During the last decades, scholarly studies on Arctic identities have been on the increase, but less is known about how academic viewpoints diverge from aboriginal perspectives. The aim of this article is to compare both points of view, by looking at the way some academic specialists define Arctic identities, in contrast — or convergence — with how one Arctic people, the Inuit, perceive who they are. Twelve scholars conducting social research in the north and recognised for their competence were interviewed on their definition of identity and their assessment of the current situation of Arctic aboriginal populations. Their responses show that they view identity as a relational and constructed process, a process that continues without much disruption despite rapid social and cultural change. As modern Inuit are concerned, ethnography and personal testimonies tend to show that they perceive identity as an open-ended and individual — as opposed to collective — relationship rather than as a way of classifying people. Inuit perceptions agree on some points — the relational aspects for instance — but diverge on others — for example, the primarily individual nature of identity — from those of the interviewed scholars, and they should be taken into account in any assessment of the current human situation in the Arctic.

To prevent boredom and restlessness during early Arctic and Antarctic over-wintering expeditions, leaders often encouraged ‘cultural’ activities, one of the most successful of which was the production of newspapers. Expedition members contributed poetry, short fiction, and literary criticism as well as scientific articles and accounts of their daily activities. These newspapers provide an important insight into the experiences and attitudes of the men who took part in the expeditions. In some cases, the newspaper would be published on the expedition's return, as a means of publicity, fund-raising, and memorialisation. The most famous example is the South Polar Times, the newspaper produced by Robert Falcon Scott's two expeditions. Other polar newspapers remain unpublished and unexamined. This article focuses on the Adelie Blizzard, the newspaper of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911–14, led by Douglas Mawson. Despite Mawson's efforts, the Adelie Blizzard was never published, and is rarely discussed in any detail in accounts of the expedition. The aim of this article is to address this neglect, by examining the genesis, production and attempted publication of the Adelie Blizzard.

The Norse colonisation or landnám of the North Atlantic islands of the Faroes, Iceland, and Greenland from the ninth century AD onwards provides opportunities to examine human environmental impacts on ‘pristine’ landscapes on an environmental gradient from warmer, more maritime conditions in the east to colder, more continental conditions in the west. This paper considers key environmental contrasts across the Atlantic and initial settlement impacts on the biota and landscape. Before landnám, the modes of origin of the biota (which resulted in boreo-temperate affinities), a lack of endemic species, limited diversity, and no grazing mammals on the Faroes or Iceland, were crucial in determining environmental sensitivity to human impact and, in particular, the impact of introduced domestic animals. Gathering new data and understanding their geographical patterns and changes through time are seen as crucial when tackling fundamental questions about human interactions with the environment, which are relevant to both understanding the past and planning for the future.

Studies of Antarctic fauna have led to tentative identification of a range of potential pathogens for both animals and humans. The rapid increase in visitors on tourist ships to the continent, now exceeding 10,000 per year, raises the concern that humans might transmit pathogens into and between wildlife colonies. The authors investigated the feasibility and efficacy of chemical disinfection of the microbial contamination on visitors' boots. During three voyages to penguin colonies in the Ross Sea, swabs were collected from the boots of visitors prior to landing, immediately on return to the ship, after a water wash, and after a chemical disinfectant wash using Virkon S. For the first two visits, abundant growth of bacteria was identified on boots at all three stages prior to disinfection. Following disinfection, the growth of bacteria was virtually eliminated. On the third visit, previously disinfected boots grew virtually no bacteria. After this landing the bacterial growth was substantially reduced by disinfection. These results indicate that consideration should be given to including disinfection in cleaning the boots of visitors to wildlife sites in the Antarctic to reduce the risk of translocation of microbial pathogens.

Henry James Snow hunted marine mammals in the sub-Arctic Kuril Islands and adjacent areas of the North Pacific between the years 1873 and 1896. His success resulted from careful study of the animals hunted, in particular the sea otter. He had continual difficulties with the governments of Japan and Russia, which had sovereignty over the land and territorial waters of the region, some of the encounters involving violence. At the same time, Snow was a careful observer of the wildlife and surveyor of the natural features, especially of the Kuril Islands. His works represented the most accessible source of information about the islands as late as the start of the Pacific War in 1941.

The ship Veslekari was launched in 1918 from Christian Jensen's shipyard near Kristiania (present-day Oslo), where Roald Amundsen's ship Maud had been built. Although primarily a sealer, she was also used extensively for other expeditions to the Arctic. She participated in several relief expeditions, including one in 1936 to Jan Mayen to evacuate people during a series of earthquakes, and another in 1939 to northeast Greenland to evacuate Count Gaston Micard, who was seriously ill. In 1928 Veslekari participated in the search for Roald Amundsen and his plane in the waters off Bjørnøya. Tryggve Gran, a member of Robert Falcon Scott's last expedition, sailed with her at that time. She was chartered four times as expedition ship for the American Arctic explorer Miss Louise A. Boyd. In the summer of 1940 Veslekari sailed to northeast Greenland to relieve Norwegian hunters and the crew of the Norwegian weather station, but she was impounded by British and Norwegian forces and taken to Scotland on order of the Norwegian government in London. She was chartered by the Ministry of War Transport and was based in Scotland and Iceland. In 1943 she was renamed HMS Bransfield and was prepared for service in the Antarctic. After the war she resumed sealing under Norwegian ownership until in 1961, when she was wrecked in the ice in the sealing ground off Newfoundland.

Verner Duncan Carse, the last surviving member of the British Graham Land Expedition, died on 2 May 2004, aged 90. In the polar community, Carse will be best remembered for his six expeditions to South Georgia, four as leader of the South Georgia Survey, but to the wider public, he was known as the radio voice of Dick Barton, Special Agent.

The texts of the Decisions and Resolutions, and the text of Measure 1 (2004), together with a summary of the Management Plan for Antarctic Specially Managed area No. 2, McMurdo Dry Valleys, Southern Victoria Land, adopted at XXVII ATCM were reproduced in SCAR Bulletin No 155, October 2004. A summary of the Management Plan for Antarctic Specially Managed Area No. 3, Cape Denison, Commonwealth Bay, George V land, together with Measures 2–4, are reproduced here. The full versions of all the Decisions, Measures and Resolutions are on the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat website at http://www.ats.org.ar/