Arctic

The Arctic is the region around the Earth's North Pole, opposite the Antarctic.

Hidden in wonder and snow, or sudden with summer, This land stares at the sun in a huge silence Endlessly repeating something we cannot hear. Inarticulate, arctic, Not written on by history, empty as paper, It leans away from the world with songs in its lakes Older than love, and lost in the miles. —Francis Reginald Scott

As I stood there on the top of the world and I thought of the hundreds of men who had lost their lives in the effort to reach it [North Pole], I felt profoundly grateful that I had the honor of representing my race. —Matt Henson

"Oh!" said Pooh again. "What is the North Pole?" "It's just a thing you discover," said Christopher Robin, not being quite sure himself. —A. A. Milne

The Arctic includes the Arctic Ocean (which overlies the North Pole) and parts of Canada, Greenland (a territory of Denmark), Russia, the United States (Alaska), Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland.

Sourced

• Even in our day, science suspects beyond the Polar seas, at the very circle of the Arctic Pole, the existence of a sea which never freezes and a continent which is ever green.
  • H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine - Vol. 2 Theosophical University Press Online Edition

• In our own lifetime we are witnessing a startling alteration of climate…Activities in the nonhuman world also reflect the warming of the Arctic-the changed habits and migrations of many fishes, birds, land mammals, and whales.
  • Rachel Carson The Sea Around Us (1951)

• As I stood there on the top of the world and I thought of the hundreds of men who had lost their lives in the effort to reach it [North Pole], I felt profoundly grateful that I had the honor of representing my race.
  • Matt Henson, Arctic Explorer Featured in Film," (1983)

• The fiery skies of the winter, the summer nights' miraculous sun.
  Walk against the wind. Climb mountains.
  Look to the North.
  More often.
  • Roy Jacobsen, [1]

• O proudly name their names who bravely sail
  To seek brave lost in Arctic snows and seas!
  • Helen Hunt Jackson, An Arctic Quest

• Iceland, though it lies so far to the north that it is partly within the Arctic Circle, is, like Norway, Scotland, and Ireland, affected by the Gulf Stream, so that considerable portions of it are quite habitable.
  • Sir Harry Johnston, Pioneers in Canada

• It is needless to rehearse the utter and degrading loss of individual liberty which results from the orthodox communistic theory that society is itself an organism in which each person is merely an insignificant cell. It is not in anti-Soviet libels, but in the proud reports of Soviet leaders, that we read of the forcible transfer of whole village populations from their ancestral abodes to new locations in the Arctic, and of the arbitrary ordering of Moscow clerks to tasks of manual labour in the farms and forests of Siberia. All these things are logical outgrowths of what the Bolsheviks call their “collectivistic ideology”, and typical examples of the horrors which might fall upon us if communism were to gain a foothold here.
  • H. P. Lovecraft, "Some Repetitions on the Times", (1933). Reprinted in Miscellaneous Writings, edited by S.T. Joshi. Arkham House, 1995.

• Oh!" said Pooh again. "What is the North Pole?" "It's just a thing you discover," said Christopher Robin, not being quite sure himself.
  • A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh (1926)

• Some regions are likely to be especially affected by climate change. The Arctic, because of the impacts of high rates of projected warming on natural systems and human communities; Africa, because of low adaptive capacity and projected climate change impacts, Small islands, where there is high exposure of population and infrastructure to projected climate change impacts Asian and African megadeltas, due to large populations and high exposure to sea level rise, storm surges, and river flooding. The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report concludes that non-climate stresses can increase vulnerability to climate change by reducing resilience and can also reduce adaptive capacity because of resource deployment towards competing needs. Vulnerable regions face multiple stresses that affect their exposure and sensitivity to various impacts as well as their capacity to adapt. These stresses arise from, for example, current climate hazards, poverty, and unequal access to resources, food insecurity, trends in economic globalization, conflict, and incidence of diseases such as HIV/AIDS.
  • Rajendra K. Pachauri, Nobel Peace Prize Lecture for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 10 December 2007

• Far to the North under the Great Bear, Sápmi shines.
  Ridge upon ridge, lake stretching into lake.
  Rocky cliffs, craggy peaks point to the sky.
  Streams laugh, woods whisper.
  Steely precipices drop, descend into the stormy sea.
  • Isak Saba, Sami national anthem

• Hidden in wonder and snow, or sudden with summer, This land stares at the sun in a huge silence Endlessly repeating something we cannot hear. Inarticulate, arctic, Not written on by history, empty as paper, It leans away from the world with songs in its lakes Older than love, and lost in the miles.
  • Francis Reginald Scott, Laurentian Shield

• As an eyewitness to the changing topography of the Arctic, I was stunned to see the rapid repercussions of global warming for the region, its wildlife habitat and indigenous cultures.
  • Will Steger, Arctic Explorer Will Steger Issues Statement Regarding the Hunt Ice Shelf Break Off.

• There are two kinds of Arctic problems, the imaginary and the real. Of the two, the imaginary are the most real.
  • Vilhjalmur Stefansson, The Arctic in Fact and Fable