezes, forming aufeis (from the German for “ice on top,” also known as naleds). The dimensions of accumulated ice just before spring thaw may greatly exceed the depth and width of the stream flow in summer. In most instances, however, winter essentially shuts down tributary inputs to lakes and streams so that water movement is minimal. Such is not the case for the many great rivers of the North—in these, water continues to move downstream under the covering ice and continues to support aquatic life during the winter. Some lakes tend to lose significant volume during winter even while being completely ice covered: water escapes through outflow rivers (also ice covered), but no significant replenishment can occur until spring thaw. Spring thaw is often accompanied by flooding of river valleys either because ice jams temporarily dam the channel, causing water to overspread the valley, or because the channel is too small to accommodate the sudden influx of great volumes of water from snow and glacier melting. Measurements of 67 Alaskan glaciers taken between 1955 and 1995 indicate an average annual loss of thickness of about 50 cm. Repeat measurements of 26 glaciers from 1995 to 2001 indicate an average annual thinning of 1.8 m, suggesting an

Aquatic Invertebrates Two features, perhaps more than any others, characterize the summer tundra and taiga: countless numbers of puddles, bogs, marshes, ponds, lakes and streams, and enormous populations of biting flies. These two phenomena are, of course, interrelated. Arctic aquatic insects serve as the basis for the food webs for more than 100 species of migratory birds. Predators take prey insects from the air or from the water or both. Alaska longspurs (Calcarius lapponicus) and snow buntings (Plectrophenax nivalis) eat plentifully of adult mosquitoes (Culicidae). Shorebirds, geese, and ducks prey upon caddisfly larvae (Trichoptera) and other aquatic insects. Aquatic arthropods are of two basic types: those that are entirely aquatic throughout the life cycle, and those that are aquatic in an earlier immature stage or stages, but then become terrestrial as adults (even some of these still require close relations with water). These invertebrates generally follow one or two of three available strategies for survival through the winter. Those that overwinter as adults usually do so in some protected niche (such as under the loose bark of a tree, or under a log, or deep down in a mass of peat moss—the possibilities are endless) and/or under a thick layer of snow. Such hardy individuals are usually equipped with protective physiological adaptations that permit them to survive freezing down to a certain degree. Typical of this strategy is the snow mosquito, Culiseta alaskaensis, which makes its presence felt immediately after the first thaw of early spring in the Alaskan taiga. The females of overwintering arthropods lay their eggs in water (or on ground that will, in all probability, be flooded in spring) before freeze-up (in which case the egg is the overwintering stage—most species of northern mosquitoes fall into this category) or in the first available water of spring. Those aquatic invertebrates that remain aquatic throughout their lives and that occupy habitats that freeze solid in winter typically overwinter in the egg stage or some other cold-resistant stage (some larvae and nymphs may burrow into the substrate of the pond or stream and remain inactive there until warmer temperatures return). Finally, those aquatic invertebrates occupying habitats that are

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FRESHWATER ECOSYSTEMS sufficiently deep that they do not freeze to the bottom may also overwinter as eggs or some comparable hardy stage or they may overwinter in an active stage (most probably with activity very greatly reduced), as caddisfly and stonefly larvae often do.

Arctic Research: Meade River Aquatic insects were surveyed in 1952 in a small study site in the Meade River valley (70.45° N 156.30° W) of Alaska about 80 km south of the Arctic Ocean and about 320 km north of the nearest timberline. Temperatures ranged from −23.9°C to 23.3°C (May 10–August 8), with July being the warmest month as it typically is throughout the taiga and tundra. River volume is greatest just after spring thaw in June, and then dwindles to a low just before freeze-up. Undoubtedly, some sections freeze solid over winter, a situation not favorable for fishes. Nevertheless, at least four species were present in the river: ninespine stickleback, Pungitius pungitius; Alaska blackfish, Dallis pectoralis; whitefish, Coregonus sp.; and grayling, Thymallus sp. Stomach content analyses of grayling and whitefish from the North Slope contained representatives of all the insect orders commonly present in that region. Water temperatures reached 9.4°C in the oxbow lake by mid-July; water temperatures in nearby smaller ponds ranged from 9.4°C to −15°C. All the observed insects showed marked adaptations permitting activity in a range of temperatures much lower than would be expected in temperate or tropical regions. Adult caddisflies were observed on June 12 (maximum temperature on that day, 5.6°C), and larval caddisflies were observed crawling about under the ice of the oxbow lake on June 18. Larval caddisflies were found only in the oxbow lake. Smaller, warmer ponds produced predaceous diving beetles (Dytiscidae), larval mayflies (Baetidae), stoneflies (Plecoptera), and various flies (Diptera), especially mosquitoes. A small, water-filled crack in the tundra produced specimens of all these insect groups as well as several kinds of Crustacea (Diaptomus sp.; Eurycercus lamellatus; Daphnia pulex; Polyartemiella sp.; circumpolar fairy shrimp, Branchinecta paludosa), a water mite (Hydrachnidia), and a snail (Physa sp.).

Arctic Research: Prudhoe Bay and Sagwon The general appearance of the tundra at Prudhoe Bay (70.28° N 148.37° W), Alaska, a center for oil extraction and distribution at the northern end of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, is little different from the tundra 100 km south at Sagwon (69.22° N 148.54° W) (although at Sagwon, the Sagavanirktok River, fast and cold from its origin in the snows and glaciers of the Brooks Range, flows at the foot of high and steep 678

cliffs; nothing of the sort occurs at Prudhoe Bay). Both sites have myriads of shallow puddles and ponds and occasional sizeable lakes that are typical of wet tundra. The major difference in the two localities is the summer weather. At Prudhoe Bay, there is a nearly continuous thick cloud cover that blocks the summer sun and keeps the temperatures low. A brisk cold wind off the Beaufort Sea is the daily norm. This cloudbank is often clearly visible to the north from Sagwon where the 24-h sun shines brightly in a sky that is clear or partly filled with cumulus clouds. There is often a cool breeze here, too, but the sun at its zenith warms the air to 15–25°C. Sometimes the sea wind drives the cloudbank so far south that it wraps Sagwon in a misty fog and the temperature at noon drops to c.5°C. At 4.5°C mosquitoes are on the wing at Sagwon, but at a High Arctic site in Canada, it was reported that mosquitoes stopped flying when the temperature dropped below 7.2°C. At Prudhoe, there are two common species of mosquitoes—Ochlerotatus (Aedes) nigripes and O. (A.) impiger—and their numbers are small. Caribou retire to this cold, windy coast, where they find some relief from the torment of mosquitoes. In contrast, at Sagwon, mosquitoes of at least six species, including the two just mentioned, gather in great swarms around any warm body—wolves, Arctic foxes, grizzly bears, caribou, people—all are surrounded by a writhing, whining envelope of mosquitoes seeking blood (however, here and commonly elsewhere in the North, there are autogenous strains of mosquitoes whose females do not seek blood; the mosquitoes take nectar, as do also the hematophagous strains, and thus become involved in pollination, but most of the energy resources they need to produce eggs are carried over from the larval stage). Black flies (Simuliidae) also join in the blood seeking; for their immature stages, they require moving water, of which there is no lack in the North. That mosquito larvae are thick in every pond and puddle and that numerous other kinds of aquatic insects and crustaceans abound suggests that sunny tundra is far more productive of aquatic invertebrates than the cold, cloudy tundra of the seacoast. Mosquitoes occur in such enormous numbers that there is no possible check upon their populations. But they do have predators and parasites. Larvae, pupae, and adults fall prey to birds of various kinds. Predatory aquatic insects—phantom midge larvae, Mochlonyx velutinus; predaceous diving beetles; water scavenger beetles (Hydrophilidae)—feed on mosquito larvae and pupae. Dragonflies (active aquatic stages also predaceous)—variable darner, Aeschna interrupta lineata; treeline emerald, Somatochlora sahlbergi)—take mosquitoes on the wing. Mermithid nematodes parasitize larvae of O. impiger and O. pullatus, and parasitic protozoans (Thelohania sp., Microsporidia) multiply in the larvae of O. communis, O. punctor, O. pullatus, and

FRESHWATER ECOSYSTEMS O. cataphylla. Some pond sediments at Sagwon and at several other localities in Alaska are contaminated with spores of Clostridium botulinum type E.

Arctic Research: Ogotoruk Creek In 1957, the US Atomic Energy Commission established the Plowshare Program and gave it the task of exploring peaceful uses of atomic energy. One proposed project, Project Chariot, was to use an atomic explosion to construct a harbor on the Chukchi Sea coast at the mouth of Ogotoruk Creek (68.06° N 165.46° W) on Cape Thompson, Alaska. In preparation for this exercise in “geographical engineering,” the environment of Cape Thompson was thoroughly studied from 1959 to 1961. Project Chariot was abandoned, but the reports of the ecological studies stand as models of excellence in Arctic research. Cape Thompson, a typical expression of Arctic tundra, lies to the west of the DeLong Mountains that, save for some low hills fronting the ocean, are the most westerly expression of the Brooks Range. There are numerous temporary and permanent ponds, a few lakes and streams, and several brackish lagoons. The freshwater habitats (including some brackish waters) yielded 708 different kinds (but generally low numbers) of algae (desmids, diatoms, blue-green algae, and others) and many species of zooplankton. Zoologists at the University of Wisconsin have conducted laboratory experiments showing that selected pharmaceuticals used in human and veterinary medicine, when applied alone or in combination, sometimes cause deleterious effects in populations of Daphnia magna, an important link in freshwater food webs. D. magna was not found at Cape Thompson, but D. middendorffiana and D. pulex were present, along with many other species of crustacean zooplankters, including 14 species of Cladocera and 38 species of Copepoda (some collected from brackish waters). Several kinds of aquatic plants were taken from tundra ponds and their margins, including common marestail (Hippuris vulgaris), several members of the buttercup family (Ranunculus spp.), boreal burreed (Sparganium hyperboreum), marsh cinquefoil (Potentilla palustris), water sedge, pendant grass (Arctophila fulva), marsh marigold (Caltha palustris), and two kinds of pondweeds (Potamogeton pectinalis, P. filiformis). The lowest temperature recorded during the Ogotoruk Valley studies was −42°C. Most tundra and taiga locations around the world would experience long periods of winter temperatures in this order of magnitude. When exposed to such low temperatures, most bodies of water would readily freeze to some depth and most would stay frozen throughout the winter, but wide variations from this basic theme would be expected because of the general North-South average winter

temperature gradient—lowest in the High Arctic, but less severe the farther south, because of the influence of relatively warm ocean currents and/or warm winds from the tropics in some localities, and because of local geothermal inputs (Iceland immediately comes to mind because of its remarkably abundant geothermal resources). In the vicinity of Pt Barrow, shallow ponds (1.7–2 m) freeze solid, but in deeper ponds, a few inches/cm of bottom water usually remain unfrozen. Probably some benthic organisms remain active in this ice-free zone all through the winter. Water samples from Ogotoruk Creek and four shallow ponds ranged in pH from 5.8 to 7.7. Pond water temperatures were essentially comparable to the ambient air temperatures, usually in the low 10°C in the summer but subject to wide fluctuations from hour to hour. Creek water temperatures registered only a degree or two below that of the ponds at the same hour. Generally, ponds less than 1 m deep were most productive, with one such pond containing in excess of 38,000 benthic organisms per square meter (90% of these were midges, Chironomidae)—deeper Arctic lakes tend to be much less productive. Other invertebrates, such as planaria (Turbellaria), worms (Nematoda, Oligochaeta, Polychaeta), water bears (Tardigrada), rotifers (Rotifera), circumpolar fairy shrimp, antlered fairy shrimp (Branchinecta hazeni) and other Crustacea, beetles (Coleoptera), caddisfly larvae, stonefly larvae and pea mussels (Pisidium sp.), were collected from ponds. Only a few fish (Arctic char, Salvelinus alpinus; usually inhabit lakes in Alaska) were found in Ogotoruk Creek, but invertebrates, such as planarians, oligochaete worms, and immature stages of black flies, midges, mayflies (Ephemeroptera), stoneflies, and caddisflies, were often collected.

