The mythical, historical and cultural past of the Sámi in 19th century northern scientific works – a tale about northern culture and northern natural landscape. Sven Lovén (1809-1895) depicted Sámi in his three combined travelling journal and scientific notebook that he wrote on his journey in northern Norway, northern Sweden and Spitsbergen in 1836-1838. Lovén made several types of representations of the Sámi such as ethnographical and anthropological ones as well as the ones he constructed out of references to literary work such as myths, fairy-tales and narratives about the Sámi. I will in this blog post look at the representations he made of Sámi with references to fictive, literary works. Lovén referred to literary works such as the epic Kale...

Where to begin? I am buzzing.. just buzzing. What a Day,- and half the world hasn't even woken up yet! Today is our sixth International Polar Day, and we are focusing on People in the Polar Regions. Plans for the day have been very experimental, very grassroots, much in line with IPY.. but with that comes that great big unknowingness.... will anyone join in? Will anyone turn up? Last night...

“Preserve the Polar Regions and Glaciers”: A major philatelic event for the closing of IPY in March 2009 Last Saturday September 20t 2008, at the “Austria Center Vienna”, a few steps from the UN Headquarter in Vienna, have been officially presented the major philatelic event concerning the “International Polar Year 2007-2009”. To pay tribute to all the efforts made during this fourth “International Polar Year” 2007-2009 and to deliver a strong message aimed at the whole world, the postal administrations of around 40 countries have decided to joint to produce a common stamp issue concerning the problem of the Global Warming and featuring the slogan “Preserve the Polar Regions and Glaciers”. Started ...

Permafrost research makes you happy Photo: Dominik Langhamer Thanks to Hanne H. Christiansen from UNIS for the text of this clog, sent from the field. To follow their adventures or get more details about the course have a look at www.tspnorway.com ! In just one long day 10 m of mainly frozen sediment cores were collected from 4 different parts of the landscape here in NE Greenland using hand held drilling machines. Thermistor strings were installed down to 3.2 m below the terrain surface in the deepest hole. This was done by the Interna...

Press release Bremerhaven August 7th 2008. The German Research Vessel Polarstern had to prove its ice breaking capabilities in Arctic waters to gain data on two series of long-term research measurements. After working in regions up to latitude 82

PRESS RELEASE Commencing in August 2008, the University of Akureyri will be offering a Master's Program in Polar Law. This Program is designed for both lawyers (two semesters leading to an LLM-degree) and non-lawyers (four semesters leading to an MA-degree), preparing them for work in both public and private sector, in national and local governments, international organizations, with indigenous peoples of the Circumpolar North, academic institutions and non-governmental organizations, and national and transnational corporations. The deadline for applications is June 5 for Home/EU students and April 15 for overseas students. The Master's Program will provide a unique focus on Polar Law. It lays emphasis on certain chapters in public international law, such as...

The Arctic Social Indicators (ASI) project is an IPY project and is following up on the activities of the Arctic Human Development Report (AHDR), and is initiated by the Stefansson Arctic Institute, Akureyri, Iceland, which also hosts the secretariat. ASI has been endorsed by the Arctic Council.

PRESS RELEASE North3 Goes Live on the Internet From: Canadian Embassy Heads of Mission: Ralph Lysyshyn (MOSCOW) Anna Blauveldt (REYKJAVIK) Scott Fraser (HELSINKI) Fredericka Gregory (COPENHAGEN) Jillian Stirk (OSLO) and Alexandra Volkoff (STOCKHOLM) Date: 2008-01-10 Summary: To mark the International Polar Year, Canada's circumpolar embassies have launched an internet outreach project to engage northern youth. Canadian embassies in COPENHAGEN, HELSINKI, MOSCOW, OSLO, REYKJAVIK and STOCKHOLM are pleased to announce that North3 is now on the internet (www.ookpik.org/north3). These missions have collaborated...

Noora Partamies describes experiences from a substorm school in Iceland, part of IPY project 63; ICESTAR/IHY. Once again the space physics group of the University of Bergen put together a substorm school for Master and PhD students in space physics. This time the course was organised together with Finnish Meteorological Institute. Six students and two lecturers from Norway met three students and two lecturers from Finland for ten days in late November to learn, observe and discuss substorm related processes in the near Earth space. The course location was a small Fosshótel Nesbúð in Nesjavellir about 80 km east of Reykjavik, a few kilometres off the shore of the Icela...

The IPY International Programme Office (IPO) has recently received some sponsorship to seed a meeting of the IPY International Youth Steering Committee (IYSC), including the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS). This meeting will occur in Stockholm at the end of September. Below is background material for this meeting. Meeting Details (252 KB DOC) includes participants, overview, agenda, and logistics Planning Information and Summary (128 KB PDF) APEC...