Heard Island, a heavily glacierized volcanic island in the Southern Ocean, is 80% ice-covered, with glaciers descending from 2,400 m to sea level: major glaciers are up to 7 km long with areas exceeding 10 km. Much of the island was photographed from the air in 1947 and again in early 1980. Photographs and limited ground surveys record changes (mostly retreats) in glacier fronts. Retreat is most marked on the eastern flanks where former tidewater glaciers are now grounded inland. Glaciers on northern and windward western flanks still end in ice cliffs but have narrowed; glaciers and ice caps on Laurens Peninsula (maximum elevation 710 m) are up to 65% smaller. Nearby lies Kerguelen and other southern islands with long climatic records have warrned significantly since the early 1960s. Surface and upper-air climatic data from Heard Island 1947–54 and records from automatic weather stations 1980–82 suggest that Heard too has warmed slightly, concurrently with a possible northward shift of low-pressure system tracks in this region. Temperatures have remained above average through the early 1980s and glacier retreat is expected to continue.

In 1978 the Younger Stone Age (6500–1800 BP) site of Nyelv Nedre Vest in Varangerfjord, northeastern Norway, was partly excavated before road widening, allowing reassessment of Younger Stone Age settlement patterns in die area. Early settlement in Varanger was formerly thought to involve regular seasonal movements between sites. Analysis of faunal refuse from Nyelv Nedre Vest now indicates year- round occupation, and re-examination of data from other inner fjord sites suggests diat they too might have housed sedentary or semi- sedentary populations. Special-purpose satellite' camps seem also to have been associated with these settlements. This settlement pattern has implications for other aspects of the social group, and the results of the analysis are relevant to other settlement studies in northern maritime regions.

Histories of individual whale fisheries mainly undertaken by Europeans have yet to be written. This article provides an outline history of whaling in the Davis Strait area during the 18th and 19th centuries. Current knowledge is reviewed of whaling west of Greenland by ships from Danish, Dutch and German ports, and from English, American and Scottish ports. The land-based West Greenland whale fishery is also mentioned, and the activities of whalers from France and Spain. In spite of recent national whaling histories of the English, Dutch and Danish industries, quantitative data for the Davis Strait fishery are still virtually non-existent.

British-Russian rivalry along the North Pacific littoral after 1815 was at once an extension of 18th century ambitions, commercial and geopolitical, and an enlargement of the interests of both nations in the existence of a Northwest Passage. John Barrow in Britain and Adam John von Krusenstern in Russia exhibited the opposing yet complementary interests of the two powers. British Admiralty activities resulted partly from a fear of Russian pre-emption, partly from ambitions for territorial and commercial aggrandizement. The Russian government supported the Russian American Company, and consolidated its overseas empire in Alaska. This paper describes die maritime activities and plans of both nations concerning the North Pacific and Northwest Passage, explaining political and territorial ambitions of the two powers that underlay the exploration, and their expansion of territorial empire and commerce in this area.

Previously unpublished information from John Ross's expedition of 1829–33 to the Canadian Arctic indicates that Netsilik Inuit at that time manufactured and used clay-based ceramic pots. Additional published ethnohistoric and ethnographic sources indicate that the Sadlermiut Inuit, and probably the Utkuhikjalik and Qaernerimiut Inuit, also possessed ceramic technology. Considered in conjunction with survival characteristics of pottery, this suggests that the Thule ceramic complex was not restricted to early stages of Thule culture (AD 1000–1200) in the Eastern Arctic, but, at least in some areas, continued through to the early Historic period.

On 23 February the uppermost edge of the sun appeared briefly for the first time over the southern horizon; by 1 March the sun's full disc had appeared, and thereafter the daylight period lengthened rapidly. Apart from some minor cases of insomnia, lack of appetite and lassitude, the long period of darkness had had little effect on the wintering party in terms of either morale or physical health. Most importantly, there had been absolutely no sign of scurvy, undoubtedly due to the regular dose of vitamins which Dege insisted his men take, and to a substantial intake of reindeer meat over the winter.

A map showing the 12 Alaskan Native regions and corporations was inadvertantly left out of the recent article by Monica E. Thomas on ‘The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act: conflict and collaboration’ (Polar Record 23(142): 27–36). We print the map below, with apologies to the author.