Pollutants In response to a massive outbreak of spruce budworm (Choristoneura fumiferana) in northern Maine, the Maine Forest Service contracted for aerial application of DDT (one pound per acre) over vast acreages in 1958. Quantitative pretreatment surveys of the benthic insect fauna of several fast-flowing streams, both inside and outside of the proposed treatment area, revealed robust populations of aquatic stages of midges, black flies, mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies, all important as food resources for brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis). Immediately after the spray application, midge populations dropped by 62%, black flies 49%, mayflies 65%, stoneflies 47%, and caddisflies 60%. Populations of midges, black flies, and mayflies recovered to prespray levels by mid-August of 1959. The recovery of populations in the other taxa varied from minimal to complete in the summer of 679

FRESHWATER ECOSYSTEMS 1959. Before spraying, most trout stomachs examined contained caddisfly larvae, and after spraying, none. Before spraying, no dead trout were found in blocking nets, and after spraying, only 2% of the dead fish in blocking nets were trout. Trout populations, mainly consisting of larger fish and young-of-the-year, dropped sharply immediately after spraying, but recovered completely during the following two summers. All trout collected from the sprayed area three months after spraying contained residues of DDT (2.9–198.0 ppm). The greater parts of the boreal forest and tundra biomes lie outside the regions of intensive agricultural production and therefore largely escape the direct effects (especially by dissolved inorganic nitrogen and phosphorus) of fertilizer and pesticide runoff into freshwater ecosystems. However, agricultural enterprises have been carved out of the taiga in Alaska (e.g., near Fairbanks, Palmer, and Delta Junction), Canada, and northern Europe. These farming operations utilize pesticides and inorganic fertilizers to some extent, and the dairy and swine operations generate quantities of manure. But these are relatively minor impacts on northern freshwater ecosystems when compared to the industrial pollutants, smog, dioxins, black carbon aerosols, acid rain, and radioactive contaminants that have made their way to the taiga and tundra regions of the world, mainly by atmospheric transport. Arctic rivers may also receive direct discharges of industrial waste (e.g., the rivers Ob’ and Yenisey in the Russian Arctic), and also transport runoff from mining and agricultural areas (see Local and Transboundary Pollution). For long eons in the past, the taiga and tundra remained largely undisturbed and seemingly constant, subject only to the natural cycles of the seasons, of fire, and of predator-prey interactions and their reciprocal population oscillations. This long-running state of equilibrium is now being disturbed by the exploitation of resources (timber, fish, fur, minerals, and oil), by pollution both from without and from within the North, and by a warming trend that is inexorably impacting the most basic rhythms and parameters of Arctic ecosystems. The changes are so great and so pervasive that the North of 50 years hence may be quite different from the North that was known 50 years ago, or even different from the North as described in this overview essay (see Global Change Effects). J. RICHARD GORHAM See also Fish; Peatlands and Bogs; Wet Tundra Further Reading Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, Arctic Pollution Issues: A State of the Arctic Environment Report, Oslo: AMAP, 1997

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Bliss, L.C. (editor), Truelove Lowland, Devon Island, Canada: A High Arctic Ecosystem, Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1977 ———, “Arctic ecosystems of North America.” In Polar and Alpine Tundra, edited by F.E. Wielgolaski, Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1997, pp. 551–683 Brown, Jerry, Philip C. Miller, Larry L. Tieszen & Fred L. Bunnell (editors), An Arctic Ecosystem: The Coastal Tundra at Barrow, Alaska, Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania: Dowden, Hutchinson and Ross, 1980 Chapin III, F. Stuart, Robert L. Jefferies, James F. Reynolds, Gaius R. Shaver, Josef Svoboda & Ellen W. Chu (editors), Arctic Ecosystems in a Changing Climate: An Ecophysiological Perspective, San Diego: Academic Press, 1992 Chernov, Yu.I., The Living Tundra, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985 Currie, Douglas C., Donna Giberson & Brian V. Brown, “Insects of Keewatin and Mackenzie.” Newsletter of the Biological Survey of Canada (Terrestrial Arthropods), 19(2) (2000): 48–51 Danks, H. V., “Overwintering of some north temperate and arctic Chironomidae. I. The winter environment.” Canadian Entomologist, 103(4) (1971): 589–604 ———, “Overwintering of some north temperate and arctic Chironomidae. II. Chironomid biology.” Canadian Entomologist, 103(12) (1971): 1875–1910 Danks, H.V. & R.G. Foottit, “Insects of the boreal zone of Canada.” Canadian Entomologist, 121(8) (1989): 625–690 Fogg, G.E., The Biology of Polar Habitats, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998 Gorham, J. Richard, “Aquatic insects and DDT forest spraying in Maine.” Maine Forest Service Bulletin, 19 (1961): 1–49 ———, “Orchid pollination by Aedes mosquitoes in Alaska.” American Midland Naturalist, 95(1) (1975): 208–210 Harden, Deborah, Peter Barnes & Erk Reimnitz, “Distribution and character of naleds in northeastern Alaska.” Arctic 30(1) (1977): 28–40 Heal, Bill, The Arctic is an Ecosystem, 2002, website: http://www.thearctic.is Hershey, A.E., R.W. Merritt & M.C. Miller, “Insect Diversity, Life History, and Trophic Dynamics in Arctic Streams, with Particular Emphasis on Black Flies (Diptera: Simuliidae).” In Arctic and Alpine Biodiversity: Patterns, Causes and Ecosystem Consequences, edited by F. Stuart Chapin III and Christian Körner, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1995, pp. 283–295 Hobbie, John E. (editor), Limnology of Tundra Ponds, Barrow, Alaska, Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania: Dowden, Hutchinson and Ross, 1980 Kaufmann, Tohko, “Studies on the biology and ecology of Pyrrhalta nymphaea (Col. Chrysomelidae) in Alaska with special reference to population dynamics.” American Midland Naturalist, 83(2) (1970): 496–509 Klein, David R., David F. Murray, Robert H. Armstrong & Betty A. Anderson, Alaska, 2002, website: http://biology.usgs.gov/ s+t/SNT/noframe/ak177.htm Kling, G.W., “Land-Water Interactions: The Influence of Terrestrial Diversity on Aquatic Ecosystems.” In Arctic and Alpine Biodiversity: Patterns, Causes and Ecosystem Consequences, edited by F. Stuart Chapin III and Christian Körner, Berlin: Springer 1995, pp. 297–310 Morrow, J.E., The Freshwater Fishes of Alaska, Anchorage: Alaska Northwest Publishing Company, 1980 Reynolds, James B., Fish Ecology in Arctic North America, Symposium 19, Bethesda, Maryland: American Fisheries Society, 1997

FRESHWATER HYDROLOGY Sahanatien, Vicki, Jim Reist & John Babaluk, “How do we protect Arctic char?.” Research Links, 6(2) (1998): 1, 6, 7, 12 Sailer, R. I., “Circumpolar distribution of water boatmen (Hemiptera: Corixidae).” Canadian Entomologist, 84(8) (1952): 280 Salt, R. W., “The survival of insects at low temperatures,” Symposium of the Society for Experimental Biology, 23 (1970): 331–350 Tash, Jerry C., “The zooplankton of fresh and brackish waters of the Cape Thompson area, northern Alaska.” Hydrobiologia 38(1) (1971): 93–121 Walker, Ian R. & Glen M. MacDonald, “Distribution of Chironomidae (Insecta: Diptera) and other freshwater midges with respect to treeline, Northwest Territories, Canada.” Arctic and Alpine Research, 27(3) (1995): 258–263 Warwick, F. Vincent & John E. Hobbie, “Ecology of Arctic Lakes and Rivers.” In The Arctic: Environment, People, Policy, edited by Mark Nuttall and Terry V. Callaghan, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000, pp. 197–232 Wilimovsky, Norman J. & John N. Wolfe (editors), Environment of the Cape Thompson Region, Alaska, Washington, District of Columbia:, US Atomic Energy Commission, 1966 Young, O.R. & F.S. Chapin III, “Anthropogenic Impacts on Biodiversity in the Arctic.” In Arctic and Alpine Biodiversity: Patterns, Causes and Ecosystem Consequences, edited by F. Stuart Chapin III and Christian Körner, Berlin: SpringerVerlag, 1995, pp. 183–196

FRESHWATER HYDROLOGY The freshwater hydrology of the Arctic plays a key role in regulating global heat balance and ocean circulation. For example, the salinity stratification of the Arctic Ocean and ice cover provide a control on the surface heat and mass budgets of the northern polar region. Arctic freshwater hydrology is characterized by a strong seasonality, including freezing and thawing of fresh water. The short, intense spring snow and ice melt causes seasonal freshwater excess that must be routed through soils and stream channels overland. Eventually, a large amount of fresh water flows into the polar rivers, providing water to Arctic plants and ecosystems since permafrost prevents surface water from draining. Land surface freshwater budgets can be controlled by the changes in total water storage, which is equal to the sum of precipitation, evaporation, and river runoff. Most Arctic regions have a net surplus of fresh water from the hydrologic cycle, which ultimately flows into the Arctic Ocean.

