Captain Scott rewrote his story: January–June 1911

This article reveals that Captain Robert Falcon Scott rewrote his Terra Nova journals for the period 24 January to 18 June 1911, making extensive changes, in places. He made carbon copies of his journal from then until 31 October 1911. The Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) holds the combined manuscript as Carbon copy of diary as leader of British Antarctic Expedition, Jan. to Oct. 1911 with reference number RFS/1. This little-known version of Scott’s journals has apparently been overlooked by many researchers and scholars. The main research question addressed by the article is: “What was the significance of Captain Scott rewriting his story?” The article reviews two versions of Scott’s story – the published narrative Scott’s Last Expedition, and RFS/1. It investigates the provenance of each version and then reviews differences between the two texts. Three key differences stand out, suggesting the underlying pressures that drove Scott to rewrite his story in mid-1911. The article touches upon editorial changes made by Leonard Huxley in compiling Scott’s Last Expedition and contrasts those changes with changes made by Scott when rewriting the same passages. It also investigates the provenance of a typescript version of RFS/1 held by Canterbury Museum.

Commercial fishing, Inuit rights, and internal colonialism in Nunavut

This paper considers the degree to which the concept of ‘internal colonialism’ accurately describes the political economy of Nunavut’s commercial fisheries. Offshore fisheries adjacent to Nunavut were initially dominated by institutions based in southern Canada, and most economic benefits were captured by southern jurisdictions. Decades of political struggle have resulted in Nunavut establishing a role for itself in both the management of offshore resources and the operation of the offshore fishing industry. However, key decisions about fishery management are made by the federal government, and many benefits from Nunavut’s offshore fisheries continue to accrue to southern jurisdictions. The concept of internal colonialism is therefore a useful concept for understanding the historical development and contemporary conflicts over offshore fisheries. By contrast, Nunavut’s inshore fisheries were established as community development initiatives intended to promote economic well-being and stability. While inshore fisheries primarily benefit Inuit community economies, the growth of inshore fisheries has been hampered by small profit margins, inadequate marine infrastructure, and a dearth of baseline data. The federal government’s failure to support the expansion of inshore fisheries is a manifestation of internal colonialism, insofar as it reflects an unequal distribution of public infrastructure and research.

A spatial reference and identification system for coastal ice-free land in East Antarctica

We describe a spatial reference system that uniquely identifies 4884 coastal island and continental rock features across East Antarctica. The system comprises a series of maps and a related database, and can be a foundation tool for a wide range of environmental studies.

The multiple landscapes of Biedjovággi: Ontological conflicts on indigenous land

In this article, we engage with environmental conflicts on indigenous land through a focus on an attempt to gain social licence to reopen and operate the Biedjovággi mine in Guovdageainnu/Kautokeino in Sápmi, Norway. We argue that mining prospects bring forth ontological conflicts concerning land use, as well as ways to know the landscape and the envisioned future that the land holds. It is a story of a conflict between two different ways of knowing. The paper explores the Sámi landscape through different concepts, practices and stories. We then contrast this to the way the same landscape is understood and narrated by a mining company, through the programmes and documents produced according to the Norwegian law and standards. We follow Ingold’s argument that the Sámi landscape practices are taskscapes, where places, times and tasks are interconnected. These were not acknowledged in the plans and documents of the mining company. We conclude by addressing the tendency of extractive industries to reduce different landscapes in ways that fit with modern understandings, which oppose culture to nature.

Mawson’s views on use of natural resources in the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic

Sir Douglas Mawson is a well-known Antarctic explorer and scientist. Early in his career, he recognised opportunities for commerce in Antarctic and sub-Antarctic regions. While at Cape Denison, Antarctica, in 1913 on the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE), the Adelie Blizzard magazine was produced. Mawson contributed articles about Antarctic natural resources and their possible use. Later, he advocated Australia be involved in pelagic whaling. He collected seal skins and oil for their commercial value to be assessed by the Hudson’s Bay Company. During the AAE, Mawson visited Macquarie Island where an oiling gang was killing southern elephant seals and royal penguins. Mawson was concerned that they were over-exploited and lobbied successfully to stop the killing. His plans for Macquarie Island included a wildlife sanctuary, with a party to supervise access, send meteorological observations to Australia and New Zealand, and be self-funded by harvesting elephant seals and penguins. Macquarie Island was declared a sanctuary in 1933. Although Mawson has been recognised as an early proponent of conservation, his views on conservation of living natural resources were inconsistent. They should be placed in their historical context: in the early twentieth century, utilisation of living natural resources was viewed more favourably than currently.

