Viewed from the south, the Arctic can seem almost impossibly forbidding. It is an ice world, where permafrost has created an expanse of tundra and taiga (coniferous forest) on land, while the North Pole itself lies on a vast sheet of pack ice, floating on the Arctic Ocean. The passing seasons are accompanied by extreme temperature shifts, with parts of Siberia and Canada plunging to −40°C in the winter months, before summer brings a balmy +35°C. Even familiar concepts of day and night break down once you reach the Arctic Circle. This line lies at 66.5°N: the point where an observer will experience at least 24 hours of both continual sunlight and darkness over the course of a year. The further north you venture, the longer these periods of light and dark endure, until you reach the North Pole, where the sun rises in March and does not set until September. When it appears once more, after months of night and twilight, the intensity of the light on freshly frozen surfaces can cause blindness.
To see this as simply a harsh and difficult world, though, is to miss the opportunities that mastering the environment presents. While those living far from the Arctic Circle often view snow and ice as a hindrance to travel, it offers rapid movement to those equipped with sleds. Floating pack ice also presents a way to traverse an area that would otherwise be impassable on foot, while migrating animals offer a bountiful source of food. Today, the circumpolar world includes portions of eight nations: Russia, the United States, Canada, Greenland (Denmark), Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. This area is home to about 400,000 people with ancestral links to the region, while the interactions of its inhabitants over thousands of years has seen remarkable cultures rise and – in some cases – fall. It is the story of these groups, both ancient and modern, and their ingenuity in harnessing a capricious climate that is the subject of a major new British Museum exhibition (see box on p.34). Here, we will take a look at some of the early occupants of the Arctic.
Ice Age colonists
In our increasingly climate-conscious age, it is well appreciated that changing temperatures can have severe implications for human activity. As our planet warms, so too the Arctic ice world is thawing, with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projecting that the North Pole will be open ocean rather than pack ice within two decades. While the stark challenges arising from the pace of modern temperature rises are addressed in the exhibition, it also illustrates how climate has always been a crucial concern for humans living in the Arctic.
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