Freshwater Sources, Storage, and Export in the Arctic Ocean The Arctic Ocean is the most river-affected ocean and is the only ocean with a contributing land area greater than its surface area. The delivery of fresh water from a continental landmass is of special importance to the Arctic Ocean because the Arctic Ocean receives about

10% of the fresh water discharged globally by rivers, but it occupies only 1% of the global ocean volume. Annual freshwater inflow contributes as much as 10% of the fresh water in the upper 100 m of the water column in the entire Arctic Ocean. Long-term mean runoffs of the major Arctic rivers have been compiled by various scientists and UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization). The largest annual average contributions from individual rivers include the Yenisey (630 km3), Lena (532 km3), Ob’ (404 km3), Khatanga (88 km3), and Indigirka (54 km3) from Eurasia, and the Mackenzie (262 km3) and other gauged rivers (209 km3) in North America. Ungauged flows surrounding the Arctic Ocean basin comprise discharges from both Asian and North American continents (total 1007 km3 per year) and Arctic islands (711 km3 per year). The total average annual river runoff is about 4270 km3; however, uncertainty and variability are taken to be high, because the discharge of Arctic rivers exhibits an extremely large seasonal variation, and also interannual and decadal scale variability. Fresh water delivered to the Arctic Ocean is stored in the sea ice cover, surface mixed water (the upper 30–50 m where changes including the annual meltfreeze cycle and river disposition take place), and Arctic halocline water (a complex of cold, salt-stratified layer). The riverine freshwater inflow contributes strongly to the formation of the Arctic halocline water, which is a cold (near freezing point) water mass with a salinity gradient (32–33%). The upper water column in the Arctic Ocean is dominated by cold halocline water that separates the fresh polar surface water from the underlying warmer Atlantic-derived waters. In addition to river discharge, the halocline water is formed by sea ice melt water, precipitation, and Bering Strait inflow water. The distribution and residence time of freshwater inflow critically affects Arctic Ocean circulation as well as sea ice formation related to salinity distribution. Based on observational investigation, riverine runoff signals are not evenly distributed in the upper mixed layer and halocline layer of the Arctic Ocean, depending on the surface water flow pattern. Approximately three-quarters of the river water inflow into the Arctic Ocean are discharged from the Eurasian continent of the Arctic Ocean. In particular, three rivers (the Yenisey, Lena, and Ob’) are responsible for about 70% of this contribution. Of the Arctic freshwater budget estimated by calculating volumes relative to the salinity 34.80, which is close to the mean salinity of the Arctic Ocean, freshwater storage is 22,000 km3 on the continental shelves and 58,000 km3 in the deep basins (total mean freshwater storage, 80,000 km3). Of the Arctic basins, the Canadian Basin contains about 46,000 km3 of fresh water and the Eurasian Basin (Nansen and Amundsen

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FREUCHEN, PETER basins together) contains 12,000 km3, due to the deeper halocline layer of the Canadian Basin. This is related to the less saline Bering Sea inflow water (long-term mean flow: 0.8 Sv) into the western Arctic Ocean. Bering Strait inflow supplies the halocline with two seasonally different water masses: the warm Bering Sea Summer Water (mean salinity: 32.2) and the cold Bering Sea Winter Water (mean salinity: 33.1). The halocline waters, which store a significant amount of fresh water, are ultimately exported from the Arctic Ocean through Fram strait via the East Greenland Current. Part of the fresh water transported in the East Greenland Current mixes into the center of the convective gyres of the Greenland and Labrador seas, and affects a delicate salinity balance of the surface waters. Variations in the freshwater supply to the surface waters of the gyres may have a significant influence on the deep water formation and thus deep circulation of the world ocean.

Macdonald, R.W., D.W. Paton & E.C. Carmack, “The freshwater budget and under-ice spreading of Mackenzie River water in the Canadian Beaufort Sea based on salinity and 18 O/16O measurements in water and ice.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 100 (1995): 895–919 Schlosser, P. D. Bauch, R. Fairbanks & Cerhard Bnisch, “Arctic river-runoff: mean residence time on the shelves and in halocline.” Deep Sea Research, 41 (1994): 1053–1068 Study of Environmental Arctic Change (SEARCH), Science Plan, edited by J. Morison, V. Alexander, L. Codispoti, T. Delworth, B. Dickson, H. Eicken, J. Grebmeier, J. Kruse, J. Overland, J. Overpeck, P. Schlosser, M. Serreze & J. Walsh, Seattle: Polar Science Center, Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington, 2001 Vörösmarty, C.J., L.D. Hinzman, B.J. Peterson, D.H. Bromwich, L.C. Hamilton, J. Morison, V.E. Romanovsky, M. Sturm & R.S. Webb, The Hydrologic Cycle and its Role in Arctic and Global Environmental Change: A Rationale and Strategy for Synthesis Study, Fairbanks, Alaska: Arctic Research Consortium of USA, 2001 UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization), World Water Balance and Water Resources of the Earth, Study and Report in Hydrology, 25, Paris, 1978

Recent Change of the Arctic Freshwater Cycle In terms of recent oceanographic observations, critical changes of the freshwater hydrologic cycle in the Arctic Ocean and on land may relate closely to the Arctic Oscillation. For instance, surface salinity decreased 2‰ during 1987–1997 in the Beaufort Sea, and the cold halocline layer retreated in the Eurasian Basin during the 1990s. The shift of Siberian runoff to the east may be responsible for the freshening of the upper layers of the Beaufort Sea and the thinning of the cold halocline layer. In addition, the sea level rise in the Russian marginal seas is consistent with a more cyclonic ocean circulation, resulting in the increased amount of fresh water flowing out through Fram Strait. This could increase stratification in the Greenland Sea and contribute to the weakened deep convection observed there in recent years. The reduced thermohaline circulation may also impose a negative feedback by causing less northward heat flux of the Atlantic Ocean into the Nordic seas and thereby cooling northern Europe, with serious consequences for human society and terrestrial ecosystems on this planet. KYUNG-HOON SHIN See also Arctic Ocean; Cold Halocline; Permafrost Hydrology; Salinity Anomalies; Sea Ice; Thermohaline Circulation Further Reading Aagaard, K. & E.C. Carmack, “The role of sea ice and other fresh water in the Arctic circulation.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 94 (1989): 14485–14498 Lewis, E.L., E.P. Jones, P. Lemke, T.D. Prowse & P. Wadhams (editors), The Freshwater Budget of the Arctic Ocean, Dordrecht and Boston: Kluwer, 2000

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FREUCHEN, PETER Danish journalist, writer, and explorer Peter Freuchen was enchanted by tales of Arctic exploration as a youth. As a university student, he persuaded Ludwig Mylius-Erichsen to allow him to join the Danish expedition to explore and map the coast of northeastern Greenland north of Kap Bismarck. Freuchen accompanied N.I.J. Brønlund and H.A.O. Bistrup on a preliminary trip to Greenland’s west coast to secure dog teams, then returned to Copenhagen, where he joined the expedition ship Danmark, which sailed on June 24, 1906. Also aboard were two zoologists, a botanist, a meteorologist, a physician, and two artists. When the Danmark arrived in Iceland, via the Faroe Islands, it proved too small to stow all the waiting supplies, including those to support Freuchen’s secondary observation post. He was therefore reassigned to assist meteorologist Alfred Wegener, accompanying him on monthly excursions inland to record observations. Danmark landed at Koldewey Island on August 13, and proceeded north to find a winter harbor at Danmarks Havn, near Kap Bismarck, on August 17. They constructed an observatory and until the beginning of December made journeys by small boat and sled to map the region and make scientific observations. On March 28, 1907, four parties were dispatched by dogsled to explore and map the northern coast. These efforts cost the lives of Mylius-Erichsen and two of his companions, but led to the discovery of Danmarks Fjord and refutation of Robert E. Peary’s claim that a channel connected Independence Fjord with the north coast. Freuchen spent the winter of 1907–1908 alone inland making meteorological

FREUCHEN, PETER observations. In spring, he explored glaciers and collected specimens. The expedition sailed for home on July 21, 1908, where its members received the Order of Merit from King Frederick VIII. Freuchen’s Arctic experience was valuable to Knud Rasmussen, who sought to establish a trading and research station on Wolstenholme Fjord, on Greenland’s west coast. Peary’s expeditions had established regular contact with the Inughuit, and a Danish missionary station had been set up there in July 1909, but the Danish government was unwilling to extend its governance to Greenland’s far north. Rasmussen and Freuchen undertook a lecture tour to raise money, and with private financial support established Kap York Stationen (later christened Thule) in 1910. Rasmussen also chose Freuchen as his navigator and cartographer for the First Thule Expedition. Accompanied by Uvdloriaq and Inukitsoq, two Inughuit sled drivers and hunters, they set off by dogsled on April 14, 1912, crossed the Greenland ice cap via Neqe and the Markham and Humboldt glaciers, searched for Ejnar Mikkelsen’s expedition, and investigated Peary’s Independence Fjord. Traveling light, and weather-bound for only eight days, they covered 629 miles (1048 km) to the ice cap’s eastern edge by May 9. They descended the length of Danmarks Fjord, traversed Independence Fjord, and by the end of June had ascended and explored the Nyboe Glacier and Adam Bierings Land, and named both for sponsors of the Thule station. Freuchen charted and mapped their route, recorded meteorological data, collected specimens, and made pioneering studies of snow stratification. The First Thule Expedition provided further proof that Peary’s channel to the sea did not exist, thus corroborating Mylius-Erichsen’s lost 1907 diaries, which Mikkelsen’s expedition had recently retrieved. Departing on July 12, despite storm delays and poor snow conditions, they reached Thule by September 15. Rasmussen’s Greenlandic background and Freuchen’s skill as a navigator and training in native means of Arctic travel and survival contributed to the success of this first-ever crossing of Greenland’s northern ice cap, which was subsequently named Knud Rasmussen Land. Rasmussen proposed to make an ethnographic expedition to study the Inuit of the central and western Arctic as early as 1909. Nothing came of these plans, however, until after World War I. Following a sojourn in Denmark, Freuchen was persuaded to give up his position at Thule and join Rasmussen’s “Danish Expedition to Arctic North America” (Fifth Thule Expedition) as its deputy leader, cartographer, and biologist. Other members included scientists Kaj Birket-Smith and Therkel Mathiassen, assistants Helge Bangsted and Jacob Olsen, photographer Leo Hanson, several Greenland Inughuit, and Peder

Pedersen, captain of the expedition’s ship Søkongen, which left Copenhagen on June 17, 1921. Despite delays from mechanical breakdowns, the loss of supplies in the wreck of another ship, and the influenza pandemic, the expedition sailed from Godthåb (present-day Nuuk) on September 7, 1921, crossed Davis Strait, reached Labrador on September 11, passed through Hudson Strait and Foxe Channel, and on September 19 established a camp on tiny “Danish Island” (65°54′ N 85°50′ W) near Vansittart Island, south of the Melville Peninsula. Freuchen and Mathiassen set out northward on February 28, 1922 on a reconnaissance to map the east coast of Melville Peninsula and northern Baffin Island. On March 30, they reached the Inuit settlement at Igloolik, and on April 4 split up, Mathiassen going north through the Gifford and Admiralty Inlets, while Freuchen headed west through Fury and Hecla Strait, where he discovered and named Crown Prince Frederik and Prince Knud (Elder) Islands and the Nyboe Fjord, before turning back. Freuchen’s second excursion to map parts of Baffin Island was cut short in the spring of 1923 by severe frostbite. Rasmussen left Canada on his epic journey westward to Alaska, while Freuchen struck out northward on January 19, 1924, reached Igloolik on February 25, and crossed Baffin Island. He had planned to cross Devon Island, Ellesmere Island, and Smith Sound to Etah and Thule, but ice conditions made further progress by sled impossible. Therefore, he left Pond Inlet aboard Søkongen, on August 2, and reached Copenhagen, via Upernavik, on September 27, 1924. Despite mishap and hardship, this ethnographic, geographic, and scientific expedition successfully mapped large areas of the Canadian Arctic and studied its peoples. It marked the end of Freuchen’s exploring career, but his many books on Arctic themes, translated into more than a dozen languages, informed a global audience about the Arctic, its peoples, and their customs.