An unlikely partnership? New Zealand–South Korea bilateral cooperation and Antarctic order

While the Antarctic Treaty System intended to keep Antarctica an area of international cooperation and science free from militarisation and international conflict, the region has not been completely shielded from global power transitions, such as decolonisation and the end of the Cold War. Presently, emerging countries from Asia are increasingly willing to invest in polar infrastructure and science on the back of their growing influence in world politics. South Korea has also invested heavily in its Antarctic infrastructure and capabilities recently and has been identified as an actor with economic and political interests that are potentially challenging for the existing Antarctic order. This article first assesses the extent and performance of the growing bilateral cooperation between South Korea and one of its closest partners, New Zealand, a country with strong vested interests in the status quo order. How did the cooperation develop between these two actors with ostensibly diverging interests? This article finds that what may have been a friction–laden relationship, actually developed into a win-win partnership for both countries. The article then moves on to offer an explanation for how this productive relationship was made possible by utilising a mutual socialisation approach that explores socio-structural processes around status accommodation.

Human–environment interactions at a short-lived Arctic mine and the long-term response of the local tundra vegetation

Arctic mining has a bad reputation because the extractive industry is often responsible for a suite of environmental problems. Yet, few studies explore the gap between untouched tundra and messy megaproject from a historical perspective. Our paper focuses on Advent City as a case study of the emergence of coal mining in Svalbard (Norway) coupled with the onset of mining-related environmental change. After short but intensive human activity (1904–1908), the ecosystem had a century to respond, and we observe a lasting impact on the flora in particular. With interdisciplinary contributions from historical archaeology, archaeozoology, archaeobotany and botany, supplemented by stable isotope analysis, we examine 1) which human activities initially asserted pressure on the Arctic environment, 2) whether the miners at Advent City were “eco-conscious,” for example whether they showed concern for the environment and 3) how the local ecosystem reacted after mine closure and site abandonment. Among the remains of typical mining infrastructure, we prioritised localities that revealed the subtleties of long-term anthropogenic impact. Significant pressure resulted from landscape modifications, the import of non-native animals and plants, hunting and fowling, and the indiscriminate disposal of waste material. Where it was possible to identify individual inhabitants, these shared an economic attitude of waste not, want not, but they did not hold the environment in high regard. Ground clearances, animal dung and waste dumps continue to have an effect after a hundred years. The anthropogenic interference with the fell field led to habitat creation, especially for vascular plants. The vegetation cover and biodiversity were high, but we recorded no exotic or threatened plant species. Impacted localities generally showed a reduction of the natural patchiness of plant communities, and highly eutrophic conditions were unsuitable for liverworts and lichens. Supplementary isotopic analysis of animal bones added data to the marine reservoir offset in Svalbard underlining the far-reaching potential of our multi-proxy approach. We conclude that although damaging human–environment interactions formerly took place at Advent City, these were limited and primarily left the visual impact of the ruins. The fell field is such a dynamic area that the subtle anthropogenic effects on the local tundra may soon be lost. The fauna and flora may not recover to what they were before the miners arrived, but they will continue to respond to new post-industrial circumstances.

Interruptions: Affective futures and uncanny presences at Giemaš, Finnmark

This paper concerns affective relations and unexpected interruptions as the planned expansion of an extractive open-pit mining site gathers momentum. The site is a mountain in Varanger, North Norway, criss-crossed by a sand-coloured meshwork of roads that are part of the current infrastructure of a quartzite quarry. Recently purchased by Chinese investors, the mining company Elkem plans a massive expansion of the operations, which will interrupt a wide range of practices and projects, including the migratory movement of reindeer, as well as their grazing patterns. Known as Giemaš amongst Sámi speakers, the mountain is also alluded to as a site of other powers, manifesting as unexpected accidents. In this article, I explore how the planned expansion evokes this contested site as more than a singular mountain, and how divergent epistemic formations interrupt the making of extractive resources in multiple ways.

“The ice has gone”: Vernacular meteorology, fisheries and human–ice relationships on Sakhalin Island

This paper examines vernacular weather observations amongst rural people on Sakhalin, Russia’s largest island on the Pacific Coast, and their relationship to the ice. It is based on a weather diary (2000–2016) of one of the local inhabitants and fieldwork that the author conducted in the settlement of Trambaus in 2016. The diary as a community-based weather monitoring allows us to examine how people understand, perceive and deal with the weather both daily and in the long-term perspective. Research argues that amongst all natural phenomena, the ice is the most crucial for the local inhabitants as it determines human subsistence activities, navigation and relations with other environmental forces and beings. People perceive the ice as having an agency, engage in a dialogue with it, learn and adjust themselves to its drifting patterns. Over the past decade, the inability to predict the ice’s behaviour has become a major problem affecting people’s well-being in the settlement. The paper advocates further integrating vernacular weather observations and their relations with natural forces into research on climate change and local fisheries management policies.