Viking Magazine - March 2014 - 20

percent of the world's undiscovered
oil and natural gas. But energy is
only part of the picture. Substantial
mineral deposits lie untapped in
the north as well. And as Arctic ice
melts at unprecedented rates and the
region's waters open up, there are
new shipping, fi shing and tourism
opportunities.
With its economic promise and
environmental problems, the Arctic
has become an important arena
for building relationships between
countries, Aas says. Stories of
nations laying claim to more Arctic
territory or increasing their military
presence there crop up in headlines,
he acknowledges, but cooperation
prevails. " We are working very closely
with the Russians, for example, on
search and rescue in the Barents
Sea " where cold and ice create
special challenges for navigation and
emergency response. " We have a joint
environmental commission trying to
handle environmental impacts. We
have the same for fi sheries, " he adds.
Regulated by the United Nations'
Convention on the Law of the Sea and
by an international body called the
Arctic Council, the Arctic " remains a
region with low tension, " Aas says.
One measure of how interest in the
Arctic has grown is the makeup of the
Arctic Council. The eight countries
" Ten percent of
the Norwegian
population lives in
the Arctic, and so
does an element of
Norway's identity. "
Over the last 100 years,
temperatures in the Arctic
have been rising
twice
as fast as the
global average.
20 VIKING MARCH 2014 sonsofnorway.com
that formed the council in 1996 are
still its only voting members (Canada,
Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway,
Sweden, the Russian Federation
and the United States). But they've
been joined lately by 12 non-Arctic
countries-some as remote as Italy,
India and Singapore-that asked for
observer status on the council and
participation in its working groups on
environmental and economic issues.
" We think it will strengthen the
Arctic Council " to include non-Arctic
nations, says Else Berit Eikeland, a
former Norwegian ambassador to
Canada and now a special adviser
on the Arctic for Norway's Ministry
of Foreign Affairs. Observer states
bring added expertise to the council
and can help solve environmental
problems that don't have national or
Arctic boundaries, she says. Among
other things, " it's important to have
big powers like India, China and
Japan engaged in climate research in
the Arctic. A lot of the [greenhouse
gas] emissions do not take place in
Arctic states, but in the growing
economic powers. "
To understand all that's happening
in the Arctic now requires understanding
that there's more than one
Arctic, Eikeland says. There's one
characterized by the ice fi elds and
wildlife of our collective imagination,
but there's also one where temperatures
are less extreme, like the long
stretch of northern Norway that lies
above the Arctic Circle. Far from
being empty, parts of the Arctic are
dotted with settlements of people.
" Ten percent of the Norwegian
population lives in the Arctic, "
Eikeland says, and so does an element
of Norway's identity.
" The importance of polar
explorers like Amundsen, Nansen,
and Sverdrup to building the new
Norwegian identity after Norwegian
independence in 1905 " would be
hard to overestimate, she says. In
that sense, present-day exploration in
the Arctic-whether for oil and gas,
new shipping routes, or new scientifi c
discoveries- " is really a continuity of
this historical dimension of building a
modern Norway. "
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Viking Magazine - March 2014

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