Biography Lorentz Peter Elfred Freuchen was born on February 20, 1886 in Nykøbing, on the Danish island of Falster, one of seven children of a merchant. Educated at the local dame-school and the Cathedral School (1896–1904), he enrolled at the University of Copenhagen to study medicine, but after two years he succumbed to the lure of adventure. Participation in Mylius-Erichsen’s 1906–1908 Greenland Expedition left him disinclined to continue studying medicine, but led to his ongoing contributions to Copenhagen’s daily Politiken, as well as his association with Knud Rasmussen. Rasmussen recruited him to join the Fifth Thule Expedition (1921–1924) to explore and map the Canadian Arctic. Frostbite, which

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FROBISHER, SIR MARTIN led to the loss of his left leg, ended his career as an explorer. However, he continued traveling widely, but only infrequently returned to the Arctic. In Denmark, he pursued a successful career as a lecturer, journalist, author, and screen-writer. Freuchen sheltered German refugees on his island farm, Enehøje, before and during World War II, served in the Danish resistance, was twice captured and imprisoned, and narrowly escaped to Stockholm, where he edited a newspaper for Danish refugees. Thereafter, he lived in New York City and rural Connecticut. Virtually all of Freuchen’s numerous books reflected his adventurous life and travels. They range from the scientifically technical to the popular and autobiographical, as well as novels and screenplays. Freuchen married Navarana, an Inughuit, in Thule, by whom he had a son, Mequsaq (born 1915), and a daughter, Pipaluk (born 1918). Navarana died of influenza in 1921 while she was making preparations for the Fifth Thule Expedition. Freuchen married his old friend Magdalene Vang-Lauridsen in Denmark in 1924. They were divorced in 1945, in which year he met and married Dagmar Mueller. Freuchen died suddenly of heart failure on September 2, 1957 at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska, where Lowell Thomas had arranged for four “pioneers of Arctic exploration”— Peter Freuchen, Donald Baxter MacMillan, Sir Hubert Wilkins, and Bernt Balchen—to retrace their expeditions by air and examine changes in the Arctic for a television documentary. Freuchen’s ashes were scattered from a plane at Thule over North Star Bay. MERILL DISTAD See also Birket-Smith, Kaj; Mathiassen, Therkel; Mikkelsen, Ejnar; Mylius-Erichsen, Ludwig; Peary, Robert E; Rasmussen, Knud; Wegener, Alfred Further Reading Amdrup, Georg Carl et al., “Danmarks-Ekspeditionen til Grønlands Nordøstkyst 1906–1908, Bind I: Report on the Danmark Expedition to the North-east Coast of Greenland, 1906–1908.” Meddelelser om Grønland, Bind XLI(1–5) (1913): 1–474 Fristrup, Børge, The Greenland Ice Cap, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967 Malaurie, Jean, Ultima Thulé: de la découverte à l’invasion [Ultima Thule: From Discovery to Invasion] (2nd edition), Paris: Éditions du Chêne, 2000 Mathiassen, Therkel, Report on the Expedition: Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, 1921–24: The Danish Expedition to Arctic North America, Volume 1, No. 1, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1945, reprinted New York: AMS Press, 1976 Rasmussen, Knud, “Report of the First Thule Expedition 1912.” Meddelelser om Grønland, Bind LI (8) (1915): 285–340 ———, Across Arctic America: Narrative of the Fifth Thule Expedition, New York: Putnam, 1927, reprinted New York: Greenwood Press, 1969, and Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1999

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Vaughan, Richard, Northwest Greenland: A History, Orono: University of Maine Press, 1991

FROBISHER BAY—See IQALUIT FROBISHER, SIR MARTIN Martin Frobisher was exposed early to the dream of a short route to Cathay, which gained impetus in the face of collapsing export markets for English woolens. Two trading voyages to West Africa hardened the young seaman, while a Portuguese pilot’s boast of sailing through a North West Passage may have alerted Frobisher to this route to fame and wealth. The Muscovy Company had failed to exercise its monopoly for northwestern trade and had denied Humphrey Gilbert’s petition to do so. However, with the support of Queen Elizabeth I, the Earl of Warwick, and other members of Court, as well as the financial backing of Michael Lok, one of its directors, the Company was persuaded to license Frobisher’s attempt to seek a North West Passage to Asia. Lok supplied the expedition with navigational instruments, and Dr. John Dee instructed Frobisher and his second-in-command, Christopher Hall, in their use. Frobisher left Deptford on June 7, 1576 aboard the 20-ton Gabriel, accompanied by the 25-ton Michael, commanded by Owen Griffin, a 10-ton pinnace, and a total complement of 35 men. They reached the Shetland Islands on June 26, and sailed west until July 1, when they mistook Greenland for Friesland, an imaginary island that misled cartographers and mariners for another two centuries. Unable to land, the Gabriel sailed on through a storm that sank the pinnace with its crew of four, and caused the Michael to turn back. After arriving at and naming Queen Elizabeth’s Foreland (Resolution Island) on July 28, Frobisher reached Baffin Island, entered the bay upon which he bestowed his own name, and concluded from the tidal flow that it was the Passage. Frobisher spent a fortnight exploring the first 40 leagues of Frobisher Bay and trading with the Inuit, until they captured five of his crew. Reduced to a crew of 13, and deprived of their ship’s boat, Frobisher responded by taking an Inuit hostage, but failed to negotiate an exchange before weighing anchor for England with the captive and his kayak. Although the Inuk died soon after reaching London on October 9, he was a public sensation. A greater sensation attended a black stone that Frobisher presented to Lok, who consulted three assayers before finding one who declared the stone laden with gold. A second expedition was organized to return to

FROBISHER, SIR MARTIN the Arctic, mine more ore, and, only incidentally, search for the North West Passage. On May 25, 1577, Frobisher, as High Admiral of the newly chartered Cathay Company, left Blackwall aboard the 200-ton warship Ayde (supplied by the Queen, who invested more heavily in this voyage than its predecessor), accompanied by the Gabriel, commanded by Edward Fenton, and the Michael, under Gilbert Yorke, Frobisher’s cousin. The three ships’ complements numbered about 120 men, including officers Christopher Hall, James Beare, and Charles Jackman, pilot Andrew Dyer, artist John White, assayer Jonas Schutz, several miners, two supercargoes, and ten gentlemen. Once again, no landing was possible when Greenland was sighted on July 4, but a landfall was made on July 17 at Hall’s Island, the source of the tantalizing ore, at the northern entrance to Frobisher Bay. Disdainful of mineral prospects there, Frobisher proceeded up the Bay to Countess of Warwick (Kodlunarn) Island on July 19, where he set miners to work, and searched along the north shore of the Bay for the crewmen lost the previous year. Several contacts with the Inuit led to bloodshed, and ice conditions precluded any pursuit of the Passage, for which the expedition was inadequately provisioned. On August 23, Frobisher sailed with 158 tons of rock and three Inuit captives (a man, woman, and her infant), and reached England on September 23. The Inuit, immortalized in portraits by John White, soon died. The Queen, nonetheless satisfied with Frobisher’s achievement, named her newly claimed domain Meta Incognita, a name still applied to the peninsula forming the south shore of Frobisher Bay. A third and much more ambitious expedition left Harwich on May 31, 1578, before the nearworthlessness of the rocks was established. Frobisher led a fleet of 15 ships and more than 400 men, a quarter of whom were to establish a permanent mining colony. Frobisher landed and laid formal claim to Friesland (Greenland) on June 20, and sighted Meta Incognita on July 2. However, he was driven south through stormy seas, and spent nearly three weeks beating westward up “Mistaken (Hudson) Strait” with eight of his ships, before recognizing his error, coming about, and reaching Kodlunarn Island on July 31. There the fleet gradually reassembled, albeit without the Thomas, which had retired homeward, and the Denys, which had been holed and sunk by ice. However, the loss of their cargoes of building material ended the colonizing plan. August was spent feverishly mining and loading over 1200 tons of hornblende at a dozen sites around the Bay, and erecting a small stone house as a token of possession,

before making a hasty and hazardous departure on September 1 amid fog and storm. Frobisher’s failure in August 1576 to establish that his strait was merely a bay helped keep alive hopes for a North West Passage, and might have secured backing for a second expedition even if the lure of gold had not become the principal goal of his sponsors. Frobisher’s acquiescence in this shift, as well as his earlier career as a privateer and pirate, suggest that achieving fame and wealth counted for more than the means to do so. Thus, further opportunities for geographical discovery were left to successors such as Henry Hudson. A poor navigator, even given the uncertainty of longitude, Frobisher’s acceptance of received cartographic wisdom helped perpetuate the confusion about Friesland, and caused successive generations to relocate his discoveries from Baffin Island to Greenland, the so-called Greenland Transfer. Reports of the Inuit’s ability to survive in the Arctic helped sustain the notion of a navigable North West Passage. The failure of the gold mining enterprise, however, overshadowed the geographical significance of Frobisher’s Arctic voyages, which were mainly remembered as a £25,000 fiasco.

