Circumpolar Observatory

The HfE Circumpolar Observatory is a network distributed throughout the Arctic and Subarctic. Its hub is the Stefansson Arctic Institute in Akureyri, Iceland.

Circumpolar North Region

The Circumpolar North has no definitive boundaries but is commonly understood to comprise large parts of the continental Nordic countries, Russia, the USA, Canada, Greenland and Iceland, as well as the Arctic Ocean, the North Atlantic and the North Pacific. Human habitation in the far north of our world has been shaped not only by distinct geopolitical, economic and cultural histories extending back millennia, but also by varying environmental conditions that make this vast region anything but uniform.

Climate Change

The accelerated effects of climate change in this crucial region of our world have brought the Circumpolar North into particular focus in the 21st century, revealing inexorable social-ecological shifts that carry with them new risks and vulnerabilities. These changing conditions demand closer examination and evaluation.

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Exceptionally early ice melt, Greenland. Images taken by the Advanced Land Imager onboard the Earth Observing-1 satellite and the Operational Land Imager onboard Landsat 8. Source: NASA Earth Observatory.

Research Projects

The research and educational projects promoted by the HfE Circumpolar Observatory aim to increase scientific and scholarly understanding of how human communities have responded in the past to extreme environmental events and variability, while also working to better understand these challenges as they unfold in the present, so that a fuller archive of knowledge can be mobilized for the benefit of human and non-human communities in the future.

The researchers, projects and educational programs brought together in the observatory are defined, in part, by an openness to disciplinary border crossing that aligns physical environmental studies with historical and cultural modes of inquiry.

Circumpolar Observatory Projects

Project

Bifrost Online

Bifrost Online is an international, open-access channel promoting education for sustainability and climate change awareness.

Project

ICECHANGE

ICECHANGE undertakes a systematic analysis of descriptions of the natural world drawn from the literature and history of Iceland for the period ca. AD 800-1800.

Project

North Atlantic Marine Mammal Project

The North Atlantic Marine Mammal Project (NSF # 1503714, Assessing the Distribution and Variability of Marine Mammals through Archaeology, Ancient DNA, and History in the North Atlantic) uses the transdisciplinary tools of history, saga studies, archaeology, ancient DNA (aDNA), and marine mammalogy to reconstruct economic contributions of cetaceans and pinnipeds across premodern Iceland, Greenland, North America, and Orkney, ca. 800 – 1500 CE.

Project

The 100-Year Time-Lapse Project

In 1909 a balloonist photographed the Mer de Glace in the Alps from the air, creating a uniquely detailed visual record of the glacier.

© 2017 Porvarour Arnason FB: Thori Photo/Film

Networks

The observatory coordinates projects and activities closely with NIES (The Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies), NABO (The North Atlantic Biocultural Organisation), GHEA (The Global Human Ecodynamics Alliance), Future Earth and IHOPE (The Integrated History and Future of People on Earth), in particular the IHOPE subprojects Circumpolar Networks and Global Environmental Change Threats to Heritage and Long Term Observing Networks of the Past.

The HfE Circumpolar Observatory is a network distributed throughout the Arctic and Subarctic. Its hub is the Stefansson Arctic Institute in Akureyri, Iceland.