Scientific Research in the Arctic: Norway

Abstract

Norway has a special situation among the nations that are carrying out scientific research in the Arctic, since nearly half of the mainland is located north of the Arctic circle. Thanks to the warming effects of ocean currents, however, Norway is not an arctic country in the climatic sense of the word. Her fjords and harbours are open all year around even in the northernmost part of the mainland. The extreme northern location has given Norwegians great economic and scientific interests in the Arctic. The maximum zone of the auroral belt runs across northern Norway, thus making it possible to carry out polar geophysical research from stations on the mainland. This may be one of the reasons why Norway's scientific activity in the arctic area north of the mainland has included relatively little activity in cosmic physics and related sciences. Norway's first national effort in the exploration of the arctic seas took place in Viking times (A.D. 800-1000) when Iceland was settled, and Greenland and the American mainland (Vinland) were discovered. In the east, the arctic coast of Russia to the White Sea (Bjarmeland) was explored. The first reports of the Svalbard (Spitsbergen) island date from this period, when it was considered to be a part of Greenland. Interest in the Arctic by the Norwegians was renewed in the early part of the nineteenth century, when Norwegian seal- and walrus-hunting vessels explored the arctic seas from Greenland to Novaya Zemlya, discovering, for example, Franz Josef Land. At the same time, Norwegian trappers began exploiting the Svalbard area. In the summer seasons 1876-78 the government of Norway sent an oceanographic and biologic expedition to Iceland, Jan Mayen, and Spitsbergen. At the end of the century, Fridtjof Nansen accomplishing the first crossing of the inland ice of Greenland and by drifting with the specially constructed ship Fram across the polar basin (1893-96), opened a new and great era of Norwegian contribution to the knowledge of the Arctic. ...