Biography Sir Martin Frobisher was born at Altofts, an estate near Wakefield, West Yorkshire, around 1535, the thirdson of Bernard Frobisher, gentleman farmer, and Margaret Yorke of Gowthwaite. His education was rudimentary, and in 1549 he was placed in the household of his uncle, London merchant Sir John Yorke, where he exhibited scant aptitude for the details of business, but eventually found his calling as a mariner and fearless leader. He accompanied the first two English trading voyages to Africa’s Guinea coast, and ended the latter voyage as a prisoner of the Portuguese. In addition to his three Arctic expeditions (1576, 1577, and 1578), he commanded the Primrose as Vice-Admiral on Drake’s West Indies expedition and assault on Cartagena. His fame rests primarily upon his naval service, during which he helped suppress the Munster rebellion in 1580, served as a Vice-Admiral in the Armada campaign, and led fleets to attack and harass Spanish shipping and land forces. For his courageous action against the Armada, he was knighted at sea by the Lord High Admiral, Lord Howard of Effingham on July 26, 1588. Although Frobisher, who was nearly illiterate, left no formal account of his Arctic voyages, several of his companions did so. On September 30, 1559, Frobisher wed Isobel (died 1588), widow of Thomas Rigatt of Snaith. He contracted a second marriage,

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FROST AND FROST PHENOMENA c.1590, to Dorothy, daughter of Baron Wentworth and widow of Sir Paul Withypole. Both unions were childless. On November 7, 1594, Frobisher was wounded while leading an assault against the Spanish fortress of El Leon at Crozon, near Brest. He died of gangrene at Plymouth on November 22, 1594, and was buried in London. MERRILL DISTAD

unconsolidated materials do not simply freeze when their temperatures drop below 0°C as they commonly exist in a supercooled state. Finally, the frequency, duration, and magnitude of drops below 0°C affect the rate and extent of freezing in unconsolidated materials. Four different frost action mechanisms are widely recognized: frost weathering, frost heaving, frost sorting, and frost cracking.

See also North West Passage, Exploration of

Frost Weathering Further Reading Alsford, Stephen (editor), The Meta Incognita Project: Contributions to Field Studies, Hull, Québec: Canadian Museum of Civilization, in Collaboration with the Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, 1993 Fitzhugh, William W. & Jacqueline S. Olin (editors), Archeology of the Frobisher Voyages, Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993 Hogarth, D.D., P.W. Boreham & J.G. Mitchell, Martin Frobisher’s Northwest Venture, 1576–1581: Mines, Minerals and Metallurgy, Hull, Québec: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1994 Hulton, P.H. & D.B. Quinn, The American Drawings of John White, 1577–1590, With Drawings of European and Oriental Subjects, 2 volumes, London: British Museum, 1964 Kenyon, Walter Andrew, Tokens of Possession: The Northern Voyages of Martin Frobisher, Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1975 McDermott, James, Sir Martin Frobisher: Elizabethan Privateer, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001 Quinn, David Beers (editor), Voyages and Colonising Enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, 2 volumes, London: Hakluyt Society, 1940, reprinted Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint, 1967 Ruby, Robert, The Unknown Shore: The Lost History of England’s Arctic Colony, New York: Holt, 2001 Symons, Thomas H.B. (editor), Meta Incognita: A Discourse of Discovery: Martin Frobisher’s Arctic Expeditions, 1576–1578, 2 volumes, Hull, Québec: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1999 Waters, David W., The Art of Navigation in England in Elizabethan and Early Stuart Times, London: Hollis and Carter, 1958, (2nd edition), Greenwich: National Maritime Museum, 1978 Woolley, Benjamin, The Queen’s Conjurer: The Science and Magic of Dr. John Dee, Adviser to Queen Elizabeth I, New York: Holt, 2001

The widespread occurrence of angular rock debris and fractured rocks in Arctic environments has led to the popular belief that repeated freezing and thawing, with accompanying expansion and contraction, of water is the dominant weathering process in these environments. The nature of the process or processes responsible for fracturing is not well understood. Traditionally, frost weathering has been viewed as resulting from the 9% volumetric increase that accompanies the water to ice phase change, and the associated production of expansive forces as high as 21,000 kg cm−1 at −22°C (French, 1996). However, this model makes several assumptions that are widely regarded as being unmet in natural settings. It assumes that water and ice are contained in hydraulically closed systems, which are cooled rapidly downward. The model ignores the fact that the presence of air bubbles and the presence of pore spaces reduces maximum attainable pressures. Thirdly, rock and soil lack the strength to sustain such theoretically high pressures and therefore are unlikely to ever develop. Recently, a more realistic model of frost weathering has been developed, which relies on a much more plausible set of natural conditions. This model views expansion as a result of liquid water migration toward a growing ice lens associated with a migrating freezing front. Frost weathering results from the progressive growth of microfractures and pore spaces wedged open by ice growth (Walder and Hallet, 1985). This model permits rapid crack growth in a hydraulically open system at temperatures ranging from −4°C to −15°C with slow cooling rates, high pore water pressure, and prolonged freezing. This largely theoretical model has the advantage that it is accompanied by a growing body of experimental support.

FROST AND FROST PHENOMENA Frost Heaving Frost Action Frost action is a hallmark of Arctic environments and collectively refers to processes involving the freezing and/or thawing of ground ice in soil, rock, or other regolithic materials. The freezing and thawing process is complex as soils, bedrock, and other unconsolidated materials freeze at different rates depending on their heat conductivity, and moisture contents, soils, and 686

The heaving of soil and other unconsolidated materials occurs as a result of two mechanisms: volumetric expansion associated with the water-ice phase change, and the migration of unfrozen pore water along a temperature gradient to the freezing front (usually upward toward lower temperatures) resulting in the formation of segregated ice lenses. It is the formation of segregated ice in cavities or lenses in the soil rather than the

FULMAR simple freezing of pore waters that is responsible for soil and regolith heaving. The growth of segregated ice continues as long as there is upward fluid migration and accompanying release of latent heat. Migration of the freezing front is generally episodic, rather than continuous. In the melt season, heat moves downward with accompanying moisture movement toward the frost and permafrost tables. During autumn freezeback, both the surface and the permafrost are colder than the central portions of the active layer. Consequently, the active layer is subject to freezing from two sides, leading to moisture migration in two directions with enhanced heaving at the top and bottom of the active layer. Frost heaving therefore is often greatest during the freeze-back period (Washburn, 1980).

Frost Sorting Frost sorting refers to the differential movement of particles of different sizes during frost heave and subsequent settling. Sorting involves a combination of frost-related processes, including needle ice development and frost heaving. The complexity of frost sorting is reflected in the diversity of patterned ground forms observed in the Arctic landscape. The sorting mechanism is most comprehensively understood from the work of Corte (1966), who recognizes three fundamental sorting mechanisms. First, sorting by heave when freezing and thawing occurs from the top. Large particles move upward and fine particles move down, giving rise to vertical sorting. Coarse particle migration is enhanced by the combined effects of frost pull in which the fragments fail to return to their points of origin, and by frost push resulting from preferential growth of segregated ice beneath coarse fragments due to their higher thermal conductivity. Secondly, sorting by migration ahead of a moving freezing plane in which freezing and thawing may take place from either the top or the sides. Under these conditions, fine particles migrate away from the freezing front and coarse particles remain in proximity to the cooling site. This results in lateral sorting. The third mechanism involves mechanical sorting in which mounds and frost heaved structures are produced. Coarser particles migrate, forming borders around finer particles. The regularity and perpetuation of these sorted forms is best explained by the development of convective cells associated with density differences within thaw water of the active layer during the thaw season.

Frost Cracking Frost cracking is a widespread process operating in regions underlain by permafrost, and occurs where thermal stresses exceed the tensile strength of ice-rich soils and regolith. (Mackay, 1986; Thorn, 1992). The lowering of the temperature of ice-rich sediments and

soils leads to thermal contraction of the ground and the development of cracks. The cracks develop because pure ice has a coefficient of linear expansion that is higher at 0°C than at −30°C and the rates of expansion and concentration of the ice-rich soils and sediment are little different from that of pure ice. Conditions necessary for cracking vary, depending on the nature of the materials being affected and on their ice content. The rates of temperature change and the magnitude of the temperature change affect the degree of cracking. At very low temperatures, even soils and sediments with little ice undergo contraction and, conversely, a very rapid drop in temperature over a small temperature range below freezing can lead to cracking in ice-rich sediments. Frost cracks divide the landscape into polygonal nets with junctions that commonly intersect at right angles, forming polygonal nets of patterned ground over large areas of the Arctic. Polygon dimensions typically range from 15 to 40 m. However, over large areas of the Arctic, hexagonal patterns dominate. It is widely believed that the hexagonal pattern reflects simultaneous crack propagation at a series of points, while orthogonal patterns imply evolution in a sequence of primary frost cracks that initially develop randomly and then secondary cracks divide the area into an orthogonal pattern. The infilling of frost cracks with water and snow, which percolates down the fractures, results in the development of ice wedges. With seasonal cracking and the addition of meltwater, the wedges progressively grow over time. JOHN C. DIXON See also Patterned and Polygonal Ground; Periglacial Environments; Permafrost Further Reading Corte, A.E., “Particle sorting by repeated freezing and thawing.” Biuletyn Peryglacjalny, 15 (1966): 175–240 French, H.M., The Periglacial Environment (2nd edition), Harlow: Longman, 1996 Mackay, J.R., “The first seven years (1978–1985) of ice wedge growth Illisarvik experimental drained lake site, western Arctic coast.” Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, 23 (1986): 1782–1795 Thorn, C.E., “Perglacial geomorphology: What, Where and When?” In: Periglacial Geomorphology, edited by J.C. Dixon & A.D. Abrahams, Chichester: Wiley, 1992, pp. 1–30 Walder, J. & B. Hallet,“A theoretical model of the fracture of rock during freezing.” Geological Society of America Bulletin, 67 (1985): 336–346 Washburn, A.L., Geocryology, London: Edward Arnold, 1980

FULMAR The northern fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis), the best known of Northern Hemisphere petrels, is the only representative of this ancient group of tube-nosed 687

FULMAR birds (order Procellariiformes) breeding in the Arctic, except for storm petrels of the Hydrobatidae family. The range of the northern fulmar is split between the North Atlantic and North Pacific Oceans and adjacent Arctic seas. The northern fulmar is a medium-sized stocky seabird, noticeably larger than the kittiwake. Body mass is typically 750 g, and wingspan is about 115 cm. Their bills are rather short and strong, with nasal tubes. As in other tube-nosed birds, a sense of smell is well developed in the fulmars. Fulmars are rather gulllike birds, but with a stiff-winged gliding flight (making them look like miniature albatrosses) alternated at times with rapid wing beats. In calm weather they “paddle” for some distance over land or sea, their webs fully spread, before they achieve enough lift to become airborne. The polymorphic plumage of the fulmar ranges from birds that are all white except for a dark eye-mark to those that are uniformly dark gray. Sexes are alike. The Icelandic name fúlmár means “foul gull.” Fulmars are petrels and the name undoubtedly was given because of their superficial resemblance to gulls, and in reference to the bird’s oil-spitting habit. All petrels defend their “individual distance” by spitting stomach oil, and the northern fulmar is particularly dextrous, shooting gobs of oil with sudden lunges of its open beak. The Russian name glupysh means “foolish”, and refers to the birds’ trustfulness. The birds are easily caught even by landing-net from the boat while they feed on offal from fishing boats. The Norwegian name is havhest. The breeding range includes north Pacific (from the Chukchi Sea south to the Aleutian and Kuril Islands) and north Atlantic (Novaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land, Svalbard, Greenland, Iceland), spreading to the Canadian Arctic archipelago. The southern range is Brittany in the eastern Atlantic and southeastern Labrador. Fulmars are divided into different races according to plumage color and bill size. In the Atlantic thick-billed and mainly dark birds occur in the High Arctic, while slender-billed and mainly light-colored birds occupy the low Arctic and boreal areas. In the Pacific, the situation is the opposite, with light-feathered birds predominating in northern areas. There is a hypothesis that the two morphs originated in different oceans—the dark-feathered birds in the Pacific. During warm interglacials, introgressions of dark morph genes into the gene pool of the Atlantic birds occurred, resulting in the present confusing “mix.” In the Southern Ocean, there is a sibling species—the Antarctic or southern fulmar, which is considered an ancestor to its northern relative. Like albatrosses and other petrels, fulmars are typical pelagic birds; they travel offshore a lot,

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prospecting far beyond the breeding range. Birds searching for food for their chicks have been found as far as 1000 km from the nesting sites. Dispersal south is mainly by young birds, who occasionally can penetrate the subtropics. Fulmars, however, are not typical migrants following a certain flyway, but are rather nomads. Fulmars breed in colonies numbering in the Arctic up to hundreds of thousands of birds, while in boreal areas their settlements are much smaller. Fulmars generally nest on steep coastal cliffs occupying narrow ledges, mostly on the upper parts with a high density reaching eight nests per square meter. Nests can also be found on flat ground, hillsides, and even in human habitation, sometimes many kilometers inland. The colonies are chiefly shared with other seabirds. As most other true seabirds, fulmars are long-lived birds with a low reproductive rate. They become sexually mature by 6–12 years, and adult survival is extremely high resulting in a 34–35-year lifespan (the oldest recorded is 43 years). A single large whitish egg is laid directly on the ground in the open or in a shelter. Incubation is by both parents for some 50 days. The male takes the first and longest stint, presumably to let the female fly back to sea to recover after laying. Mass hatching occurs during early-mid July. Newly hatched chicks are brooded and guarded for 2 weeks. They are fed on a soup of partly digested fish, crustaceans, squid, and the stomach oil. Growth is rapid in polar regions, and by the seventh week they exceed their parents’ weight. First fledglings appear at sea in late August to early September, and slightly later in the High Arctic. The fulmars are superior flyers; they are stiffwinged and use much dynamic soaring exploring the food resources of the open oceans. At sea the birds generally remain dispersed but can gather in huge flocks when food is abundant, and actively follow vessels. Fulmars also swim well and much prey is taken by surface seizure and by scavenging. Fulmars are seldom seen diving, but do so occasionally. Fulmars consume a great variety of food, including crustaceans, cephalopods, and smaller pelagic molluscs, fish, offal, and carrion. There are many observations from the intensive whaling in the early 19th century that enormous numbers of fulmars assembled around the dead whales. Today, the commercial fisheries apparently serve an equally important food supply for the fulmars as whaling did. It is common to observe thousands of fulmars around fishing vessels. The abundant food that became available as a result of whaling and commercial fishing is considered to account for a major range expansion and population explosion observed in pale-plumaged fulmars of the eastern Atlantic. The

FUR TRADE process seems to have begun about 200 years ago in Iceland, the colonizations spreading south in the Faroes, Britain, Norway, and France. In spite of the clear picture observed in the North Atlantic, the reasons and mechanisms of the fulmar’s population dynamics are not evident. There is no increase observed in the High Arctic, and in some places in the north Pacific the opposite trend is recorded. The fulmar’s eggs and flesh were once considered delicacies and were eaten in large numbers, and their oil was used extensively for lamps. Nowadays, human predation has declined, but not stopped. Northern fulmars appeared to be the only tube-nosed birds known to transmit a disease fatal to man (viral ornithosis). Fulmars are subjected to many threats, including contamination by organochlorines (DDT), which have been found in the birds in relatively high concentrations, and swallowing of plastic, which is found frequently in their stomachs. Fulmars are commonly caught in the long-line fisheries, and are considered vulnerable to oil spills. Nevertheless, none of the threats mentioned above are documented to have affected the populations, and the species thrive almost all over the range, with total numbers estimated at 4,000,000–16,000,000 pairs. MARIA GAVRILO See also Seabirds Further Reading Cramp, S. & K.E.L. Simmons (editors), The Birds of the Western Palearctic, Volume I, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977 Del Hoyo, J., A. Elliot & J. Sargatal (editors), Handbook of the Birds of the World, Volume. I, Barcelona: Lynx Edicion, 1996 Fisher, J., The Fulmar: The New Naturalist, London: Collins, 1952 Shuntov, V.P., Trudnaya professiay albatrosa [The difficult occupation of albatross], Moscow: Nauka, 1993 (in Russian) Warham, John, The Petrels, Their Ecology and Breeding Systems, London: Academic Press, 1996

FUR TRADE The history of the fur trade, well documented back to the 9th century, is a history of the colonization of the North and the struggle of circumpolar peoples to reconcile market economies with a traditional way of life. The pursuit of fur brought traders into the European North and later to the far frontiers of Russia in the east and west to North America. Fur was often the first commodity that brought northern peoples into the network of European contact and trade, with various degrees of exploitation, settlement, and assimilation to follow.

Declines in populations of heavily exploited furbearers slowed or halted the trade of many species in given regions at certain times. Markets and fashions in the south have also governed the trade to a large degree. The late 20th century brought a twist to northsouth fur trade relations, as antifur movements based in temperate regions condemned Arctic and Subarctic fur production and caused prices to plummet. Contemporary fur markets continue to fluctuate according to fashion, politics, and the world economy. Global warming introduces new uncertainties to the trade. Examining the history and economy of the fur trade of the North allows an excellent view of the nature and particulars of conflict and change between northern indigenous people and exogenous influences. Trade in furs between the circumpolar North and more southerly regions began in the 9th century or earlier, as northern peoples came into contact with traders from regions to the south. Economic changes occurred across the north as the fur trade introduced new goods and brought new people and new technologies. Traditional subsistence lifeways adjusted to produce furs for trade in addition to skins normally harvested in hunting for food (as with reindeer, caribou, seals, etc.) and by hunting or trapping that targeted furbearers. The integration of Arctic peoples into the global economy played out differently in various parts of the North. In Fennoscandia and parts of the Russian North, traders were eventually followed by settlers, who often displaced indigenous peoples from the best land and competed with them for resources, including furs. Always adapting to superior technology, indigenous peoples readily welcomed trade items such as metal cooking pots and firearms, glass beads, and wool blankets, for their labor-saving qualities. Commodities such as flour and tea provided a welcome variety to northern diets. These goods could be purchased with skins that were not generally targeted or could be harvested in the course of normal hunting activities. Wearing fur was a necessity in the north for thousands of years. Until the recent advent of synthetics, Arctic survival depended on fur clothing. Long valued as a luxury item in more southerly climes, fur was sought from as far south as Egypt and around the pole. The modern relationship between Arctic fur producers and southern consumers is more complex. Today’s fur trade reflects both the continuing market relationship and a new system of restrictions and controls imposed by well-meaning people in dominant countries who often do not understand Arctic conditions.

Europe Early European traders venturing North were eager to secure furs from “Fynnes,” the Saami of the far North.

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FUR TRADE Casual trade turned into forced tribute to Norse chieftains in the 9th century in the form of pelts of marten, sable, fox, and other luxury furs. By the 10th century, Danes, Norsemen, and Swedes competed for trade in these furs as well as sealskins from coastal Scandinavia and Iceland. Russian traders were interested in obtaining silver and other European goods in exchange for furs. Elaborate trade routes developed between the 9th and 15th centuries brought furs from northwestern Europe and Russia to England, Germany, southern Europe, and farther afield to the Islamic world and to the Silk Road and east. Vikings, Bulgars, Germans, Tatars, Novgorodians, and Kiev traders each had their territories and periods of dominance. In return, northern peoples obtained items such as iron tools, salt, cloth, and trinkets. Colonization of the North by Novgorod (Russia) in the 12th century, and tighter control of fur-producing peoples by Novgorod and others to continue the flow of pelts through major fur trade centers brought rebellions, violence, and subjugation to peoples of the North. In the 13th and 14th centuries, a fashion for northern squirrel skins sewn together into mantels became very popular. First restricted to nobles and wealthier classes, the soft skins were soon worn by lower classes as well. By the early 15th century, England alone imported hundreds of thousands of the silky gray and white skins per year (Martin, 1986: 68). Many of the skins were provided as tributes, taxes, or rents both by indigenous people and peasants of Russia and Fennoscandia. The trading and system of tribute paid in furs led to the development of political powers in Russia, the Hanseatic League, and elsewhere. Indigenous Eurasians first encountered Russians in large numbers in the 16th century, when Chinese, Tatars, Mongols, Novgorodians, and Muscovites began demanding furs for tribute. By the end of the 17th century, the North had been violently subjugated by invading traders, trappers, and military. Many native peoples were unwilling to submit to giving tribute without receiving iron tools, bread, alcohol, tobacco, or sugar in return. Settlers followed Russian colonists, and as they tried to farm the land, burning forests and disrupting animals, the number of fur-bearing animals dropped. As in other parts of the North, natives who did trap furs did so at the expense of traditional seasonal activities of reindeer herding, fishing, and hunting. For the Russian traders, there was the problem of remoteness, difficulty in supplying trade goods, and keeping hostile “savages” at bay. By the end of the 17th century, the fur trade in the Russian Arctic was left in the hands of Cossacks living in isolated forts. Many of these took native women to be wives, concubines, and slaves, leaving few women in some northern communities.

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North America By the 17th century, furbearers were becoming scarce in Europe. Luxury furs still flowed from parts of Russia, but the opening of North America to the fur trade was timely. Depletion of many Northern European fur stocks coincided with the rise of a new fashion in beaver for felt hats. North America had plenty of beaver, and many English and French adventurers were eager to seek the “soft gold.” Most northern furs were traded through the Hudson’s Bay Company, chartered in 1670, or the North West Company until their merger in 1821. Unlike in many areas of what is now the United States, fur traders to Canada’s North were not rapidly followed by settlers. But traders traveled far into the continent in search of fur, and missionaries followed. They brought diseases that decimated aboriginal populations, and they had one item to trade that changed everything—guns. In the early years of European trade in the Subarctic, Cree and Chipewayans often took on the role of middlemen between traders and native trappers. Tribes competed fiercely for this role in order to control the trade and obtain more guns than rival groups. Cree restricted trade routes around Hudson Bay and are thought to have migrated and expanded their territories far west from Hudson Bay to the prairies, where some became classic Plains bison hunters. Chipewayan caribou hunters pursued moose as they expanded into new territories. Existing prairie tribes that were not interested in giving up hunting buffalo to become trappers adjusted their economy to the trade as well. Pemmican, the mixture of dried buffalo meat, fat, and berries, which was the staple of the fur trade, was produced in vast quantities to feed the trappers and traders expanding westward. Tribal economies changed in significant ways for many northern peoples. There is controversy among historians over just how much northern hunters became reliant on trade and trading posts. As Inuit, Dene, and Cree peoples included fur trading more often in their seasonal rounds, some individuals became dependent on trading posts. Epidemics and the resultant massive population declines attracted individuals more toward posts. This certainly increased with intermarriage of natives and traders, pressure by traders on trappers to devote more time to trapping and less to hunting, and the introduction of credit. Missionaries also encouraged settlement near trading posts. Hunting territories, which prior to this period were often quite fluid and dependent on following animal migrations, became more localized and individualized. Steel traps introduced early in the 19th century greatly increased the efficiency of beaver hunting. This was soon followed by a bitter trade war between

FUR TRADE the North West and Hudson’s Bay companies. The corporate battles did great harm to their indigenous partners; regular introduction of alcohol into the trading process increased company profits and put indigenous people at a disadvantage both in trade and in their abilities to subsist as they had on the land. The deleterious effects of alcohol on people who chose to stay around trading posts and missed their annual hunting rounds are well documented; how much of the indigenous populations fell into this trap has probably been exaggerated. The 1821 merger of the rival companies mellowed trading tactics, but not their fervor to trade furs. In 1841–1842, conservation restrictions were placed on the catch of beaver. The fashion craze of 200 years’ duration for beaver hats fizzled by 1850. In Canada’s North of 1870, muskrat, beaver, and marten made up 95% of pelts taken (Ray, 1990: 20). Beaver stocks were low, and although muskrats made up the bulk of furs captured, these smaller, less valuable animals were prone to population crashes. Centuries of heavy exploitation of furs led to declines in many species across the North by the late 19th century. From 1870 to 1911, increasing industrialization raised the demand for luxury furs. Fur farming emerged in the 1890s as an alternative to wild harvest, particularly for mink, sable, and fox. Farmed furs and the substitution of domestic furs such as dyed rabbit brought wild fur prices down. In the north, wool and cotton clothing became widely available early in the century, and trapping declined. During the 1920s, the highest production of furs came from the Soviet Union (Ray, 1990: 135). Production picked up somewhat in North America during the cash-poor depression, but prices were low. Meanwhile, the introduction of rifles, outboard motors, and other new technology was raising the cost of both trapping and subsistence hunting. When prices were on the upswing, trapping complemented by hunting provided an excellent income to northern trappers. Colonization played out differently in the Russian Far East and Alaska. By the mid-18th century, Russian traders had extended their interests across the Pacific. Luxurious sea otter pelts, highly prized in China, were their main object. Russians enslaved hunters of the Aleutian Islands (Ungangan) and Kodiak Island (Alutiit) to hunt sea otters in the Commander Islands, along the coast of Alaska and as far south as Fort Ross, California. Others went North to hunt fur seals in the Pribilof Islands. Hunters were forced to leave their homes for long periods of time, leaving families behind without hunters. (The Russians held families hostage to ensure compliance by the hunters.) They also required the indigenous people to produce dried salmon, “Indian rice” (rhizomes of the chocolate lily, Fritillaria camschatcensis), and other foods to provision the trade.

These pressures, along with decimation of the population by smallpox, brought about the abandonment of many small and seasonal settlements. Survivors consolidated their communities, usually in areas where fish and other resources were most plentiful. One hundred years after Russian hunters and traders first appeared, British and American fur interests had extended north up the Pacific Coast into Southeastern Alaska. Americans took control of the fur seal trade in 1867 when the United States bought Alaska. Sea otter were already fairly well depleted by that time. Commercial sealing was under way not only in Alaska, but along coasts of the White and Baltic Seas, the North Pacific, and the eastern shores of Canada, starting in the mid-1700s. Northern fur seals (Callorhinus ursinus) and harp seals (Phoca groenlandica) were hunted nearly to extinction in the Baltic and Northeast Atlantic; by 1800, the seal fishery in the northwest Atlantic had become an industrial venture (Wenzel, 1991). Along the Arctic coast of Canada, Inuit traded sealskin clothing and meat with whalers and explorers as opportunity allowed. The seal fishery there only reached commercial proportions after 1870, following the depletion of baleen whales. Until around 1920, when petroleum substitutes for whale and seal oil were widely adopted, sealskins were sold with the blubber on, to be rendered for their oil. Although this trade produced large numbers of skins, reportedly 3700 annually for Cumberland Sound alone between 1883 and 1903, Arctic seal populations remained healthy (Wenzel, 1991: 44). Inuit continued to trade some sealskins throughout the early 1900s, but the market for Arctic fox was more lucrative. At Clyde River, Inuit traded skins of white and blue (Arctic) fox, polar bear, ermine, wolves, caribou, and Arctic hare. Unlike Subarctic hunters, Inuit relied on nonmigratory species (seals). Because this food supply remained steady and traders were more migratory, Inuit did not come to rely on trade as much as had natives further south. The incentive to trap was dulled by the unreliable supply of trade goods, and by the 1950s wage labor supplied some of the needed cash to communities. Earnings from the fur trade still amounted to little compared to ammunition and other costs for subsistence activities. This changed after 1961, when a new tanning process for sealskin increased demand by the industry. Prices went from $3.50 per pelt to $14 by 1966 (Wenzel, 1991: 51), enabling hunters to buy snowmobiles and greatly increasing the mobility of Inuit from settlements. In 1967, following reports of the inhumane slaughter of baby harp seals in the commercial fishery, animal rights groups launched a campaign to “Save the Seals.” Demand for all types of furs plummeted, along with prices. The US Marine Mammal Protection Act of

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FUR TRADE 1972, a campaign by Greenpeace in 1977 that included condemnation of Inuit sealing, and a ban in 1983 by the European Economic Community on harp and hooded seal imports further damaged the market for sealskins. Cash income for Inuit on Baffin Island fell 85% (Wenzel, 1991: 54). Other fur markets were also badly affected. Prices recovered somewhat in 1979 following a program by the Canadian Government to counter the animal rights movement. This sealskin trade really benefited Inuit, because a good trade in sealskins meant that large amounts of traditional food were also being harvested for the community. From $23 per skin in 1980, prices on Baffin Island fell to $7 a pelt in 1985 (Wenzel, 1991: 125). Twenty-three dollars would cover expenses for fuel and ammunition for a full day of subsistence harvest activities. Seven dollars barely covered the cost of bullets to kill a seal. Antisealing and antifur lobbies are criticized in the North for having a double standard; condemning hunters for harvesting “luxury” furs when fur has been the only “cash crop” available for northerners to export. The ban against this “luxury” product reduced cash income from fur in the 1980s from $450 down to around $100 for Inuit hunters (Lynge, 1992: 31). Meanwhile, southern organizers of this campaign are seen by northerners as enjoying many modern conveniences and luxuries that are unavailable to northern trappers and hunters. The bitterness of this irony was intensified by the huge donations that animal rights groups collected during their antisealing campaigns: the International Fund for Animal Welfare raised $6 million, Greenpeace USA $5 million, and other groups additional millions (Lynge, 1992: 31). The World Wildlife Fund and the UNEP realized that these campaigns, which were supposed to exempt Inuit and Greenlandic hunters, had a devastating effect on Arctic lifestyles. But the damage against fur markets had already been done.

Greenland The Danish Royal Greenland Trade Company (KGH) held a monopoly on trade in Greenland from the late 18th century until the 1950s. This exclusive relationship ostensibly protected the Inuit population from disease and exploitation, and controlled prices; it also guaranteed high profits for the Danes (Gulløv, 2003). The fur trade in Greenland was preceded by whale and seal fisheries. With the demise of the blubber and oil markets, cash income from seal and, to a lesser degree, fox skins became a primary source of cash income for Greenlanders, and kept the Inuit population in a state of dependence on trade (Holtved, 1967). In the 1920s, fishing overtook seal hunting as the primary occupation (Government of Greenland, 2000), but income from the

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sale of sealskins was still important for subsistence hunters. With the international antisealing campaign, low prices and demand led to a drop in processing of skins. The Home Rule government continued to subsidize the purchase of skins at stable prices despite large stockpiles through the 1990s; still the average price barely covered the cost of hunting (Dahl, 2000). In the early 1990s, Great Greenland, the fur company of the Greenland Home Rule government, bought a total of 77,000 sealskins annually and several hundred fox and polar bear skins. By the mid-1990s, the total number of all types of furs purchased dropped below 48 (Statistics Greenland, 1997), and China was the largest buyer. By 2000, prices and markets were beginning to improve (Great Greenland, 2003). Today, Great Greenland markets sealskin with a guarantee that it comes from adult seals (rather than the baby seals that fueled the animal rights campaign), and that buyers are “helping to maintain the ancient Inuit hunting tradition” (www.great-greenland.com/). After years of being victims of a proanimal, antinortherner campaign, Greenlanders and other fur producers are fighting back with their own politically correct marketing.

Fur and Fashion Today In Russia, fur never went out of fashion. Descendants of Cossack traders became “Old Settlers” and continued to trade for furs. More settlers and peasants arrived in northern areas after the revolution, increasing pressure on habitats and animal populations. Native people often did not trade furs unless they were given a good deal, including friendly arrangements with traders such as hospitality and credit, and when these conditions were not met by traders under the new system, the fur trade broke down. Quality trade items were hard to come by. Trappers often had more freedom than fishers or herders, because if they did not like the terms of trade, they could return to subsistence pursuits, and were hard for the state to control or collectivize. Because furs brought in hard currency for the state, they maintained the fur trade despite political inconsistencies. There were some instances where the state fur-trading agency tried to foil native trappers, such as a scheme in the 1930s that closed areas to trappers and allowed for complete extermination of animals on the “reserve.” The venture was exposed as injurious to long-term state and native interests (Slezkine, 1994: 213). According to Slezkine, the Soviet fur trade remained a steady link between the world economy and peoples of the North, despite not fitting into Soviet ideologies. Russia remains a major consumer of furs, exporting few furs due to high domestic demand. In 2000, China surpassed Russia as the greatest consumer of fur with

FUR TRADE, HISTORY IN RUSSIA Korea following as its economy improves (Parker, 2002). Still, European and American prices are higher than the Asian markets, and although prices have recovered since the lows of the early 1990s, costs of trapping make wild fur harvest barely viable in North America. Fur is slowly returning to fashion stages of Europe, regardless of the latest political controversies. In 1996, the European Union tried to ban the import of any furs caught in leghold traps. The ban was suspended, and was overturned by the World Trade Organization in 1999, on the grounds that it is illegal to distinguish products based on how they are produced. Canada had already agreed to adopt regulations for the use of more humane traps—an additional expense for trappers. A phenomenon of greater concern than politics to the fur market is global warming. Pelts do not thicken to “prime” grade without cold weather. More significant for the trade, people do not buy fur coats in mild winters. As indigenous communities of the circumpolar North seek sustainable economies, fur is likely to continue to play a role. However, the availability of wage labor and the high cost of harvesting on the land reduce incentives to trap. Competition from farmed furs and uncertainties of climate, politics, and fashion are likely to keep market prices too low for a return to the glory years of the northern fur trade. It is unlikely that fur will again be the primary link of northern communities to the world economy, as it was in the period of colonization and in many decades since. DEBORAH B. ROBINSON See also Fur Trade, History in Russia; Hudson’s Bay Company; North West Company; Trapping Further Reading Dahl, Jens, Saqqaq: An Inuit Hunting Community in the Modern World, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000 Gibson, James R., Otter Skins, Boston Ships, and China Goods: The Maritime Fur Trade of the Northwest Coast, 1785–1841, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1992 Government of Greenland, This is Greenland 2000–2001: The Official Directory, Nuuk: Government of Greenland with the Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2000 Great Greenland, Great Greenland Furhouse Homepage Great Greenland, 2003 [cited July 7, 2003]. Available from http://www.greatgreenland.com/ Gulløv, Hans Christian, Denmark - Greenland and the Faeroe Islands - Greenland Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2003 [cited July 10, 2003]. Available from http://www.um.dk/english/danmark/danmarksbog/kap7/71-19.asp# 7-1-19 Holtved, Erik, “Contributions to polar Eskimo ethnography.” Meddelelser om Grønland, 182 (2) (1967): 7–180 Krech III, Shepard (editor), The Subarctic Fur Trade: Native Social and Economic Adaptations, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1984

Lynge, Finn, Arctic Wars: Animal Rights, Endangered Peoples, Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1992 Martin, Janet, Treasure of the Land of Darkness: The Fur Trade and its Significance for Medieval Russia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986 Parker, Sandy, “The year in review.” Sandy Parker Reports: Weekly International Fur News, 25 (2002): 42 Ray, Arthur J., Indians in the Fur Trade: Their Role as Trappers, Hunters, and Middlemen in the Lands Southwest of Hudson Bay, 1660–1870, Toronto, Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1974 ———, The Canadian Fur Trade in the Industrial Age, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990 Slezkine, Yuri, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1994 Statistics Greenland, Greenland 1997 Statistical Yearbook, Nuuk: Greenland Home Rule Government, 1997 Tikhmenev, Petr Aleksandrovich, A History of the RussianAmerican Company, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978 Usher, Peter J., The Bankslanders; Economy and Ecology of a Frontier Trapping Community, Ottawa: Information Canada, 1971 Wenzel, George, Animal Rights, Human Rights, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991 Yerbury, J.C., The Subarctic Indians and the Fur Trade, 1680–1860, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1986

FUR TRADE, HISTORY IN RUSSIA For the peoples of Siberia, fur represents one of the most significant centerpieces of history and culture. Its fundamental importance derives from the first human migrations of hunters into the region tens of thousands of years ago. However, for these people fur was simply part of a subsistence lifestyle. With the Russian conquest of Siberia, fur assumed a commercial aspect and importance. For centuries, Siberian fur was a major source of wealth for the Russian State. In addition, for the indigenous peoples, the fur trade irrevocably altered economies, as they became proficient trappers and fur traders. From the early Middle Ages, untreated furs comprised one of Russia’s most important exports, but it was not until the second half of the 15th century that Europeans developed a major demand for foreign furs on which Russia could capitalize. Western Europe’s widespread destruction of forest to make way for agricultural growth meant that the number of furbearing animals declined. At the same time, however, sophisticated Renaissance taste created an enormous demand for luxury furs. Unlike its European neighbors, Russia possessed a vast frontier land at its eastern border, scarcely populated and rich in fur-bearing animals. Hence, the European quest for furs, especially the sable, became the most important single factor behind the Russian expansion into Siberia. The European demand for Russian furs did not end in the centuries to come. From the beginning of the

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FUR TRADE, HISTORY IN RUSSIA conquest of Siberia in the late 16th century to the beginning of the 18th century, Siberian furs represented Russia’s most essential export and constituted up to 10% of the total income of the state. After 1700, the sable and other fur-bearing animals became so scarce because of intensive hunting that trade in Siberian furs lost its position as a cornerstone of the Russian economy. Nevertheless, in certain periods of the 20th century, the export of Siberian furs regained a position of dominance, which was as significant as the one it had enjoyed in its prime. In the post-Civil War period, the damaged apparatus of production necessitated the quest for foreign capital to rebuild the machinery. Furs became Russia’s only remaining major export. Thus, from 1924 to 1929, furs accounted for 10–15% of the total value of Soviet exports. The resurgence of Siberian fur in Russian foreign trade continued in the decade to follow. Joseph Stalin’s request for foreign capital to build a heavy industry at record speed encouraged the support of large-scale fur trapping and fur farming. In fact, the sale of Siberian furs abroad played a key economic role in the completion of Soviet industrialization. Although Siberian furs have presently become a negligible part of Russian exports compared to the sale of energy—oil and gas—they do retain importance. Altogether, economists estimate the Siberian fur industry to be worth about 62 million dollars a year, and the international fur trade continues to depend heavily on Siberian furs. During czarist Russia, the state obtained most furs from the fur tax, or yasak, imposed on all indigenous Siberian men between 18 and 50 years of age. Even though the Russian hunters (promyshleniks) and fur traders were also required to pay a fur tax or tithe to the Czar, the amount from the indigenous peoples easily made up the largest sum, contributing 65–80% of the state’s total income in furs. However, Siberia’s indigenous peoples did not passively finance the Russian economy and empire building. In fact, indigenous activities significantly shaped the organization of the fur trade. At the end of the 18th century, the Anui Chukchi, living in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), had been cut off from dealing with Russian traders because their fellow tribe members in Chukotka were fighting the newcomers. The boycott created a shortage of tobacco, an indispensable product for the Chukchi. They captured a Russian government official, and in exchange for his release demanded that a trading post be established in their territory. The administration, which had already lost many battles with the Chukchi, saw no way around the problem than to comply and establish a trading post. The Anui Fair, as it was named, became one of the most profitable in the Siberian Far East.

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Moreover, the Sakha (Yakuts) of northeastern Siberia came to play a significant role as fur traders. As seminomads, the Yakut had the advantage of being placed between the settled Russians and the other native groups, such as the Yukaghirs, Evens, and Evenks, who were full-time nomads. Often, the Russians settled near the winter pastures of the Sakha. Hence, the latter learned the Russian language and gained easy access to Russian commodities. At the same time, they had old trading relations with the other indigenous groups. By selling Russian commodities for fur, some Sakha traders became among the wealthiest businesspersons in Siberia. Moreover, the Sakha language replaced Russian as the language spoken when trading. Even today, most ethnic groups (including some Russians) living in the Sakha Republic and the bordering regions speak Sakha as their first or second language. Toward the end of the 1980s, a controversy provoked by the protests of animal rights groups against fur-trapping methods, specifically the leg-hold trap, led to calls for a European Union ban on the import of certain types of wild fur. This powerful and wellorganized lobby of animal welfare and animal rights campaigners’ organizations—including the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), the Eurogroup for Animal Welfare, and others— swayed a vast majority of the European Parliament in favor of their aim: to ban all imports of the furs of 13 key species of furbearers in Canada, the United States, and Russia, all admittedly nonendangered by the hunt in their respective habitats. The lobby argued that leghold traps were cruel and should be banned, and the best way to ensure such a ban was to stop all trade in wild fur. The Commissioner for the Environment agreed with the Parliament, whereas the Commissioner for International Trade opposed the idea of a trade ban. Eventually, it was the latter view that won the day, mainly because of WTO rules, but also to a considerable extent due to the arguments of the delegations of indigenous Indians and Inuit, who year after year showed up in Strasbourg (France) and Brussels (Belgium) to present their case. No Siberian delegation ever came. They simply were too distant and too poor. In 1993, the Upper Kolyma Yukaghirs of Yakutia and the neighboring Sakha of the village of Verkhne Kolymsk decided to sell their sable furs directly at the Danish fur auction houses, where they would gain prices several times higher than those they received from the Yakut Republic. In 1999, the Yukaghirs received financial support from the Danish NGO, the Committee for Nature and Peoples of the North (Natur og Folk i Nord) to carry out the project. However, the immediate response of the Yakut police was to confis-

FUR TRADE, HISTORY IN RUSSIA cate the furs, claiming them as property of the Yakut Republic. The Yukaghirs are presently involved in a court case in Moscow with the aim of gaining the legal right to control the trade in their fur. Meanwhile, the native newspaper Ilken has published a number of articles, revealing how the Yakut Republic’s fur company Sakhabult, which makes a high profit on the international fur market, exploits native trappers. The outcome of the conflict between the native hunters and the Republic has great significance for the future organization of the fur trade. If the Yukaghirs win the court case, it could mean the beginning of a new area, in which the Siberian indigenous peoples, for the first time since the Russian conquest, will gain control over the trade in their fur. RANE WILLERSLEV

See also Fur Trade; Trapping; Yasak; Yukagir Further Reading Bobric, Benson, East of the Sun, the Conquest and Settlement of Siberia, London: Heinemann, 1992 Bogoras, Waldemar, The Chukchee, 3 volumes, Leiden: Brill, and New York: Stechert, 1904–1909, reprinted New York, 1975 Fisher, Raymond H., The Russian Fur Trade 1550–1700, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1943 Jochelson, Waldemar, The Yakut, New York: The American Museum of Natural History, 1933 Lynge, Finn, Arctic Wars, Animal Rights, Endangered Peoples, translated by Marianne Stenbaek, Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1992 Willerslev, Rane, Hunting and Trapping in Siberia, foreword by Finn Lynge, Copenhagen: Arctic Information, 2000

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